Pregnant, Brain Dead, Old, and Unemployed

So today marks the one month anniversary of my lay off from the hospital. Ho hum. In the days leading to my lay off, I was excited about all the new time I would have to be working on the blog. Readership has naturally plummeted since I haven't been present in say...half a decade. (slight exaggeration.) However, I have been in a bit of a slump.

 

I turned 30 last month without much fanfare. It's hard to have a lot of excitement when your half way through a pregnancy that has only let you stopped vomiting in the last 10 days. I didn't even make a cake, or get a cake...or even want one for that matter. I am so burned out on cake it's not even funny. I blame the Wilton class for it. Once I learned that the bulk of "buttercream" icings were mostly vegetable shortening ("the more trans-fat the better your decorations will hold!") I have been on icing hiatus. I used to leave the cake to eat just that crap. Barf!

 

Since being home, I have cooked all of one meal. I am really ashamed of myself. I've been trying to get used to the idea that I might be a stay at home mom for awhile. No judgement, just not how I thought things were going to work out. I've been reading "Stay at Home Mommy Survival Guides" to get an idea of what to expect, because all I have managed to do in the week that I have been off is get addicted to Game of Thrones.

 

A lot of changes have been happening besides the layoff and the pregnancy. We bought a house, and the documents are in the works. Jon and I moved out of ghettosville at the end of May. I've been trying to clean and unpack as best as my body will let me. I just find that I don't have the stamina I used to. I'm 27 weeks pregnant and only now starting to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. The baby is fine and healthy, I've just turned into a pile of goo.

 

Well NOT TODAY.

 

I got off my bum and decided my dear breadwinner of a hubby needed some sweets to get him through the day. Since there will be no cake, I decided to try my hands at Snickerdoodles. A Christmas favorite, due to their warm holiday spices of nutmeg and cinnamon, this little cookie is usually usurped by it's fancier friends, chocolate chip, macadamia nut, or oatmeal raisin.

 

Snickerdoodles are relatively new in my orb of awareness, though they have been around for generations (so I've read.) I guess I thought they were a "Wal-Mart Cookie Creation" because I had only seen snickerdoodles in the pre-made dough squares offered at mass grocery chains. Every time I see something advertised as a snickerdoodle at a bake sale, they still have that squarish shape from those packaged beginnings. "Why?" I ask. After some Googling, I found they are pretty simple to make, don't require a lot of fancy ingredients, and are very quick to prepare. To me, cookies that are soft and chewy will always beat out a a crunchy cookie. I tested out this recipe and found a winner:

Chewy Snickerdoodles
1/2 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)
1/2 cup butter (NOT margarine)
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 eggs (room temperature if you have time)
2 2/3 cups flour
2 t of cream of tartar
1 t of baking soda
1/4 t salt

~Topping~

1 T of sugar
1-2 t of cinnamon

Start by getting all your ingrediants together like we've discussed a million times before. Put your butter and eggs out 30 minutes or so before you're ready to start so they will be room temperature, but not melted. If you forget to put the butter out to soften, nuke it until soft but not melted. Sometimes it helps to cut it into pieces so it doesn't stay a brick on the outside and melt in the middle.

• Preheat your oven to 400*
• Mix your shortening, butter, eggs, and sugar.
• In a seperate bowl sift your dry ingrediants together if you have a sifter. If not, it's not the end of the world.
• Mix in the wet ingrediants to the dry.
• In a small bowl, mix the topping sugar and cinnamon together.
• Once everything is well incorporated, roll the dough into ping pong ball sized balls. 
• Roll the balls in the topping covering. Be generous.
• Place the dough balls on a ungreased cookie sheet. about 2" apart. If you grease it they will be overdone on the bottom. 
• Push the balls down a little with your fingers. These babies don't spread out like other cookies.
• Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.

 Enjoy the chewy awesomeness.

"Fashion Knives" & Other Kitchen Non-Essentials

Wow, just wow.

Strawberry Angel Food Cake

The unseasonably warm Spring means strawberries are in season early. So, now is the time to create some of your favorite summer treats.

