Here's Trouble!

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Double cookie baking extravaganza!

If you haven't seen my kitchen (or lack thereof) before, suffice it to say that baking two different kinds of cookies in one night after a full day of work really pushes the kitchen to its limits. Oh, to have a real kitchen with full size appliances... alas, I'm too cheap to pay for that kind of apartment.

Type I: Meringue Kisses (recipe courtesy of Aunt Louie)

Type II: Thumbprints (recipe courtesy of Aunt Mary Ann (NJ))

The aftermath: not too bad if I may say so myself (I'd already cleaned up and put away the mixer when I took this picture... believe it or not the mixer was on that little piece of visible countertop)

Well, I'm thinkin' I might call it a night (w/o making coconut macaroons (recipe courtesy of Aunt Louise)... yes, it appears I'm collecting recipes for my favorite cookies made by my aunts ;-)
Aunt Mary Ann (PA) still hold corner on the market for nut tosses (I don't think I'm there yet!)

I better go wash the rest of the dishes since I certainly don't have space for a dishwasher in that kitchen!

More kitchen time... sans fire extinguisher ;-)

Well, here they are... and all in neat little rows! Who knew it would take so long to make 103 individually wrapped cordial cherries? This turned out to be the product of two nights work (rather than just one night as I had anticipated). In case you were wondering, red wrappers have milk chocolate, gold wrappers have dark chocolate, and holly wrappers have white chocolate... OCD much?


These little beauties are a product of night 3 in the kitchen. These are chocolate thumbprint cookies with raspberry filling and almonds. These took MUCH longer than the 40 minutes claimed by the recipe (found here). My initial assessment is that they are not chocolaty enough. However, I tend to enjoy cookies more after they sit for a few days... I'll have to get back to you on these.

Tomorrow's kitchen goal includes meringue kiss cookies... although I may switch it up for some Aunt Mary Ann thumbprints instead. Note to self: must go to grocery for thumbprint filling!

A box of chocolates... and a fire extinguisher

My first attempt at candy making (if you haven't guessed already) nearly ended in disaster! Please explain to me what would cause a wooden stirring stick in chocolate to spark?! There was smoke coming out of my chocolate... OY! I didn't actually have to employ the fire extinguisher, but I might have if I hadn't been standing in front of the microwave peering at the melting chocolate.

While I'd love to show you a picture of my box of cordial cherries, the batteries in my camera are not charged and I don't know where I put the transfer cable when I cleaned my room (it certainly didn't go back to it's usual home). So for now, you'll have to imagine my foil wrapped cherries covered in dark chocolate, white chocolate, and milk chocolate.

I've made myself hungry... hmmmmm...

A Fielding Christmas

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St. Nicholas Day...

Well, it's St. Nicholas day... for those non-Catholics who may have stumbled upon this blog, you can read about St. Nicholas here

What does/did St. Nick bring at your house? At my house, St. Nicholas brings each child an onion and an orange along with some other treats. The orange is for how good you were and the onion is for the bad things you had done. We always compared the sizes of our oranges and onions to see who had been better :) We were comforted by the fact that our onions went into the Christmas soup to give some extra flavor.

Please do share your traditions with me... I'm very curious :) Last year St. Nicholas day fell on a work day so each of my co-workers received a small stocking with an onion, an orange, a pack of tissues, and a few pieces of candy. I really enjoy holiday traditions!

In case you were wondering about that last post:
I have no idea why the picture caption that should have read "You're a Mud Pie" did not show up in the post... yes "Katholil" you got your pie right! :)