Thursday, December 16, 2010

Holiday Baking

I love the holidays. As I get older I still love receiving gifts, but giving gifts is becoming more stressful with each passing year. What does one do in this situation? Bake! To the people that know accomplished bakers this is a welcome gift, but to the people that know me...beware!

Today I made about 11 trips down the baking aisle at the grocery store looking for items that I had never purchased before, such as peppermint extract and unflavored gelatin. I also witnessed a woman break a bag of sugar and leave it leaking on the floor while she scurried away, then when one of the store employees walked by and tried to pick up the spilling bag I felt really guilty even though I didn't do it. While I was shopping I somehow convinced that boy that I like to clean up the kitchen. He even organized one of the cabinets to make room for the 16 pounds of sugar and nuts I bought (I knew I liked him for a reason)!

I came home and declared the kitchen table as my own. It is where I have set up shop until the weekend is over. For those of you wondering, yes, the bottle of rum is essential to baking. It will only get worse from here.




Because I am already an expert baker (yeah...right!), I have decided to try my hand at candy making. This is not one of my brightest ideas. First up: Peanut Brittle. Making peanut brittle taught me that I am afraid of boiling sugar and that hardened sugar is hard to scrape out of your favorite pot. Next up: Rum Balls and Homemade Marshmallows (thanks M Cubed!).




For the moment I need to stop baking and have a glass of wine and try and shut out my extremely loud neighbors and the gaggle of small children they have running and screaming upstairs. It looks something like this (which is also when I realized that I hate facebook because they keep changing the layout, and I'm pretty sure they are getting more corrupt by the hour, but I'll still keep using it anyway).




Hmm, maybe I can just buy cookies and candy and pretend that I made them.

1 comment:

  1. Go Becca, I look forward to trying all your goodies, and may you be the baker that I never was! You certainly didn't learn it at your Mother's knee! Everyone in the family can recall their birthday cakes held together with toothpicks!

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