3 posts tagged “baking”

The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Book 1)

Eric's birthday is tomorrow, but we are celebrating with the family today with a big birthday party!  I told him Friday was the beginning of his birthday celebration and he keeps laughing at me.  We went out and watched the Golden Compass on friday and had Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch, and it was a really nice date.

E's mom is actually coming, because she flew up for a funeral in Walla Walla yesterday.  We're sad for the reason, but it will be great to see her, since we aren't flying down this holiday season ourselves.  Of course, as we get closer to the event, people are dropping off of the list, which does tend to happen because E's bday is so close to Christmas and people having other responsiblities.  But it will still be great, we'll have somewhere between 9-14 people I think!

I've been doing a bunch of cleaning throughout the week and yesterday, we finished up most everything.  How does dust and dirt get on ever surface of the house?!  It's sure shiny now at least.  A few weeks back, we rearranged the couches, and even though the couch sitting area is a smaller area now, I think I'm going to leave it this way even with company and hope that nobody feels like there's nowhere to sit. (we are only one chair short because it was Megan's and she needed it).

For dinner, we are going to have fabulous food.  I created this recipe for Pasta Bake (theredkitchen) a few months back when I didn't have any lasagna noodles, and have perfected it and then added a vegetarian version.  I've never made it on a bigger scale than single-service+leftover, though, so this ought to be exciting.  We'll also be having yummy dinner rolls (theredkitchen), which I love to make because they are all yeasty and fresh tasting.  And then broccoli with butter and mizithra cheese (like Spaghetti factory) and Apricot Glazed Carrots (allrecipes) or something like that - I didn't get an orange to zest. 

The Cake Mix Doctor

Yesterday's cooking prep included a new recipe for snacking on, Peppermint Cookie Brittle (bettycrocker).  This looked like an easier version of peppermint bark that I made last year because the base is cookies instead of chocolate.  We still need to break it up into little pieces, but it's done.  E picked a cake out of the Cake Mix Doctor, and Almond Chocolate cake that smelled SO good last night and I can't wait to eat it! :)

So today will involve a bunch of cooking to try and be done and ready to bake it before people start coming early to gather and play.  I'd rather not be stressing about finishing anything but the vegetables once people get her, truthfully, because that's a little more anxiety-inducing!

Along with the birthday party planning, I finished Christmas decorations, and started wrapping Christmas presents (E's mom may be able to stick a few in her suitcase, otherwise we'll bring them to the mail on Monday).  This coming week will be mostly relaxing because gifts are almost all done and just waiting to be wrapped.  And Christmas cookie baking will happen towards the end of the week to bring them for Christmas Eve with the family.  We'll go to church on Sunday with Leonard and Sarah, which really gets me in a good mindset for Christmas (speaking of which, I dreamt last night that I found an adventist church I actually wanted to attend and didn't have people who I'd rather not see at it.  I wish that was true!)

Ohhh, and E found a cable for the entertainment center downstairs to plug my iPod into.  Now we can listen to the 8 hours of Christmas music on my iPod instead of having to use the CD rotator and be limited to 5 CDs and listen to the ugly noises it makes when switching between ;)  I ripped his Mannheim Steamroller to alternate with my regular Christmas Music.  I can't help but sing along, even if my voice leans towards singing the harmony too often!

Have a beautiful day, friends!

See the first part: I painted plates for my family members for this Christmas, and then made a variety of baked goods to go along with them.  

It wasn't hard to decide what baked goods to put on the plates.  A nice mix of the family favorites, and my favorite things to bake were important. But I did want it to be a balanced plate (which usually to my silly brain means and odd (instead of even) number of options) and be very pretty.

Earlier this summer, I found silver balls (dragees) that I was eyeing for a long time and found that even though some stores don't sell them anymore for health concerns, you'd have to eat like a whole container of this brand to be harmful!  So I knew I wanted to do some sugar cookies with those.  I love decorating sugar cookies anyhow, so that was a must-have.  I was in the middle of baking sugar cookies when the power went out, so that batch ended up not turning out well, so I did start again the next day with a different recipe (but chilled to be able to be cut out cookies) and that was much better.

Russian Teaballs was a must because that's an old family favorite.  We wanted Fudge, but E wasn't as happy with last year's marshmellow creme kind, so we found this recipe, and that was a good one, although I'd probably use the microwave to melt together the chips and milk next time.  Peppermint bark is such a fun idea, and I'd made it last year, so I was excited to try it again, this year using candy melts instead of white chocolate chips.  And finally, pumpkin bread is my favorite kind of special bread, and it's an easy recipe so I knew that should be part of it.

I mapped out my weekends in advance to make these just at the right time to have them all perfect in time.  The pumpkin bread freezes well so that could be done a little bit early, and fudge/peppermint bark could be done at least a few days in advance without a problem. Sugar cookies and Russian teaballs were done towards the end.

And then my favorite part of the plan was to get to go to each person's house and deliver them.  We weren't quite sure how well that would work, but we wanted to try... if nothing else, it was a good chance to try and see each person's Christmas tree. :)

So I baked and planned and ended up with a bunch of pretty things:

And voila!  the cookie plates were ready to be delivered.

We made it to see Matthew and mom right before she left for work last Saturday, and then saturday night we stopped to see Megan and Andrew.  Sarah and their family picked theirs up from Eric's birthday party the next day, and Matthew brought Lisa and Jon theirs that same day because they were at home sick.  So everything did make it to their homes, with the exception of the plate for my inlaws, which is coming with us on a trip this coming week.  They won't have the same assortment because it was going to be hard to make them and take them all with us.

I'm really happy with how these plates and their baked goods turned out.  I felt all Christmassy delivering them and it really was a fun experience for me.  Hope you enjoyed the story!