It's The Holiday Season!

Hello all!

It's that time of year again - the HOLIDAY SEASON! I know I haven't blogged lately but with the holidays here I have to believe that I will  have tons of baking to do! Thanksgiving was this past Thursday and I baked like there was no tomorrow! I asked everyone else in my family to please NOT bring dessert because I knew I could fill a table with treats myself [and I happen to enjoy baking, duh]! Below are the items I made.. most [if not all] I have blogged about:

• Ice Cream Cake [p.s. I made this 5 days in advanced and it was AWESOME.. held up perfectly out of the freezer and didn't melt too quickly! This is always a HUGE hit with the kids]
• Frozen Key Lime Pie
• Apple Crumb Pie [served with vanilla ice cream of course]
• Gram's Cheesecake [with fresh strawberries]
• Mini Cheesecakes [with caramel, chocolate, or cherry topping]
• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Cream Puffs - Chocolate and Vanilla filling
• Vanilla Cupcakes
• Chocolate Oreo Cupcakes [actually these were for a family party right after thanksgiving]

I had a great time baking this Thanksgiving… I'm so grateful for all of the many blessings in my life at the moment… I have the BEST family and friends anyone could ask for, and of course I'm thankful for my blog for helping me discover so many wonderful treats that I now have in my back pocket and can whip up at any time!

Stay tuned - I hope to bake some more soon and then of course put out another crazy spread for Christmas :) Can't wait to try out some new Christmas Cookie recipes!

xoxoxo

Day 34 - Bite Size Apple Pies

Day 34

Friday, November 11, 2011 (11/11/11)

Even though its only Friday, I decided to do some baking. I was off of work so I had lots of time on my hands. A friend recently told me about a website called Pinterest.com, which is a site for people to share pictures and links - everything from clothes, shoes, recipes, home decor ideas, quotes, anything you can really think of. It's AWESOME and it's my obsession of the moment- I'm on the website at least twice a day!

Anyways, I have found some amazing looking recipes on the website and I cannot wait to try them. I think this may be just the first of many baking sessions this weekend. Tonight I wanted to try a recipe for bite size apple pies - I figured it went with my apple theme lately. The recipe looked really simple and so cute!

The only ingredients are apples, a frozen pie crust, sugar, cinnamon and butter - all things I happen to have at home except for the apples! I started by rolling out and preparing the pie crust (which I defrosted in the fridge before hand). Next, I melted some butter and mixed together the cinnamon and sugar - some of the butter gets brushed over the dough and then some of the cinnamon sugar gets sprinkled over the top of that. The dough is then cut into long strips and ready for the apples to be placed in them.

The apples just get peeled and cut into wedges and they are ready. I put 2 wedges in each strip of dough and rolled it up. Before these go into the oven, I brushed a little more butter and sprinkled a little more cinnamon sugar over the top.

These only bake for about 15 minutes until the dough is nice and golden brown. I was concerned because I wasn't sure that the apples were cooked through but when I tried a piece of one, they were perfect - it actually tasted like apple pie! The recommendation is to serve these warm with vanilla ice cream so I'll have to try that when I serve it to my Dad later :)

Stay tuned for next time… probably sooner rather than later!