Cookie Dough

 Can you believe Spring is already here as of today? It seems like the first quarter of the year has flown by, but I’m ready for nice weather, playing outside with the kids, grilling, and having friends over.

We got a jump on ideas for delicious spring treats last night at my Great Value baking party – and everything we made just involved a few ingredients – so easy!

We decided to make something savory and something sweet, and the starring ingredients in both dishes were the Great Value crescent rolls and cream cheese spread. I love having dishes with overlapping ingredients, because it makes it cost even less to provide great food when you entertain – not to mention the lower Great Value prices to begin with!

So, I’m sure you’re curious about what we made, right? First let’s talk about our savory dish – cold veggie pizzas shaped to look like carrots! These are a fun way to introduce veggies into your kids’ meals, and with Easter around the corner you can remind them that bunnies love to eat carrots, so they should eat some too!

For our pizzas, first we rolled out crescent roll dough into sheets on baking pans, and baked them at 375 degrees until they were golden brown. Then my friend Amanda chopped up broccoli into fine pieces, while my friend Kristi did the same with carrots.

Once the dough is baked, we just cut out cone-shaped pieces. We made ours small, but you could easily make these bigger for a more substantial pizza piece. Then just spread each piece with cream cheese, and sprinkle with carrots and broccoli! The idea is to make the broccoli look like the leafy part of the carrot, but you can approach the design however you like best.

These are REALLY good – I’d had something similar before, so I knew I’d like these, but my friends were a little skeptical. These won them over, though, and I think they’ll be making them in the near future!  My friend Jennifer’s daughters liked them, too:

Now, on to the sweet treats (always my favorite part)! We made stuffed cinnamon roll bites – and let me tell you, these are AMAZING. Like, so good I can’t even convey it with words… you will just have to make them for yourself.

For this dish, all we needed was the crescent roll dough, cream cheese, cinnamon, sugar, powdered sugar, and vanilla.

We mixed up a cinnamon-sugar combination to coat our crescent roll dough. We tore off small pieces to fit in a fun bunny-shaped muffin tin I bought, coated each one on both sides, and pressed it into each of the bunnies.

Then we mixed up 1/2 cup of cream cheese, 1/4 cup of powdered sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla to use as a filling.

For these small bites we just used a tiny spoonful, not filling the cavity up completely. Then we topped these off with another piece of cinnamon sugar-coated crescent roll dough.

Once these baked and cooled just a bit we popped them right out (easy with the silicone pan!) and had adorable little bunny-shaped, stuffed cinnamon roll bites. The tops of these are slightly crispy and the bottoms are gooey and amazing. We flipped ours upside down because the bottoms showed the bunny shape a little better. Aren’t they adorable?

You could easily modify these with other shapes, or you can do like my friend Jennifer did and make roll-ups – she coated a full triangle of crescent roll dough with the cinnamon-sugar mixture, spread it with the sweetened cream cheese filling, and rolled it up like you would a normal crescent roll. YUM!

I hope you’ll give both of these fun spring treats a try – and don’t forget you can make other easy desserts with Great Value cookie dough – I think we’ll be making Easter cookies soon!

Note: I am participating in the Great Value program with The Motherhood. I have been compensated for my time.  All thoughts and opinions are honest and are my own.

I can hardly believe Spring is right around the corner! We’ve survived the time change, and now we’re looking forward to warmer weather, longer patches of sunlight, and lots of fun outside.

It also means it’s about time for my next Great Value baking party! I am looking forward to another excuse to get together with friends and bake some delicious goodies – and without spending an arm and a leg on supplies.  This party I’m going to focus on some good crescent roll recipes. I’ve loved crescent rolls for a long time, and they definitely add a great flavor to all sorts of recipes, both sweet and savory.

One thing we’re going to make is some mini, bunny-shaped sopapilla cheesecakes. I bought this silicone mold at Walmart:

What we’ll do is take small pieces of crescent dough and coat them with a cinnamon/sugar mixture, then press them into the bottom of the molds. Then I’ll put a dollop of sweet cream cheese filling in the middle, and then top with another piece of crescent dough. I’m excited to see how these turn out, because I think they’ll be adorable AND delicious.

For the savory side, we’re going to make some veggie “pizzas” in the shape of carrots, an idea I got from Hungry Happenings. So cute, easy, and it’s a way to sneak some veggies into your kids’ diets.

I bought my veggies and cream cheese along with the crescent roll dough, so I’m all set!

And last but not least, since crescent rolls are pretty delicious all on their own, we’re going to make some “bunny buns”; all we have to do is roll the dough into a rope and twist to make a cute addition to meals your kids will love. I’ll show you the trick to those in my next post, along with photos from the party! Be sure and check back for the pics, recipes, and tips for some great Spring snacks and treats – I’ll share a cookie recipe with you, too, so you can use your Great Value cookie dough for some adorable desserts. Can’t wait!

Note: I am participating in the Great Value program with The Motherhood. I have been compensated for my time.  All thoughts and opinions are honest and are my own.

Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about the fun Great Value baking party I had with some friends? We made apple pie, which was amazingly good. But guess what… I’ve found out a way to kick it up a notch. I’ll share it with you in just a little bit – you’re going to love it!

So, as I was saying, we had a lot of fun at our baking party and we decided we definitely need to have one to prep for the holidays. We’re getting together this coming Saturday morning for a cookie baking and decorating party. Since it’ll be morning, I’m going to serve some Great Value cinnamon rolls for breakfast… but why relegate cinnamon rolls only to breakfast? Here’s where my hint above comes into play… you can use cinnamon roll dough for pie crust!

Just spread rolls into a thin layer and place in a pie pan, then follow the rest of the recipe as normal. YUM!

The main focus of our party on Saturday, though, will be cookies. And we’re inviting our kids along this time, so it should be a blast! We’re going to make some sugar cookies – but instead of taking a lot of time making dough from scratch, we’re getting right to the fun part. We’ll just use the Great Value cookie dough and roll it out on a floured surface, and let the kids pick their favorite shapes. So easy! I’m going to make up a bunch of different colors of icing so they can get creative with decorating (and I even got some kid-sized aprons for them to wear)!

Aside from sugar cookies, we’re going to let the kids make simple snickerdoodles – just roll slices of the sugar cookie dough into balls, then coat in a sugar/cinnamon mix. So good – and so easy!

I also bought some chocolate chip cookie dough.  But instead of just making chocolate chip cookies (which, let’s be honest, are pretty delicious on their own) we’re going to take it one step further and wrap the cookie dough around chocolate creme sandwich cookies – it’s an easy way to add a little surprise and extra flavor to the cookies.

I can’t wait to tell you all about the party, and of course I’ll take a ton of pictures to share with you! Check back this weekend for my follow up post and I’ll even have another recipe to share with you, along with my favorite 5 cookie ideas to inspire you.

Note: I am participating in the Great Value program with The Motherhood. I have been compensated for my time.  All thoughts and opinions are honest and are my own.