I send holiday cards... and edible gifts. It's something I've done for a few years now and it's a practice that makes me feel distinctly "adult." Each year I like to send my friends a small token of appreciation to show that I care. Also, I can make stuff. I tend to be known in my social circle as someone relatively crafty. So I do what I can to say, "hey, you're cool and I appreciate that you think I'm kinda cool too." Aside from the postage it is also relatively cheap. My mom likes to tell me, "You can pay with time. Or you can pay with money..." I choose to pay with time.

This year I made tea and cookie packets. I found a nice, stable (i.e. dried spices that keep and not rot) masala chai recipe in a book at the library. First I worked on making teabags.

MASALA CHAI SPICE MIX
2 Tbs cardamon
2 Tbs ground clove
2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbs ginger
1 Tbs pepper

CHAI TEABAG
2 tsp quality loose leaf black tea
1/8 tsp Masala chai spice mix







What kind of cookie goes well with tea? ANY KIND OF COOKIE! (That was a trick question.) I made brown sugar pecan shortbread cookies to go with my masala chai. I thought the warmth of the spices would go well with the carmel-esque undertones of the brown sugar. Also, who doesn't like pecans? It was pretty basic. Brown sugar, butter, pecans, and flour. Add cookie cutters and I had myself a decorative cookie!





Lastly, I crafted my own holiday cards. I made them using a 3-D effect (b/c 3-D is the new thing) and some twine for texture.

You scream... I scream... We ALL scream... for ice cream. Gimme s'mores! (I said that last bit in my my ODB voice). I pulled out my beloved but rarely used ice cream maker recently and did a bit of a mish mash. I had some leftover cooking/baking ingredients that were taking up too much space in the kitschen. So I decided to use them up in an ice cream mash-up.

Because I made those s'more pops for my nephew's birthday I had 3/4 of a bag of marshmallows I was trying to use up and a box of graham cracker crumbs. This easily meant s'more flavored ice cream HAD to be made. Initial research showed that googling "s'more ice cream" lead to a lot of recipes with marshmallow base flavored ice creams. I like marshmallows but not that much. I prefer all ice creams to have a chocolate base! As a result I poked around a bit more and decided to do a chocolate ice cream and then add in the rest of the s'more flavors as mix-ins. The chocolate ice cream recipe I settled on came from this book. The recipe basically calls for making two mixtures and then adding them together.

I tweeked the recipe a little bit because I have a phobia of tempering eggs. So instead I used cornstarch as a thickener. I nixed the eggs and added 3 TBS of cornstarch with a bit of the milk to make a slurry.




Some s'more ice cream recipes just had you chuck in the mini marshmallows but I didn't have mini marshmallows. So I did another google search and found out you could make fluff by melting down marshmallows and adding in a bit of butter (mmm butter) and corn syrup. I know you're thinking "isn't that bad for you?" And to that I reply: It's ice cream! Who cares?!





Seriously folks... the chocolate ice cream was amazing. Such a great chocolate flavor. I will make a plain batch of chocolate ice cream any day with that recipe. So good. I liked the spatula clean and would have liked the urn too but I was afraid my tongue would stick. You can't tell from the picture but during the last 5 min. of churning I crumbled up the graham cracker crust and dropped it in there to mix throughout. While the ice cream finished I loaded up a disposable icing bag (using this method) with my homemade fluff. The final step was to transfer the churned ice cream into a freezer safe container and layering the fluff throughout. I couldn't take pictured during this process because my hands were covered in chocolate and/or fluff.

Does anyone else remember that show from Nickalodean? I loved that show... I wanted to work at a camp/ranch as a teen because of that show. Well, Hey Dude and Camp Anawanna. Now when I think about it they were both totally not PC probably. What does all this have to do with my kitschen adventures? My nephew recently turned 8 and he had a cowboy/cowgirl theme birthday party coordinated by moi!

Here's a pic of a draft of the invite...

I also made homemade trail mix to go into the swag bags.





I made some s'more pops too and wanted to used them to close up the bags someway...







For dessert I used the book Baking: New Frontiers recipe for chocolate rootbeer float bundt cake. I want this book so bad... but for now I am settling for this one recipe.

