My son likes lights.  We first noticed it when he was about 2 months old while walking around Babies R Us, he kept focusing on the huge florescent overhead lights.  Then there was the time we drove home from UT when he was 5 months old and from Flagstaff to Phoenix the only way I could keep him from crying was to hit the button on this silly light up toy phone.  Over and over I hit that button in the dark for over 2 hours and he never tired of watching the blinking colored light combination.  Fast forward to now, he’s 8 and his fascination hasn’t waned much.  I took this photo Wednesday night of his room…he even has them set on a timer.  He is so proud of this creation.

I made a little of my own holiday sparkle today as well.  I finally made it out to ABC (man oh man, they have everything and then some for food decoration!) for Disco Dust.  Disco Dust is basically edible glitter that you can add to frosting, use as sprinkles or well…anything else you can think of.

I agreed to bake some cookies for a cookie exchange (this always seems like a good idea until I get the final count of how many cookies I need to bake and then I want to lie on the floor and die), which is a huge step for me…considering what happened last time I attempted a cookie exchange.

I went with one of my favorite holiday cookies (did I mention it is super easy too?), Mexican Wedding Cookies.  I’ve heard other people call them Snowballs or Russian Tea Cookies- who cares what you call them as long as they are coated in powdered sugar!  They are basically a shortbread cookie rolled in powdered sugar.

Seeing as I can’t leave well enough alone (or I like to add stress to my life) I decided that such a simple cookie wouldn’t be enough, it needed something more….enter disco dust.  I mixed gold disco dust into the powdered sugar before I rolled the cookies in it.  They turned out nice and sparkly, but still subtle.  Disco dust is available in many colors, but I thought gold would be appropriate…but of course pink would have looked great too!

Here is my family recipe:

1c butter (the real stuff, no margarine)

1/4c Powered Sugar (and more for rolling)

1t vanilla

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

2c cake flour

Cream butter and sugar, then mix in remaining ingredients.  Roll into 2″ circles and bake for 10-12 min at 375.  While warm roll in powdered sugar.  Eat & Share!

filed under in my kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. leave a comment,