Baking, Baking, Baking.

Since I have all that flour from my Aunt baking was a necessity the last two days. For the last few months I have been making homemade pizza dough but without yeast since we were just too lazy to go out and buy some (plus I had found a recipe that didn't use eggs or milk either so it helped when we were low on food and couldn't go shopping till the following month...budget budget budget). But yesterday we tried a dough with yeast courtesy of Emeril Lagasse. Got to use the dough hook:

 

We decided on canned spinach (don't forget to rinse!), canned tomatoes (normally use fresh but we have those 9 million cans), chicken, and mozzarella:

 

I also make my own sauce from tomato paste, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and some oregano. I forgot to take an after picture but here is the before:

  

Mike liked it alot better than my normal pizza crust. It wasn't bad, but I do prefer the flat bread pizza taste better. Just preference.

I also started baking yesterday for our super belated Christmas dinner at my Grandma's in Sarasota today. Last night I made the Honey Drizzle Cupcakes from a cupcake book I got from a bargain bin some time some where:

 

They didn't rise as well as I thought they would (I would probably add 1 tsp baking powder next time and maybe add a little more sugar to the batter). So I decided to call them tartlets instead of cupcakes:

 

This morning I had three things I wanted to make. First was Ring Around the Cookies (1956 book) since they had to sit in the fridge for a while:

 

Look at that yummy log (I rolled it in chocolate pieces):

 

Butterscotch brownies (1956 book) were next:

 

So good:

 

Lastly was the Orange Caramel cookies (1961 book):

 

I forgot to take pictures of it in the sheet, but they came out very crunchy and very very sweet. I used fresh oranges from my Grandma's tree but they were also very sweet. Next time I think I need to tone it down. Needless to say they weren't a big hit. Here is everything all together ready to do to the party:

 

On the left you can see the honey drizzle tartlets, then the butterscotch brownies, then the orange caramel cookies, and finally the ring around the cookies in the bottom right hand corner. 

Besides all the food, my Grandma gave me this cookbook she found at a Goodwill:

 

 

It is the 1987 Southern Living Cookbook . I haven't really gotten a chance to look at it but I will let you know how it is very soon!

 

Until then, enjoy this picture of an anole we caught when I was on a research trip to Jamaica in 2006 when I was an undergrad: