Fall baking awesomeness!

This weekend I baked a bunch of items for Mr. A's office. I decided to go with a fall theme. I also decided to make all weight watchers items. I was hoping his coworkers would appreciate a healthy and yummy snack and not stab me for tricking them into eating something healthy.

I started off with banana pumpkin bread, from skinnytaste.com. This bread was amazing and I think anyone would like it. Not too pumpkin-y either.

Then I made low fat, low points, pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. These cupcakes were more like pumpkin bread with cream cheese, but they were super yummy! They were also from skinnytaste.com.

I then made a sweet treat hat I am totally going to make for me niece and nephew's birthdayween party coming up. Ghost cookies! They are super cute and super easy to make. I think everyone liked them too! Also from skinnytaste.com.

Please excuse my dirty oven, oh the shame.

Aren't these too cute!?

After a hard night of baking harry was pooped...

 The hubs and I are trying to watch our waste lines because since we have been back from vacation we have been eating like beasts! So here is to healthy and fun fall themed treats!

Baking: FAIL

Source

In preparation for a fabulous night out with girlfriends on Friday for the Sex and the city 2 movie I tried a new baking recipe. I had decided I wanted to bring French Macaroons to the party and color to match the hostess' party decor PINK. Well I knew it was going to be a challenge but man did I underestimate how much of one.

I found my recipe from epicurean.com, they have raspberry chocolate filling and are super cute because they are pink! I thought well I know it will be a challenge but let's do it. So I started with my fabulous new food processor and pulsed together the almonds and confectioner's sugar. I then whipped the egg whites and salt. This is where the issue began. The egg whites never quite got there in terms of fluffiness. No matter how much or how fast I whipped they were not fluffy enough. I then added sugar and they did not get any better just thicker. I thought maybe I was being weird about this so I added the almond mixture and folded it in anyway. Well then it just became a paste that kind of looked like pink glue. SUCKED. So in a moment of panic I just threw it in the pastry bag and went to town trying to get the perfect little circles on my prepped parchment that the recipe said I should make as it kind of oozed out the bag uncontrollably.

Let me paint you a picture as I did not have a camera to document this situation. I have four bowls out, several pastry bags, two racks of cookie sheets and pink frosting all over my face as I tried to make this work. It never got there and the "circles" turned into blobs of paste and ran together all over the parchment. NOT GOOD.

I threw it all out and called it a night at 11:30. I guess the road to becoming a master baker will be filled will situations like this but I did not enjoy it.  I am going to beat these effing cookies if it kills me. Tonight I am going to make cupcakes - I hope I don't eff these up too. DAMN YOU EGG WHITES!!!

Baking

So I have had the urge to start baking again. Any of you that knows me well knows I stress bake. When ever I used to get really emotional or whatever I would bake. I would make things almost nightly at one point and then bring them into my office and have them test everything out. I have perfected my Chocolate Chip Cookies, by making them over and over again, so I wanted to challenge myself. I looked around and found a blog by "The Waspy Redhead" - a friend of mine who always has amazing food! She made these Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies - http://thewaspyredhead.com/?p=1122, and they looked wonderful so I tried them out!










I think they came out pretty wonderful. Mine of course don't look anywhere near as beautiful as my friend's do but oh well it was a first attempt! The grating of the zucchini was a little taxing so I will have to find a better way to do this. I think the cookies came out a bit like zucchini bread but they are so moist and yummy that does not matter. I baked them alone in my house with some streaming jazz piano from Pandora on and had a wonderful night to myself. It was really fun to get my feet wet and I hope to continue this trend through the holidays. If you have any treats you want me to try out let me know! I love to bake and am always up for a fun new thing to try.

On a side note, I brought these cookies into my office and did not tell anyone that they were any different. A lot of people looked at them and were like why do they have green in them. One lady even refused to eat my cookies because she thought I was feeding them rancid food, COME ON! I am not weird and I would never do that, and I am just a little hurt that she did not like my cookies.