I have missed three posting days after not missing for over a month! The horror!! I will wait till next Monday to catch up on my Marriage Monday posts, and will resume my regular posting schedule next week. For now though, I’ve got some fun recipes to get you in the mood for Christmas!

Just a little note for future reference, mostly to myself. All recipes made for the 2010 Christmas season will come from magazines and books I have fallen in love with, bought, and left to sit alone (well, alone with each other) in my kitchen. I have about eleventy billion of them, time to actually use them!

I’ve been gearing up for Christmas baking, mostly icebox cookies that are made for freezing. Some doughs make for great slice and bake logs and some cookies freeze excellently after they’ve been baked and cooled. So I’m doing a bit of everything and as I make things for the freezer, I’ll post recipes and next month let you know how well they froze. I can’t possibly explain to you how hard I am hoping that next month I’ll say that all the recipes I chose to freeze worked out perfectly! The whole point to doing this is to cut back on my December baking time and to make as many different kinds of cookies and bars and wee treats to package up and send out as possible!

So far, I have made White Chocolate Dipped Red Velvet Shortbread Cookies, Peanut Butter Brownie Biscotti and Ooey Gooey Chewy Smore Bars. Yes, I sampled – but just one of each! They were all pretty straightforward and turned out well. Today I’ll give you the shortbread and the biscotti – stay tuned tomorrow for these gooey bars. Mmmmm.

The red velvet shortbread was pretty much what you’d expect – a fairly standard shortbread with a general addition of red food colouring, once they were baked and cooled, I dipped them all in white chocolate. I got two dozen cookies out of the recipe, half of them I left the white chocolate alone, and the other half got a dash of red and green sprinkles.

Red Velvet Shortbread Cookies – from Christmas Cookies ’09 (a Better Homes & Gardens magazine)

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, cut up
1 tablespoon red food colouring
3 ounces white chocolate
1 1/2 teaspoons shortening

Preheat to 325. Stir together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Use a pastry cutter to cut in butter and food colouring until mixture is crumbly and starts to cling together. Form into a ball, knead till smooth.

Now flour your counter, knead your dough on it and roll out to about 1/2″ thick, cut your dough in whatever shape you like, just keep in mind the baking times will be off. Put them on your parchment paper lined baking sheet, mush the scraps up, re roll them and do it again.

The recipe said to bake for 20 minutes and mine burnt at the 10 minute mark. In my supernova oven they were ready in 6 minutes, so test your oven!!

As the cookies were cooling on a wire rack, I melted the white chocolate in a ceramic bowl set in a pan of hot water. Then I coated half the cookie, and put it on a piece of parchment paper on a tray. If they got a shot of sprinkles, they got it here before they were popped in the freezer till the chocolate had set so I could put them in freezer containers.

Even though I had never made biscotti before, making four different kinds of it to give away at Christmas is on my list of things to do this week. I’d show you my list but I don’t want to frighten you. 😉

Peanut Butter Brownie Bsicotti – from Christmas Cookies ’09 (a Better Homes & Gardens magazine)

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1 cup chopped semi-sweet chocolate (about 6 ounces)

Preheat to 375. Cream the peanut butter and the butter, beat for 30 seconds and add the sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder. Scrap down the sides of the bowl, beat in the eggs and vanilla until well mixed, now beat in the flour and once it’s all combined, stir in the chocolate chunks with a spoon.

Knead the dough on your floured countertop and form it into a 9″ x 2″ roll. Usually, when recipes tell me to do something like that, I can never get it to be the right shape but this recipe actually works and 9″ x 2″ is totally doable. Bake this loaf on a parchment paper lined baking sheet for 20 minutes (according to the recipe, my crazy oven had both rolls fully cooked in half the time).

Once they’re out, you can turn off your oven – for now. Let them sit for an hour, then cut them into 16 pieces each and bake them again, for another 10 minutes (5 for me), then flip them over and bake for another 10 (or 5 lol).

