Christmas morning

 We had a brief snow flurry on Christmas morning.

Not enough to cover the ground, but it looked pretty while it was falling.

I was late getting my heated bird water bowl set up this year. It's only been out a couple of days.  These Eastern Bluebirds (below) were looking for a drink.

I know they are hard to see in the photo, but there are three at the bowl...there at the edge of the porch.  I haven't been seeing them around so I suppose they are passing through.

We had a quiet and relaxing Christmas Day.  Our dinner was chili and a ham braid and snacky type foods.   Of course there were cookies and 2 different candy and nut boxes we had received as gifts.

Usually, I'm the photo taker on the holiday so I 'm rarely actually in the photos.

I took a couple of selfies to make up for it.

Happy New Year to all!

candy fail

 

A few days before Christmas I wanted to make a couple more batches of goodies.  I had made a few half-batches of different cookies but we have been nibbling on them.

I think it's more fun to enjoy the sweet treats in the days leading up to Christmas rather than have them leftover afterwards...getting stale and making us feel guilty for continuing holiday indulgences.

I decided to make Buckeye candy. I haven't made it in several years and didn't even have a recipe anymore.  I found a recipe online and made up the peanut butter balls...ready to be dipped in chocolate.

That's when things went haywire!  The recipe instructed to melt the chocolate for dipping, adding a couple tablespoons of shortening for a dipping consistency.

I didn't have shortening so thought I could use butter.  WRONG!  The chocolate turned dull and dry - no way to dip anything in it.

Trying to figure out a way to save it and have something edible, I melted the chocolate again, adding sweetened condensed milk and poured that over the peanut butter balls, which I had arranged in a casserole dish. Sort of like a tray of fudge.

It seemed like it might work out so I refrigerated it overnight.  The next morning I sliced it and we all tried it.  It's okay but really overly rich and sweet.

I put it back in cold storage and later (in a few weeks) I might try melting some of it again and tossing with rice krispies or some other kind of cereal.  Or maybe it could be used for cake frosting?

I later read online that butter shouldn't be used in melting chocolate because it has water in it, whereas shortening does not.

I also want to say that I do not like the Walmart store brand of confectioners sugar (used in the peanut butter balls).  To me, it has a starchy taste from whatever they use to keep it from clumping.

This is a different cookie that I tried this year...Raspberry Thumbprints...

They were a bit tricky too...with the raspberry jam wanting to bubble up out of the thumbprint while baking.  

I'm finished with baking now for awhile!  

so scary!

A few days ago, Lonnie was at his desk and I was upstairs doing something.  As I passed by the stairwell, I smelled a burning odor and I walked down to see smoke streaming from an outlet that Lonnie had his ipad charger plugged into.

He was on the phone and hadn't noticed it.

I squealed out, "Lonnieeee, LOOK!" and headed to the basement to shut off the breaker. 

Before I got down the steps he had pulled out the plug and apologized to the person on the phone and finished his conversation.

That did it - the burning stopped. 

Pretty scary though.  many times we leave devices charging overnight or even when we aren't home.

That's all the damage there was and the Sasquatch put in a new outlet for us.

 I have to laugh at this photo, though.

The top of the burned outlet looks like a scared face with his mouth in an "O", and the bottom one has a serious frown because of his injury.

Am I the only one who sees this?  Maybe too much smoke inhaled!

The Sasquatch makes a tart

 The Sasquatch recently got interested in doing some baking.  He knows how to cook things that he likes but I don't think he has really done much baking.

First he made a sweet and tangy lemon tart.  Then he tried out this recipe for a Bittersweet Chocolate and Caramel Tart.   Recipe HERE

He brought some to share with us at Thanksgiving. Delicious! Each bite like candy!

The recipe has a lot of steps and parts of it look tricky...but he said "it's just following directions".

He took photos while making it and wrote about it.  

"The Sasquatch makes a Tart"   (in his own words)

Flour, sugar, and salt. The salt is pink, all I had was Pink sea salt

Add in butter

Wrap and chill for one hour

Roll it out in a perfect round shape like I did in the picture above

Roll it over the rolling pin to transfer it to the pan. Make sure you DON'T put enough flour down when rolling it out. This way you get to use a spatula to try to pry it off the table. This also gives you an opportunity to poke a few holes in it, these holes add flavor.

Use the leftover dough to fill in all those 'flavor holes' that appeared earlier

Cover with foil and add baking weights (rice)

Baked pastry. I used some of the left over to make a small personal size tart in the green ramekin

I used three if these for the filling

Whole milk and heavy cream. Bring to a boil, remove from heat and add the broken up chocolate bars.

Mix until smooth. Pour some of this into a small bowl and add the eggs and mix, pour that back into the pan and mix some more. Pour in to the pastry shell and bake again, make sure to leave enough room for the caramel

Do all the dishes so you can get them dirty again making the caramel

Melt the sugar, never stop stirring it. Be sure you have the butter and heavy cream pre-measured and handy since you can't stop stirring to do anything else.

Butter added

Heavy cream added

Done with the second bake

Add the caramel. Be sure to overflow it in at least one spot, this makes it a lot more fun and interesting when you try to remove it from the pan and the caramel has cemented itself to the edge. Eat your miniature sized tart while it's still warm and gooey and the other one is chilling in the refrigerator. Do the dishes again.