Cooking Baking Eating

Here’s the one thing that sucks about living so far from my family: Holidays.

We moved roughly 6 years ago to the Pacific Northwest, away from everything we knew, family, friends, and memories. We really haven’t regretted the decision, except of course in times of trouble or holidays. We haven’t always been able to make it home for holidays or birthdays, mostly we see them at Christmas, so it was nice that our friends were kind enough to invite us to their early Pre-Thanksgiving Day celebration.

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I had never heard of a Pavlova before I saw it being made a while ago on Ina Garten’s TV show. It looked neat but didn’t really appeal to what I “thought” I wanted in a dessert.

The time passed and I wanted to make a splash at a friends party with something light, berry, and cool. I remembered this one and thought it could be a really neat one if I did it right. Anything light and delicate seems to crumble under my hands, and that’s exactly what the meringue is in Pavlova.

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A few years ago I made a trifle by the seat of my pants for a little get together. Now keep in mind there were only 4 of us and I used my largest mixing bowl to make it. We ate the whole thing. Just the 4 of us. Insanity.

I made it again for a little party on Friday night. This type of dessert is quite awesome for those times where you won’t have enough time just before the party to get anything together and get ready at the same time, and it only gets better as it sits and all the flavors combine.

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Every once in a while I like to pretend that I’m a master baker or chef and go make something that I’ve never made before except from a boxed mix and expect it to come out perfect! Yeah and we all know how that one can turn out.

Earlier in the year I had a craving for brownies and wanted to make them on my own. Well they didn’t turn out too good, or too bad, they just…were a brownie I guess. It wasn’t anything to write home about but hey, I made them.

This time I decided to look for a richer brownie. After some research I found out there are so many different types of brownies! Ok well not that many. They generally can be broken down into three types: cake, fudgy, and chewy.

I found one brownie recipe that I can’t really remember for the life of me where I found it, but I decided to try it. There was lots of chocolate, butter, and some brown sugar. Now THAT sounds like a winner to me. It didn’t say what type of brownie it was, but it sounded pretty darn tasty from the description.

And they were darn tasty!

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Thats right. Dark chocolate salted caramel cupcakes. Have you ever heard of anything that just makes your insides just start dancing, anticipating the sugar high that is about to ensue? This causes it.
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Work has really been evil for me lately. My schedule got knocked around majorly, I now have to be at work at 5:00am. Because of my commute I have to leave at 4:20am. I have to wake up by 3:10am to go shower.

Yeah, its early and yeah it sucks. Hopefully it’ll only be temporary.

It feels as though my soul has taken a little beating lately with the stress of a new work schedule and the stress of getting up so flipping early. It almost feels as though my soul needs a hug. Or maybe a band-aid and a bubble bath. Either way I know there is one thing to feed my soul.

Baking.
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My husband likes to “hint” at things he wants me to try and bake. I know he has an evil scheme to get an idea in my head and to get me to make it a reality. In my head it’s almost a conspiracy, an evil plot to do his bidding in the kitchen.

What can I say? I’m just a sucker for a pretty face.

So he puts in my head something tasty. Brownies. Sometimes it is posed as a curiosity, like “What do you make brownies from that don’t come in a box?” For someone who never bakes I guess that can be a pretty common question. Most people now only know how to bake from a box. Add water and go! Yeah, not me as much anymore.

I went through my pile of cookbooks looking for a good brownie recipe. You wouldn’t believe how many different ones I had to choose from. Some books had 2-3 recipes! Most had things like nuts added to them, but I omitted those (allergy).

I finally decided on a recipe from a cookbook that was actually given to me by my husbands Grandma. She seems to have adopted me and likes giving me her cookbooks, but I think she’s just happy I’m not crazy and I keep the husband happy.

I took the recipe from Better Homes and Gardens new Cook Book circa 1953.
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