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While Jeremy and the younger boys were at Leadership Camp, Julia and I decided to do some baking.  True to form Julia loves more complicated things than I do so we did a Black Forest Cake.

 It was pretty good except we only have two pans and needed three.  The third layer was really gummy because it shouldn't have sat around so long before we baked it.  Now we know and Julia bought a third pan at the band garage sale!

Pig and Fig

So my roomies and I went to Carmela's and I had their Pig and Fig Pizza.  So good!  Obviously I needed to try to make it at home later.  It has figs, prosciutto, parmesan, goat cheese, basil and truffle oil- no wonder it's delicious!

I had only bought figs of the Newton variety before.  I think in the future I'll buy dried ones because I had no frame of reference for buying good figs.  These were okay but didn't have the pop of sweet tanginess like at Carmela's.

Here's the finished product.  Pretty good.  I will probably never buy truffle oil but this was not a bad at home version, I'd make it again.

In the Kitchen

Philip got a wild hair and decided to make pretzel rolls.  Always time consuming but always worth it!

They disappeared fast and I forgot to take a photo of the finished product.

 

Deliciousness

Nicholas wanted to make pretzel bites.

But he had the idea to make them peanut butter filled!

They were everything I always want a PB filled pretzel to be but store bought never quite are.  We'll make these again!

Julia decided to make this special orange cherry bread cake.

She loves trying out new recipes and is more adventurous than me!

She split it like a sandwich and put real whipped cream inside!

It was super tasty! 

Roast Beef Dinner Time!

Blueberry pie

Two pumpkins

These cute cupcakes that Julia made.  Except they over priced them so they didn't sell until late and by that time the hours in the sun had taken a toll on the cuteness.

Kolaches, biscuit cutter method.

Julia helped with the filling.

I baked them on 400 degrees, per advice from last year and they browned up way better!  Yay!

It's That Time of Year

Church dinner time!

I lost Grandma's kolache recipe awhile back  and my kolaches haven't been browning right.  I asked some of the kolache bakers in the parish and realized I need to cook them at a higher temperature.  400 degrees next year, Lisa.

The dinner was a success as always despite many other parishes' dinners being down in attendance.
 

Yummy!

In May I always have to remind myself to enjoy the quiet summer time.  Those days with some of the kids still in school and little for me to do feel slow but then June hits and we're busy!

This year I used the time to try a new bread.  It's called Babka, this particular one is pecan, and the dough has to go in the fridge overnight, hence why I've never made it before.  

 It was as tasty as it looks!!

Green Thumb Year

We have the best garden we've had in a long time!  Corn, cucumbers, zucchini and cherry tomatoes are all flourishing.

My item of the year is refrigerator pickles.   I bought cool jars and everything!  I learned to make both sweet and dill and they are pretty delicious. 

If you need zucchini or cucumbers CALL ME!!!!

Nothing Bundt Fun

I have to admit that when I opened my gift from Lynn I thought, "Why did I put a Bundt pan on my list?"  Bundt, it was worth it!  Turns out everything looks cooler when baked in a Bundt pan, which in turn, makes the baker look cooler too.  ;)

Breakfast:  Blueberry pancake casserole

Dinner: Tamale round

Dessert:  Old fashioned doughnut cake

All delicious and amazing looking.  Good thing I read "how to grease a Bundt pan," because so far everything I've made came right out.  I'm sure there'll be a disaster eventually, bundt for now I'm happy.

 

Yummy Preparations

We all know my favorite part of preparing for Christmas celebrations is making treats!  It was a great treat year.  Unfortunately for all of you we didn't share much because, as in everything this year, stupid covid.

This new bread was SCRUMPTIOUS.  It will be made again and again and again.  It's vanilla almond bread.  I don't know a lot about brioche bread but I think this is a variation of that.  This has mascarpone and ground almonds in the filling and then it's rolled and twisted to look beautiful.  It's a little over browned because my new oven browns things so.much.better than any oven I've ever used and I'm still getting used to it but it still tasted great.