Tips for strawberries:
1) Buy them the day you want to use them. I went berry picking on Thursday afternoon, and most of my berries are already on the over ripe side.
2) Wash them only when you're about to use them, the water will make them soggy faster.
3) Store the berries in a single layer to to prevent bruising and sogginess. Preferably on a paper towel.
4) I store my berries on the counter instead of the fridge. I think the cold damages the fruit's skin.
5) Ugly berries can puréed or made into jelly. Do your best.

The Reason I've Been Missing for 3 Months & Other Wordlessness

Hipster Cakes Are All the Rage

The past couple of days, a friend of mine and I were plotting a surprise birthday cake to make for her husband. We thought about Lost, and Willy Wonka, and Books, and all manner of things that I am unskilled enough to try to achieve. Later, we settled on a little hipster bow-tie cake, suitable for the pocket protector wearing nerd you know and love.

The final product

Now I no Ace of Cakes or whatever, but I think this little guy turned out alright. Jon and I both worked on it, as we are wont to do nowadays when I have an order. One thing we did notice is that when a cake order comes in, tension runs high. We always believe our cake looks awful. Whenever it is delivered though, it aways brings joy. After this last bout of slinging icing and obscenities, it was decided that I need to go ahead and start my cake decorating classes. The theory is I will become more comfortable with the basics and won't fret so much.

I drove down to Hobby Lobby to sign up for the Wilton Decorating Course #1 a week ago, which was a feat in and of itself. The cashier was a total bonehead, but I walked out with my registration ticket in hand. Only $20 for a class! What a steal! That's when I started to read the back of my form. I forgot to pick up the supplies I needed for the class!

Later that week, I trudged back to HL and started grabbing the items from the supply list. My register total: $200! I almost fell over dead. How could a 2 hour class need so much crap? Thankfully, the other wilton courses use the same stuff so I will not have to repurchase anything. Jon is demanding that I take all the courses, even the ones I think are not up my alley (i.e. "Making Icing Flowers!") These cakes look like the old lady cakes you can get from Wal-mart. I would hope I produce a more ahem...slight artistic and higher quality product than that. Jon feels that may be true, but at some point, someone will want a granny cake for Mother's Day or something. So I will acquiesce and take it next.

Tonight is my first class, and I am about to head out with ym 3 bags of supplies. I'm nervous that it is going to be a complete disaster, and that I can't possibly learn enough in a 2 hour class to make a decent, plain looking cake. However, YouTube is quickly becoming a poor substitution for actual classroom instruction. So, away I go, dignity the only thing left to lose. Pictures of my work will hopefully be posted in the morning. Wish me luck!

What Did Santa Bring You For the Kitchen?

Well, if I ever decide to open a bakery, I think this Christmas took the cake (< see what I did there) when it comes to getting set up for it. I got about 9 million kitchen items to get the bakery started on firm ground in 2012. I think the most impressive gift I received was this:

The Cricut Cake Machine

This little machine cuts fondant and "icing sheets", whatever those are. It is like the Cricut machine that people use for scrapbooking, but made for cakes. I can't wait to use it. Let's hope it works as well as it promises.

Jon got me cake decorating lessons from Hobby Lobby. Those start in January and are twice a week. Very exciting. Maybe I will finally learn how to make super smooth cakes with butter cream. That is something YouTube just can't seem to teach me.

My mom got me one of these from Ross. It was just so cute she couldn't pass it up.

Hopefully it will make cupcake transport easier.

Strangely enough, I got two pressure cookers, two 9" round cake pans, and two bread pans. One of the pressure cookers will have to be returned, as will the 9" cake pans. Unfortunately, the cake pans have slanted sides. That will not work for cakes that are to be stacked. You need the pans to have straight sides. I might keep one as a biscuit pan. We'll see.

So... did Santa bring you for your kitchen?

Grandma H's Kolache Recipe and Other Disappointments

As my loyal readers (all 2 of them) know, I have been trying for year to get Jon's gran to give me the family recipe for kolaches. There's been a lot of back and forth.

In comes Christmas, and our obligatory family visit. I'm sitting alone, minding my own business, when Grandma H walks up to me with the biggest smile on her face and a little, folded piece of paper in her hands. She makes me come to dining table before she explains that she is giving me something special this Christmas:

BEHOLD!

