to do list revised
Steve and I had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my family. Among all the other things I have to be thankful about (and they are legion), there is the the fact that my family is pleasant, funny, and relatively drama-free company.
I passed up several tempting invitations in order to work on holiday stuff this weekend. On average, I'm glad I did. I got a lot done and I enjoyed it. Bruce came over Friday night and we watched Scrubs while I dyed eggs. Steve and I had a good talk and then watched some tv tonight while I sorted beads. The rest of the weekend I was alone with the cat, my Ipod (Mirror Dance and trashy-but-entertaining Nora Roberts mysteries, yay!), Buffy Season 2, my eggs, and a metric fuckload of butter and sugar. Also, there was some rum. Pyrat is very tasty.
This is most of what I got accomplished this weekend; some of it is already in the freezer:
Made and portioned dough for four batches of gingersnaps, baked and froze half of it.
Made 6 batches of toffee: 2 plain almond, 2 chocolate almond, 2 chai almond
Blew out and made 30 usable eggs for ornaments, broke or otherwise rendered unusable a half dozen or so more. My fingers are still tie-dyed. The eggs took Friday and much of Saturday, but by the end I was getting some very pretty effects:
Now the ornaments are a portable project. All I have to do is string them with glass beads. If anyone particularly wants one of these, just let me know.
I was asked for the gingersnap recipe:
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar (I use the organic stuff, which has a higher molasses content and just tastes better)
1 egg
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 cups AP flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 heaped tsp each cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. (These cookies really need strong, fresh spices. Yes, I am in fact Penzey's bitch. You should be too.) The addition of a 1/4 cup or so diced crystallized ginger wouldn't go amiss either.
1/2 tsp salt
sugar for rolling, preferably a large grain, sparkly type like Turbinado
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and molasses, beat well. Sift flour, spices, baking soda, and salt together; add gradually to creamed mixture and mix well. Chill dough until firm. Preheat oven to 375. Roll dough into balls and roll in sugar. My recipe calls for 1 1/4 inch balls; I never made them that big. I pat the dough into a rectangle and then cut it into 48 chunks and roll them into balls. Bake for 10 minutes or so, until the edges are firm and you see cracks on the surface.
I passed up several tempting invitations in order to work on holiday stuff this weekend. On average, I'm glad I did. I got a lot done and I enjoyed it. Bruce came over Friday night and we watched Scrubs while I dyed eggs. Steve and I had a good talk and then watched some tv tonight while I sorted beads. The rest of the weekend I was alone with the cat, my Ipod (Mirror Dance and trashy-but-entertaining Nora Roberts mysteries, yay!), Buffy Season 2, my eggs, and a metric fuckload of butter and sugar. Also, there was some rum. Pyrat is very tasty.
This is most of what I got accomplished this weekend; some of it is already in the freezer:
Made and portioned dough for four batches of gingersnaps, baked and froze half of it.
Made 6 batches of toffee: 2 plain almond, 2 chocolate almond, 2 chai almond
Blew out and made 30 usable eggs for ornaments, broke or otherwise rendered unusable a half dozen or so more. My fingers are still tie-dyed. The eggs took Friday and much of Saturday, but by the end I was getting some very pretty effects:
Now the ornaments are a portable project. All I have to do is string them with glass beads. If anyone particularly wants one of these, just let me know.
I was asked for the gingersnap recipe:
3/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar (I use the organic stuff, which has a higher molasses content and just tastes better)
1 egg
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 cups AP flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 heaped tsp each cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. (These cookies really need strong, fresh spices. Yes, I am in fact Penzey's bitch. You should be too.) The addition of a 1/4 cup or so diced crystallized ginger wouldn't go amiss either.
1/2 tsp salt
sugar for rolling, preferably a large grain, sparkly type like Turbinado
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and molasses, beat well. Sift flour, spices, baking soda, and salt together; add gradually to creamed mixture and mix well. Chill dough until firm. Preheat oven to 375. Roll dough into balls and roll in sugar. My recipe calls for 1 1/4 inch balls; I never made them that big. I pat the dough into a rectangle and then cut it into 48 chunks and roll them into balls. Bake for 10 minutes or so, until the edges are firm and you see cracks on the surface.