This month is full of Christmas baking and knitting and serious prep for my sister’s 22nd birthday party in 2 weeks. I’m so excited I want to post all about it, but I don’t want to unleash any surprises in case she’s reading. Hi Nikki!

In this post, I’m participating in Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Tuesday Night Supper Club, Hearth ‘n Soul, Tuesdays at the Table and Delicious Dishes at It’s a Blog Party

We were really feeling the Halloweeny vibe this year, but wee one #2 marches to the beat of her own drummer. So in the midst of the black and orange explosion of last week, she chose to go off the rails and bake something not even remotely seasonal. That’s ok, she’s 4 – as long as she’s actually creating edible food in the kitchen who cares if it’s on theme or not right? Right!

The Halloweeny food does not need recipes, as I am sure you make these on your own already and if you don’t there are about eleventy billion recipes online. I did my best to make Halloween week as silly and as fun as possible for the kids – of course it got me in the spirit too. Every day, we had at least one themed treat or meal, and towards the end of the week the whole day was themed! Not that I have ever been known to get carried away. Ahem.

(mmmm garlic), oregano, a little thyme and a teeny bit of Miss Diana sauce for chicken. I know that doesn’t sound amazing, but trust me, it is.

We were having a really laid back day and I asked wee one #2 if she felt like baking something on her own (under supervision, natch) and without even thinking about it she announced she wanted to make granola bars!

They are painfully easy. All I did was turn the oven on, measure the ingredients into bowls, put the dish into the oven and then later take it out. She did the rest.

Painfully Easy Granola Bars

First she piled her dry ingredients into the Kitchen Aid and gave it a whirl. My mother didn’t get a Kitchen Aid till I was 14, so it’s hilarious to see my not quite 5 year old daughter working the kitchen power tools!

Then she literally dumped all the wet ingredients on top and gave it another whirl. It worked. If I had made them, I likely would have mixed all the wet ingredients together first and then added that to the dry, but what do I know?! 😉

She then greased a brownie pan with Becel and a pastry brush before unhooking the bowl from the stand and dumping the entire contents into the pan. She smoothed it out and instructed me to pop it in the oven. And so I did – then 20 minutes later I took it out again.

It was hard to hold everyone back while the pan cooled enough for me to cut them into bars. Mmmm. The kids brought them to school the next day! Yes, I know there are peanuts in them and I said they took them to school. Believe it or not, their school only has 41 kids in it and no peanut allergies so they are a peanut friendly school.

In this post, I am participating in Making Your Home a Haven, and Marriage Mondays.

I am so excited to get to this week’s challenge I want to breeze through last week, but I wont. 😛

So last week was about tenderness, and the suggestion was a serious pillow fight in the living room. We had a pillow fight, but in the interest of not breaking our TV, we had the pillow fight in the girls’ room – home to many pillow fights already! I gave back rubs to everyone and they all got into it and they were all giving back rubs to each other! Wee one #3 is in the ‘mimicking everything everyone does’ stage and was really, really into it. It was both heart warming and hilarious. I said last week that I don’t know how long the tenderness will last with the kids as they grow up, especially my son! You never know what the future holds, so for now I’ll take as many snuggled as he’ll give me!

This week’s challenge is to cook things that smell good. As anyone who has ever read my blog knows – I’ve got this locked down. I have considered cooking and baking to be art since I was a kid and first decorated cakes with my Mother and sugar cookies with my Granny. I cook every meal from scratch with the exception of lunch for the kids when they want something ‘fast and boring’. Even breakfast is pancakes or french toast or oatmeal (you know, the kind you actually cook in a pot and not the instant ‘just add boiling water’ kind).

Sometimes I fall in love with a recipe that uses store bought pre-made stuff, I’ll take it a step further (most of the time) and make as much of it from scratch as I can. It sounds a little crazy but I swear it’s never as much work as you think and the house smells so so so good!

