Well at least someone is baking cookies!

-C

Crappy Crap Crap Weekend

I was really looking forward to this weekend. It was my 3-day weekend. I had Friday afternoon off and I don't have to be to work until Tuesday at 1pm. I was going to nap, knit, bake, wrap presents, and go bowling. The best laid plans...

I couldn't knit anything to save my life. I wasted sugar and a cup of butter (real butter, not margarine. BUTTER!) on what are now door stops. The washer broke down and I am going to have to bring my laundry home to my mother's like a freshman. My hands are raw from wringing out wet towels, which I have been drying for 2 days. (And don't tell me to go to the laundromat). No presents got wrapped, bowling was canceled. I HATE this weekend.

On Friday before I left work, I came across what looked like a great cookbook Better Homes and Gardens Classic Cookies. The pretty pink and white spiral cookies on the front won me over and I wanted to make them! What a mistake. I knew the instant I started putting in the flour it was all wrong. There didn't seem to be enough of the other ingredients to mix with the flour it took a lot of work to incorporate the flour and then I had to work the dye into half the dough. So bad.



Check out video footage of the best tasting door stops anywhere, 'cause yeah, it tasted fine. I just can't roll it out or do anything to it. Oh, did I mention there was shoveling, 'cause there was an hour of shoveling wet heavy snow. The shoveling was the final straw. I had to resort to store bought cookies.

Just to prove someone had a good weekend here is a picture of my cat Griffin and some of his "Yarn Art".

Chow Mein Clusters (Dedicated to Wendy)

So, not much baking happened this week. I had a one day weekend, and although I didn’t bake cookies, I did host a program for kids who decorated cookies … not that that gets me off the hook for a new recipe this week, of course.

This week’s favourite cookie recipe is the Chow Mein Cluster or Noodle Power Cookie from Jean Pare. ( I am going with the title Chow Mein Cluster since that's how my friend Wendy introduced them to me.) These are fast, easy cookies to make and they freeze well which means you don’t have to eat them all the first night. (They aren’t the prettiest cookies,so I am sure Martha wouldn’t approve!) And then there are the food-associated memories. The Chow Mein Cluster is a favourite of mine because it is one of the pieces of Christmas spirit given to me by Wendy.

I love Christmas, and I have fun with Christmas. I have my 3 vol. Christmas CD set that I play on the trip home to PEI. I love getting my lights up, and I have Christmas Movie a night in December. I LOVE buying gifts and I truly believe Christmas is for giving fun presents that people wouldn’t buy for themselves, not practical gift like RRSPs or snow tires. But I didn't always feel this way about Christmas.A lot of people (e.g., my Mother) feel that Christmas is for children. Well, I don’t think so, and as I have gotten older, I have started my own Christmas traditions that I look forward to and that are developing every year. There seems to be a weird gap between when you stop believing in Santa and say your thirties where you finally start looking forward to Christmas rolling around again.

When I was making my Chow Mein Clusters last night, I was instantly transported to Wendy’s home. I love going to Wendy’s at Christmastime. I see us in the dark, eating cookies, watching Christmas movies by tree light. Wendy always has the most beautiful tree by far. The ornaments are mostly homemade, the tree is real, and they string popcorn (which the cats slowly eat over the holiday). There is also the annual angel massacre, the debacle of the tree cutting, the Playmobil Advent calendar, the Charlie Brown Puzzle, Yukon Cornelius, and Sam Push toys. I love Wendy’s house at Christmas, and that’s how I want my home to be.

Now I realize this is a lot to get from a cookie and your experience will not be the same as mine. But it‘s a good cookie and Wendy has the best Christmas spirit.

Next post: I swear I will make the Madeleines!

-C

A New Tradition

I have started a new tradition for myself -- Christmas Movie a night in December. A cumbersome title to be sure, but unlike many of today's youth, I don't need to shorten everything to four letters. So I started off the month with a bang by hosting Claymation Night. I invited a few friends over to watch Rudolph, Year without a Santa Claus, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Frosty.

I tend to go overboard when having people over, and my budget can't really handle it at this time of year, so I announced we would be ordering out. This however opens up the door to do some baking. I had been debating for weeks what I would make, I was trying to have some variety, as well as allow my gluten free guest to enjoy a treat as well. Of course I changed my mind a hundred times.

Inspiration come in the form of Dulce de Leche caramel sauce being sold at Superstore. I love Dulce de Leche (however, it scares the crap out of me thinking of boiling a can) and wanted to try it out, and two days before the party, I started looking for recipes that called for Dulce de Leche. I found David Lebovitz's Dulce de Leche Brownies. K is a big fan of David and I had one of his cookbooks on my stack for months and didn't even look at it. This recipe has changed my mind. It was really simple to make, it used one pot, and, as you can see from the picture, the brownies were gobbled up.

I will definitely be making these brownies again before I go home for Christmas. If you've never been to David's blog, take a minute to check out the brownie recipe.

My second recipe was Mars Bar Squares from Company's Coming Most Loved Treats by Jean Pare. I don't know if Jean invented this recipe. I couldn't find it credited to her on the internet, although I did find lots of variations of this recipe. Some of you may look down your nose at Jean and her cookbooks, but I am positive that a majority of houses have at least one of her books in their collection. Besides anything that combines melted Mars Bars with 1/2 cup of butter...I mean, how can that be bad?

We do have lots of copies at HPL so check it out. Unfortunately the URL is horribly long, so go to the library catalogue and do a "Title starts with" search for "Most Loved Treats."


Next Week:

I am trying out Madeleines for better or worse.

-C

Christmas Baking -- The Most Wonderful time of the Year!

What a great time to start a cooking blog. It is THE time of year when everyone lets their waistlines go and enjoys eating. It is THE time of year when people expect you to have various goodies in your home and not just any goodies, homemade goodies. And not only do you eat these goodies, you accompany them with a cup of liquid chocolate!

Ah ... baking. There's no need for it. Sweets are not required to survive, yet how could we survive without a little treat now and then. For some of us, the pleasure comes not just from eating but also from creating.

So I was lying in bed last night thinking about what to try this weekend, and I thought, it's time to start that fricking blog that has been hanging over my head for months. I have been gathering and reading and taking pictures of almost everything I make and yet nothing is happening. But the magic of Christmas baking has made it happen. So I have vowed to bake each weekend in December and to try at least one new recipe, along with some traditional favorites. And then post the results good or bad for all the world to see.

-C