At the end of December, I took some time off from my weekly baking projects. Because of the holidays, most of my classes in December were canceled, so I had no kiddos to bake for. I also came down with a head cold that inspired me to buy goodies for family gatherings instead of poison my loved ones with my cold germs. Christmas rolled around and I was overwhelmed with many baking themed gifts from my in-laws. I got recipe books, special baking sheets, spatulas, oven mitts… With so many gifts focused on my passion for baking, I felt that I would start 2012 off in a yummy way. The sad thing is… I didn’t… My first baking project in 2012 was a total flop. I had a box of gingerbread mix left from the holidays and I set forth to make my class of girls some ginger snaps. I was still on cold medicine at the time, so I’m going to blame for the drugs for my mistake. I added too much water to the mix. As I poured the water into my kitchen aid, it didn’t look right. I picked up the box to see that I had added 1.25 cups of water instead of the needed .25. What do I with an extra cup of water in there? At first, I started to scoop at the water since it wasn’t mixed in yet, but it was starting to dissolve into the mix and I wasn’t sure if I was taking out mix with the water. I then decided to add flour to thicken the mix and try to get the batter to the consistency I thought it should be. Well, when these gingersnaps baked up they were funny shaped and had a funny texture. Sadly, the batch of cookies went into the trash. Since I had to come up with something to feed my girls and I was too tired to brainstorm and complete another baking project, I decided to bring fruit snacks and granola bars from my pantry to class that night. What an epic failure to start of the new year with!!! I had all these hopes and vision of 2012 being the year of baking where I really provided my class and loved with new goodies and where I mastered more skills in the kitchen. This baking project kind of took some of the wind from my sails. However, I am happy to report that the next two weeks of baking where much more successful. I made some molasses cookies for my girls two weeks ago and last week I made an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie using white chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips and coconut. Very tasty!!! I’ve already started to ponder what I’ll be making my girls this week… After two better baking experiences, I feel like I’m back in the saddle again and I’m ready for a year of baked goodies!
Cookie Exchange December 23, 2011
Let’s try this again! On Tuesday, I tried to write a blog about my cookie exchange experience, but sadly, I hit the wrong button and there it all went – poof! Gone! I was so frustrated that I didn’t try again. So now I’m trying again… but I will admit that since then I’ve developed a head cold so my brain is fuzzier than when I first tried. Let’s call this the cliff notes version of my previous blog. Sorry, folks! 
Our office ladies and pastors wives have put on a Christmas cookie exchange the past two years. I didn’t make it the first one – only my cookies did. So this was my first real experience other than the baking. I picked a way too complicated cookie last year. I had learned from my mistake and chose a drop cookie this go around. Also we all learned that a dozen cookies each was too much. It was a lot of baking, but in return we were all left with a lot of cookies to eat. We changed the number to a half a dozen cookies for everyone. This was a lot more manageable and gave me a nice platter of cookies right before the holidays with a lot of company coming into town.
I knew that I wasn’t going to the store before I needed to bake the cookies. This left me the option of anything in my pantry which was starting to become limited. Jeremy and I are in a phase where we eat everything before we go back to the store. Needless to say, I was low on a lot of items, but not pumpkin. We had purchased four cans before thanksgiving and had only used one up to that point. I decided on a pumpkin cookie from a cookie magazine. My mom is no longer eating sugar so she gave me a bunch of Christmas cookie magazines since she would no longer need them. It was hard to decide what cookie to make since I had so much inspiration! The pumpkin cookies were very soft and cake like. I really like baked goodies like that. 
Now I was supposed to frost them and sprinkle cinnamon on top. The day before I had purchased paper boxes that look like take-out containers. They had penguins on them and I couldn’t refuse the clearance price of forty-nice cents! Since these boxes were already purchased, I thought the frosting situation might make them a bit too messy. The cookies would be good both ways, I’m sure. They tasted great without frosting, but I’m also sure they would be amazing with frosting.
