FitnessNerd was crazy...and quite possibly on performance enhancing drugs!
Last weekend, I was consumed with Christmas Prep. Since I didn't really have a clue what I was going to make for dessert until Thursday, there really wasn't an option for me get that out of the way first. On Friday, I took the day off to finish my Christmas shopping, which took me to the north side, south side, and back downtown! I also hit the grocery store for everything that I needed for the Gingerbread Cheesecake that I had decided was the winner for dessert. Since I had found the recipe on Martha Stewart.com, I guess the specter of that wench grabbed hold of me, and I opted to actually make a batch of molasses gingerbread cookies and use a portion for the crust, instead of actually buying some ready made to crush up. Bad idea!
I enjoy baking a lot, but there are a few things that I just despise making - cookies being one of them. Especially cookies that you have to roll out and cut. I just find the whole process to be so tedious, and I have never really mastered the art of rolling dough out consistently. On top of this, I didn't really read the directions for the cookies outside of the ingredients, and I didn't see how complicated it was. They had to be rolled out, then put in the freezer for 15 minutes, cut out, put in the oven for 6 minutes, taken out of the oven and rapped on the counter a few times to make them fall, then put back in the oven to finish cooking. ARGH! I like to be efficient in the kitchen, and when I have a lot to do, it is stuff like this that drives me bonkers.
I finished up the dough on Friday night, and then I went over to Tyler's place for the night. *censored for the young* On Saturday morning around 10, I ran out to my parent's house to pick up the stuff for what my mother needed me to make -- Chex Mix and Buckeyes. For Christmas, my mother has always gone crazy with the snacks from candy to cookies and Chex Mix to cheeseball, which is probably why my family is pretty much all overweight. We've tried unsuccessfully to convince her that we don't need all of this stuff, but she still wants to have all of it for a "traditional" Christmas. Since she's a teacher, and schools go all the way up to the Friday before Christmas, for the last couple years, I have helped her out with some of the prep. Yes, I realize I'm enabling her, but I did convince her to only have a half batch of buckeyes this year. Yeah, 75 instead of 150 for 8 people. That's progress!
For those who have no idea what they are, Buckeyes are basically balls of peanut butter dipped in chocolate to resemble a buckeye. They are actually both fun and annoying to make. Fun, because you get your hands dirty mixing the peanut butter, butter, and powdered sugar, but by the second pound of sugar, your hands really start to get tired. Then you have to roll them into balls, chill them, and dip each one of them. This goes back to the tedium that annoys me about making cookies!
Anyway, I got back to my apartment around noon, and that is when I started to be a kitchen goddess on Crystal Meth (no..not really). In the course of the next 7 hours, which was when I was meeting my friends to go see Sweeney Todd (more on that in the next post), I made 4 dozen gingerbread cookies, two and a half batches of Chex mix (one pan with peanuts, and one without because my niece is allergic), 75 buckeyes, the Gingerbread Cheesecake, AND I got all of my presents wrapped! When you take into consideration that the Chex Mix takes a good hour in the oven (each pan separate because they were big), being stirred every 15 minutes, and the cheesecake overtakes the oven for three hours, this was pretty much a master class in scheduling, and I have NO clue how I accomplished it.
I am going to try to write more later...
1 comment:
OK Betty Crocker...I'm worn out from reading all of that! I REALLY don't have the patience to bake. When it comes to cooking, I'm more like Emeril. BAM! and it's done. :-)
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