Eat your heart out, Rachel Ray

By the way, "eat your heart out"? Where did that saying come from...it's kinda icky Indiana Jones-ish...



Anyways, I just spent the last 10 hours doing my Christmas baking (well, minus the hour when I had to run back to the grocery store to get zucchini for the zucchini bread...yeah I know...and then the lady in front of me ran into a car that was zooming across 6 lanes of traffic (Darwin anyone?) and had to wait for the cops as a witness since Darwin lady was trying to argue that it wasn't her fault). Today was the only day I had to get the baking done...mission accomplished (hope the pool tournament was fun!). Now for the random cooking stories:

Someone needs to invent a candy cane crusher...yes a hammer works fine- except when you can't find yours and the recipe calls for "finely crushed candy canes". I tried the food processor, which worked like a gem until the candy cane pieces got stuck under the blade and knocked it out of place...so onto the new blender...well, I pretty much had to feed it itty bitty candy cane piece by piece (again, they wedge up under the blades), but it finally churned out the required 1 1/2 cups...I decided, next time, I don't care if people break their teeth on candy cane bits. Oh and by the way, inhaling candy cane er...dust...not fun.

Do not try this at home...it doesn't work...

So then it was on to the chocolate coconut balls...I truly hate making these things. It is so tedious, but they are sooo good. Once the batter chills, you have to form little balls and then coat them with melted chocolate. Since I do not possess a double boiler (neither does my mom- and she's been doing this for 30ish years), I get to mickey mouse one together and then try to outwit the steam that comes from inbetween the cracks of the pans...it's kinda of a contest between me and the steam- how many times can it get me to fling my hand out of the way- leaving a fine spray of chocolate over me, the floor,...my cats...

The finished chocolate coconut product

Oh, and when is someone going to invent a hood (like those from chemistry class) to use when working with powdered sugar?- and how the heck do they make powdered sugar anyways?

Puppy Chow cooling...

Oh well, when all is said and done, I have 3 batches of Puppy Chow, 5 loaves of zucchini bread, 5 loaves of lemon poppy seed bread, 6 dozen chocolate coconut balls, and a pan of candy cane fudge...church people and office people...bring your sweet tooths...uh..teeth?

Zucchini bread....in case you've never seen bread before :)