Cranberry Bliss Bar wanna be's

I so love those Starbucks cranberry bliss bars and actually indulged when I went to Disneyland and ate an entire bar to myself. Normally I try to split one with my husband. I reasoned that I would be actually walking it all off.

Earlier this year I found this recipe and OMG! they taste like the real thing well IMO a bit better than the real thing so I am adding this recipe to my Christmas baking list. Definitely gift giving worthy.

I made this batch for work but of course keeping a few bars for the home to treat myself and my family with.

And if you love these bars read on because I am including the recipe with this post.

Ingredients

Cookie  Bar

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup chopped dried cranberries
6 ounces white chocolate, chips or cut into chunks

Frosting

4-ounces cream cheese, softened
3 cups powdered sugar
4 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup dried cranberries

Drizzled Icing

1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk
2 teaspoons vegetable shortening

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Make base by beating butter and brown sugar together with an electric mixer until smooth. Add eggs, vanilla, ginger, and salt and beat well. Gradually mix in flour until smooth. Mix 3/4 cup chopped dried cranberries and white chocolate into the batter by hand. Pour batter into a well-greased 9x13" baking pan. Use a spatula to spread the batter evenly across the pan.

 

 

 

 

 

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until light brown on the edges. Allow to cool.  (Mine was probably a tad over done by2-3 minutes)

3. Make frosting by combining softened cream cheese, 3 cups powdered sugar, lemon juice and vanilla extract in a medium bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. When the cookie bar base has cooled, use a spatula to spread frosting over the top of the cake.

4. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of diced cranberries over the frosting on the cake.

5. Whisk together 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon milk, and shortening. Drizzle icing over the cranberries in a sweeping motion or use a pastry bag with a fine tip to drizzle frosting across the top of the cake.

6. Allow bars to sit for several hours, then slice. I cut mine into bars but if you want the Starbucks look then slice the bars lengthwise (the long way) through the middle. Slice the cake across the width three times making a total of eight rectangular slices. Slice each of those rectangles diagonally creating 16 triangular slices.

Makes 16 bars.

Floral Quilt

This is my last quilt that I needed to complete for Christmas gifts, whew! Glad to have that done and over. I saw this gorgeous fabric when the fat quarters shop had a sale. I normally don't hoard fabric, at least I try not to but I saw this fabric and bought it with no real plans for it, just knew I wanted to make something with it.

Then the idea came to me I would gift this to my chiropractor. The women has been a saint to me, I couldn't stand going to one and she is gentle and super uber nice. The kind of person you wish you had spent more time with growing up. She is just a fascinating person who happens to sew or she did but hasn't done much of it lately. I am hoping to change that.

Any how instead of gifting her money or a gift card or whatever I thought she would like a quilt. This one is small and considered to be basically a lap quilt perfect for cuddling up with on the couch and a good book which she does a lot of.

I did all the quilting free motion on my machine. It was a chore but I loved how it came out and much better than paying someone $$$ to do it on a fancy schmancy machine.

This is one gift I am very excited to be giving this year.

Classy and Elegant Card

So I am diverting backwards as this card was actually completed for Day 3. I decided to use some water colors and then added in some stickles for the berries and gold droplets then finished it with a few sequins, red twine and gold bells. 

 

The Holly stamp is from Clearly Besotted and the sentiment stamp is from Penny Black. I think this maybe the first or second time I have used it over the past five years. I have this terrible affliction of buying things thinking I will use them then get them home and struggle with actually using them. 

 

 

Cute and Whimsical Cards

Continuing on with my online card class I am sharing two cards I made that are supposed to be in the Cute and Whimsical category. I have to say just getting back from Disneyland this was a bit of a challenge to get done. My mojo really wasn't in full swing trying to catch up. This is day 5 and the class is on day 12..yikes!

Up first is this fun little guy from My Favorite Stamps. I really like these little dudes, so fun to color them.

And this other one is using stamps/dies from Lawn Fawn as well as the MTF mountain range die and the Merry die is from Clearly Besotted. The falling snow stencil is from Simon Says Stamp.

Christmas Love

Today I have more cards but not from the online class just my need to do some more coloring with my Copics.

Holiday Style - Clean and Simple

Hello fellow bloggers, today I am sharing not one but two cards I made for an online class called Holiday Style. I took a similar class last year and really wasn't that impressed, this year seems to be a bit better.

I am behind because they are on day 6 and I have just begun. I guess it doesn't help I am on my way to Disneyland so most of my efforts have been geared towards the trip.

So they gave us three different clean and simple cards but eh I can't say that I think they are completely clean and simple but I do like the idea of what they have shown us.

The first one uses stamp repetition as well as the suggestion of bending your stamps so that's what I did here. I feel like it's missing something not sure what but I am not very happy with the card.

I used a template for the snow and tried to use a white gel pen to add more snow on the tree but it wasn't showing up much, I then decided to use a stylus tool to dot the glitter embossing paste and once it was fairly dry I squashed it down to mimic the template look.

Stampscapes - Lg Tree Cluster

Papertrey Ink - Season's stamp, Ink

Aleenee's Glitter Snow Embossing Paste

Simon Says Stamp - Falling Snow Template

This next card was for the clean layers look but I didn't have the die that they used so I am just improvising and doing my own thing based on their use of watercolors and snowflakes. I did dbl cut the snowflakes and then popped up the second layer for a bit of dimension.

I added a bit of shimmer to the card using radiant pearls splattered as well as glitter confetti stars and cut Joy out of diamond plate paper.

Kuretake Gansai Tambi - Waterolors
Simon Says - Snowflake Dies
Papertrey Ink - Joy Die and stamp
Other - glitter confetti, radiant pearls

Holiday Joy

Nothing special here just a cute little deer from Lawn Fawn and using up some much older pattern paper. I really love it when manufacturers give us the dies that go with their stamps so much easier than having to fussy cut and lets face it, a much cleaner look.