Disappearing Act!?!?

I am so not an excuse maker, but seriously, I have some stellar reasons for not posting in ummm…. forever!

1. I have had appointment after appointment with the chiropractor and physical therapist to hopefully make my knees work for the half marathon this weekend.
2. I have had a few baking jobs!!!

Both valid reasons why I have been far to pre-occupied to keep up with my regular life, let alone my blog life.

So, lets start from the oldest creation… A few weeks back I promised homemade ice cream to one of my classes for winning a jeopardy game. It was played among all three of my classes and my Geometry class won. I made them chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream (vanilla with chocolate chips and cookie dough chunks), and s’mores (chocolate ice cream with marshmallows and graham crackers). Both were well received. I hadn’t made ice cream since last summer and I completely forgot how easy it is to make!

Cookie Dough:

A little closer – unfortunately I scooped at school so no pretty scoop pics:

S’mores – looks melted, but definitely frozen:

After the ice cream I got two orders. One was from my husband’s colleague. He needed two cakes for his son’s first communion and let me pick whatever I wanted to do! I went with a white cake with vanilla frosting, and a chocolate cake with oreo frosting. Well, the white cake recipe I used failed me twice. I broke the first one (which you’ll see later turned into cake balls), tried a second time, and that one just came out too thin. SOOO, I visited smitten kitchen and went with her FABULOUS yellow cake. The only thing I would do different next time is to definitely bang the pans on a counter a few more times (as suggested) to get out even more air bubbles. This one baked, frosted, and tasted fantastic. I also went with her favorite chocolate cake too. I did 2/3 of the recipe to make 2 awesome 9-in pans. I completely trust this woman’s taste… seriously, they were both awesome. I did the frosting work on the chocolate cake and the crumb layer on the white cake. Since Joe is more artistic he did the rest of the white cake. Here the are!

Definitely being enjoyed by many – you think?

The same week my principal asked me if I would do 4.5 dozen cupcakes for teacher appreciation week. She felt bad asking because I am a teacher, but she PAID me for the job, so that made it all good. Yay for making money doing what I love!!! I made the lemon limoncello again, red velvet with cream cheese frosting, and chocolate with chocolate frosting.

Lemon-Limoncello:

Red Velvet:

Chocolate Chocolate:

From doing this job, I already got 2 more jobs from teachers for cookies and a cake 🙂

Well, due to the cake disaster I made cake balls using the crumbled white cake and the leftover cream cheese and limoncello cream cheese frosting. They weren’t pretty (I’m not a chocolate dipping pro at all), but they tasted fantastic!

Oh, my favorite image of the day…. I looked around my kitchen during the cake/cupcake baking and saw this –

Yes, that is butter… and not even CLOSE to all that I used over those few days. Paula Dean would be proud 😉

Finally…. I did a chocolate chip cookie comparison. I started with this recipe, and then made some changes. Overall the family and my students liked my version better. They weren’t just saying that either, because I didn’t tell them until AFTER the taste test which was which!

Original:

Mine:

Mine ended up being the perfect crispy around the outside, soft and doughy on the inside.

Thank you so much for being patient with my posting and for reading this one!  The farmers market starts a week from Saturday, I’m so nervous!!!

Question: How much do you think is too much to charge for a cookie, bar cookie, or brownie? I think I figured out my pricing to be fairly reasonable, but opinions on how much you would spend are more than welcome!