Yummy!!

Chocolate chip cookies on Sunday afternoon! I made them from the recipe on the back of the Nestle chocolate chips bag. They really grew while they baked though -- the small dollops of dough on the baking sheets turned into monster-sized cookies. They turned out good, I think, but the dough is always the best part of a chocolate chip cookie! :)

Gingerbread progress

Today, I baked all the pieces for my gingerbread house. I meant to get this finished yesterday, but I went out shopping all afternoon with my mom. By the time I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was roll out dough. This morning, I set out my dough to let it soften some. Since I made it Monday, it had chilled until it was too hard to work with. Then I began rolling it out. It was actually the easiest dough I have ever used! It didn't stick, it didn't break, and it didn't have to be floured constantly! I could even pick it up and turn it different ways like the chefs do. :) I guess chilling the dough thoroughly is key to being able to roll it out easily. It took a while to roll out all my pieces, simply because there were several and I could only fit two on each pan, but the rolling out process, for the first time in my life, was a breeze. All of my pieces turned out well, too. Only one of my walls didn't feel quite right to me after I baked it. I hadn't rolled it out quite evenly, so one side was fat and the other was thin. I made a duplicate of it with the left over dough to try to prevent assembly problems. I did keep forgetting to check on the dough in the oven (note to self: from now on, set the timer five minutes early), so a few pieces got brown around the edges -- not good in the gingerbread world. Hopefully, they won't become brittle and crumble on me. I did manage to bake off two absolutely perfect pieces -- no cracks, no bubbles, and all perfectly even-- which are pictured above. Considering they are only two out of about ten pieces that I baked today and the fifty or so pieces I've baked in the last three years, that's quite an accomplishment. :)

Rambling Thoughts

I'm a little stressed in the last attempts to get all my artwork ready for the art show two weeks from now. I have drawn eleven new pieces this year, most of them in the last three months. The newer pieces all need touching up so I work on them in my spare time. I'm also trying different frames and mat boards on all of them constantly to see which looks the best.

One of my new projects is a website. I finally found a place online that hosts websites for free, so I have been working for over a week to put one together for my artwork. On one hand, it's fairly easy, because all I have to do is choose a template and upload photos to my site, but on the other hand, it's a LOT of work and very time-consuming. I have most of the main photos in place now, so I think I should have it finished in a few days.

I tried to bake bread from scratch this morning. My mom brought out her bread machine this weekend and made a few loaves in it, so I thought I would try a recipe for whole wheat bread. I used Martha Stewart's recipe. It needed quite a few ingredients, but I got everything ready and attempted it this morning. I made the dough and set it to rise. When I took it out to knead it, I realized I had mixed up the kneading instructions and done the "rising" and "kneading" in the wrong order, but I repaired the mistake as best I could and put the two loaves in the oven. When I finally took them out, they looked okay, but somehow, not quite right. It wasn't until I waited for them to cool, cut myself a slice, and tasted it that I realized my mistake -- I had been so busy measuring three kinds of flour that I forgot the salt! Oh, well. If I put a lot of peanut butter on it I probably won't notice how tasteless it is.

Brownies From A Box

Yesterday, I made some brownies from a box mix. I bake lots of things from scratch, cookies in particular, but now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever made brownies from scratch. I'll have to try it sometime and see which I prefer. I actually like blueberry muffins from a box mix better than home-made. The mix is just lighter and fluffier, in my opinion. :)

Anyway, here's step 1: Stirring the dry mix, oil, water, and eggs together. This step is also a reminder that even box mixes can be messed up. Once when I made brownies, I didn't notice that it clearly says "stir 50 times" and used a hand mixer. Big mistake! Those brownies turned out so tough that they could have been used as a substitute for rubber. Now, I stir, no matter how long it takes to get all that dry mix incorporated.
Step 2: spread evenly in pan. Finished brownies! Always wait for brownies to cool completely before you take them out of the pan, because they will crumble. These brownies turned out pretty good. They were a dark chocolate flavor, which I really liked, only next time I think I'll make them "cake-like" instead of "fudge-like" so they will be just a little fluffier.