Does Your Sewing Machine Do This?

Mine Does

Lost Party!

I had big dreams for this lost party, but due to the snow that night most people did not end up coming, so I scaled the plans back a little. Alan, Joe, Kate, and Puja made the trek over though because they are awesome:)

First off, we had Dharma Initiative Beer:


There was also water and Peanut butter. Water, because not everyone wanted beer, and peanut butter for Claire, and how she finally got some when the hatch was open.










































There were of course cupcakes with The Numbers on it.



My favorite part was the cake with the picture of the island frosted on, and a matchbox airplane crashed into the island.



Now compare that with the actual island:



Pretty good right?

Cant wait for the rest of the season, and maybe a few more lost parties along the way!

Candy Cane Cookies

Emily and I decided to try and make Candy Cane Cookies in preparation for a small new years eve gathering. I think they turned out well. The only thing I'd change in the future would be not to melt the butter so much for the frosting.

The recipe can be found here

Florentines

I tried making Florentines, and for the most part half the batch worked out well. I made 3 fatal mistakes.

1. I am home for the weekend, and my mom has FIVE different types of sugar, but none were white granulated, so I used light brown instead.
2. I mis-read the amt of cream to use, so i used much less than called for
3. I only flattened 1 pan appropriately, so the not flat pan did not bake evenly

The flattened pan came out well, and a spread dark chocolate over the bottom. They turned out pretty well, but i'll have to give it one more shot.

Ocean Waves Quilt

I completed this quilt while we got about 2 feet of snow outside (exciting!). The pattern is called ocean waves, but it doesn't really look much like waves.

I realized that I'm not very good at assembling the layers of quilts. I'm totally fine making the front, but since its never a perfectly even shape it gets a little messy when I try and add a back and filling. This time I put 2 layers of fleece inside, and miraculously the exact width of the fleece was the width of my quilt otherwise that would have been disastrous!

Here is a close up on one square


I think this is technically my best quilt because all the blocks lined up and you have to look pretty close to see something wrong! Plus peter helped me cut off all the loose threads, so its neat.

Cranberry Tart

From The Art and Soul of Cooking
5 Cups fresh Cranberries
3/4 cup of sugar
Finely Grated Zest of 1 medium Orange
4 teaspoons flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Coarsely chop half of the cranberries, an mix all ingredients. Pour in a Pie shell.

Pie without topping.

Topping
1 Cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter cut into 1/2 inch pieces
Mix above ingredients until the consistency of peas, and then evenly spread on top of the pie.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 min.

Success! (with room to grow)

I've been wanting to make Parisian macaroons for a long time, and this week finally read up on it and gave it a try! To my surprise all the things that I thought would go wrong worked out well, and the only problem was that i slightly over cooked them so they are sightly golden in color.

I used this recipe to make them, and was careful not to over beat the eggs. I split the recipe in half and dyed half teal and half pink. I pulled them out of the oven and was pleasantly surprised that they were the right shape, and even had the little foot!



In the middle I used jam in some and this recipe for the filling but added almond flavor to it. The filling was alright, but a little too buttery in my opinion and i may try and find another recipe for next time.



I'd consider this baking adventure a success!