Baking Day

We watch Food Network... We browse Pinterest... We flip through cookbooks... and maybe you can relate, but I get overwhelmed with so many amazing looking recipes that I want to make and I never get around to actually rollin' up my sleeves, puttin' on my apron and gettin' in the kitchen! Well, one day over the break, Courtney and I did just that. 

We made Pioneer Woman's Homemade Oatmeal Cakes. I'm all about following a recipe {especially when baking} to a "T" the first time I try, but I think some of our little glitches in this batch were because we didn't. Here is our review: they were good. Next time I would make each patty smaller and thinner. We used the marshmallow creme filling {which was yum} and I would try the second filling option just for kicks. 

We also made Pioneer Woman's Christmas Finger Jello. Her pictures of it are gorgeous and they had me at first glance. These little jello jigglies just looked fun to eat. Making them was a task in that you had to work layer by layer... very easy but very time consuming. It worked out fine because we we were in the kitchen all day anyway! They were good... tasted like jello... we used raspberry instead of strawberry like the original recipe says and it was yum. They would be the perfect festive addition to a heavy holiday meal.

Next up was a Pinterest recipe that I have been drooling over for quite some time... Better than Brownies Chocolate Cookies. They were probably my favorite item we made. They were chewy and rich and literally melted in my mouth right out of the oven. A warm cookie and a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream would be heaven. Make these today!!

And last but not least, we made Ina Garten's Fleur de Sel Caramels. Of course we did not have any "fleur de sel" salt on hand so we used sea salt... not as elegant but close to the same flavor. Also, with the combination of a pan too large and 90% humidity, our little caramels started to resemble turds. They didn't taste like it though! They were very rich {almost too rich for me- but that's not saying much} but were a big hit with our taste testers.

Our little baking day ended with us piled on the couch in a sugar coma with aching legs and feet... Baking that many desserts was hard work! We packaged up all of the goodies and delivered them to our families. We were very popular that day! Like we always say after making a new recipe, it felt good to get those recipes "out of our system" and now we feel that we can move on. We hope to make "baking day" an annual tradition!