I think it's apparent that I love baking. I could bake all day, every day. In fact, my friend and I have talked about opening a bakery someday and I'd love to see that dream come true. I think with enough hard work and savings it could happen. We've thought of all sort of names and concepts for the place, we just need the time and money to make it happen. Short of opening a bakery, I make sure to take time at least once a week to bake something and when I saw my emails start coming in with my daily holiday cookie recipes I knew I'd be busy.So the first cookie I decided to attempt this year is a chocolate chip meringue cookie. I've always been mildly afraid of making a meringue cookie because they seem so easy to mess up. But the simple ingredients in this recipe made me want to try it. So last night, to the sounds of Grey's Anatomy, I heated up the oven and started cracking eggs. Despite their delicate look, these delicious morsels were quite easy to make and I'm excited to try them again. I think they'd be wonderful with peppermint extract instead of almond to give them a little bit of a holiday feel. Check them out and give them a try. I promise you won't be disappointed. 
With the air getting cooler, the leaves changing colors and the rain starting (stupid rain) I'm in a spectacular baking mood. This had led to numerous consecutive days of baking. Sunday night Tim helped me and we made cut-out sugar cookies. I tried a new recipe (the one from Crisco) and have to say I was mightily disappointed. The dough was too sticky and the cookies didn't keep their shape as they baked. So now we've got these oddly shaped things. To top things off, we were out of powdered sugar (which has since been remedied by my fiance) so these are naked (read no frosting) cookies. Not sure what kind of frosting I want to make for them though - if any. I'm considering leaving them as they are and making a better batch (read recipe from Williams Sonoma) this weekend. On the topic of this weekend it just so happens to be a certain someone's birthday! I've got a cake planned for Friday/Saturday. I'm still waiting on the materials to make the birthday present. And I'm not sure what we plan to do this weekend... I'm hoping the weather might stay a bit decent so we could hit up a pumpkin/apple farm on Sunday. I just bought a new pie plate and I'm itching to be able to use it. Which reminds me, I need to check with Katy to see if she's still got that amazing pie crust recipe (why yes, I make them from scratch). Anyhoo, back to the grind. I can't believe it's only 9:30am, feels like it should be 4 or 5pm. Darn long days!
So I found the elusive canned pumpkin in the grocery store yesterday so I had to take advantage and bake something delicious with it. I've wanted to try pumpkin cookies for over a year now, and I had a few recipes to play with. I went with one I found on Allrecipes.com that had great reviews. I didn't change anything in the recipe and I'm glad I didn't. I just wish I would have had powdered sugar so I could have made homemade glaze and/or cream cheese frosting. As my friend The Pink Spatula always says: homemade frosting is worth the extra effort!