We met at my mother-in-law’s house (she is the Director of Operations at the church). We enjoyed a Christmas brunch, a small birthday celebration and exchanged the cookies. It was a good time and a nice way to start of my Christmas break. As of now I’m out of the office until January! Yay! I’m just like a kid! I love my Christmas break! I’m not sure that I will get to the blog again before Christmas so let me say Merry Christmas to you all!
Class Christmas Party! December 7, 2011
Tonight is my class Christmas party for my 5th/6th grade girls. This is one of my favorite nights of the year! We have so much fun! We’ll have a gift exchange. It’s always fun to see who is brave enough to steal a gift from her fellow classmate. At this age, most are really sensitive to their friends, so the stealing is always very dramatic! As an adult and many years of gift exchanges, I can steal a gift without much remorse. I’m not sure if that is a good thing, but I figured it’s a rule of the game and it’s just a game. It’s interesting to see what the girls go home with. After class I let them barter for gifts they might have wanted but didn’t get. There are often many trades. It’s all apart of the experience!
After the gift exchange, I have worksheets for the girls to do. The first one is to put the 12 days of Christmas in order. When did the pipers pipe or the lord’s leap? They’ll see if they know! The other worksheet is matching “Merry Christmas” in 8 different languages to the correct language. I’m pretty sure they’ll get “Feliz Navidad”, but will they get “Mele Kalikimaka ” or “Buon Natale”. We shall see! After the worksheets, we’ll make a magnet craft and enjoy some yummy snacks!
It wouldn’t be a good Christmas party without some great 
Christmas goodies. A special treat seems to make the Christmas cheer shine just a little brighter, so I spent my evening yesterday working on the snacks for tonight. The first snack I created was a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting and peppermint crumbles on top. I used peppermint discs and realized that candy canes might have been a better option. Pettermint discs are pretty are hard to break… I learned this by beating on them quite loudly with a rolling pin. The rolling pin came out dented from the sharp edges of the crumbles. It was intense. Next time I will use a thinner peppermint candy and I’m sure that candy canes will fit that need.
The second snack and the inspiration for my peppermint theme was a white chocolate dipped marshmallow that is then rolled in peppermint crumbles. These were very easy and fun to assemble. I crumbled the peppermint first. I put lollipop sticks into marshmallows before I melted the white chocolate. Once the white chocolate was fully melted, I set off dipping and rolling. It’s important to let as much extra chocolate drip off as possible. Rolling the marshmallow in peppermint was a little trickier than I expected, but it turned out great. I let the marshmallow pops cool on wax paper. Once the chocolate was set, I wrapped the marshmallows in plastic wrap 
and tied it close with red ribbon. There was some excess plastic wrap on the pop, so I cut around the pop so the wrap didn’t completely engulf the stick. Tying the ribbon into the bow was the final touch. I knew I needed a creative way to display these pops so I purchased some foam from my local craft store – the kind that they use for floral arrangements. I wrapped the foam like a present and then pushed the sticks through the wrapping paper into the foam. It’s really great for presentation as well as practical for transportation.
I’ve never really used peppermint in baking other than peppermint extract. It was a lot of fun to take something very seasonal and tweak it and create something new. It’s been a fun journey for me as I branch out of my “usual” baking projects and try something new. Peppermint is a very Christmasy flavor. It also has the right Christmas colors with the bright red and white. These goodies are sure to spread Christmas cheer on multiple levels!
Thanksgiving Baking Projects! November 23, 2011
It’s a been a drippy couple of days here in western Washington. Days like these are perfect for baking projects and with Thanksgiving coming up, I figured I would start some new baking adventures. I attend an annual event called Taste of the Holidays at my church. It’s a fun tasting of holiday goodies. They send me home with the recipes every year and I’ve never made a single thing out of the books. After this year’s TOTH, I decided I was finally going to make something out from these recipe books that I’ve stored for so long.