These mummie hot dogs are a great example! The recipe I first saw used refrigerated crescent roll dough and hot dogs. While I am not above making my own sausages I do use regular hot dogs, but never pre-fab dough! So I took an extra 10 minutes (literally) and made some pizza dough to wrap around our hot dogs! 10-15 minutes in the oven at 350 and they were done. Even if you do use the pre made dough, the whole house will smell a lot yummier than it would if you just cook up some hot dogs and pop them in buns.

My kids are 10, 4 and 20 months and already I know they all associate me with the kitchen and yummy smells. I even started sneaking veggies into their treats a couple of years ago and no one noticed the chick peas in the chocolate chip cookies or the black beans in the brownies (thanks Gilly!!)

These candy corn cupcakes were made with apple sauce instead of oil and no one even notices!

I made these cakeballs as Halloween treats for the kids classmates and they are made using mashed bananas instead of oil. The orange pumpkin though, he’s 100% orange candy melt, no nutrition there. 😉

Of course there is a spiritual side to this too. The whole point of this challenge series is to make our homes more welcoming and inviting and full of love for our families. This only happens in the kitchen if you’re focusing on your family and your positive intentions while you’re in the cooking and baking. Have you ever seen an overstressed woman preparing a serious supper? It smells wonderful, but the moment a little one tries to cross the threshold into the kitchen, mama freaks out and wants the kids out of her way. It’s not about that, it’s not just the smell. It’s about the feeling of togetherness and warmth we’re creating, and coming from someone who is literally in the kitchen most of the day, I can say with certainty that sometimes it is a little stressful. But just like with everything else in life, when it gets too much for me, I give it up to God and feel a lot calmer. A kitchen that smells amazing is spoiled by a grouchy cook!

I am thankful that today’s post is food-focused so I can post about some of the fun treats I made and didn’t have a chance to post on Thursday and Friday. I’ll sneak in two more pics for this post! Chocolate coated and candy covered mini marshmallows!

There will be a handful of Halloween treats left that I’ll save for another foodie post tomorrow. 🙂

I originally saw these little cuties on Bakerella, of course. I’m a little obsessed, can you tell? Then, just as with everything else that happens on the internet, they started popping up everywhere. I neeeeded to make these. This week has been a blur of black and orange, a frenzy of Halloween activity that I have loved every moment of! I will post some of the Halloween treats I’ve made this week tomorrow (along with my entry for the Craftster Fall Cooking Challenge). So with all the ghoulish cooking and baking going on around here, cute little brownie burgers were a nice change of pace in the kitchen. I made an extra tray and let the kids have at it with way more buttercream frosting than any three children should have access to. 😉

It’s pretty straightforward, and I’m including recipes! I made my standard vanilla cake in a mini cupcake pan for the buns, then I cut the tops off! Don’t overfill the cups too much because you don’t want too much of a muffin top! I then made classic buttercream and tinted it red for ketchup, green for lettuce, yellow for mustard and left some white for onions. Get creative with it! If you typically put hot peppers on your burgers, tint some orange too!

Standard Vanilla Cake – from Elliot Bakes a Cake

Separate the eggs into two small bowls. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

Cream the butter, add the sugar. Stir until smooth. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the butter and sugar. Add the milk and vanilla next and stir.

Then add the flour mix, a little at a time. Mix till smooth. Beat the egg whites till stiff peaks form, then fold into the batter.

If you’re using it for these mini cupcakes, assume they’ll be fast, like 15 minutes or less. If you’re making bigger cupcakes or a cake, add more time.

The brownies were my standard cocoa brownies (found here with chocolate chips added to them). I found that since they are so moist, I had to pop them in the freezer for a bit for them to be easier to cut – I still have yet to pick up a small circle cutter so I used a shot glass.

The sugar cookies here are the same I made last month for the Daring Baker challenge. So simple and so fast!!

