Let's see... Should I tell you the reality of my life right now? Will it be "Oh my gosh there she goes again. That woman is NOT Perky. She's depressing. Why am I reading this crap?" Or will it be "Oh, I can laugh because I'm not her. How does she stay so cute and perky?"
Yeah, don't answer that.
I think my family is thisclose to melting down. We're seriously considering returning certain things we've purchased. I don't know how I'm going to be ready for Christmas but I know this: I bake and make candy better than I take pictures.
I started off the weekend with adorable cherubs helping me (before they broke the newest of our electrical trains about an hour ago...)
At one point I had cooling racks stacked four high but I only got a picture of three:
So here are the visions...
Thanks to Alton:
These are called People Chow - they're chocolate and peanut butter --
Yes, they're made with saltine crackers and they're stupid good:
People really do beg me for these. Really. They're my personal specialty thingie. This picture was taken before I gave up trying to take good pictures:
And here's my grandmother's date bars - but I think she used brown sugar because hers were darker:
These are called fruitcake bars and they're very good. These are one of my go-tos for when I nibble at my own creations:
Then I gave it up and realized that none of my pictures were going to be beautiful and I just took the pictures still in their Tupperware/Gladware/Rubbermaid/Smart & Final containers. The balls on the right are "orange juice" balls. The darker balls on the left are bourbon balls. Yummm.
Gumdrops. Trust me, they're really good. My oven is getting strange. It's not breaking, dangnabit, but it's getting wonky enough that the heat is inconsistent. Can you tell?
The kisses are dark chocolate. Duh.
I'm actually amused by how well these turned out - I'm refining my technique and it's not taking as long as I expect it to and I'm getting more adventurous with my designs. I'm not Martha but I don't think they're too bad:
Oh, no! They've lost a button! (The eyes on the left are that way on accident. I didn't even do that on purpose but dang, they work!)
Ok. I need help captioning this one: "Mr. Angry Eyes"? The kids begged me to make this one. There was a cookie with eyebrows like this at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf the other day. That cookie was obviously just an accident - the frosting was smudged and it looked like he was making an evil grin. But my boys called him "Angry Eyes" and asked me to make some. So I did. But he had to have an obvious reason to be pissy. "My kids just broke one of my electric trains" wasn't easy to express in frosting. So I goofed up his buttons to give him a reason to be pissed off. Hey, dude, it's better to be pissed off than pissed on.
Here's the fudge. Woo hoo:
Every year I try something new. This year, besides the date bars, I made Alton's macaroons:
But I went totally manic on learning how to make homemade marshmallows. I couldn't JUST make them plain. I tried rosewater. Yeah. Uhm. I'm not happy with them. So they're not here. But the other three batches that I made, I'm happier with so they're here. Let me tell you, oh, they're so complicated and difficult. If you have someone in your life who is willing to go to all this trouble to make homemade marshmallows, you just need to consider yourself really lucky. They're that hard. I'm a giver so I'll do it for my loved ones but just so you all know: you all owe me. Big time. It's just that much of a personal sacrifice.
Here are the "Altoids" marshmallows. Next time, less peppermint. Look at me, stirring in the red food gel and everything. Such a giver:
None of these ideas are my own. Thanks to a very gracious cook, I had lots of resources (pages and pages of websites) to read - and I read them all and took notes. From those notes I also made, "London Fog" - which turned out to be really good. I made a cup of tea with three tea bags and added a teaspoon of vanilla. Yum:
I made some coffee flavored, too. I decided to get really adventurous (and really, I have no time to be adventurous so it was probably a psychological attempt to avoid doing the things I don't want to do, and it's too late to come up with a more efficient word for that, right now.) I played around with some melted chocolate chips and here's what happened:
The chocolate sort of overpowers the coffee flavor. But I think this picture looks a lot more artistic.
You know, the real lesson here is that even if you have a kick-butt camera and a freaking awesome computer, that is not enough to have great awesome pictures of your homemade goodies.
Fortunately, I know how to use my kitchen instruments better than my camera and computer. And this is what my packages look like when I have them put together. I think they're cute.
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5 comments:
Grammy's "date" bars were darker becasuse she let them age on the lawn for a few days before harvesting
I forgot to mention that the tea in the London Fog marshmallows is Earl Grey.
Now I'm even *more* sorry that I didn't get to see you at your first Rockapella show on Sunday. They look yummy to me, and those gingerbread men are too cute.
Well, I thought your artistic pictures were very nice. You don't give yourself enough credit!
You must have a nice mixer for your marshmallows to turn out that nice - mine were a lot flatter, but I only have a little portable mixer (and I burned out one on the marshmallows last year!)
I just did plain and chocolate (using cocoa powder in place of some of the sugar) and then 'lollipopped' them and dipped in melted chocolate (milk and white) and covered in sprinkles, nuts or whatever). They turned out cute that way, then I put them in a an old syrofoam wreath to bring to work to share.
I thought the pictures were very artistic, and the goodies look good. Congrats for making it through the madness!
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