Baklava

Baklava seems like a scary thing to make, but it really wasn't as hard as it seemed. The hardest part was parting with the cash to buy the nuts that go in the filling. With a bunch of pistachios, walnuts, and almonds, this is one expensive dessert!

After shelling and grounding the nuts with some sugar and spices, I unrolled the thawed phyllo dough and cut it to the size of the pan. This stuff gets crumbly quick, so I made sure I had everything ready before I took it out of its packaging.

I had the filling and a bowl of melted butter ready to go.

After brushing the pan with butter, I put down the first sheet.

Each sheet of dough got a brushing of butter. I put down 10 sheets, one layer of filling, 6 sheets, another layer of filling, 6 more sheets, the last of the filling, and 8 sheets on top.

I baked the baklava then made the syrup to go on top. It has honey, sugar, water, cinnamon, and an orange peal (gets removed at the end).

Though it turned out pretty good, I don't think I cooked the syrup enough. I used Alton Brown's recipe (available on the food network site - I omitted the rose water because I didn't have any), and the reviews said if you cook the syrup as long as it said to, you'd end up with hard candy. I was overly cautious, and it didn't get thick enough!

It still turned out pretty good, and I'll definitely make it again! Apart from gathering ingredients and shelling the nuts, the process was pretty easy!

Bridal shower cookies

These tea cup & tea pot cookies were made for a bridal shower.

Unfortunately, they did not make it there intact. They are the only cookies I've ever shipped to break like that!

Luckily, I did figure out what was wrong so that that hopefully won't happen in the future.
I have done most of my baking in the fall, winter, and spring, so the hot and wet summer meant I needed to use more flour in the dough to get it as sturdy as normal. Plus, I now bake cookies that will be shipped a little longer to ensure they will be sturdy for the trip. These were softer, which is tasty, but dangerous for travel.

I was devastated that they broke in transit, but glad to have learned more about properly shipping my cookies.

Christmas Eve cookie decorating

On Christmas Eve I pulled out all my cookie decorating supplies for Andrew and me to decorate cookies! We put on the Grinch and got to work.

He usually watched while I decorate things with specific colors in specific ways, so this time I let him choose the shapes, colors, and how he wanted to decorate. Hence the pterodactyl in the above picture.

We used gingerbread cookies and buttercream icing.

His gingerbread man has a funny mouth.

Note the Christmas cow.

We happily ate our mistakes!

A stocking for Me, the baby, and Andrew!

Yes, there is a dinosaur, some squirels, and a sheep.

There's the traditional Christmas octopus...

We had lots of fun decorating and eating cookies!

Gingerbread House

Seminary housing had a gingerbread contest this Christmas, so Andrew and I rose to the challenge!

We found a template for a gingerbread house, sized it, printed it, and used it to cut out the gingerbread pieces.

Then we baked the gingerbread, crushed butterscotch candies, filled the windows, and put the pieces back in the oven to melt. Before assembling, I piped on the details and Andrew sanded down the edges to fit perfectly with the micro-plane grater.

Andrew made a box base and covered it with foil. He put holes in it so we could fill it with Christmas lights. They lit up the melted candy in the windows to make the house glow. We then put together the house around the bunched up Christmas lights.

Here's the finished product (pardon the not-so-great lighting).

The trees are upside down ice cream cones with dark green icing piped with a star tip. After they dried, I used meringue powder and water (egg whites would have worked, too) to glue on some sanding sugar snow to the branches.

We also added candy canes to the corners of the house.

The snow on the ground is royal icing covered with sanding sugar.

The ceiling is wheat Chex cereal. This took forever! We had to get the Chex pieces to be just the right shape and size to fit in odd roof angles. We dusted the finished roof with powdered sugar snow.

The walkway is made of cappuccino jelly beans.

The berries on the greenery are red sprinkles that I added with tweezers.

We won the housing competition and probably started a new Christmas tradition! This was a lot of fun!

So.... I haven't posted in awhile

I haven't updated the blog in forever, but I've been a bit busy. I've been working at a new job (not so new anymore), and I've been growing a baby! Sarah Grace is due to make her way into the world Feb 8th. Between morning sickness, fatigue, and growing too big to comfortably bend down, baking and blogging haven't been priorities.

I have done some baking, though, and so I'm going to start posting again - even though there may be no one left reading.