Basic Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup + 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups + 3 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup caster sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. DO NOT OVERMIX. Beat in egg till well combined and not a second longer. 😛

Add flour and mix till a sticky dough forms. Kneed into a ball and divide into 2 or 3 balls. Roll out each ball between two sheets of parchment paper for about half an hour. Preheat to 350, then take it out, peel off the first layer or parchment paper and slice it into strips like french fries!

These babies cook fast, especially if you made thin fries! Check on them after 5 minutes but they may take up to 8 or 10 minutes.

And now, let’s sidebar into kiddie art, shall we?

Later that afternoon, wee one #2 wanted to into the new finger paints my husband picked up, and with wee one #3 sleeping, away we went!

This first one was made with blow painting, which is just plopping a bit on watery paint on the paper and blowing it around with a straw to make different shapes. We added eyes because she told me it’s a friendly monster.

Then we did some thumbprint snowmen on the left and handprint flowers on the right. The hand prints were the most fun because they were the messiest, of course!!

In this post, I’m participating in The Daring Kitchen, Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Tuesday Night Supper Club, Hearth ‘n Soul, Tuesdays at the Table and Delicious Dishes at It’s a Blog Party

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

This challenge was so fun I don’t even know where to begin. Think about entering a coffee shop, and the row upon rows upon rows of doughnut behind the counter. With the recipes from this month’s challenge, you can literally make all of them! I may be 300lbs the next time anyone sees me!

These doughnuts are the final birthday party item I didn’t post about yesterday! Surprise!

There yeast doughnuts, old fashioned buttermilk cake doughnuts, bomboloni (German style with a fruity filling) and pumpkin. I went with the old fashioned buttermilk cake doughnuts and no lie, they taste exactly like the Tiny Tom carnival doughnuts!

So first, here’s the recipe I used!

Old-Fashioned Buttermilk Cake Doughnuts:
Sour Cream 1/4 cup
All Purpose Flour 3 1/4 cup
White Granulated Sugar 3/4 cup
Baking Soda 1/2 teaspoon
Baking Powder 1 teaspoon
Kosher (Flaked) Salt 1 teaspoon (If using table salt, only use 1/2 teaspoon)
Nutmeg, grated 1 1/2 teaspoon
Active Dry Yeast 1 1/8 teaspoon
Buttermilk 3/4 cup + 2 Tablespoon
Egg, 1 large
Egg Yolk 2 large
Pure Vanilla Extract 1 Tablespoon
Powdered (Icing) Sugar 1/4 cup (used for decorating and is optional)

First heat the sour cream in a stainless steel bowl set over a pot of simmering water. Then turn your oil on. 😉

Over a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nutmeg; make a large well in the center. Place the yeast in the well; pour the sour cream over it. Allow it to soften (if using packed fresh yeast), about 1 minute.

Pour the buttermilk, whole egg, egg yolks, and vanilla extract into the well. Using one hand, gradually draw in the dry ingredients. The mixture should be fairly smooth before you draw in more flour. Mix until it is completely incorporated. The dough will be very sticky. Wash and dry your hands and dust them with flour.

If I’m honest here, I’d admit that I love mixing food by hand. Loooove it.

Now comes the really fun part!! Shaping them! For the traditionally shaped doughnuts, I used a drinking glass and a very teeny shot glass, though I am aware there are actual doughnut cutters out there! Now that I know how to make them, I have those cutters on my wish list.

Be sure to seriously flour up your counter and work fast!

They really don’t take long at all, maybe 30 seconds a side, and really the second side is a little less. They’re super fun to make and, as usual, I was in the kitchen, dancing around and listening to my music louder than I probably should when all the kids are in bed and I was almost done the whole batch before I knew it.

Once my husband came in the room and saw what I was doing, he raided the cookie cutter cabinet (yes I have a cabinet full of cookie cutters), and cut out angel and heart shaped doughnuts. He is hilarious. We ended up making another batch and made all silly shapes! The kids loved them the next day – I wonder if it’s weird that their parents stayed up and made funny doughnuts while they were sleeping? Ha!

