This year I decided to bake for my team as their holiday treat. I usually only enter the kitchen to serve myself some water or the dinner Jeff has cooked. So baking is a big deal for me!
I had a birthday cake, carrot cake muffins, gingerbread cookies with royal icing-all from scratch, and chocolate covered pretzels on my list.
First off was the birthday cake for my hubby.
Now is a good time to take you back to the past…One birthday (mine) awhile ago, I had to make my own birthday cake as the loved ones in my life forgot about me. My beloved husband (boyfriend back then) could not be bothered to search for the spring form cake pans so I was forced to make my cake in regular cake pans. This would have been fine except we had no baking spray and my cake stuck to the pan and literally fell apart when it came out. :(
This time, I made sure we had PAM and out the cakes came, perfectly in tact.
After the cake, I moved on to prepping the gingerbread cookie dough. Here is where I encountered my first cookie FAIL! I forgot to let the butter come to room temperature. Jeff helped out by putting the butter on the stove to “warm up”.
For some reason I don’t have any pictures of the finished product. :( But trust me, they turned out pretty good. Especially being from scratch! The icing though…not so much. My second cookie FAIL. Without a pastry bag, the frosting came out running and too fast.
During this time I was also making mini carrot cake cupcakes. These turned out so cute and were delicious!
While they were cooling, Jeff got out the decorations and started helping decorate the tree.
Chloe tried on her present from my mom. Doesn’t she look adorable???
By the time it was time to work on the chocolate covered pretzels, Brooklyn and Kalea had arrived and were willing to help. I dipped the pretzels and they sprinkled the “crystals” on them.
While we were wrapping up the cookies, Shannon made a tinfoil hat for Kalea. She looks like one of those people on TV wearing the hat to ward off the CIA from reading their minds!
It was a pretty successful baking night. I hope my team enjoys their treats!
