X-Mas Baking Fest ’11

Ready. Set. Bake!

What a day! My feet hurt, my back hurts, and I have flour in my hair and in between my toes. I’d say X-mas Baking Fest ’11 was a huge success. We baked all that needed to be baked and are now ready to sit back and enjoy the holidays. 🙂

We prepped this morning with a huge grocery shopping trip and the last of our last minute Christmas shopping. Once we had everything we needed, Kelly and I met an old high school/ college friend for lunch at Cracker Jack’s.

Such a beautiful day. Why were we spending inside again?! 😉

Our table started with a shared app of edamame.

And I ordered the blackened fish tacos with a side salad.

The fish was great, but the tortilla was bland and flavorless. I ended up ditching the tortilla and just adding the fish to the side salad. It was much better that way.   

With full bellies, we were ready to bake!

We started with a batch of leftover sugar cookie dough I had frozen when I made my little brother cars cookies for his birthday last month. The dough had a chance to defrost on my drive home yesterday and was really easy to work with today.

Having the dough already on hand made the sugar cookie process super easy. we just rolled the dough cut the shapes, and baked until golden brown.

Once the cookies had a chance to cool my mom whipped up a batch of buttercream frosting to coat the cookies with.

Then Kelly got to work decorating.

Sugar cookies? Done.

Next up were Emily’s Crystallized Ginger Spice Cookies

Where does one buy crystallized ginger? Because we couldn’t find it. We ended up following the recipe as written (skipping the crystallized ginger) and still loved them. No crystallized ginger needed. 🙂

Cooookkkiiieeesss

Not for Sadies.

Every holiday season I like to attempt one fun, crazy dessert. This year’s fun dessert was a Yule Log. I saw one at Derek’s office Christmas party at the beginning of the month and it has been on my mind ever since.

I followed this recipe as suggested by a twitter follower and tried my best to follow it to a t.

Everything looked good and smelled good coming out of the oven.

But looks aren’t everything. #Fail

Back to square 1.

My second attempt at the sponge cake was a little better. I let it bake an extra 5 minutes and made sure to butter up the parchment paper nice and thick so it wouldn’t stick.

Success!

I was even able to roll the cake in the towel without a fuss.

Once the cake was cool I ended up with a nice cake roll.

In went a layer of the mocha cream filling

And my friend Allison and I finished it off with a nice layer of Mocha Buttercream Frosting.

If this cake tastes anything like the failed cake from up above (which was delicious, just a tad undercooked), then I know this baby is good. Can’t wait to dig in tomorrow night!

We finished our baking adventures with…

cranberry sauce

chocolate pie

and pumpkin bread.

My Dad made an amazing meal of stuffed acorn for dinner.

He just roasted the acorn squash and stuffed them with black beans, rice, and melted cheese.

My dad rocks. 🙂

My sweet tooth was in overdrive today with all of the sweets. I had my share of cookie halves, crumbs, spoon licks, and ‘samples’ though out the day. It was good – so, so good – but I have a tummy ache to go with it all. Too. Much . Sugar.   

I had so much fun today baking up a storm, but tomorrow is going to be even better.

Santa is coming!

Santa is coming!

Santa is coming!