DECK THE HOLIDAY'S

Shortbread has to be one of my favourite holiday cookies, I mean it is so easy to make and that melt in your mouth buttery goodness is almost impossible to resist! Although plain shortbread is amazing you can fill it with pretty much anything from simple to gourmet and from sweet to savoury even. Taking a queue from my  candied orange peel shortbread  I had been wanting to try a festive version with bright red maraschino cherries, though instead of coating them with chocolate this time I was going to add the chocolate to the cookies along with the cherries. I was however a little torn between whether to use white or dark chocolate as white chocolate seemed more festive but dark chocolate goes so well with cherries. In the end the easiest solution was to make a batch of both and besides you can't have too much shortbread. The chocolate and maraschino cherry shortbread cookies did not disappoint! I was quite pleased at how the red from the cherries swirled into the cookie do

    Almost every culture in the world has its own vampire legend, and some date back thousands of years. Today, we are most familiar with Count Dracula and other folklore from Eastern Europe. Do you want to learn more? Here is a wealth of juicy trivia to sink your fangs into sink your fangs into this Halloween season. 1. Was the first vampire a woman? The oldest known vampire legends come from Babylonian and Sumerian mythology. Female demons called the Lilu were said to hunt women and children at night, and drink their blood. 2. Vlad III Tepes, also known as Vlad Dracul, was known for his incredible cruelty; he was alleged to have killed up to 30,000 people at one time! His bloodthirsty reputation inspired Bram Stoker's  Dracula . 3.  The National Retail Federation  listed "Vampire" as the second most popular adult Halloween costume in 2005.  Vampires  were the sixteenth most popular children's costume for the same year. 4. While modern pop cul

    A little known fact is that fifty-four of the fifty-six signatories of the Declaration of Independence were believers. These men understood the powerful influence that the Savior God had on each and every individual who had signed this and pledged allegiance to it. Their signatures could have possibly sealed their deaths and they were all fully aware of it.     In their framework of the Declaration, they sought God's wisdom in creating a document that would become this great nation's most important testament. Little did the signers of the Declaration of Independence know that with the signing of this Declaration, the birth of a new nation had begun, and "the shot that was heard around the world", the first shot fired against a British soldier, would be the beginning of the end for Great Britain's rule over the American colonies. The Declaration of Independence     With the signing of the  Declaration of Independence , on July 4th, 1776, the U