Chocolate Chip Cookie Cups

What you need:

• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

First, cream the shortening, butter and sugar in a large bowl. Then add the egg and vanilla and mix until blended. In a separate bowl sift together the salt, baking powder, and flour. Then mix it little by little into the batter. Then stir in the chocolate chips. Wrap the dough in plastic and let it chill in the fridge for at least two hours.

Heat the oven to 375º.

Using upside down muffing tins, cover the cup bottoms with squares of aluminum foil (use every other cup so there's some space between them). Grease the foil and set it aside.

Unwrap your dough, place it between 2 sheets of waxed paper, and roll it out to about 1/8-inch thickness. Cut out 4-inch circles of dough and place each one over a cup bottom, smoothing out any cracks (we did this and still ended up with small cracks in our bowls - oh well!).

Bake the cookie cups for 10 to 12 minutes or until light brown. Let them cool for 10 minutes, then remove the foil and cookies together from the muffin pan. Peel off the foil and let the cups cool completely on a rack. AS you can see from the pics, ours didn't turn out nearly as pretty as the original recipe's, but looks aren't everything! :)

Just before serving, fill each cookie cup with some yummy fruit salad (or ice cream if you prefer). Makes about 10.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Ingredients
• 16 ounces milk chocolate chips
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 1 pound fresh strawberries with leaves

Directions

1. Insert toothpicks into the tops of the strawberries.

2. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate and shortening, stirring occasionally until smooth. Holding them by the toothpicks, dip the strawberries into the chocolate mixture.

3. Turn the strawberries upside down and insert the toothpick into styrofoam for the chocolate to cool.

Chocolate can be a mystery, so Here is a tip to keep your chocolate from becoming too thick. When you are melting over a double boiler, don't let the water touch the bottom of your upper pan. Heat until only 1/2 of the chocolate is melted, then remove from heat and stir gently until it is all melted. The chocolate should actually be cool or tepid to the touch. If it's hot, chances are it will sieze up and thicken. If it does that, no amount of heating or stiring will fix it.

Just FYI: Chocolate chips come in 11.5 ounce bags now. I used half milk chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate and I did not use shortening, but butter (a little less than 2 T due to smaller bag of chips). Since chocolate burns easily and then gets hard and globby (even in the microwave), it is good to get the water in the double-boiler actually boiling, melt the butter (or shortening) first, and then add the chocolate so everything is nice and toasty warm for it to gently melt. If you don't have a double-boiler, try using a regular pot, get the water boiling in it, then use a smaller pot to rest in the big one to melt the butter & choc chips. These are really tasty.

Fruit Salad

1 bunch purple grapes, halved (no seeds)
1 bunch white grapes, halved (no seeds)
3-4 bananas
1 medium can peaches (drained)
**1 medium can pineapple chunks (drained)
1 medium can pears (drained)
1 8oz jar cherries, halved (drained)


Sauce:

**juice from pineapple
1/4 - 1/2 cup lemon juice
1 pkg vanilla pudding (not instant)
1 T sugar
1 T corn starch

Section all fruit and place in a large glass bowl.  Bring pineapple and lemon juice to a boil.  Mix pudding sugar and corn starch together, adding small amounts of water bits at a time, until it becomes a smooth mixture. 

Pour into boiling juices, stir until it becomes transparent.  Pour over fruit while hot.  Chill/Serve

Red White & Blue Stuffed Strawberries

12 fresh strawberries (halved)

24 fresh blueberries

1 tub Cool Whip

Select 12 good quality strawberries and slice each strawberry in half. The green leaves can be kept on the berry or removed, if desired.

Use a melon ball scoop (or teaspoon) to remove the center of each half slice of the strawberry and fill each scooped half slice of strawberry with approximately 1 teaspoon of Cool Whip. Top Cool Whip with a blueberry and serve, or chill to be served when ready.