Chocolate Macaroons with Dark Chocolate Ganache Fillling

On my 9th birthday I received one of my favorite birthday gifts ever: Samantha Parkington, my first American Girl doll. She looked just like me with brown hair and eyes. I was excited. Little did I know that she would end up being the beginning of a life-long love affair with American Girl.

OK, so maybe that's a tad exaggeration. I only have one other doll - Kirsten Larson, who I bought with my own money right before I turned 10 - but I have been faithful to the company since I got Samantha, buying every single historical character book that came out (well, almost - I'm still missing a few individual short stories and I've never really been interested in the mystery books) as well as many of the advice and activity books they used to have. I even bought an Irish dance outfit for my girls and the Irish dancer who was part of their Girls of Many Lands collection back when dance was a big part of my life in high school (yes, you read that right - high school).

I've been slightly less interested in the Girl of the Year line, mainly because the girl doesn't always share an interest with me. But Grace, the 2015 Girl, does: like me, she has a knack for baking. When she was first introduced in January, I noticed that one of her specialties was macaroons, a meringue sandwich treat. So I decided to make them to eat while watching the movie (several of the Girls have gotten movie adaptations of their books, following in the footsteps of 4 historical characters).

Source

I had actually attempted to make them back in May, when National Macaroon Day was on the horizon, with the intent to freeze them so I could eat some during the movie. But I completely failed at making the batter so I had to make them closer to watching the movie.

Take 2 didn't go so well either.

At least I made them this time?

Snickers Stuffed Peanut Butter Cookies

After the success of my mom's Mother's Day gift, I decided to do the same for my dad. I figured I could do one of two things: make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Dad's favorite from the Cle Elum Bakery, or make something with Snickers, Dad's favorite candy. I decided to start searching for Snickers recipes and make the other ones if I lucked out.

I started searching on Pinterest since I just joined and recipes are one of the types of pins that the site has plenty of (plus I've discovered that you have to have a Pinterest account in order to see the Pinterest search pages that come up in a Google search). I decided to stick with cookies or bars since those are easy to box up. A few pins down, I came across a recipe for Snickers stuffed peanut butter cookies from Crazy for Crust. Like with Mom's bars, these combined two of Dad's favorite things: peanut butter and Snickers. Jackpot!