Thanksgiving Dinner: Part I

Google Images confirms the popularity and goodness if this dish

Thanksgiving is fun. I really enjoy hanging out with my family and making Thanksgiving dinner. This year will be my second year making the complete dinner and this is one meal where I don't try and make everything from scratch. It's part of the fun... right? Cranberry jelly that's shaped like a can, canned yams and marshmallows.... they're staples at our dinner. Even if I think yams are gross.

One of my favorite side dishes is something not thanksgiving-ish at all. My mom found this recipe several years ago for Strawberry Pretzel Salad and now we make every Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's so good. You should make it right now. And eat it. It's that's good. It's made of a layer of pretzel crust, cream cheese- whipped cream middle and strawberry jello layered on top. Yum. It's salty, savory and sweet in one dish and very addicting. I could eat it all. Oh and use frozen strawberries if you're not lucky enough to have them year round like we do here in California.

But here's your chance to get the recipe. I use one from All Recipes. Com.

Strawberry Pretzel Salad

Make it now and thank me later.

Baking Club!

Did you know I belong to a club? A baking club? While I haven't made it to alot of our meetings, I did get to host this past weekend. It was nice to catch up with some old friends, make a new one and try out some new recipes.

We made cinnamon apple coffee cake, pumpkin bundt cake and chocolate cupcakes, ate some lunch and had some fun.

Here are my reviews on the recipes:

Apple Coffee Cake recipe from Betty Crocker:
This is a pretty simple coffee cake to make and it tasted pretty good. The strussel crumb topping is always my favorite in a coffee cake.

Pumpkin Bundt Cake recipe from ... I need to get it from Wendy:
As you can you see from the picture our cake had a little accident. It didn't come out of the pan all the way.  So we put the glaze inbetween the broken layers, which helped it to stick together as a whole piece.
This was my favorite of the day. It didn't taste too much like pumpkin and was very moist. I recommend this one for the season... but will need to post the recipe later! Oops....

Chocolate Cupcakes with Irish Cream Glaze
Chocolate cupcake recipe from a google search: Cake on the Brain Blog
Irish cream glaze a simple mix of powder sugar, a touch of milk and a splash of Irish Cream syrup (all eye balled and made up by me)
The result- the batter looked like chocolate mousse, which is always a good indicator. But the finished product wasn't as moist and because this was a dark chocolate cupcake, it could have benefited from some chocolate frosting. But that would have taken too long.

Well that's all I've got for now. Must prepare for Thanksgiving soon. I'll be posting some of my fave Thanksgiving recipes shortly. Stay tuned!

Week Night Dinner- Thai Red Chicken Curry

This one is a cheat- which I would like to think I don't stray away from making things from scratch, especially for this blog, but when I get home around 530-630 I am generally hungry and generally the one who cooks dinner.... so I want to make something quick so I can eat it. It's a dilemma.

When All Else Fails, There's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Dear Blog,
I was going to update you with fabulous and fun Halloween cookies that I made! But, they didn't turn out so well! I really wanted to make Star War cookie sandwiches with these cookie cutters I got from Williams-Sonoma.... but my recipes were not cookie cutter friendly at all. And to be honest, the cookies themselves weren't that great. They weren't bad, but they just didn't do it for me. So when all else fails, make chocolate chip cookies and everyone wins- regardless of the festive holiday. And that's exactly what I did.
Ever catch my post on the best ever chocolate chip cookies? Well make them here!

Cookie Fail

Cookie Win!