Jenny's got a gun

Before you get scared, it's just a cookie gun.  I've wanted one ever since the first time I had my first spritz cookie with some very sweet and milky tea.  Ah, youth.  I feel like my mom told me these were hard to make, or my inner-pessimist did (they sound identical!)  Anyway, $10 at Target and I was equipped to make the cookies of my childhood. 

There were a few missteps (did you know you're supposed to make a tube of dough and just set it in there, not cram it tight with the back of a spoon?  Also, if you don't have the plunger knob facing the right direction, it will shut your cookie factory down?).  Amazing how much faster things went after we read the directions.  BF was in charge of sprinkles because I had developed quite a trigger finger and refused to surrender my weapon.  There are many like it, but this one is mine. 

 

And look, not too shabby eh?  They were just now cool enough to package up.  One container is for friends who are just lucky enough to see us tomorrow.  The others are off to a special someone who has no proper oven for baking.  I think she'll be glad it wasn't too hard.

Yep, more Christmas stuff

I'm following my own advice and eating as many cookies as possible this season, starting with mexican wedding cookies, my absolute favorite. 

A normal person would probably put them in air-tight containers to preserve them for as long as possible, right?  Yeah, we just plopped them in front of the TV with some tea and watched a little Winter Wonderland. 

Hmm...is that a chart for letters?  What will that be used for?

Once I finished the secret project that can't be named until after Christmas, I made this little Gingee from a Lion Brand pattern.  Unfortunately, he and Ruddy the Reindeer are wrapped up and headed off to BF's boss and division secretary.  I miss them already. 

Bake, baby, bake!

I couldn't pass up the opportunity yesterday to skip church, pawn the munch off on his daddy & bake my day away.

The German girl gave me her bread machine a few years back, when she moved on to the Netherlands. She brought her adorable baby daughter to visit last weekend, and mentioned that, "By the way," when she sets up house here in the USA again, she'll want the old crust-cooker back... So, I figured you never know which loaf will be your last and I mixed up an egg bread to go with our morning beverages.

After a slice or two with peanut butter & homemade Peach Preserves (locally picked), I moved onto the baby sauce.

By the time the baby sauce had the house smelling sweet, I had already pulled out the crusty Betty Crocker & sliced up some apples for Apple Crisp (www.bettycrocker.com/recipes.aspx/apple-crisp).

It was at this point that I realized that my trusty red Betty has seen better days. If you want to cook something spectacular, you have to consult with Maid Martha. So I ran Betty's apple crisp over to the neighbors & started fresh under Martha's direction (www.marthastewart.com/recipe/apple-crisp).

Great Success. Papa said that it was so much better than Bettys. This makes mama happy!

After one Martha-induced complement, who wouldn't go for a second? Pumpkin Pie it is.

Again I turned to Martha, who suggested I make Pate Brisee; the french version of the classic American pie dough (www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pate-brisee-pie-dough?). This dough is super-easy to make. However, I do not suggest using a hand mixer, in lieu of the suggested food processor. This substitution may increase your cleanup time...

Although Martha suggested sweet local pumpkins, I had a can of pumpkin pie mix that I substituted, and Papa thought this turned out scrumdiddilyumpcious. Martha's pie filling recipe was also a cinch! (http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.fc77a0dbc44dd1611e3bf410b5900aa0/?vgnextoid=6ea8759a3ac0f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default&backto=true)

My first pumpkin pie!

OK, OK, so I've made pumpkin pies before - but they were always just eh.  Sometimes they didn't set.  Sometimes they tasted like mush.  But they always started w/ a can of pumpkin.  But today at the farmer's market they had the cutest little pumpkins, and that's when I began plotting their murder, roasting, and pieing. 

I chopped the little bugger open to find about 30 odd seeds.  Are you kidding me?  I roasted them up anyway as the pumpkin was cooking - BF had never had them before because his family is not Halloweeny.  I thought they were delicious, but he was not as enthused. The pie was a different story - he gobbled down the first piece and went back for another (with ice cream.  Ah, to be a boy...).

And yes, I realize this is the ugliest pie every made.  My crust was a little warmer then I would have liked when I rolled it out, but it was getting late and I was ready to be done with it all.  And in the goopy rush,  I didn't get it pushed all the way to the top, and I thoroughly underestimated the amount of room needed for all that filling.  But eh, who cares?  I call this one a delicious success regardless. 

Cake Excuses

Oy vey - as is usual w/ a J&E project, this blog is being sorely neglected.  But I have excuses, like, hold on, I'll think of one.  Oh yeah - I'm crocheting samples for a local company that sells to sorority girls.  I didn't even know companies like that existed, but I am ever so thankful for the opportunity.  What are these samples of?  Sorry - who takes pictures of things before they sell them and turn them over?  Huh?  Everyone?  Oh well, I forgot. 
In between stitches, I'm making many, many soups.  Even though it's still in the 70s here, there's something in my Northerner DNA that says October is for soup.  I'm also watching way too much TV and saw that the Office wedding will be next Thursday.  BF said I could make a wedding cake and we could eat it during the show.  Really, I will look for any excuse to eat cake. 

Speaking of, this weekend is the Sugar Arts Show in Tulsa, OK.  When I was younger, I would watch the specials on TV and dream of the day I could go.  It has so been worth a  few close-up sightings of Kerry Vincent and her magnificent headband.  Maybe I'll get some ideas for next week's cake. 

Modern Baking

I've been replaying the following incident in my mind over the past week, and each time, I think about watching my mom or my grandma cook from recipe cards, or more often, from memory. If they wanted to try something new, they were limited to the recipes on the backs of packages or those begged from relatives at family picnics. In contrast, I own a shelf full of cookbooks, a pretty small collection for someone these days, and I find most of my new recipes in my email inbox, on a food-devoted television network, or on one of my favorite websites.

The boyfriend and I, to best deal with our newfound poverty and hatred of processed foods, are now devoted to making things from scratch. And although I am unable to make chocolate chips by hand, I figured the supporting wholesome ingredients (if brown rice is good for you, than so is brown sugar!) made chocolate chip cookies as close to "from scratch" as sweets were going to get. So I headed to bakerella.com, where I remembered seeing some yummy cookies and an accompanying recipe. Can you imagine telling your mom that although you had her time-tested recipe, you were using one from a website instead?

To make things worse, I've been known to take my laptop into the kitchen and cook from it. In my defense, it does save paper, and I have used it to view hand-me-down recipes that my mom had typed up for her own convenience. But on this day, the laptop was with the bf in an architecture class of some sort, so I scribbled the recipe down and set off to bake. I made it all the way to the end of the recipe when I realized - I don't have baking powder. I parked the batter bowl in the fridge and, I can see grandma cringing now, changed my facebook status to reflect my recent disappointment. Immediately folks started replying - why did I need baking powder? Usually cookies have baking soda. A trip back to Bakerella confirmed I had copied it down wrong.

Thanks for the rollercoaster, technology. I wish I could say that in the future I'll stick to what I know, but those cookies were so darn delicious. And come to think of it, my mom always used whatever recipe was on the back of the chocolate chips. How's that for modern baking?