Of course, this is me, so I had to pick desserts! That is my favorite part of any meal! I went back through the books and picked three recipes that I remember liking a lot. I set to baking yesterday when I got home from work and finished up this afternoon. My first project was called Hello Dollies. They have graham cracker crust with chocolate (I used both milk chocolate and white chocolate), 
coconut, condensed milk and pecans. The second project I started was pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting. I will admit that I just used store bought frosting. I figured with all the baking I had planned, it would be nice to have one step completed for me. The third project was raspberry ribbons. I think these were the hardest of all. It’s a cookie was raspberry jam down the middle and a glaze drizzled on top. There were more steps to this recipe and I don’t think I got the exact balance of jam to cookie down.
Because I plan I sharing these goodies with family tomorrow I couldn’t dig right in and chow down. However, I’ve never made these recipes before so I did do a little taste testing… I needed to know what I was serving! Overall, I think these treats were tasty and I look forward to sharing them with others. Every year when I attend TOTH, I get a little overwhelmed by how awesome all the food is. I guess I always figured that I would never be able to do as good as a job as the chefs so why try… I’ve decided that is a dumb attitude to have! So what if I’m not the best – these turned out great and I am very happy with them! That is all that matters! It’s not a contest!
Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner! November 19, 2011
I feel like I cheated a bit. On Thursday night my husband and I made a small feast and it was very much like that of Thanksgiving. Now it didn’t have all the trimmings, but it had all my favorites! Jeremy grew a ton of potatoes this summer in his garden. I asked him if he wanted to make anything in particular on Thursday night since we would both be home and he said something with potatoes. From there the inspiration of our meal unfolded. We could do mashed potatoes… we have a frozen turkey breast in the freezer… I could attempt to make dinner rolls for the first time… Jeremy would stop by the store and get cranberry jelly. There you have it – my Thanksgiving staples – turkey, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls and cranberry jelly. Yum!!! In the original plan, Jeremy was going to make stuffing, but he was too hungry when he came home so the stuffing went by the wayside so we could eat faster. Sad for him, not so much for me. I’m not sure why, but I’ve never been a big fan of stuffing.
I was really nervous about making dinner rolls. I guess I’ve heard one too many stories about how someone’s rolls didn’t rise enough or the rolls turned into hard lumps or they were undercooked and doughy. In my mind, rolls have always been something that could go wrong in a number of ways. Normally I stick to buying already baked rolls or the frozen kind. However, in my quest for culinary greatness, I decided to try my hand at making dinner rolls. I found that I like making rolls more than I like making bread. The recipe I used was easier to work with and the flavor was better in my opinion. The only thing I struggled with is getting my dough to rise because my house tends to be on the colder side. However, it was worth the patience and the rolls were fabulous!
We enjoyed our meal a lot! A pre-taste of what is come in less than a week! It’s so hard to wait until Thanksgiving when there are so many good foods in the stores and commercials on television keep showing holiday meals. It was impossible to pass up the opportunity! After dinner, Jeremy talked me into playing Wii Party with him. He has been trying to get me to play for a while, so I caved. It was fun. I won one game and he won the other. Snowflakes fell for a bit so we sat with the curtains open so we could see them falling. After Wii Party, I made an apple crisp to end our feasting evening! I know we’ll have lots of pumpkin treats next week and I still had apples to use, so it seemed that apple was a better direction to go! Overall it was a very tasty and fun evening. It truly feels like the holiday season is here and I am loving it!
Marshmallow Overload Part 2 November 16, 2011
In a previous blog, I explained that Jeremy and I have an abundance of marshmallows in our pantry. I created pumpkin spice marshmallow treats a few weeks ago using Cinnamon Burst Cheerios and Jet Puffed Pumpkin Spice Marshmallows. This creation tasted great, but I learned a few things from the experience. First – Cheerios are harder to cut than Rice Krispies. Second – Cheerios get a soggy texture after they are encased in marshmallow. They were great the first day, but they next day they no longer had the firm texture they once had (and that was while they were stored in an airtight container).
