Subscribe to Our Feed!I made three dozen heart-shaped cookies the other day. I still have enough dough to make another four dozen. That seems a bit like cookie overkill since absolutely none of the cookies are exiting our house as school is cancelled, yet again. It also seems a little strange, coming from me, the woman who doesn’t participate in Valentine’s Day type stuff. It’s just never been my thing.
While baking those initial three dozen cookies, I had a few errors. One particular cookie was burnt to a crisp. Some had burnt edges. At one point, I put a tray of cookies in the oven and forgot to turn on the kitchen timer. I had to guess when the cookies were done. Surprisingly, that tray yielded the best results. I felt kind of good about myself at that point. For a second.
Then these two little cookies came out of the oven.
They’re not so perfect. They’re cracked. They’re burnt. They’re kind of ugly. And I think they’re kind of awesome, really, for all of those reasons and more.
I’m not the perfect mom. I don’t like Valentine’s Day. I bought
I love these boys, even on Valentine’s Day, in my very own imperfect way.
_
[Disclosure: Links are through Amazon Associates.]
This week’s You Capture challenge over at I Should Be Folding Laundry is, appropriately, food. I meant to take pictures of our meals every day but time got away from me as we’ve had two birthdays and one party in the past week. I did take quite a few pictures of cake but we also had some great meals this week. Think homemade chicken potpie (which I’ve photographed before), ribs (made by FireDad), a new meatloaf recipe, and, oh, I did photograph our chili!
But I did manage to get some food shots. You see, BigBrother has been wanting to make pumpkin pie for weeks. But then we got the flu and it kind of fell by the wayside. With today being Thanksgiving, I figured we’d make a pumpkin pie together. Last night we got together in the kitchen, after I already had the crust made, rolled, fought with and placed in the pie pan, and made a pie together. Our pumpkin pie has no cinnamon (I’m allergic) and is actually a maple pumpkin pie. BigBrother had a blast. Truth be told, so did I.
To prove that I was involved, FireDad snapped a picture. Thanks, hon!
He looks awfully smug, doesn’t he? So proud of himself! I’m proud of him, too.
Recipe is a variation on this Real Simple one, sans cinnamon due to my allergy and cloves due to my distaste for their very existence. Our maple syrup is Gramps’ homemade maple syrup so, of course, ours is better than any variation you will make. It is heavenly.
Somewhere in between the last two pictures I managed to spill the pie out of the crust and pan and onto the bottom of my oven. The spilling also caused the crust on that side to burn. Knowing that it would, I ran to the store and picked up some Reddi-Whip which I plan to use so that my Great-Grandmother doesn’t see my pie snafu. Also, I picked up wine on my quick outing. See?
The big bottle in the back is for today to share over dessert with my enormous family. The small bottle in front was for me to test last night (as my favorite brand wasn’t available in a big bottle). You know, just in case it wasn’t going to be good, I had to have a glass last night. I took one for the team. (Moscato is my favorite.)
Next week’s You Capture challenge is to tell a story. I have something in mind. We’ll see if I remember to do it or not!
–
Food (and wine) aside, I’m very thankful today, of all days, to be where I am, who I am and with those in my life. Our life may be busy and hectic at times but that in itself is a blessing. I am thankful for the three amazing men who live under this room. I am thankful for an amazing Munchkin and the people who love and care for her on a daily basis. I am thankful for my friends, both here in Ohio and back home in Pennsylvania, who bring sanity and laughs to my life. I am thankful for my blog friends who encourage, challenge and generally make my life awesome. I am thankful for so many, many things.
I hope that you are able to be thankful today as well!
Happy Thanksgiving from the FireFamily!
I’ve mentioned it time and time again here on the blog: I’m not a crafty person. But I wanted to do something crafty with the boys. A few weeks ago, BlogHer wrote about and linked up various (great) rainbow cakes. I immediately loved the one at SweetNicks. (I also immediately became a subscriber to that blog!) I saved it for a fun food craft to do after we got back from camp.
And here’s our rainbow cake experience.
I followed SweetNick’s advice and went with the Pillsbury cake mix. It took me two trips to The Store That Has Everything from Spray Paint to Food Coloring to find the Wilton’s Icing Coloring. Here’s my tip: It’s not in the “normal” baking aisle. It’s in the “crafting” baking aisle near the wedding stuff. Of course, as they just remodeled our store, it took me awhile to even find this aisle on my second trip after being informed I could most likely find what I was looking for by my fellow tweeple. (Thanks, all!) I also went with premade frosting/icing because I didn’t want to ruin the cake. I switched brands and went with Betty Crocker’s Whipped “Fluffy White” frosting because it is smooth. I used almost all of two jars to ice this six layer monstrosity.
(That’s what the Wilton’s Icing Coloring looks like so you know what you are searching for in the craft baking aisle. I still maintain that baking things should be in the baking aisle in the food section. But apparently this makes too much sense.)
The point of doing this edible craft, after all, was to let the boys help. And they did. They helped do the initial stirring, laughed as I used the mixer and helped put the coloring in each of the bowls. Here’s another tip: when they say that you don’t need a lot of each color, they’re correct. A toothpick dip in each was all I needed for all but the red. The red needed three dips. The boys loved watching the colors appear. I loved watching their faces light up.
As the cakes were cooling, we went outside to play. And my two loving sons, one with purple still on his face, had a loving moment. I live for these moments.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t let them stack or ice the cake with me. I had enough difficulty and I don’t regret this decision. Starting with purple on the bottom (next to my plum Fiestaware), I iced in between each layer. The bad news about my baking is that since I made my red layer last, there was a little extra batter in that baking pan. However, I didn’t check that cake separately when the others were done. As such, the top of the red layer deflated. I figured this would be okay as the red layer was the top layer. After I stacked them all the way to the top, I just added extra icing in the deflated hole. No one was the wiser. Except that I just told the whole Internet. Hmm. Anyway, you saw this picture on Wednesday but it belongs here as well. This was after the stacking just before I started icing around the sides.
The next day, the boys woke to a six layer iced cake sitting in the middle of our kitchen table. And they didn’t touch it. We had friends over for a playdate and cut the cake. It was beautiful.
And BigBrother was happy about it.
I’ve been asked, umpteen billion times, why I made a rainbow cake, why I baked a cake, why why why. Doesn’t anyone just bake a cake for no reason? I mean, I’m honestly not the biggest fan of cake. I prefer pie. But this Pillsbury mix with the pudding in it? That’s some soft, moist, delicious cake. And so, my reason for baking this cake with my sons is that I wanted to do something fun, something different with them. We had a good time.
And I got to have a healthy breakfast of coffee and cake the next morning. The coffee makes it a legitimate breakfast, right?
I’m glad I decided to go ahead and do this edible craft with my kids. Not only did we enjoy making it, we enjoyed sharing it with friends. Even if they did make fun of me for making a cake for “no reason” other than something to do. Sure beats normal crafts for us!
(One sentence: Tune in Friday for the results!)
_
For more Wordless Wednesday, visit 5 Minutes for Mom.
