Food – nicole.groudasfamily.com

Christmas cookies and cards

What a wonderful weekend we had! On Saturday my sister-in-law brought my nieces up for a visit and we relaxed and caught up and played with the girls. The girls helped me make chocolate with white chip cookies and we ended the evening going out to a nice dinner. It was very relaxing and just what I needed to recuperate from travel last week!

Today I continued with Christmas cookies, making up gingersnaps, gingerbread (with icing decoration) and butterscotchies! It took all day but I was able to make up plates for the neighbors and have plenty of left over for work on Tuesday (lunch pot luck).

And the extra gingerbread cookies ready for work. (The rest were drop cookies so I put them in baggies to save till Tuesday).

This was a first with the piped icing for me but I got to break out all my fun decorating supplies and whip up some frosting. It took all afternoon (from about 1pm-5pm) but that’s not too bad and I had Christmas movies and then music going in the kitchen while I baked!

I ended the evening doing Christmas cards after delivering the cookies to neighbors (well half, 2 of them weren’t home tonight so I’ll try tomorrow night). We’re almost done shopping for Christmas, just a couple quick trips maybe tomorrow evening and then a little bit of sewing and we’ll be all set to go!

Happy Thanksgiving

I’m all ready to head back to NY for Thanksgiving! Pies are done (8 pies!), dog is clean – finally! truck is almost packed and just a little work left to do.

Spent the morning making pies, I had an extra crust and extra chocolate than planned so this year I did..

2 lemon meringue to start (they need the most time in the fridge before travel)

Pumpkin pie (plus a little pumpkin pudding for Ryan) 🙂

2 Apple pies (one with a crumb top because I had one extra crust)

3 chocolate pies (pre-made cookie crusts so these are easy!)

I just have to figure out where to fit them all into the truck, and then move them all to the car after I meet up with Ryan. Poor Fitz is now mad at me because he had to have a bath – he was getting so bad he was bothering my allergies. At least I used the bath tub so he got warm water which is a change (usually he gets hosed in the yard).

Now I just have to get some work done and head out maybe by 4? Not looking forward to the drive in traffic. Happy Thanksgiving everyone – see you on the flip side!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I made a little treat Sunday – inspired by this blog: http://www.bakerella.com/a-valentines-day-gift-box-of%E2%80%A6/.

My version is definitely different, first i went with a pink box instead of red to cut down on the food coloring since I didn’t have any no-flavor red coloring and too much red can be bitter. Second I used chocolate cake and chocolate frosting for the cake and cake treats instead of red velvet.

I used a mixture of milk chocolate, dark chocolate and white chocolate for the candy coatings. I’m pretty happy with my results, it was the first time I ever used fondant and I had some fun making the chocolate covered cake shapes. I did learn one thing – to use the double boiler method for melting the chocolate instead of my candy maker – the boiler worked great for the white and pink but the chocolate dips were too thick using the candy maker. Lessons learned 🙂

DSCN0941 — box of chocolates - all made of cake and chocolate

Off to see my nieces today – can’t wait!

Ready for Christmas!

I can’t believe it’s only Saturday night, we’ve had such a great weekend already. Of course having a cold isn’t great but it’s mostly an annoyance at this point, making me sniffly and tired.

Ryan’s parents came out to visit Friday night we had dinner, watched movies, baked some cookies and relaxed this morning. After they left Ryan and I ordered our front hallway lights (chandelier and sconces) online.

These will be our sconces:

http://www.lightingdirect.com/royce-rw2195-2-transitional-two-light-up-lighting-wall-sconce-from-the-stalton-collection/p672015

And our chandelier – although picture with shades that match the sconces:

http://www.lightingdirect.com/royce-rc2195-6-tuscan-six-light-up-lighting-chandelier-from-the-stalton-collection/p671777

I was pretty worn out after that so we took a nap while watching It’s a Wonderful Life, getting into the Christmas spirit! The nap was great, I woke up so refreshed, not cured of my cold but definitely a bit better. I helped Ryan build his work table for building cabinets, he’s also planning on building a router table but we started with the work table.

His table is a great size for a kitchen island too, so I persuaded him to roll it into the kitchen to help me bake cookies! In a few hours I had the annual neighbors’ cookie plates all wrapped up and ready to hand out tomorrow:

This year I went with gingersnaps, sugar cookies and inside out chocolate chip (white chocolate chips in a chocolate cookie).

So a little more baking in the evenings this week (still got to make greek cookies to bring home) and a few presents to wrap that arrived today and I’m ready to go.

Tomorrow if I’m feeling up to it I’ll work on the electrical a bit. I’m hoping the sconce lights don’t take long to arrive because I need to figure out what kind of box will work with those before wiring them.

And I’m off to relax for the rest of the evening (which means take NyQuil and go to sleep) 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving

I quit work a little early today so I could get started on Thanksgiving baking! I’m supplying the pies for thanksgiving this year and it was quite an order to fill.

I started with one apple pie (I have 3 total to make), then I made 2 lemon meringue and a chocolate (new recipe for dark chocolate)… mmm yummy!

DSCN0745 — Apple and Lemon Meringue pies done and painting in the background

Now that the 3 pies that need to go in the fridge are done it’s back to apple pies. 2 to go and I’m done for the night and it will be time to pack up the pies.
It’s too bad my back is already killing me and I’ve only been baking for 2 hours.

On the side I’m working on making a cute frame (painted it red and I’m adding white letters) for my niece’s certificate she got for finishing a work book. I can’t wait to give it to her tomorrow 🙂

Baking

In preparation for camping this weekend I decided to do some baking and with the numerous raspberries begging to be picked I decided to make up some muffins. I made blueberry and raspberry muffins. The mulberries were dwindling so I could only get a few and put them on top of the raspberry muffins but I picked almost a pint of raspberries from the garden!

DSCN0312 — Fresh raspberries from the garden!

DSCN0314 — Raspberry and blueberry muffins getting ready for the oven

DSCN0316 — First batch of blueberry muffins ready

They were delish!

Baking

Strawberries are in season so in June I made up a cake – it’s a basic vanilla cake with a layer of strawberries in the center. The frosting is actually plain whipped cream.
I made the strawberry center concoction with orange juice and it had a nice tang to it. This was a nice start to baking this summer as I have since made a couple more treats!