I am baking right now. This can be frustrating and satisfying at the same time. For example, I have never made meringue cookies before. I loved them when I was a kid when my JW mom made them. Those cookies just melted in the mouth -- pure sugar high.
Why is it I cannot get egg whites to peak nicely? Did I not let the eggs come to room temp? Did I accidently get a wee bit of yolk in the whites, contaminating the whites with yolk, which adds unwanted protein to the mix? Did I over beat the eggs? Any and all of those things could have happened.
I think I salvaged them. I made chocolate coffee meringue cookies. Only made 16. The recipe says yield is 24. Yield never matches reality. I guess if I had gotten the mixture whipped up properly it would. Because of the extra sugar I put in, it flattened out more instead of the nice round ones in the picture. I dipped them in bittersweet chocolate and I just got them out of the fridge. We tried one. It wasn't the little round pieces of heaven, but they tasted good and still melt in the mouth. The other 15 are in their container for family christmas tomorrow night.
I just took out two raspberry chocolate cheesecakes out of the oven. Those are cooling now and I will make a chocolate sauce for those. I think I will freeze those when that is done. After they thaw a bit, they have the consistency of frozen yogurt.
Still have some fudge and some chocolate chip cookies to bake. Toni (my fiancee) and I are baking the cookies together. She "hates" me because my chocolate chip cookies are better than hers (all has to do with how it is mixed together, even with same ingredients).
Tomorrow we are taking the easy road and just putting a store bought ham in the oven, though I am making homemade mashed potatoes. I just thought about it, I will also have to make some gravy since I am not making any beef or pork. Sigh. At least it won't be at our house this year.
We have an Andy Williams Christmas DVD in the player that I bought Toni last year. The guy sings well but he is strange.
Anyway, it sure is nice not to have to worry about you know who (Grinch... aka WTBTS).
Merry Christmas everyone.
Snakes (Rich )