mmmm baklava sounds good 8)

Oh maaaaaaaaan~

Pumpkin pie cupcakes~

I don't have pictures yet, but I made a chocolate cake, and I'm make hazelnut buttercream for it right now.

I thought this said Holiday Bonking at first. At any rate, I really wanted to try making a pavlova, but my dad always used to and would mess it up so I doubt I'd do better. Turns out I'm in charge of "nibbles" anyway so I don't have to bake anything, just take the cheese and biscuits out of the packet :/

But my mum is supposed to be making shortbread from my nana's recipe. I wonder if she's done that yet, I wanted to help. She should probably have a baklava recipe too which I should get. You used to be able to buy the mix in a box and you just had to buy pastry for it. It's the one reason why I want a food processor that can chop nuts.

I would like to see some pictures of holiday bonking, please.

i made some chocolate chip cookies, and when I came home yesterday my mom made gingerbread.

Betty Crocker and Trader Joes, respectively.

I would also like too see some holiday bonking. Or do some. I think my mum bought some ginger. I hope it's for gingerbread.

I had to look up baklava. I think I may have had it in Turkey before, but I am not sure. It looks delicious, anyway.

I will not be doing any baking.

My old girlfriend's mum made the best baklava. You need to use rosewater.

it's basically icecream plus a few berries & such and crushed meringue pieces in vanilla icecream

We call that eton mess.

Except we do it with whipped cream usually.

I'm making a pavlova too! I've made the base , I'm going to top it with just cherries and cream this year I think, or maybe some mango, I'll decide tomorrow.

The other baking i have dine is savoury, a silverbeet and potato grattan. It doesn't look very pretty but it smells amazing because of the creamy nutmeggy sauce.

whoa, how'd you make the pumpkin pie cupcakes?

my mom does most of the holiday baking, so i just made some rum balls.

oh man...yummiest blog ever!

I feel lame.

I'm making peanut butter cookies in sort of a triangular shape and putting chocolate-covered pretzels in them for antlers and M&Ms for eyes and nose. Reindeers.

But I generally COOK instead of bake for Christmas. Dunno why.

Here's the recipe blog.

HI!

yesterday my dad and I made like 20 loaves of pumpkin bread.

I haven't baked a damn thing so far.

Omg that all looks delicious! Yesterday I made a bajillion pounds of this stuff my mom invented that we call "popcrack". It's popcorn, chex cereal and pecans in a brown sugar sauce coating thing. We also made caramel nut pretzels. Today I'm making browned butter muffins.

Wow. I seriously need the recipe for popcrack!

8 cups of popped popcorn
1 box chex cereal
1 1/2 cups pecans, sorta crushed up


1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks of butter
1/4 + 1/8 cups karo syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

-Get all your dry ingredients together in a big pan.
-Set the oven to 300 degrees
-Put the brown sugar, karo syrup and butter in a pot on just above medium heat. It will start to bubble and get bigger, then add in the vanilla and baking soda.
-Stir it all together, it will get kind of fluffy.
-Pour the mixture over the dry ingredients
-Stir together until the dry ingredients are pretty coated
-Put in oven for 30 minutes, stir halfway through
-stir again when it's done then let it cool.

Tadaaaaa! Popcrack!

ugh i wish i was getting some holiday bonking to take pictures of...bleh

all these things sound great!

here's the recipe for the pumpkin pie cupcakes

Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes With Cinnamon Cream Cheese Buttercream Icing

and I'm pretty sure this is the recipe my sister used for the snickerdoodle cupcakes

snickerdoodle cupcakes

-k.

Today we also made nougat balls dipped in caramel, dipped in chocolate.

FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED ME

I hereby promise that if I bonk or get bonked this holidays to post some pictures here for you all.

My mum did bake shortbread!

Thanks for the recipes, y'all! Have a happy Christmas!!!

Holy crap pumpkin pie cake get at me

I read 'Holiday Banking'
I haven't felt the greatest while I've been home. My mom made Lemon loaf and shortbread cookies. I haven't decided what I feel like making yet.
I'll get back to this if I decide on something and make it before I head back.

My nana's is always rectangular and scored with a fork but this is my mum's version I guess.

My auntie made a pavlova too! And it was really good for homemade pavlova, the outside shell was nice and crumbly and inside was nice and soft and it was white the whole way through.

It's really easy to make a mistake and they go hard the whole way through or kind of glossy on the outside or they just go brown. But this one was great!

Here's my half-eaten slice.

Well, pretty much everything got eaten up already, but I made:

The Darn Good Chocolate Cake from the book The Cake Mix Doctor. This is the BEST chocolate bundt cake recipe EVER. Everybody likes this cake, even people who don't like chocolate that much, and they're always asking me to make it at my office. It's super-easy to make, too.

Here's the recipe:

1 pkg. plain devil's food or dark chocolate fudge cake mix
1 pkg. (3.9 oz.) chocolate instant pudding mix
4 large eggs
1 c. sour cream
1/2 c. warm water
1/2 c. vegetable oil (canola, corn, safflower, soybean or sunflower)
1 1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly mist a 12-cup Bundt pan with vegetable oil spray, then dust with flour. Shake out the excess flour. Set the pan aside.

Place the cake mix, pudding mix, eggs, sour cream, warm water and oil in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2-3 minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed. The batter should look thick and well combined. Fold in the chocolate chips, making sure they are well distributed throughout the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing it out with the rubber spatula. Place the pan in the oven.

Bake the cake until it springs back when lightly pressed with your finger and just starts to pull away from the sides of the pan, 45-50 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes. Run a long, sharp knife around the edge of the cake and invert it onto the rack to cool completely, 20 minutes more.

Also made tons of cookies, including chocolate chip cookies (used the recipe from the back of the Ghiradelli chocolate chips package), lemon thumprints (made these on the fly with a Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix, some lemon zest, lemon extract, and a jar of lemon curd) and this recipe I invented myself:

Pumpkin Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
¼ cup butter-flavored shortening
½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 egg
¼ cup orange juice
Zest of one orange
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 (14 oz.) pkg. Pillsbury Pumpkin Quick Bread and Muffin Mix
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.

In large bowl, cream together the butter, shortening and peanut butter. Beat in egg, orange juice, orange zest and vanilla extract.

Add quick bread mix, peanut butter chips and chocolate chips to butter/shortening mixture and combine until dough forms.

Drop dough by teaspoonfuls on baking sheets. Press down lightly on each dough ball with fork. Bake in oven 12 to 14 minutes or until bottoms begin to brown and edges are set (tops will be soft). Allow to cool for 1 minute before removing from baking sheets. Cool thoroughly before storing in airtight containers.

The Pillsbury pumpkin bread mix is usually only available during the holiday season, but if you can find a box, I really recommend trying these--pumpkin and peanut butter are a great flavor combo and the cookies have a nice warm spicy feel from the pumpkin spice in the mix.