Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Bake Fest 2011

Merry After-Christmas! Was it a good one? Did you enjoy spending time with friends and family? Was the food awesome? Was Santa good to you?

For me, the answer is just yes. To everything. We had a great Christmas. It felt just like being in NH with my extended family. The fact that we replicated that feeling tells me it was an awesome Christmas. And of course, Santa was EXCEPTIONALLY good to Penelope. :-)

Perhaps one of the staple activities around the holidays is the baking of yummies. This year, I baked more than I ever have before. I enjoyed it, but it was quite stressful. So here it is! The breakdown of Bake Fest 2011.

1 batch of gingerbread men for Thanksgiving bake sale at the church
1 batch of gingerbread men for Christmas bake sale at the church
2 batches of gingerbread men for Candace and Fezziwhig Party
1 batch of gingerbread men to send to family
1 figgy pudding (yes, like from the Christmas carol)
1 baklava for the band
1 chocolate cake for Christmas Trifle

Each batch of gingerbread men makes approximately 4.25 dozen cookies. Weird number? It's because the number of cookies depends on the cookie cutter I use. The gingerbread men make 4 dozen, the ninjabead men make 4.5 dozen, so it evens out to approximately 4.25 dozen.


So 5 batches of cookies =  21.25 dozen = 255 cookies! That's A LOT of cookies! I also made a traditional figgy pudding, a baklava for the band, and a chocolate cake for a Christmas trifle I make every year for Christmas. Needless to say, I'm done baking for awhile!
Figgy pudding ready for the oven!
All in all, Bake Fest 2011 was awesome! I had a lot of fun baking, and loved decorating all those cookies. Although I have to admit, after awhile, they all sorta started looking the same (YOU try decorating 255 gingerbread men differently!!) :-) My new Kitchenaid mixer definitely helped!

Merry Christmas to me!!

So now that Bake Fest 2011 is over, what's next? Well, just a little thing I like to call "The Great Kitchen Clean-up 2011" :-)

What did you bake for Christmas this year?

1 comment:

Julie Crawford said...

Baked a goose for the first time - and probably last time. But it was an experience! Made a great stuffing with about a pound of butter and heavy cream, apples, raisens and chestnuts. Big hit - who doesn't love butter? Made my rice crispie cookies with chocolate/butterscoth icing. Christmas dinner was beef wellington - a family recipe. But I didn't gain weight??? I was good inbetween!