Christmas Baking...

My posts have been few and far between lately! The truth is that I simply haven't had time, as we were in the midst of renos and family stuff (new nephew!) and all that jazz. I've now moved into the new house (but of course the renos aren't finished!) and successfully hosted Christmas dinner for the whole family. I'm finally finding time to get back into the kitchen, but am finding myself without the masses of tools and appliances that Mom had collected over the past 30 years. Time to invest in some serious kitchen gadgetry...

To prove I'm still alive, a couple of quick snapshots of Christmas baking, which I mainly did at Mom's house (I simply couldn't find the motivation to make oodles of Christmas cookies without a mixer) and a couple photos of the peppermint bark I made this year in my own kitchen (that was before the microwave broke. Literally, the start button stopped working, rendering the beast rather useless...). There was more baking (buttertarts! sugar cookies!) that I don't have photos of...

Thumbprint Cookies - a Christmas requirement. Usually made at Christmas with red and green Smarties (a Canadian chocolate treat), I made the mistake of buying the Christmas M&Ms, and Mom promptly informed me that the M&Ms don't bake up as nicely as the Smarties. And she was right. Darn. This photo is pre-baking, and so the M&Ms don't look as rough as they did 15 minutes later...


Meringues - one of my favourites for eating, regardless of the time of year. They're so light and melty that you can eat oodles of them before you realize you've probably consumed more sugar in those ten minutes than in the entire week before. I did intend to sandwich these with a dark chocolate ganache centre, but they all were eaten before that ever happened.


Peppermint Bark - I'm going to do a separate post for these... when I find the photos...

Nephew - I can't help it. Babies on a food blog- how awful! But he's so darn cute, and I am spending a lot of time cuddling with him instead of baking... Cakes can happen anytime- kids are only 2 days old for a limited time!


Happy Cookies!
- Carolyn