I did that?!?

Me: "What do you want me to bake?"
Hubs: "What?"

Me: "What do you want me to bake next?"
Hubs: "oh......."

Me: "I've already make blueberry pie, apple pie, chocolate chip pumpkin cookies...any requests."

Hubs: "How about a cake?"

Me: "Okay, any special kind?"

Hubs: "You can't go wrong with chocolate"

Enter Barefoot Contessa's Chocolate Buttercream Cake

I'm so proud of myself that I made this...entirely from scratch...on a school night?!?!?
Yep, on a Thursday night I was baking away. I enjoyed myself thoroughly (too bad we don't really enjoy the icing--it is sadly not our thing)


Now what to do with all that cake....
and what to bake next....(after our weekend adventure that is...)

Small Group & White Elephant

Greg and I joined a small group again this year. It's fun to get out of the house and get together with people that you don't always get to really talk to...not to mention the discussions are often really great also. Tonight was our Christmas dinner party. We ate dinner, a delicious brownie with peppermint ice cream (1st time I had it and mmm, so good) and then we had our white elephant gift exchange. Because I was busy all day working on a Christmas present for someone special, and grocery shopping, and cooking dinner...my wonderful hubby helped out by picking out something from our 'yard sale' pile for me to wrap and take. 

Anyway, here is what I got. I started with a purse lamp. (tiger stripes with black fuzz--not pink)

Well I stole a book (which I feel bad about, even though it's the name of the game because someone else wanted it to). A book of recipe ideas for Gifts from a Jar..ohh so appropriately named

 "Gifts from a Jar"...Cookies, Brownies, and Bars.

Ever wonder how people come up with all those different dessert jars? They get a book like this, or look on the internet of course.

A Zelinske Tradition

Ever since I can remember, my grandfather, Bum as we called him [maybe more on that name later] always made cut out cookies. Since they were soo tasty, my parents got the recipe and it was the one cookie that we made and ate EVERY year. Well, Bum passed away September of 2008 and I the cookies took on a whole knew meaning. Now they aren't just a cookie but they remind me of him.

So in honor of him, I took my first crack at it. My directions more or less were to cream butter & sugar, add the egg, vanilla, baking powder, and flour. Roll out, cut out, bake for 6 minutes (depending on your oven). GREAT this should be a piece of cake.

But no...then came the exceptions. 

"Well," my mom said, "I'm never sure how thick to roll them. 

If you roll them too thick they won't cook (aka raw egg), 

and if you roll them too thin they will burn." 

My response....

"How on earth am I supposed to know how thick or thin to roll them."

My mom's response...

"Roll one set and bake them. If they come out okay, you did it right.

If they burn or don't cook, you did it wrong."

Ohhh of course! Why didn't I think of that. Without a real clear answer (and by the way I left out the conversation about whether it should be butter or shortening) off I went with the recipe with no intention to make them this weekend due to other plans. We tried going to church this morning, but we have to use a windy and hilly road to get there. We got about 85% there when we hit a stoppage of cars on a hill that we classified as a "sheet of ice". So no church today, we turned around and came back home. 

Which leads me to my cookies. The first batch was thick--they were in the oven for quite awhile, and although they were checked frequently they got a little brown...really only a little. So I rolled the next 2 batches better (at least in my opinion). And here they are in all their sprinkled glory (next time I will be using colored sugar...sooo much better than sprinkles). They are a little crunchy..not burnt...crunchy. They look pretty, but someday I'll have to try again to do them justice.

 

 

**Now for my grandfather's name, Bum. The story is that he would always tell the first Zelinske grandchild (not me, I'm the 3rd) "You're a bum." and eventually my cousin responded..."No, your a bum". So the name was born, Bum...or Bum-Bum because we repeated cool names like that.