cookie exchange 2014

Torri and I hosted our third annual cookie exchange in early December, and it was a success! Each year we learn a little more about what it takes to host a cookie exchange and make things work well. We grew our number of participants significantly this year, and we loved having our friends join us to kick off the Christmas season! 

A few of our friends stepped in to help quite a bit as we were overwhelmed with cookies this year--so many to label and cut up for samples. We definitely met our goal to grow our cookie exchange! 

Mom's friend Cathy won best tasting cookie, with her Swedish almond cookies (below), and my friend Kristin won prettiest cookie, with her spritz cookies. I don't even have a picture of hers! We always get wrapped up with hosting and forget to take pictures. 

I'm so thankful for our good friends here, and I enjoyed getting to see so many of them in one place. I feel so loved by my friends who take time from their busy December to bake cookies and come to our party. Even though I will be married and moved away by next Christmas, and Torri will have a baby, we are going to do our best to keep this tradition alive! 

pumpkin week

This week entailed a lot of pumpkins and fall pretties in general. After a rough day on Monday, Zack made it all better with lots of surprises, including picking out pumpkins. We took our parents a few tiny pumpkins and chose two similar larger pumpkins to carve with our friends. 

We learned a bit about carving pumpkins with children. A child may spend 90% of the time meticulously cleaning out the inside of the pumpkin and 10% drawing a face for you to carve. He may spend 99% of the time drawing tiny black marker lines all over the pumpkin then 1% of the time asking you to cut out a beard (where even is the face?). Each child has his own personality, and they are never boring. How much richer of an experience than just carving my own *perfect* pumpkin at home! I love that my small group includes children. 

Oh yes, these flowers! Hydrangeas are not in season this time of year, but I suppose any flower can be bought for a price, and they are my favorite. I am spoiled, and they made my Monday afternoon so much better. 

Sometime in the last few weeks, Zack found this paleo pumpkin pie recipe and brought over the ingredients for us to make together. I finally got around to making it on Wednesday. It was fairly simple and a decent substitute for the real thing. (Check out the pumpkin muffins that I made last year here.)

I whipped up some cream and sweetened it with honey to make a paleo topping for our paleo pie. My pup sure enjoyed licking the whisk. 

What pumpkin treats have you made this year? How are you celebrating fall? 

sweet potato biscuits

As a southerner, I'm ashamed to admit that I don't have a go-to biscuit recipe. I think I made biscuits in foods and nutrition class in high school, and since then, I've only made drop biscuits a handful of times to top chicken pot pie. So I'm taking a break from doughnuts to search for great biscuit recipes. 

Thumbing through a few hand me down cookbooks last week, I left some pages open with biscuit recipes. When we had extra baked sweet potatoes on hand, I decided to start my biscuit making with a recipe for sweet potato biscuits. 

The recipe is fairly quick and easy, but the dough was sticky, difficult to roll out, and more difficult to cut, pick up, and place on a baking stone. If I make this recipe again, I will roll out the dough a tad thicker, as the best biscuit in the batch was the biggest one I made by throwing together all of the scraps.

Do you have a good biscuit recipe or biscuit making tips? Please share!

double chocolate doughnuts

I mentioned that I was craving chocolate blood orange glazed doughnuts again, but I decided to try a different recipe for my second experiment in baking doughnuts. 

My mom gave me a doughnut pan for my birthday, so expect many more experiments. 

I used a doughnut recipe from Joy the Baker's post on double chocolate cake doughnuts and Heather Christo's recipe for chocolate glaze from her post on banana doughnuts with chocolate glaze. 

I made small changes: I substituted a small amount of vinegar + almond milk for the buttermilk. 

I used semisweet chocolate chips instead of chopped dark chocolate in the glaze. It was rich and delicious. 

Since the second recipe made more, I had extra glaze, some of which I spooned right into my mouth. It also would have been delicious on strawberries, marshmallows, etc. as chocolate fondue. 

How could you go wrong with cream + chocolate?! I'm not embarrassed. 

This was also my second try at taking photos of my doughnuts. I think they look better than my first. The glaze was so shiny and photogenic. I have much to learn about photography, but I'm having fun practicing. 

Christmas sweet potatoes

I made sweet potato casserole (recipe) for Christmas dinner. 

My dad's friend grew these sweet potatoes. I used the small ones for the casserole and saved the bigger, prettier ones to bake whole later.

Here, my sweet potatoes are plated with Boston butt cooked by my dad's friend in Salisbury and green bean bundles that my mom made.

