domestic divas!

This semester Emily and I (Kelsey) have transformed into quite the domestic divas. Well, at least in the baking aspect. We both co-lead separate small groups, and every other week we bring dessert, and since we're on the same lead/snack schedule, every other weekend we experiment with new dessert recipes! It's been quite the adventure. It usually happens like this: we find a recipe online (often on the beloved Pinterest), get any ingredients we don't already have, pull it up on the computer and bake away! Emily usually takes the lead, she's more expert than I am.

Emily here.  Only objection to the preceding paragraph is the last sentence. I am an expert at baking a total of three recipes in my mom's oven. I am not an expert at these new recipes whose names are so long I have to look them up every time someone asks what they're eating.  Kelsey is an expert at finding such recipes.  I am glad.  It is my personal conviction that the longer the name and the more extensive the ingredient list, the better the cookies taste.  If we have to go to multiple (read three) grocery stores to accumulate exotic ingredients (read cashew butter), even better. And now back to Kelsey.

One of our more exciting baking endeavors happened earlier this semester, late Septemberish perhaps. This one wasn't for small groups - we decided we wanted to bless some of our friends/siblings at college by sending them cookies! [Addendum by Emily: Baking cookies for Laura was more about filling the big birthday box and less about blessing her.  Sorry, Lau.]  We used three different cookie recipes to make somewhere around 100+ cookies! [More like the +.] The three recipes were: pumpkin oatmeal white chocolate chip dried cherry, chocolate cookie with peanut butter filling, and cashew butter banana! Mmmm.

So, we were off to a great start of what ended up being about 4.5 hours of baking. [True. We turned off the oven at midnight.] We were in the middle of our second recipe - cashew butter banana. I was standing next to the oven (probably sneaking tastes of the batter [I saw that!]) when a huge puff of burnt-smelling smoke invaded my face. Panic. Open oven. Black cookies. How could they be burnt already? It had only been just a few minutes! I glanced at the temperature dial: 500 DEGREES?! That's right when the smoke alarm started screaming at us and we frantically opened windows and fanned the air with pillows. I guess as we were running around in our tiny kitchen - one of us bumped the dial way (WAY) up.  Oops! At least we only had one tray in there at that point. Here's what it looked like:

[These cookies are supposed to be light brown. They are not chocolate cookies. Sadly.]

Emily back again.  This evening, we tried a new recipe. Hold on, let me look up the name.  They were peanut-butter-banana stuffed peanut butter cookies.  They passed the ingredient test: I have never baked with peanut butter chips and we would have had to go to two grocery stores to find them had we started at Trader Joe's. We were smart and went straight to the Berkeley Bowl. Not smart to do it on a Sunday night, but we made it out of the store without reading the Psychology Today magazine by the register. 

[Yummy! Notice successful addition of chocolate chips and coordinated apron and shirt.]

Highest adrenaline moment: realizing we forgot to top the half-baked cookies in the oven with chocolate chips. 'Twas a quick fix though. We pulled them from the oven, strew chocolate across the pale peanutty domes, and flung the tray back in the firey roaster.  In less than 2 minutes. 
Lowest adrenaline moment: waiting for the filling to harden in the freezer. For 40 minutes.  We could have covered at least 20 trays of cookies with chocolate chips in that time.

Well, that's the news from CAKES. Here's to experiments and domestic adventures. Like living with live turtles.

-K & E