I was so excited I almost wet myself! Finally, after 6 years of begging and pleading, I finally got a copy of the recipe. Gran, all proud, smiles and moves on about her holiday party. I quickly unfold the paper and scan for a clue about what I am doing wrong all this time. Then I realize this recipe is a little...vague. What I had clutched in my hands was not a recipe, it was a list of ingredients and their measurements. No other instructions whatsoever. It was as if Santa had shit in my cereal.

I finally get a chance to corner Gran and say very gently..."Um...this recipe seems to be missing the instruction portion, Gran." She laughed and said, "All you have to do is dump this stuff in a mixer. Nothing to it!" All of you that have seem my last June 11th kolache bomb know that is NOT all there is to it. So now I'm doing the delicate dance of "what is she hiding from me?"

Ten minutes later she comes back over and says, "oh, you want to mix your wet ingredients first, then add them to the dry." I dive for a pen, "DOES ANYONE HAVE A BLOODY PEN!!!"

Thirty minutes later she wanders back towards me with a quizzical expression, "Oh you want to make sure that you don't knead the dough. Just pat it down gently or the kolaches will be tough. I think I forgot to mention that."



*me feverishly writing, and thinking, I've never seen a kolache recipe where the dough was pressed flat*

"Pressed flat, Gran?"

"Oh yes," she said. "You have to cut it with a biscuit cutter."

Now I'm beyond confused. That is TOTALLY opposite from what I learned from the Kolache Master several years ago. I sit and stew over this a Gran rejoins the party.

Later I realize, I have no idea how long to cook these for and how many I can expect to get out of a batch. Is she purposefully trying to be elusive?!

I corner Gran in the kitchen again and ask her what to bake these on and how long. She gives me a rough temperature, and says the batch will produce 4-6 dozen. That's a huge variance!

One of Jon's aunts saw me plop down in a fit of exasperation after all of this and kindly wandered over and said this: "You are never going to be able to make them the way she does, because every time you try, she will sneak behind you and put something in the bowl while you have your back turned. That's how they always come out right."

So essentially, I think I am still at square one with the kolache recipe. It's been about 6 months since my last try. I guess it's about time to try again. Perhaps I'll see if I can 1/2 the recipes I do have in order to spare my poor soul kitchen for the tempest that is kolache making.

Bacon Candy

Well you asked forit: bacon, chocolate and caramel candy. I was supposed to make it last week for my #1 fan's birthday, but alas it was just too hectic of a week to get it together.

I am making up for it this weekend by making a gagillion things at once in my tiny little kitchen. It's like Thanksgiving in the home of my favorite blogger, NeNe.  Here's what's going down:

• Burner One: Pinto Beans and Sausage
• Burner Two: Stew 
• Burner Three: Double Boiler of chocolate
• Burner Four: Bacon.
• Oven: Sugar Cookie trial batch for snowflake cookie sales.
• Microwave: Carmel sauce.
• The Fridge...is very very afraid.

We just spent a ton on groceries, despite doing much better with stacking our coupons. I am determine not to waste any food this go round. So, today starts the cooking for the week so we can pack some of the leftovers away for another time.

Right now, the bacon candy is in the fridge hardening up, but I couldn't resist breaking off a bit to show you and um...consume unmercifully. Here it is.

I wish I wouldn't have tried it, I might eat it all before I can sell it.

So, the original recipe called for peanuts, but I left them out. This baby has plenty of salty and sweet textures, and the peanuts might have over done it. Not sure really, perhaps I'll offer two varieties: one with peanuts and one without. I've decided to package them in cute little cellophane bags with bows. It will be great.

On a side note, I am not advocating the eating of raw dough, but I had a teensy taste of the sugar cookie dough and almost died in a flavor coma. It was like sugared butter. I don't know if these cookies are going to get far from my kitchen. I was going to decorate them in royal icing and sugar pearls, then wrap them in the cellophane bags and give them away as Christmas gifts to coworkers. I am going to have to rethink my plans here. The original recipe said that it make 60 cookies. I probably should have made the whole recipe instead of cutting down to two dozen. There's no way I could have eaten all 60...right?

Are you preparing any special recipes to give away as gifts for Christmas?

Baby Shower Cake!

For a baby girl! Congrats Jen & Scott!

A Twist on the M&M Cake

Reese's pieces add a cute Halloween or Thanksgiving flair.