We had a delicious Christmas dinner that felt like Thanksgiving part two. Well, actually, part three--I wish I had a picture of my plate from our gathering on Christmas eve!

What did your family eat on Christmas?

citrus cookies

My sister in law and I started a tradition last year.  We host a cookie exchange in early December, and we ask that each person makes a different recipe each year.  At the party, we give prizes for the best tasting cookie, prettiest cookie, and best all around cookie (most votes in both categories combined).  I found this recipe for citrus cookies from Martha Stewart, and I hoped they would be a contender for prettiest cookie.  

I baked my cookies on Saturday morning, so I had to pause to make waffles and bacon.  I mixed in cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.  Is anyone going to Vermont soon?  I used up the Vermont maple syrup that my parents brought back for me from their trip this summer.

Back to the cookies.

I made half of the dough lemon flavored and the other half orange flavored.  Always read the comments on recipes!  That's where I got the idea to do half and half; I had oranges on hand and had purchased yellow and orange sprinkles, so all I needed was a lemon.  Fortunately, mom texted me while she was at Target, and she brought me a lemon.  

My dad is a fantastic problem solver.  When I realized I was already halfway through the process and hadn't found a thread spool like I needed, I asked him what I should use instead.  He suggested an apple corer/slicer.  It made nice marks on my cookies, but the indentations weren't quite wide enough to hold sprinkles.

The thread spool my mom found worked better with the sprinkles.

I didn't get any votes for best tasting or prettiest, but I would still try this recipe again.  Both types had nice flavor and with a little more practice, I think I could make them pretty.

What's your favorite cookie recipe?

five spice pumpkin muffins

Last year, my friend Kim brought these amazingly delicious pumpkin muffins that her mom baked to our friend's bachelorette weekend.  I asked her for the recipe and enjoyed making them last fall.  When another friend's bachelorette weekend (this past weekend) was approaching, along with the first day of fall, I had to make these muffins and share them.  Thank you to Kim's mom for a fantastic hand me down recipe!  

FIVE SPICE PUMPKIN MUFFINS

2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar (white)
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1- 16oz can of pumpkin
3/4 cup Canola oil
3/4 cup water
3 eggs
3/4 tsp each: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, ginger

Grease and flour loaf pans or use cupcake papers to line pans for muffins.
Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour for a loaf; 20-30 minutes for regular muffins; 10-15 minutes for mini muffins.

Note: Although not the traditional technique for quick breads, I have had most success by mixing the sugars and oil, then adding the rest of the wet ingredients, and next adding the dry ingredients in this recipe.  I have used a whisk to break up most of the lumps before filling the muffin cups nearly full.  

extra time for . . . lately

Having time off of work means more time for just about everything.  I've been spending a lot of my time cooking, baking, and eating.  I exercise, too, but somehow it isn't quite enough to offset all the eating . . . 

I love mornings praying and reading my Bible while eating breakfast and drinking iced coffee.  I keep the same morning routine as when I work, I just do it all slower in the summer.  I challenged myself to journal every day in July, and would you know I wrote something every day except July 30 and 31.  The Lord heard my prayers those 29 days and every single time I heard from Him and became more disciplined.  Romans 12:2 is made new to me.  

This time I made some cold brew coffee with beans from Jubala.  

I just really like waffles.  When I moved in to a completely furnished house for a semester in school, I had to bring my waffle iron.  I had gotten it for my birthday.

I typically use Martha Stewart's pancake recipe for waffles, but with extra time and curiosity, I tried this recipe.  The batter was very thin, and it didn't rise, so the top of the waffles didn't make contact with the top plate and didn't brown.  I'm not sure if the cause was my mistreating of the yeast or my waffle iron.  Still good, though!

I was fortunate enough to get invited to a special Christmas in July party that my parents' friends host every year.  They went all out with decorations and food and even gave us gifts!  I was glad to have a reason to make pumpkin pie -- to take to the party.  Here is the crust recipe and pie recipe I used.  Pins here and here.  

These salted fudge brownies (recipe) are the best I've made; there's just not much excuse for using a brownie mix when you could make these instead.  Pin here.

I got the chance to volunteer yesterday with a local ministry that I have wanted to get involved with for a long time.  I enjoyed meeting and playing with the children that came in, and it gave me yet another reason to keep working on my Spanish.  Speaking partners wanted!

What is special about your summer?  Baking anything lately?  Spending time with God?  Serving?  Traveling?  I know I took a big trip to Asia, but since then, I haven't gone anywhere, and I'm going a little crazy.  Traveling partners definitely wanted, too!

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