Gingerbread Houses

Well big news I guess! It's official I am no longer cooking in a blue kitchen! I have moved! This move is probably the best thing that has happened to me in the last little while. I am now living with girls that I love dearly. And I think life will be much better here on out. My new kitchen is beige which is actually really boring, so I won't be changing the title of this blog.

Anyway, so I'm at home for the Christmas break so my bestie and another friend came over and we made Gingerbread houses. Well not gingerbread houses per say because well... my gingerbread was another kitchen disaster. But, I've never made it before so I'm okay with the fact that it stuck to the pan and tasted terrible! So we used graham crackers! And they turned out so cute!

Here is my house, before and after the grass. The grass is made out of crushed green Lemonhead's candy. I crushed them on a cutting board with a plate. Fore warning, they fly everywhere when you use this method. So if any of you can think of a cleaner method advice would be greatly appreciated. Anyway, here are some pictures of my house.

This is before the grass was added. Notice the messy work station. But I make the best art when I can make a mess.

Here's the finished product. I didn't have lots of candy choices so I feel like parts of the house are very empty, I'm hoping my next attempt with turn out better. I used thin mints for the border and the circle windows. Chocolate for the door, spice drops for the path, and skittles for the Christmas lights.

My dear best friend Anni is the best! She made a trailer! Isn't it amazing! I love it so much! It even has a little hitch and propane tank on the side. She's just super creative and funny like that.

For the glue that amazingly held all the pieces together so well we made Royal icing. Here's the recipe we used:

ROYAL ICING

2 2/3 C powdered Sugar

2 Egg Whites

Mix egg whites and 1 1/3 C powdered sugar until smooth. Add the remaining sugar and beat with an electric mixer until it forms stiff peaks. If peaks don't form add more sugar. Keep covered with a damp cloth while working with it so it doesn't dry out.

It's important that it forms peaks so that it's thick enough to hold the candy and pieces up. But be careful not to make it to think or else it becomes difficult to work with. Also, be sure to beat it thoroughly so that all the lumps in the icing come out. But I promise this icing is amazing and will hold even a 3 story house together! (pictures to come later)

Lesson Learned

Well, my cooking last night resulted in yet another amazing kitchen adventure! I had plans all day to make Salmon for the first time, and I turned on the oven descaled the fish then smelt smoke. So I opened up the oven to see what the heck was going on when a great cloud came billowing out, (yes, I may be exaggerating just a little) so I slammed the door shut quick turned off the oven looked around for the smoke detector which is apparently non existent in my new kitchen I feel jipped very jipped, and opened all the windows. Then I reopened the oven and the smoke was gone within about 30 seconds. Yeah, when you spill banana bread in the bottom of your oven make sure, before you preheat the oven again, that you clean it out or else it results in smoke and a very unpleasant smell. So, lesson learned. And I will now be making salmon tonight.

So, I was also feeling ambitious yesterday so I decided to try to make bread from scratch for the first time. I know how to make it, I learned all about what to do in my 9th grade foods class. Anyway, it did not turn out at all, it smelled wonderful and I was so excited but it tasted like nothing at all and kinda tasted bad actually... So I have decided I am just not destined to make loaves of bread. I also learned that when you're letting yeast rise make sure the bowl is big enough!

If you don't, this happens.... and then it starts to over flow just like the banana bread, but much easier to clean up! This is about half way through the rising time, you can imagine the mess that ensued.

So, lesson learned yet again! I promise I will cook something soon that will turn out amazingly well! No worries, I really can cook!

The First

Well, I decided that I wanted to start a blog. I love blogging, but I never have anything to say. But there's one thing that I do all the time and love to do and that is cooking! So I thought to my self why not blog about all the fun things I cook? So I decided to start this blog, of course to be able to blog about cooking you have to actually cook something to talk about in your first post correct? I had some bananas laying around that were at the perfect point of ripeness to make my favorite Banana Bread recipe, so I opened up my excel file found the recipe and got started. Everything went surprising smoothly, considering I have just moved and am living and cooking in a kitchen that is the most disorganized mess I've ever seen. All that will be changing soon enough. I'm also cooking with a new oven which is always a challenge. So I mixed up the batter, and it looked just like it always does. Keep in mind I have made this recipe many many times, it's my favorite! I poured the bread into the loaf pan, the biggest one I have, popped it into the oven and 350 for 1 hour and went about my way making dinner.

After finishing my delicious dinner, Bertolli frozen dinner Chicken, Broccoli, and Rotini in a Garlic Olive Oil sauce, I smelled the kitchen. It didn't exactly smell like banana bread which instantly worried me so I opened up the oven and flipped on the light, and there was my beautiful bread over flowing and dripping into the bottom of the oven and burning. I acted quickly thinking to my self "This is just a minor set back, no big deal" I grabbed a cookie sheet and carefully removed the bubbling pan and placed it on the cookie sheet so the banana bread could finish baking with making any more of a mess in my oven.

This is the banana bread, after my intervention.

And this is the bottom of my oven following my intervention...

now it's just very black and very stuck.

Thank goodness for Easy-Off oven cleaner!

So the hour finished and I eagerly removed the banana bread from the oven... and lets just say it is now in trash as it is not edible at all. I'm really bummed out,and really embarrassed, this is my favorite banana bread recipe and I have never screwed it up before and I have no idea what happened it always makes exactly one beautiful loaf. Here are some of my hypothesis as to why disaster struck:

1- I can no longer properly read a recipe
2-I did something terribly wrong, like added to much of some ingredient
3-I have lost all of my talent in the cooking category (oh goodness, I hope not!)
4-Not everything can be perfect, and the Universe is trying to teach me that right now.

So I know after reading this post you so want the recipe to this disastrous bread, so I'm going to share it! And I promise it really does usually turn out wonderfully moist and beautiful.

"Disastrous Banana Bread"
1 C Sugar

8 Tbs Butter
2 large eggs
3 ripe bananas
1 Tbs Milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 325

Cream the sugar and butter. Add the eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.
In a small bowl, mash the bananas. Mix in the milk and cinnamon.
In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, soda, and salt.
Add the banana mixture to the creamed mixture. Add the dry ingredients
Pour batter into prepared loaf pan, bake for 1 hour.

**I just realized one mistake that lead to this cooking disaster, I set my oven at 350 when the proper temperature should have been 325... live and learn I guess!**