With these learning experiences in mind, I set out to make another marshmallow creation. This time I used Cocoa Krispies and Jet Puffed Chocolate Mint Marshmallows. To finish off the taste and presentation, I sprinkled Andes Mint baking chips on the top. In my opinion, the marshmallows don’t really taste all that chocolatey or minty. I melted them in them in the microwave and during the process the brown and green coloring blended to make a strange color. The Cocoa Krispies are very 
chocolatey and I think they are going to be the real flavor punch of the treat. Once the marshmallow was mixed with the cereal, the color didn’t seem as odd. I figured since the marshmallows didn’t have a strong mint flavor, the mints on top would really complete the chocolate mint combination.
It’s been really fun coming up non-traditional recipes with marshmallows. So far all my creations have been in cereal treats, but I have another recipe up my sleeve for the holidays that involved dipping marshmallows in white chocolate. I am very excited!!! So this is not the last of the marshmallow blogs! More marshmallow fun is still to come!
Failure happens… November 12, 2011
There is nothing worse than starting a project with lots of hope and having it end in failure. Welcome to my morning!!! Last weekend while we were visiting family, Jeremy and I picked up a 10lbs. bag of Honey Crisp apples. I was brainstorming what I could do with them since we couldn’t eat them all before they went bad. I originally decided I would make an apple crisp tomorrow for our life group. However, I later decided that I want to try my hand at making a pie again. Since a pie needed more time, I set to work on it this morning.
This time I made my own crust because we were out of the mix we’d used in the past. I was okay with making my own crust because I really wanted to try it. It turns out making crust is a bit of a challenge. At least it was to me. I conquered the pie and added a lot more apples than the last pie I made. I thought I had learned from my past mistakes and this pie promised to be better than the last. I love sugary tops on pie so I decide to add that element to my crust. I followed the directions…
However, I was met with failure. The sugar on the top of the pie burnt and made my pie both look and smell unappealing. I was so discouraged because I had put over 2 hours of effort into that pie and I was planning on taking it to life group. That was no longer an option. I will not bring sub-standard goodies to my life group.
I knew I needed to make something else for life group, but I didn’t have the time to do something as complicated as a pie. I went into the pantry and pulled out my pumpkin spice bread mix from Costco. I had just used this mix last night for pumpkin spice waffles, so I knew this would be tasty and quick. The box had a cookie recipe on the back, so I went to work making pumpkin spice cookies. They turned out great and they helped with the semi-burnt smell in my house.
When trying to practice and develop skills, failure is going to happen. Something you did well last time might not turn out great the next time. I am still learning. The last apple pie I made didn’t have enough apples. This time great amount of apples, but burnt crust. I’m not sure what next time will hold, but I can assure you – there will be a next time. I’m not giving up. I may not ever be a pie master, but I will make a decent pie that I am pleased with. This is my goal. I believe it’s possible. If not – thank God for prepackaged mixes that make for quick snack substitutes!
Audrey’s Birthday November 9, 2011
Let me tell you a funny story… At the beginning of the school year, my class helper, Aimee, made up Audrey. This imaginary student really took off with my class of girls and now we talk about Audrey every week. She is our class imaginary, special friend. The funny thing is I get confused from time to time and call her Aubrey… Good thing she’s not a real student or that would be bad news! It’s been a bonding experience to have Audrey be apart of a our class. The girls have really rallied around her and love to make up stories about what she likes and what she’s been up to. It’s quite hilarious! The class decided that today is Audrey’s birthday a couple of months ago. No surprise that is is on a Wednesday night so they can celebrate it.
I try to make something special for the class when I know there is going to be a birthday. Audrey’s birthday is no exception. Originally I planned on making yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It was easy. However, my creative side just had to take over. I’ve got a couple cans of pumpkin in the pantry that I’ve been dying to play with. So of course, I looked up recipes on my handy Betty Crocker app and found one that sounded good. I turned plain yellow cake mix into Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Pumpkin Spice Frosting.