Ok, back to our regular doughnuts. Since they were really hot and we were working fast (because the recipe told us to!) we hadn’t tried them yet. So as soon as the doughnut holes were ready we had one. Oh. My. Goodness. When we realized that they tasted exactly like the Tiny Tom mini doughnuts, we immediately bathed them in cinnamon and sugar and nom nom nomed half a tray of them.

Eventually, we restrained ourselves long enough to whip up a sour cream glaze (!!) for the remaining doughnut holes. Man, they were good!

Sour Cream Glaze – found on an index card in my kitchen
3/4 cup icing sugar
2 tablespoons sour cream
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon water

Just stir the sugar and sour cream in a small pot over low heat till it’s melted and almost smooth. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla an water. Voila!

The glaze is really shiny and almost see through on the first coat. Once it’s a little dry and duller, you can dip it a second time – or more if you prefer. I found that two coats gave it that perfect coffee shop shell, you know? Watch out for cavities!

I can hardly wait for next month’s Daring Baker challenge!! Stay tuned!

Last weekend, four of my dearest friends made the two hour journey (one of them had a 5 hour journey) to my house in the woods to help me celebrate my birthday.

Backing up a bit, when I was preparing for my ladies (and Andrew) to come up for the weekend, I naturally went on a baking spree, and so I needed birthday items, like sprinkles and candy melts. I literally asked for a handful of 3 colours of candy melts, 3 colours of sprinkles and about 1/2 lb of milk chocolate. My husband drove into town to get the gear I needed and came back with what can only be described as an avalanche of sprinkles and candy melts and other amazing things I didn’t even ask for. That’s love people, that’s love.

I had asked for the candy melts and sprinkles to make cupcake pops. I’ve made cake balls many, many times before but these are so much more festive! I used the Bakerella Cupcake Bites Made Easy post as my guide. They really are so easy, all you need is some chocolate, a candy cup mold (like the bottom of a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup), candy melts in different colours, some sprinkles in different colours and Smarties. Ready?

Leave the chocolate to dry on the counter for a bit, and once it’s lost it’s shiny gloss, pop it in the fridge for a few hours.

Now add a few dollops of buttercream or cream cheese icing and mix it up. The ratio is different depending on what recipes you use for the cake and for the icing. We’ve been over the whole store bought things before. I know it’s so much easier to use a boxed cake mix and a tub of frosting but my Granny has drilled in to me that I should just do it from scratch. I swear it doesn’t take that much longer at all!

Once you’ve got the right consistency, roll your mixture into cake balls and put those in the fridge as well. Make sure you roll them big enough (or small enough depending on your mold) to sit comfortably in your chocolate cups!

When your chocolate cups are ready, and you’ve popped them out of their molds, melt some of your candy melts down to use as glue to hold the cake balls in the chocolate cups.

Bakerella squished the cake balls right into the melted chocolate in the mold before it even went in the fridge. Which is genius. I, however, did not do that so I had to glue them in. Next time, I will do that.

Now holding the cupcake pop by the chocolate cup, dip it in the candy melts and add your sprinkles and Smartie to it while it’s still wet! These are a lot of fun to make because you can literally use whatever sort of toppings you want depending on the occasion!

Keeping with the theme of treats I love that look a lot harder to make than they really are, I also made Leek Rings. They really should be eaten fresh, so I made them as I knew everyone was coming over. I went with leeks instead of onions because we all prefer them, and they’re just a little different than what you’d expect. So people were arriving as I was making these, and no lie, they were eating them right out of the collinder! Very few of the leek rings even made it to a plate.

