Baking Day 2011

Here's me and my friend Tricia in a sort of crummy timer photo but at least her eyes are open.

For the last several years (five? I'm not really sure exactly...) Tricia and I have gotten together in December and spent an entire day baking.  Yes we have matching aprons, thanks to Tricia.  But I cannot express to you how wonderful it is.  I look forward to it all year - seriously.  That's how great Baking Day is.

And look at our sustenance...yeah we didn't eat that many grapes.

I packed up half of my pantry to bring to Tricia's because she has two ovens and a beautiful kitchen.  And you think I'm kidding but look - that truly is half of my pantry.  At least.

This year was a little different because Tricia only has one child left at home, 14 year old Mary, who was at school all day.  So instead of all of these teenagers bugging us all day, we were all alone at her house and it was kind of weird.  I posted this on FB but in past years, Adrian and Anna would be there helping us or running to the store to get some forgotten ingredient, Robert would either be sampling, entertaining us or even better, running to get us some Subway.  Emy and Mary were always the best taste-testers so even though the big kids are gone, Mary came home and tried everything out.  I love it that Mary requests and expects me to make certain things and of course, I do just that.

Yes, we went through more than five pounds of butter.

There are a few standbys in our Baking Day repertoire but this year we tried to mix it up a little and make some new things.  I made: chinese noodle cookies, peanut butter cup cookies, peppermint meltaways, cookie dough fudge (which was a fail), mint magic bars and caramel chex mix.

Tricia made toffee, peppermint bark, sugar cookies, almond raspberry shortbread cookies, orange truffles (another fail), peppermint bark popcorn and crunchers,

I bought some super cute Martha Stewart treat boxes I found at Marshall's for a fabulous price and I put boxes full of love together for work people, visiting teaching sisters and my home teachers.

I love that I have homemade gifts for people at Christmas time but I love more the time spent with Tricia. We are completely comfortable sharing a kitchen, we talk about everything under the sun, we laugh hysterically and sometimes we don't say anything at all. Even with a couple of recipe misfires and even though I came home completely exhausted and half of my pantry is waiting to be put away, we still had a fantastic day and I can't wait until we get to do it all again.