baking extravaganza!

Traditionally, the Langel family women get together around this time of year to do our annual Christmas baking day and spend the day baking, talking and drinking wine. For the past few years i have missed out on the even due to school conflicts and this year it's not happening at all because of the tight turn around between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Well, not happening in the traditional sense; yesterday i took matters into my own hands and created my own baking extravaganza!

Now, I really enjoy baking, but sometimes (like yesterday) things get a little out of control. I think i was largely motivated by denial: denial that Aaron's wonderful weekend visit was over and denial that i had to do laundry. So instead i baked, for SIX hours. But it was worth it! First i made banana bread and kind of taught one of my roommates how. Second was peanut brittle because well, it's the best baking/science experiment ever. For those of you who have never made peanut brittle let me illuminate the process. First you heat the sugar and the peanuts for about twenty minutes or until your thermometer reads 300 degrees. This first part is a little slow but then you add the butter and baking soda and blam! it bubbles up and turns into a wonderful candy mass. After a trip to the grocery store i continued with round two of baking and made sugar cookies and peanut butter balls.

Maybe a baking extravaganza is something you have to be a part of to appreciate but let me add a few more details so you can get a clearer picture of how this all unfolded. All of this baking took place with just one big bowl, one cookie sheet and one sauce pan. This led to a lot of washing dishes and some creative maneuvering. Luckily it was cold enough outside that i could use our deck for my refrigerator since ours definitely would not have had space to cool my treats. But of the first go in this space and for a solo baking extravaganza (it's jsut such a fun word) i think everything turned out pretty well!