Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts

The Cookie Making Adventure

How To Make Cookies With Your Nieces
While Watching Them At Their House


1. Buy this awesome Crayola cookie kit on clearance after Easter.
2. Add the small amount of wet ingredients to
the ridiculously large amount of dry mix.
3. Use a spoon to mix.
4. Give up using the spoon and just do it with your hands.
5. Divide the dough into four parts, mixing the
three primary colors into three of the parts.

6. Let Alyssa Kate mix the primary colors
to make the secondary colors.

7. Have her pose for the camera.

8. Put all six colors (plus "white") into separate bowls for creating.

9. Let Alyssa Kate make the sun on a paper plate.
10. Try to move the sun onto the cookie
sheet, subsequently mangling the sun .

11. Decide to just let her make the
cookies directly on the cookie sheet.
12. Hand some dough to Caroline to let her mash.
13. Continue helping Alyssa Kate.
14. Look back at Caroline to see nothing in her hands. Ate it.

15. Check on Jake. Yep. He's good. Just shaking some Cheerios.

16. Realize there is a ridiculous amount of dough
here so decide to make a cookie pizza.

17. Let Alyssa Kate fill the tray with... a polka dot cookie, the sun, ("Caroline's" flower), a layer cookie, a ladybug, a green snake, a flower, and an orange snake.

18. Pick your favorite - the smiling ladybug.

19. Go to put the cookies in the oven.
20. Find out the cookie sheet doesn't
fit in the oven in their new house.
21. See if there's any way to move the cookies to another sheet.
22. There's not.
23. Try cooking the cookies with the door part
open, rotating the tray every 5 minutes.

24. Check on the girls. They're oblivious.
25. Realize the door-open strategy isn't working
because there is no heat left in the oven.

26. Check on Jake. Still good. Eatin' a puzzle.

27. Think (knowing exactly what's going to happen), "Maybe if I put these partially baked cookies in like this, they'll finish baking before sliding down the tray."

28. Not quite, genius.
29. Set cookies out on counter, hoping for
them to harden to eating quality.

30. Share the yummy and successful cookie pizza.
31. Put everyone down for a nap.
32. Realize after cooling that the cookies are
not edible since the bottom halves are still gooey.
33. Carefully move the cookies to another cookie sheet.
34. Finish baking.

35. Be excited that, four hours later, the cookies are now edible.
36. Try to recognize what each one was supposed to be.
37. Use the rest of the neverending dough
to make some swirly cookies.

38. Swear to check the pan size beforehand next time.

Happy Football!

Well it was national Americans Watching Football and Eating Too Much Day. We had a Sunday School watch party for that football game that was on and we were all supposed to bring a snack or dessert. I saw these super cute football truffles on this great site I've found, Bakerella. They looked easy enough.
Advice: Be sure to read the package for the dipping chocolate, because you MAY add milk (instead of the recommended Crisco) to make the chocolate thinner and end up with a solid mass of chocolate on the stove and have to go to Walmart at 9:00 at night to get more since the first batch was ruined. I'm just saying. It's something you might do. Not me of course.

The little balls of poo before they were decorated.

The one that came out the best.

Plate #1 of 2 full of footballs.

Aren't they cute? Not as good as hers but still cute.

They were very popular.

Showers and More Showers

Did I mention that everyone I know is pregnant? Twenty of them, to be specific. Eight of them are in our Sunday School. It's like a breeding ground for... breeding. Five of the twenty are due this month though, including my sister-in-law, Candice. We had a shower for her both last Friday and tonight.
Last Friday was a Diaper Dinner (mmmmm!) for the girls in our Sunday School class.

The simply adorable cake

The HUGE diaper cake made of 240 diapers!

The expectant mama: due June 27th

She scored a bunch of diapers.

Including these super cute ones wrapped in clothes by yours truly.

And this cute towel made by a girl in our Sunday School class (one of the pregnant ones!)

Tonight we had a cook-out for all of the other people that Candice knows that aren't in our Sunday School class. We had it out at a park by the river.

Here is my very favorite father-in-law playing with Alisa's camera, which is just like mine. And there's Alisa!

The super-cute miniature diaper cake centerpieces made by Melissa.

I got this picture of Jon and his dad. They look a lot alike.

Mmmmmmm... meat.

Daniel called me a Camera Nerd after the previous picture. So I took his picture.
It's very Zoolander.

And of course, I made the cupcakes. Yellow cake with chocolate icing, requested by Candice.

Alyssa Kate is thinking "What in the world is wrong with this kid?"
Greyson's just loving his cupcake.

Although she didn't do much better.

The hostesses and the mama. (I've been outside a lot recently.)

I'm headed to a wedding in Texarkana tomorrow. (I know three people getting married tomorrow!) After the wedding, I'm continuing west on I-30 to Fort Worth to see the fam until Wednesday. When I come back I will be posting something I haven't done in a while and something I haven't done in forever! Funny things and kid quotes. Get excited!

Babies Babies Everywhere

Not mine. I do however know SEVENTEEN people who are currently pregnant. Not exaggerating. There are probably more I don't even know about! Are you one of them?

Anyway. I helped hostess a baby shower for Sally, a girl in our Sunday School class. The other hostesses were talking about cake and stuff, and I said it would be cheaper and more awesome to do cupcakes. So I unfortunately volunteered. Never again will I make two dozen each of two different kinds of cupcakes with two different kinds of icing. They were delicious and popular, but a heckuva lotta work.

The cookies and creme cupcakes had an oreo on the bottom!

The baby, Ryder Ray Reynolds, will have a construction theme in his nursery so that was part of the theme of the shower.

My table layout

Sara made a beautiful bouquet for the table.

Sally scored a bunch of presents!

All one million hostesses.

Which brings up a discussion I had with my mom last night. I was talking about how I felt bad for Sally since there were eight hostesses and that was a bunch of gifts to have to buy. She not only had never heard of this tradition, but was also appalled by it. She said maybe it's an Arkansas thing, but I remember going to showers in the past where the hostesses received gifts from the person for whom the shower was being thrown. Here's a poll about it.


Sorry For Almost Trying To Kill One of You

I have this nifty little thingamajig from circa 1974 that I use to chop up nuts when baking. (It's way cheaper than buying the already chopped up nuts.)

View from bottom of chopper:

View from top-a-chopper:

Well, I was getting things ready to make another delicious cheesecake for a Sunday School thing tomorrow night. The recipe called for pecans so I got my huge bag of pecans out of the freezer. (A student gave them to me from his pecan orchard last Christmas and I've had them in the freezer since then.) Apparently pecans are WAY harder than walnuts, the nut I usually use in recipes, because I was having a really difficult time getting the chopper to work.
I finally got my 3/4 of a cup of nuts and mixed it in with the rest of the cheesecake topping. As I was mixing it together though, I spotted something shiny in there...

WHAT THE...? What is that?! After a moment of pondering... Ah! One of the tines of the chopper! Yep. Nuts were so hard they broke part of my 35 year old chopper! Boo! Then my mind raced to the thought of what would have happened if I didn't see that in there before putting it in the oven. That would have been HORRIBLE!
So, Sunday School girls, be glad that I found it. I ended up with a cheesecake that I think is going to be one of the best yet. And so I present the completely metal shard-free finished cheesecake:

Mmmmm!
(Yeah. Picture's blurry. What of it?)