Melting Moments Cookies & Choices {Recipe}

Melting Moments are crisp, shortbread-like cookies that are tender to the bite, a little crunchy, but then melt away in your mouth. They are simple, unassuming little cookies, but definitely moreish! And I think they look rather pretty with the bright red cherry in the middle!

I had a bit of fun with these cookies. I made a big batch for my Young Women lesson at church on Sunday - everyone really enjoyed them at the end of the lesson, and we had the Young Men appearing at the door looking for their share too.

Some of the cookies however, had a little extra, not so welcome ingredient - dirt. I presented a platter of dirt infused cookies at the beginning of the lesson and gave the girls a choice, they could eat a cookie if they wanted to, but I made them aware that there was just a little bit of dirt in each one. Only a tiny bit of dirt though, it probably wouldn't even really be noticeable if you were to eat the cookie, the few tiny visible specks could surely be ignored - the cookies still looked really yummy. Unsurprisingly, they did not rush to eat them. I then compared eating the contaminated cookies with making choices to do things that were mostly OK, hoping that the tiny little bits of 'bad' involved in those choices wouldn't affect them.

If you would like to make your own Melting Moments, here is the recipe (don't worry, I left the dirt out ;)

Melting Moments       PRINT

Makes 30 cookies

Ingredients:

225g butter - room temperature

175g caster sugar

2 large egg yolks

1 TBSP vanilla

270g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

60g rolled oats

15 red glacé cherries

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180ºC

Line 2 baking trays with baking paper or silpats.

Beat butter, sugar, egg yolks and vanilla together. Add the flour, baling powder and salt and beat in until you get a smooth batter.

Spread the rolled oats out on a plate.

Scoop out about a 1 1/2 inch ball of dough (either with two table spoons or with a small ice cream scoop), and drop it onto the rolled oats.
My little ice cream scoop measures 1 1/2" across, I use it for all of my drop cookies, like chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles. It's just the right size and using it means that my cookies all come out uniform in size and shape.

Roll the ball of batter around until it is coated in oats.

Place on a baking tray and flatten slightly, then top with half a glacé cherry.

Repeat until all the dough is used up - you should get about 30 cookies - 15 on each baking tray. Ensure there is space around each cookie to spread out when cooking, about 1 1/2” space between cookies is enough.

Bake for 18-20 minutes, until just going golden around the edges.

Leave to cool on the baking tray for a few minutes, then lift onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Best eaten within 48 hours.

Happy Baking!

Doctrine and Covenants Seminary Scripture Mastery MAD GABS *Updated for 2021*

Today I have something slightly different to share. I have been an early morning Seminary teacher since September, and am absolutely loving it. After seeing Mad Gabs used in a Seminary activity last year (Book of Mormon), I decided I'd like to include a Mad Gab game in my lessons. After searching for and not finding a full set of Mad Gabs for the Doctrine and Covenants online, I started working on my own set, and have finally finished a complete set for this year's D&C Scripture Masteries.

My students all love practising their SM with these cards. Except my son. He has a love/hate relationship with them. One of the funniest moments in seminary is when he reads one of the cards out loud. Everyone else in the class instantly understands the phrase he is reading - he does a really good job of slurring the words together so that it sounds right - but he can't hear it! The more times he reads it out, the clearer it sounds to everyone else and the more confused he gets, and the more everyone, including him, laughs. At least he has a good sense of humour :)

So here are my D&C SM Mad Gabs, free for you to download and use. I hope you and your students enjoy them!

The cards are in a 4 page A4 pdf document that you can download.

*** EDIT January 2021 - I have created an updated set which includes the new scriptures added to scripture master this year. Click here to download the updated version, or on on of the the images. ***

 (The old 2015 version can be found by clicking here.)

You can make a set of cards by gluing the MAD GAB and it's answer back to back for each card.

OR

You can make a set of cards with only the MAD GABS on them (blank on the back), which the students can then handle without seeing the answer, then print out the whole set onto one or two pages for you (the teacher) to use as an answer sheet.

Have fun!

Come Unto Christ 2014 LDS Youth Theme {studio file}

With the new year upon us, it was time to redo our Young Women notice board at church. We really wanted it to reflect the 'Come Unto Christ' theme for the year and decided that the logo should feature on the board. I have a Silhouette Cameo machine and I wanted to be able to use my machine to cut the logo from scrapbooking paper, so I re-created the artwork in the Silhouette Studio software. The completed project really does look lovely on our notice board!

I have included links to the file I created so that you can use it too, just click on either image to download the .studio file. Both colour and monochrome versions are in the same file.

Don't Forget to Pray

For Christmas this year, we (the ward YW leaders) made "Don't Forget to Pray" cushions for our Young Women.

Update: I am pleased to say that they loved them :)