Baking Frenzy!

Happy November!  Happy birthday month to me!  :-)  To be honest, I'm kind of glad that October is over... it was really busy and dangerous in terms of food.  Not that November is necessarily going to be any easier.  Thanksgiving sneaks in right there at the end.  Yikes!

Anyway, I've kind of been a cookie-baking fiend lately.  Mainly because I found some recipes to try for a wedding (cookie table!).  I ended up going with these:




Jimmy was the master of Hershey Kisses, cooling racks, and our oven mitt puppet.  Seriously, it just needs some giant googly eyes and he'd be awesome.  We may have made 11 dozen of the Hershey Kiss-topped Cookies and 4 dozen of the Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies.  Just know that it was an insane amount of cookies.  You'll be happy to know that the cookies were delicious and the wedding was fantastic!  :-)

The following three cookies below I baked yesterday with my friend, Beth.  She is a fabulous baker and I'm learning all of her secrets (mwahahaha...).  Mmm... 

Cinnamon Roll Cookies

 

Chocolate Macadamia Meltaways



Peanut Butter Thumbprints

Yep, just let your mouth water.  I'd give you the recipes, but then you'd have all my secrets, too!  :-)  You'll just have to come over for cookies sometime.  I mean, Christmas is coming...

We also made an Apple Crips (not pictured because it wasn't finished baking) and this soup:

Summer Squash and Corn Chowder

I decided I'm going to invest in a Dutch oven, so that I can make all kinds of yummy and healthy soups.  We'll see how it goes!  I'm pretty excited to try to make more soup recipes. 

I also roasted pumpkin seeds for the first time ever... they taste a lot like burnt popcorn.  Who knew?  Maybe I made them wrong.  ;-)  I seasoned them with Old Bay, garlic salt, and pepper.  Jimmy did not like them, but I don't know if he counts since he doesn't like popcorn.  My kiddos at school seemed to like them!

...and here are our carved pumpkins...

Alissa's Owl Pumpkin and Jimmy's Zerg Pumpkin

The pumpkins only lasted for a few days before they started caving in on themselves.  We decided to ditch them before they made a goopy mess like the ones I carved at school.  Decomposing pumpkin is NOT a good smell... especially when it splashes all over you.  Trust me.  Like I said, Happy November!  :-)