The kids helped with various treat making.  Cherry rolls, candy cane topped cookies, dipped pretzels, Chex mix, cinnamon roll sugar cookies, home made Dots pretzels, maraschino cherry, chocolate chip shortbreads and of course, what I hope to be remembered for, white chocolate peppermint fudge.  Thomas, probably purposely evaded the camera when he made delicious spinach artichoke dip.  Oh, and Philip is wrapping in one of the pictures.  I let go of giving pretty, coordinated gifts this year (usually, for the sake of getting the right present to the right Christmas, each celebration gets a different wrap) and had the kids wrap everything that wasn't for them.  Some of the children used interesting methods and maybe a lot of tape and the gifts definitely weren't coordinated but it saved me a late night!

So many delicious carbs.

Among many other, much more important things, Christmas was tasty!

 

Blueberries Were $1

So I tried making blueberry jam!  It's intense but tasty!

I'm Going to Have to Get Serious about Working Out

Ordered this last week.  I'm pretty sure we're going to have lots of fun with it!

Julia made the batter for the premier batch.  

We didn't wait until morning to try them.  They're tasty!  The chocolate frosting (read thinned down melted chocolate chips) kind of steals the show though.  I'll have to shop around for recipes until I find the right one.

I have come to the conclusion my "melt chocolate" button on the microwave is not the way to go.  We almost seized the chocolate and that always makes me grumpy.  But I managed to salvage it, phew.

Also on today's agenda, from my baking bucket list:  BAGELS!

We ARE waiting for breakfast to taste these but they look soooo good!  They were about as much work as I expected. They're pretty big, I think I could make them a little smaller and get more out of each batch.  The recipe says they freeze well so they have good potential for school time breakfasts-thaw and go!

I made these and some cinnamon rolls too.  Breakfast is going to be good (if not healthy) for the rest of the week!

I told you baking is the best part of quarantine!  But now what to make for dinner...

The Best Thing About Quarantine is

BAKING!
I made this new cookie recipe.  Chocolate chip, maraschino cherry and pecan shortbread cookies.  County Fair, here I come...if it happens...or in 2021 if necessary! 

I've wanted to try making pretzel buns for a long time...so I used my "extra" quarantine time and

They were totally worth the time and effort!  I only made a single batch so this is all there were.  They are a little more time intensive than regular rolls because you boil them before you bake them so next time I'll make a huge batch and freeze them in portions of 7.

Now the quarantine baking I love- the making a meal every time I turn around?  Not so much.  Time for my favorite summer program:  Cook of the Day.  Each kid makes a meal twice a month or so.  And it's not even cancelled because I'm in charge of it!  If I call it a summer program maybe it will make the kids more excited?
Thomas got a jump on it because he had to make supper for his Foods class.  He made taco burgers and even grilled the buns.

Julia, Philip and Nicholas planned meals before I grocery shopped last week so they are on tap in the next couple weeks.  Samuel and Thomas are officially done with school tomorrow so they will get put into the rotation next time I go shopping.

More Preparations

Why does it make me so happy to coordinate the wrapping for each celebration?  Poinsettias for Jeremy's family, ivy for mine, snowmen and different poinsettias for the kids.  And Philip did the cute personalizing on Jeremy's gift.

We had fun making crafts and goodies too.  Samuel's white fudge on the bottom right deserves a recipe link.  It's so good!

Packing the Freezer

When I was younger and reading books like Little House on the Prairie, I thought I would have made a great pioneer.  Now I know I would have died.  But I've felt pioneer-y lately, and very thankful for freezers!

Yesterday I made these 

 Into this

Thanks for the tomatoes Steve and Raleen!

I dried our garden's haul of cherry tomatoes too.

There's plenty more coming, I'll have to dry more next week.

I love these for putting on lettuce salad and in homemade bread!

They'd probably be great in pasta too but I haven't tried that yet.

A few weeks ago we picked 16 dozen ears of corn from Julia's friend Maddie's grandpa's (did you follow that?) huge garden of sweet corn.  It made 40 quart bags of corn for the freezer.  We'd picked 7 dozen from him the week before too so we have a bag of corn for every week for a year!

Before school started I tried freezer breakfast sandwiches and burritos for the first time.  They've been a hit.  Three weeks into the school year they're almost gone.  I'll have to make them again!

 The lady is brilliant, she cooks a dozen eggs on a cookie sheet and then cuts them into circles with a cup.  I got 16 sandwiches out of it.  The extra pieces go into the burritos.  I did another dozen scrambled eggs with a pound of sausage so that I'd have more burritos, 40 total. After all, I'm feeding 5 kids, a dozen eggs doesn't go far....  And overall they're pretty cheap to make too!

The freezer is FULL!