Very simple to make!! You can cut your leeks (or onions) thin and have a lot or cut them thicker to make a bigger snack out of them. If you cut them as thin as I did, you can just pop them in your mouth in one or two bites. Which may not be a good thing!

leek/onion in the batter, shake it off a bit and pluink it in the oil. Let it cook for just a few seconds if you want it a golden brown, then flip it, cook it for another few seconds and move it to a paper towel-lined collinder. If you like them crispier, just leave them in longer – but not too long, these babies cook fast!

I could eat and eat and eat these. They were so good it’s a little alarming. I would gain so much weight if I made these all the time, but boy do I ever want to make these all the time! I will save them as treats for when I have visitors (which isn’t that often out here in the woods)!

One more treat and I’ll let you get on with your day. This was my birthday cake. I was having some serious oven issues and my sister looooves cheesecake, so I whipped up this Chocolate Elegance Cake from Kraft. Amazing, and again, so simple!!

Chocolate Elegance Cake – from Kraft

1 1/2 packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups Cool Whip
6 ounces chocolate chips
1 package jello chocolate instant pudding (4 servings)
1/2 cup milk

This cake is made upside down in a loaf pan, set in the fridge, covered in chocolate and set in the fridge again. Then your friends come over and eat it all!

Beat the cream cheese and the sugar till blended, then stir in 1 1/2 cups of the Cool Whip. Spread 2 cups of this mixture onto the bottom of a 8 x 4 loaf pan lined with plastic wrap.

Melt 3 ounces of the chocolate chips, and add to the rest of the cream cheese mixture along with the pudding mix and milk. Beat till blended and spread over the first layer in the pan. Pop this in the fridge for about 4 hours.

Once the cake as set, melt the rest of the chocolate (3 ounces) and Cool Whip (1 cup) together, let it cool a bit. Now invert your cake onto the platter you’re using and take off the plastic wrap. Spread the glaze you just made over the cake and immediately top with either sprinkles or nuts or whatever you like. Put it back in the fridge for another half hour or so, till the glaze is set.

This cake was amazing, and I later thought about tinting the first layer to a bright colour, or making several layers like that one and tinting them all different colours!

I made one more treat for my birthday party, but I can’t tell you about it yet because it’s a Daring Baker’s challenge and we’re not unleashing it until tomorrow. Trust me though, it’s good! Once you read how to do it, you’ll be wondering why you don’t make it yourself all the time!!

In this post, I am participating in Making Your Home a Haven, and Marriage Mondays.

I am love, love, loving this challenge series! It occurred to me today that I will likely be begging Courtney to start another one when this one winds down! <3

So with my candle going and with softer music playing in the house (most of the time), I kept my mindfulness of being peaceful and kind to everyone in my home. Recapping last week, I tried to attack the mental clutter. Knitting, baking and cooking have helped a lot with that, as weird as that may sound because I have to focus my attention to the stitches or the ingredients and I can’t let my mind wander. While this is a decent quick fix it does not get to the root of the issue, so that every time I am not knitting or playing in the kitchen I am horribly distracted by hundreds of tiny thoughts that add up to a whole lot of mental clutter. So all week now, when I’ve noticed that it’s creeping in – these completely irrelevant thoughts, I’ve just turned them over to God and refused to make a big deal out of it. That’s not said lightly and yes it is difficult, but this week has been easier since I’ve been shelfing all the internal chatter. So far, so good.

As for the clutter in the house, we’ve been over this. I am very thankful to say there isn’t any, but of course that’s because I clean every day and not everyone has time for that. I wasn’t always this neat and I can honestly say that the overall feeling in a home when everything is put in it’s place is so much calmer and laid back than when there are piles everywhere and everyone is running late and where is that permission slip?!.

This week now we turn our attention to physical tenderness in our quests to make our homes havens for our families. This is an important but sometimes neglected part of being a close family to a lot of people. We’re big on snuggled in our family, but I can sense that it gets harder to keep that up the older they get. My oldest is 10, and he’s always got a hug for me when he gets off the bus after school or when he’s on his way to bed – but will it be like that when he’s 15? I have my doubts lol. For now though, we generally watch movies together on Friday nights and sunggle up under a huge blanket on the big couch in the living room. We also do a whole lot of blanket forts, and that usually results in some close together time too.

