Papier-mâché!

Brandon and I have been working hard on a variety of Mexican wrestling masks and Day of the Dead skulls for his online store. This is my first finished skull!

Gingerbread

Ginger-Bran & Linds

This Christmas was ginger-filled! Family friends came over with their three young boys so I made some gingerbread men to decorate. It is only fair since they can't drink wine. Anyway, it was my first time rolling and baking them because, although I had done plenty of the fun part, my mom had always done all of the hard work. It took me a bit to figure out the best way to get these guys cut out (two at a time, directly on the sil-pat) but it was worth it. They looked great and tasted wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Bittman for your wonderful recipe!

GingerHaus

We also assembled this gingerbread house my sister also picked up. It is a pretty cool kit from Sur La Table. It was still a bit of work but definitely was great for a first solo gingerbread house. And as novice gingerbread makers we still experienced some frustration, and as a licensed architect my sister may have a couple of concerns with its structural intergrity, all said and done it was great fun and I highly recommend it.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and has a very happy new year!

Pizza Pie and Pie!

Pizza Pie

We had yet another installment of Pizza Club tonight and I thought an excellent addition to our pizza pies would be, well, more pie. This Chocolate Chess pie is really something special! It tastes just like my grandmother's Bangor Brownies, which earns it a place amongst my all-time favorite desserts.

Chocolate Chess Pie

Another successful pizza club meeting has concluded on a very sweet note.

Be the Meatwave!

There once was a man named Josh
Who claimed his BBQ "Boss"
"My sauces, the sweetest,
My meats are the meat-est,
Just who will help with the cost?"

Now I am hungry.

Pie, pie, me oh my!

After one month at the pie shop I felt confident enough to take on Thanksgiving pies. So here they are, from start to finish all from scratch! 

This is a pretty standard pate brisee, with a twist that I learned at the shop... secret, of course. 

For the pumpkin filling I went with Paula Dean's recipe. I thought the addition of cream cheese sounded good.I won't know until tomorrow if that risk paid off. 

For my apple pie I decided to get a little creative. I learned there was going to be apple crisp served as well I thought a pre-cooked apple with orange juice, a little zest, vanilla bean and clove would be nice.

And here they are!

Happy Thanksgiving

Baby... it is cold outside.

Chicago weather has turned gray and rainy. A sure sign of the end of summer and a small taste of the long winter to come. While I am not looking forward to the snow and ice, it is ideal weather for bread baking. This Oatmeal Wheat Bread is sweet and hearty. If I made this again, I would either push it over to the sweet side by kneading in raisins and nuts of some sort or go the other way by reducing the amount of honey in half. Either way, this is one loaf (or two) definitely worth making. 

Pizza Club

It has been a long standing tradition for my family to make homemade pizza every Saturday. Well it isn't Saturday but it is Pizza Club night tonight! So in order to rally the troops and work up an appetite check out this super sweet video  that my wonderful and talented husband made. Now who is hungry?

Edited to add: You can check out the high resolution video here!