Year 2 - Day 354 - December 11

Baking, day 2 brought chocolate chip, butterscotch chip, peanut butter with the hershey kisses, and mint chocolate chip cups. Plus, we made pretzel melts. I should have thought ahead and made the kisses and melts yesterday. I always forget how long it takes the chocolate to harden on the cookies & pretzels. Luckily Mike doesn't get up on Mondays so he can stay up and babysit until they're ready to be bagged!

Year 2 - Day 353 - December 10

Today we began our cookie baking. It takes more than one day, but we got a decent start. Today's batches were M&M, Chocolate w/ peanut butter chips, and fudge.

While we were doing the baking, we also made a little more than a half gallon of OJ.

This time each year, we get a box (2/5 bushel) of juice oranges from the high school band near where I work. It makes me appreciate the high cost of OJ these days, since this pitcher cost 3x what a normal container of OJ would cost, PLUS we had to spend the 45 minutes making it. :) But oh my goodness it's tasty.

Year 2 - Day 336 - November 23

This is why I don't bake more often.

I made a lot of messes today, but one takes the cake.

The things I made required several eggs. After cracking & using them, the shells were sitting in the sink. When I was getting ready to do the dishes, I turned on the faucet intending to fill up the bowl with water.

However, I moved the faucet to the left a little as I as bending down to the right to fill the dishwasher. I didn't notice that the water was NOT going into the bowl. Instead, it was streaming into 1/2 an egg shell, which was lying in the sink in the shape of a little tiny cup. The water was then bouncing out of that egg shell and directly on to the counter in a perfect arc. (Our sink is really shallow, as you can tell from the bowl sticking out of it.)

It would have been nice to notice that for the first 10 seconds while my attention was on dishwasher loading. It was quite the flood.

So yeah, that's one of the reasons why I don't bake more often!

Year 2 - Day 218 - August 7

When we got 3 zucchini with our crop share this week, I decided that I'd try to make zucchini bread. I googled, facebooked, and tweeted and decided to go with this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/moms-zucchini-bread/detail.aspx

After I grated the zucchini I opted to toss it in the food processor to get the pieces as small as possible. I'm glad I did because the one hunk I bit into in my finished product added a lot of bitterness to that bite. It didn't taste like vegetable, but it wasn't sugary goodness like the other bites.

All in all, it's decent, and I'd eat it again. I think it tastes a lot like the Amish Friendship Bread that uses vanilla pudding. (Mostly because flour, sugar, and cinnamon are the main ingredients of both!) I do prefer banana bread, but neither one is all that healthy so I won't be eating either on a daily basis. :)

My picture shows why I don't bake more often! :)

Day 347 - December 13

I will never be Bakerella.  We worked really really hard trying to make them into reindeer cake pops.  Almost an hour later with 2 semi decent ones and 4 bad ones, we decided the rest would just be Christmas sprinkle covered cake pops.  She makes it look so easy!!!!!!!

Day 341 - December 7

Tonight's baking was 10 dozen-ish pieces of Kahlua fudge.  Yummy!  This is by far my favorite thing we make.

Day 340 - December 6

We started the baking process tonight.  We made 4 dozen peanut butter chocolate clusters and then 4 dozen regular chocolate chip cookies.  That seems like so much, but when you compare it to how many we need - it's nothing!

Day 329 - November 25

My pies ... our contribution to Thanksgiving.

Day 328 - November 24

The carnage from today's baking feast.  I made a regular pumpkin pie with a ginger snap crust and then a pumpkin swirl cheesecake too.  It took every mixing bowl we own. :)

Day 326 - November 22

Behold - the organized and ready to go "December baking cabinet!"  Let's eat some sugar! :)

Day 280 - October 7

I love this book.  I don't really bake much, and even if I did I doubt I could pull many of these off - but this sequel to Hello Cupcake has some adorable designs.  My favorite is the chinese food take out.  They cut up orange starburst to be the little carrots, and they used a cut green Tootsie Roll, some icing, and some sprinkles to create broccoli.  Genius!