I will be mindful of it though, and encourage a serious pillowfest in the living room. I give back rubs to my littlest and to my husband. This week I will be sure to also give some to wee ones #1 and #2, and ask them how they feel about this challenge. I always move the pillar candle form the kitchen counter to the table for supper and they have all seemed to enjoy that. When I was a kid we ate a formal supper in the dining room every night, with candles, linen placemats and napkins – the whole nine. My mother is a very classy lady, one day I’ll get there!

Thanksgiving has always equated to pumpkins, which I think is pretty traditional and fair. This is the first year in a very long time that I’ve been away from my folks for the prep of Thanksgiving. We made the drive down to their place for actual Thanksgiving supper, but this year I wasn’t there for baking the desserts. I may have gone overboard with the Thanksgiving baking at my house, but is there really ever such a thing?

First up, I asked Twitter what I should bake and Jen from Hollyhouse Studio suggested I try out the Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting from Brown Eyed Baker. Excellent idea. If you’re not following them on Twitter yet, get to it. If you are, then take Jen’s advice if she gives you any, and bake as much of Michelle’s goodies as you can. <3 I didn't have everything I needed for the filling, so I whipped up some classic buttercream frosting to fill them with instead. Whipping cream spiked with cinnamon or nutmeg would have also been pretty amazing. Before this month is over, I will likely have another pumpkin extravaganza and try these with the proper filling. The whoopie pies themselves were wonderful! Not sticky at all, just spongey enough too. When we brought these to Toronto my father inhaled them. 🙂

I have no idea where I found this next recipe. It was in a sheet protector in my kitchen recipe binder, which just means I must have really wanted to try it out if it made it’s way to the kitchen binder.

1. Preheat oven to 350. Use either three loaf pans or a pan and a half like the one I used.

2. Sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.

3. Beat sugar, pumpkin puree, oil, water and eggs till smooth. Blend in the flour mixture and fold in chocolate chips

4. Fill each pan 1/2 to 3/4 full.

5. Bake for about 35 minutes if using loaf pans, 20 if using mini pans.

These. Oh these ones. My pride and joy. My mini pumpkin tarts. The idea was shamelessly stolen from inspired by Bakerella’s Pumpkin Pie Bites. I love her blog dearly, but I cannot bring myself to use pre-made pie crust. My Granny would be reanimated from the grave and haunt me for the rest of my life. So, I used my 78 year old pie crust recipe. Do you want me to share it with you now? Promise you’ll be good to it? Don’t roll it out too much and for crying out loud, once it’s in the pan leave it be. Okay? Alright then, here you go. It’s really as simple as possible – it is from 1932 after all.

‘Plain Pastry’ from The Art of Cooking and Serving

Mix and sift four and salt. Cut in butter with a knife. Add only water enough to hold the ingredients together. Do not knead. Divide dough in 2 parts and roll out thin on a slightly floured board. Line a pie pan with one half the pastry. Pinch pastry with the fingers to make a fancy edge and prick bottom and sides with a fork. Bake in a very hot oven (460) 10 to 15 minutes. For a 2 crust pie, line pie pan with pastry, put in a filling, cover with top crust and bake as directed for pies. If less rich pastry is desired, use only 1/2 cup butter.

I will bake my way through this cookbook as a challenge to myself in the new year. I still have to finish ‘cake year’. 😉

The filling for these little cuties is your standard ‘evaporated milk + egg + pumpkin pie filling’.

I gave them an egg wash, of course. Pies and tarts must have a glossy crust, right? I made the pumpkin pie the same as the mini tarts, and the crust is the same as well. I swear by this crust. It is prefect every time.

