Christmas Feasting

Yesterday was full of Christmas Feasting – my department at work had a meal at lunch, and Brent’s had a breakfast/all day snacks.

We started cooking Thursday night, after we got home from the DCBC Christmas party at Brown’s Corner, which was about 8 pm.  I made Red Velvet cookies both of us, and cupcakes for only mine.  Brent made his famous sausage balls and also pigs in a blanket.

The cookies turned out better this time.  I did a few things differently and I think I have this recipe down to a science now, after baking so many!

Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies, Take 2

This time, the recipe went as follows:

• Oven to 375.
• I doubled the recipe to 2 cake mixes + 1 c. vegetable oil + 4 eggs.
• I used the mixer (instead of my arm) to mix the cake mix + 1/2 c. vegetable oil (instead of canola oil) + 2 eggs.  I almost burned the motor up, too. It started stinking.  Maybe I am crazy, but I think the cookies tasted different (and the batter smelled different) with the vegetable oil instead of canola. 
• Instead of cookie-shaped patties, I rolled the dough into little balls -- they were much smaller.  Brent’s friends who tasted the first batch recommended making them smaller.
• I used two different pans – one went in for 9 minutes, the other for 8 minutes.
• I used Target generic powdered sugar (instead of Dominos’ confectioners sugar) and mixed the icing with the mixer instead of my arm. The difference was remarkable.  Completely different (stiffer) texture for the icing.  I think the first batch of icing might have tasted a little bit better, but the stiffer texture works better, because it doesn’t squeeze out when you bite into the cookie sandwich.

Everyone loved the cookies! They were gone after the meal with none left for nightshift.  I will definitely be making these again.  Some of them (the first batch that baked for 10 minutes and some of the smaller ones that Brent rolled) were too crispy.  After icing them and storing them in a tin overnight, they completely softened up and you couldn’t even tell that they were over-baked.

Buttercream icing

I made the cupcakes from a 2 small mixes and the buttercream icing from a recipe on the back of the powdered sugar bag – I halved the recipe because each mix only made 12 cupcakes.

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 c butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 c milk

I made two batches of this – one in vanilla and one in chocolate. For the chocolate, the recipe substituted 1/4 cup cocoa for 1/4 cup powdered sugar.  I also had to go back and add more milk to the chocolate icing, because it was too thick to spread.  It was perfect!  I even liked this vanilla icing much better than the recipe I was given for the Wilton cake decorating class. My picture of the chocolate cupcakes turned out even worse than these pictures, so oh well. My only mistake with the cupcakes was crumbling peppermint for the tops – it looked pretty at first, and then it melted and the red ran off into the icing. 

Brent made his famous sausage balls on Thursday night, helped me with the cookies,  and got up super early  to bake the sausage balls and make pigs in a blanket so they would be warm for the breakfast.  Next time we will do all of this in advance – it was a very stressful morning and we were both 10 minutes late.  I also got in bed really, really late Thursday night because the kitchen was a MESS after I was finished.  That’s the major downside to cooking, in my opinion!

The pugs assisted by 1. supervising and 2. making sure the floor stayed clean of any crumbs or spills.  Sometimes they are actually handy.

Last night we went to bed at about 7:30 pm – seriously!  I was watching a movie (The Edge of Love) and could not keep my eyes open.  I kept waking up and realizing that I had missed bits and pieces of it.  So I finally turned it off.  I might rewatch it, but I’m not sure.  It was a beautiful movie, and a good story (I think), but it was one of those where I just could not hear the dialogue.  ???? So I’m not exactly sure of everything that was going on, but I got the major story line ,which was about the poet Dylan Thomas being in love with two different women – his wife and an old girlfriend – during the war.  I think I’ll probably sent it back to Netflix today, actually.

Today I work from 9 – 5:30, then Brent’s picking me up at 6:00 for another Christmas party!