Hey ya'll... It's fall one, of my favorite times of the year. Being from the Midwest I find fall to be a beautiful time with all the colors of the trees and the bounty of apples available. Add in a nice crisp autumnal breeze and I'm ready to snuggle up with a book and cup of warm cider in a hot second. I have been able to do that a few times this season already! I also love the flavors of fall... with them in mind I decided to break out the donut pan I bought months ago and put it to use. I borrowed a recipe from my favorite TV cook Rachael Ray (Ray Ray as I love to call her) and made some donuts with fresh apples! I used honey crisps because they're my favorite after granny smith.

Or alternatively you could make a glaze with powdered sugar, milk, and caramel flavoring. But the caramels were on special for $1/bag and I don't own any imitation caramel flavoring so I went the cheap and easy route.







Some of the donuts I also added a bit of chocolate to as well. I just melted some chocolate chips put them in a boughetto piping bag (i.e. a sandwich bag with the corner snipped off) and drizzled away. They were all so pretty I had to share. I boxed up four and took them through airport security to hand deliver them to a friend in D.C. She was graciously allowing my to crash on her couch and I just couldn't come empty handed.

Nobody likes to see a couple of bananas go bad. Nobody. Recently my mom bought a bunch of the perfect fruit (i.e. bananas) for my nephew to snack on. I do not like real bananas. I do love artificial banana flavor (see: Now N Laters, Slurpees, & Laffy Taffy). However, the idea of bananas has grown so appealing to me that I'm trying to learn to love them. Reasons why I should love bananas:

* totally portable
*high in potassium
*can be eaten with peanut butter
*go well in smoothies

So when I saw that pair of bananas getting brown spots I decided to put them to good use. While I don't subscribe to any magazines, (let us mourn the slow death of print media), I do frequent Barnes & Noble and read through a few while drinking the smallest drip coffee available. Why buy the magazine when you can get the coffee for almost free? And a month or so ago Food Network's magazine had a section with an infinitely adaptable quick bread recipe. I loved the idea of being able to tweak the ingredients according to my mood and pantry so I broke down and bought the magazine. Over all the recipe was simple and the results were very satisfying.

'Tis the new school season and I hope all you with wee ones have gotten everyone one back on the school year schedule. Here at my homestead my nephews began 2nd grade and my niece started middle school. Or at least I think it's middle school. Maybe it's junior high. I still don't fully understand the difference.

I came across a nifty thrifty craft online and decided to use it to show some love to my big sis's kids. I have all the supplies to make a few more for some other children call me Tia Gia but I've yet to complete them. Does anyone else suffer from such inertia? You spend all this time prepping and once you're all set things just slow down... I've got so many hours in a day and not enough time to do everything and keep my Hulu queue in order!

My momma taught me well so I also included a little note and personalized the wrappings. The great thing about craft projects is you often end up with remnants and can re-purpose stuff. These are the left over mini clips and treat bags from my grad party take-aways.

Also, I recently watched Duff Goldman's new show Sugar Rush on Food TV. Although I really wish his friend and cake constructor Geoff got a spin off I was still inspired by a segment of the 1st episode. I wanted to try and make a flat chocolate chip cookie. After some searching I came across Alexis Stewart's (Martha's daughter) recipe and it seemed simple enough. I looked around a couple days for those flat chocolate disks but couldn't find them even though I swear they used to sell them at Whole Foods. In the end I just used some Ghiradelli chocolate chips since they tend to be a bit bigger than Toll House's.








As one of my official taste testers said... they ain't too pretty but they sure do taste good!

My grandpa turned 88 this weekend. The family had a surprise and slightly impromptu birthday party for him. It was great to get multiple generations together. Looking through pictures of my Papa in his many different ages and stages also gave us a chance to do comparisons. A younger picture of my Papa looked a lot like a picture of my brother when he was a kid. Another pictured looked like my uncle and my nephew. The genes are strong in my family and a glance through a photo album is hard core proof.

As with any celebration there HAD to be cake.... The week before I began racking my brain trying to think of flavor a combination he might like. I originally settled on a pear cake with caramel glaze. However, my mom didn't think that combo sounded too tasty.* She attempted to get me to make a caramel cake but I vetoed that idea right away as my grandma was famous for her caramel cakes... I was not about to try and out do a culinary legend and legacy like hers. So after some additional searching I came across a recipe for a strawberry cake. A lot of the recipes I found initially were make with strawberry Jello. I know my Papa isn't into artificial flavors so I tracked down a vanilla cake w/ strawberry puree recipe over on Smitten Kitchen (I love that blog!). So I pulled out my biggest mixing bowl for this 3 layer cake recipe and crossed my fingers. I even bought a new 9" cake pan b/c I only had 2.