My full Thanksgiving treat spread, on the beautiful fall harvest platter Gilly gave me a few years ago – thanks Gill!!

Canadian Thanksgiving has already come and gone, but I know that American friends still have about a month to pull together some cute treats! As you are painfully aware by now, I adore cute food. I mean, I like snazzy grown up food as well, but I have a really soft spot for small, cute food (just wait till you see what I made for my birthday party last week)! I had seen these in various forms all over the place. But these ones are my hands down fave and I more or less used these as my guide.

First off, use the Double Stuff Oreos Cookies and Cups pulled apart regular Oreos and mashed them together to create ‘Redneck Double Stuff’ (best name ever), so it’s possible to make them without, but to make enough for a classroom or large group, I’d imagine you’d need twice as many.

The first few steps are very, very simple. Poke 5 pieces of candy corn in a semi-circle around the top of the Oreo for feathers, then break pretzel sticks in half (technically, you need them to be a little less than half, but you can pawn the middles off on your kids – ha), and poke them in the bottom, like little turkey legs.

There are about a zillion ways to make the head. I have seen chocolate covered mini marshmallows, mini peanut butter cups, Malteasers, Skor balls (and of those chocolate bar in ball form would work). Me? I used brown royal icing, because I had a bunch left over and hate to waste. Depending on what you used as a head, the eyes and nose can be so many different things as well! I used more royal icing, white for the eyes of course and orange for the beak. I painstakingly put on green and blue sprinkles with tweezers to make the pupils. They added serious personality!

It has been said before, but I’ll say it again – cute food is so much cuter on a stick!

Naturally I had to wrap them for transport to school, and I’m not a part of the whole ‘getting to school’ process now that we live in the woods. So I used candy bags and orange ribbon for the kids to cart them off in shoe boxes on the school bus!

As cute as these Oreo turkeys were, they were not exactly the sort of thing to send for the teachers, but I still wanted their treats to be cute because while everyone knows that I’m doing most of the work, wee one #1 is an excellent measure-er and wee one #2 is a great dumper-inner. So the treats are coming from the kids too! I decided on these pumpkins because they’re festive for Thanksgiving, fall, and October all at once and they’re cute but not so cute they’re clearly meant for children.

I packed the cookies in parchment paper, tied them with orange curling ribbon and tucked them in the kids shoe boxes with their turkeys.

They were very excited to be bringing their treats to school. It’s the first holiday of the school year at a new school so I was a little nervous but everyone loved them!

The kids were feeling the Halloween spirit when they got home from school, and set to work on making little Halloween cards to send to their friends back in Toronto. I jumped on the wagon and made a bunch for my friends too and let the kids decorate them! That’s a whole other post!

I have fallen head over heels for recycled glasses. I came across an Etsy shop called BootleHood and am even more in love. These Dr Pepper bottles-turned-glasses are swoon-worthy. I looooove them.

These recycled wine glasses are beautiful too. As much as I love the prints on the other glasses that make it obvious they are recycled, these ones are proof you can made recycled goods look better than new. They’re lovely and clean so they’d work in a modern kitchen, but pretty much all glass wear will work in any kitchen theme.

Now, proof that new, modern pieces like the recycled glasses above can co-exist happily with fun vintage finds! These ashtrays (or candy dishes), found at Stock in Trade are vintage but well kept and they would be perfect alongside any of these glasses! These dishes were meant for game night, yes?

Another item from the same shop, hi-lighting the same idea, vintage and modern, happily ever after. I would run off with this pot. I’d make sauces in it all day.

Naturally, I can’t have a kitchen edition of Window Shopping Wednesday without aprons!! In keeping with the modern meets vintage theme of this week’s installment, here are three much-loved aprons from Mia Sorella Aprons. All three would work in either a modren or retro kitchen.

I am, no surprise, especially in love with this one.

Gear up for a post tomorrow about what I made for the kids’ school for Thanksgiving!