I followed the cupcake recipe to the letter – except when it came to the pumpkin pie spice. I don’t own that spice, but I do own all the spice that make it, so I quickly threw together my own pumpkin pie spice. When it came time to think about frosting I was in a bit of a pickle. Most pumpkin recipes call for cream cheese frosting. I didn’t have any cream cheese frosting and I felt no need to run out and get some. Instead I used the basic vanilla butter-cream recipe and added pumpkin and spice! Thus creating Pumpkin Spice Frosting!
I tried to make the frosting really thick, but I found that when I started to pipe it onto the cupcakes it started to soften just a little too much. Instead of completely frosting the cupcakes I decided to go with a drizzle effect. The pumpkin on pumpkin flavoring is good, but I thought less is more in this situation. Once the cupcakes were frosted, I used holiday sprinkles to add the finishing touch.
Tonight I plan on bringing birthday candles and putting one in each on the cupcakes. I’ll let each girl blow out a candle in celebration of Audrey’s birthday. Since she is a special friend to the entire class, I figured that they all can take a unique part in celebrating her birthday.
Class Snack October 27, 2011
I guess that you’ve probably caught on to the fact that I like to bake. When I have the time, I’m choosing to bake instead of buy things. I’ve been making more goodies for gatherings. One such opportunity happens every week on Wednesday nights. I love making a treat for my class of 5th/6th girls. I’ve been trying to make more things for scratch. I’m also trying to do very seasonal baking. 
This week I decided to make brownies… from a mix… but I couldn’t just leave it the way it was! I decided to put a twist on this brownie mix that I make quite often. I’ve never made peanut-butter brownies, so I thought this would be a great time to try to add another layer to something I’m very familiar with. I hopped online and consulted good ol’ Betty to help me with peanut-butter element. To jazz things up and give the brownies some fall color, I added Mini Reeces Pieces to the mix and sprinkled them on top. The colors are just right to make it feel like an autumn goody.
These brownies turned out fun and festive! Not too mention tasty! It was very rewarding to add another element to a classic! I’m learning that baking is a way I can bless others and share something that brings me joy. I didn’t intend for this blog to become a location for me to showcase food, but I’m finding it brings me great happiness and I’m enjoying the challenge of trying new things.
Saturdays October 23, 2011
I’ve found the last couple of Saturdays have held similar activities – cleaning the house and baking a special treat! The weekends have been filled with gatherings of friends and family. Thus, I’ve needed to have the house tidy and something to offer my guests. For life group two week ago, I made the applesauce spice cake. I’ve already posted how yummy that turned out! I’m already planning on making that again – this time for my Wednesday night class. 
Last Saturday was my first venture at pie making on my own. I’ve watched Jeremy make a pie and I’ve made a pie with Jeremy, but until last week I had never done it by myself. It was a bit of a personal challenge to show myself that I can do it. Apple pie was decided on because it was to be shared with family for my father-in-law’s birthday. He is big fan of apple pie, so it seemed that would be the best option. Since it was my first time, I did learn that I need to add more apples next time. I used an extra apple in the recipe, but I should have used another. I know that for next time. I also used a mix for the crust again. Now that I am out of the mix, I plan of making my own crust next time. Baby steps!
Today is a life group Sunday, so yesterday I decided to bake banana bread to take to the group. It might sound odd, but I’ve learned that bananas freeze well and they can then be saved until you plan on making some bread. It’s a chilly to prepare them, however, they taste great! I used the recipe from my Shueyville cookbook and it’s a classic! I shared the recipe in a previous blog if you are curious. The great thing about this recipe is it needs to be split into two loaves. We will take one loaf to life group and the other loaf will be munched on by Jeremy and I. It’s perfect for sharing!
Amy Scott's Thoughts 