Baking Adventure

I am already having a great Christmas vacation!  I took Thursday off from work to get the house ready to host my family for the weekend.   It was a busy day with cleaning house and the big trip to the grocery store.   I love that I don’t have to work until 2012 (one of the perks of working for a university is it is closed the week between Christmas and new years).

This year for Christmas I wanted to learn to make my husband’s favorite cookies, crinkle cookies that his mom makes each year.  I got the recipe, bought all of the ingredients and all was going well.

The dough gets pretty thick and the mixer was struggling.  I told K that it smelled like it was burning and the mixer held on until I finished mixing but was smoking by the end!   Kevin has had the mixer as long as I've known him (almost 8 years) so it served him well, but just couldn't take the thick dough.

Just that afternoon I'd said that if I kept baking that we might need to get a stand-mixer, but I wasn’t planning to get a new one this quick!  

We have to have a mixer for some other cooking we’re doing this weekend (they are a must for mashed potatoes!), so I braved the crowds this morning and went to find a new mixer. I’d done my research online and could not believe how many models were only available online, usually I don’t mind it but the timeline I was one even next day shipping wouldn’t work.  My ‘plan b’ was to borrow one from my in-laws, but I wanted to get one of my own!  Target was out of them, but I found just what I wanted at Kohl’s – a KitchenAid stand-mixer in empire red.

I finished the crinkle cookies today, and they look and smell great!   I even got to break in the mixer when I made peanut butter cookies, it is wonderful and makes mixing so easy, now I wonder if I shoulnd’t have burned up his mixer long ago….hehehe

While I was out, another gift appeared under the tree, I don’t know what it is..I love surprises!

We'll have a busy weekend with family, so I'll say it now MERRY CHRISTMAS!