A Day in the Kitchen

Literally!  I spent a whole day in my kitchen!  Thursday was a wild day.  Because I got the bug on Wednesday, I decided there was no point in procrastinating on Thursday.  I got up and by 9am I had baked all the cookies for my homemade Oreos.  After that I made some killer Peanut Butter Butterscotch sqares and followed those up with a batch of my husbands Grandpa's homemade granola (yum!).  When the granola came out of the oven I decided I needed one more thing...Banana Chocolate Chip Bread.  By the time the banana bread came out of the oven, it was 3 o'clock and school was out.  I couldn't believe it...I'd truly spent the day in my kitchen...and there were plenty of dishes to show for it.  Yesterday I tried a modified recipe for Orange Cranberry muffins.  I wasn't really thrilled with the result of those...they were a little dry.  I threw them in the freezer and have decided to work out some kind of orange glaze to put on them.  We'll see if that works or not.  It was too bad they were dry because they smelled fabulous!!

Christmas is Coming

I had a horrible realization this morning as I was doing my daughter's hair before school...one month until Christmas Eve!!!  Where has the time gone and why is my baking not done.  (Surely typing on my computer isn't going to help my baking get done but here I sit anyways).  I think the tricky part for me about Christmas baking is how much to bake and what will I be left with when the kids go back to school.  This year I plan on my regular recipes with a few new ones as well.  I made an attempt at Wellington Squares yesterday.  They look delish...I've never made them before but have always enjoyed them when I've tasted them elsewhere.  Let's be real, with shortbread, caramel and chocolate, what could go wrong?!?!!?

There will be the usual nuts and bolts along with lots of different cookies.  My m-i-l and I will work on Gingerbread Houses with the kids--I wonder if they'll finish eating them this year or not?  With Christmas comes company and I like to have some things to pull out at the last minute (or make it look like I can do that).  The Greek Bread will be made as we will go through a loaf of that a day (probably need to make a double batch of it) and likely sugar cookies for the kids to decorate.  How I love the smells that come from the kitchen during the Christmas Season.  To me, it makes everything a little merrier and a little brighter.

So here it is...

I have a dear friend who has been insisting that I blog.  You see, I have an addiction.  That addiction is my kitchen and all things that are produced therein.  Unfortunately that addiction has led to sharing treats with friends and neighbors, school teachers, and staff at my husbands work.  My addiction has somewhat led to the food addictions of others.  I've been encouraged to open a bakery, to start my own e-business, and now to start blogging about what comes out of my kitchen...so here it is.

In a given month I can usually be found in my kitchen baking cakes, cookies, "Sin"-a-mon buns, and other various muffins and snacks.  Come Christmas, I spend hours with my m-i-l working on our hand dipped chocolates.  Yesterday for example, we spent around 5 and half hours making the fondant from scratch.  We're doing some of the old favorites as well as trying something new.  This year will be peppermint patties, coconut creams, maple walnut, turtles, turkish delights, truffles, olympian creams, white chocolate candycane bark, and -for the first time- dipped nougat filling.  We, on average, dip 3000 chocolates a year and they are delicious.  The vast majority of these are given as gifts--some people think I'm nuts for just giving them away--the rest are kept for my family to enjoy...and we DO enjoy them.  Everyone seems to have a favorite.  I wish I knew who liked what exactly and then maybe I could rule out making one kind or another.  My husband jokes that if I were to decide to quit making them, he may have an uprising at work and lose his job.  I sure hope he's kidding.