I've been busy?

Long time, no update! Ah well, it's been pretty crazy with graduation, the holidays and a niece's birthday. I almost lost my baking touch (gasp!) but I think it may have been salvaged in the last week. My most recent baking exploits:

- Thanksgiving: a chocolate meringue pie. It was my first time baking a pie (though not a first for the pie crust), and my first time making meringue. The recipe looked easy enough, but I think it should have been more specific as far as how long to let the chocolate mixture go on the stove. My chocolate never thickened, even after freezing. The meringue, while delicious, also didn't spread well, so it looked like little icebergs of meringue floating on a chocolate ocean. Delicious according to all and completely devoured by the end of the night, but a bit of a failure in my opinion.

- Pre-Christmas: sugar cookies. The dough was made by my sister and I did the rolling and cutting (very soothing). The cookies themselves weren't sweet enough, but her icing compensated. The only problem was that the icing wouldn't harden, allowing you to stack the cookies. So when I decorated cookies with friends, I made a new icing that advertised itself as perfect for cookies because it hardens quickly. One problem: way too much crisco! It was all you could taste and the tupperware containers were impossible to clean with all that grease! It was good fun though (see picture), as was making creative and hip ornaments for my friends' tree.

- Christmas: Snowball cake. Another fantastic success thanks to Kraft Foods! The recipe was about as simple as it gets, but super delicious with the cream cheese surprise and crunchy coconut. The cake also comes out super moist.

- Soup night: rosemary bread. My first-ever bread and it got rave reviews. A great accompaniment to any soup, this bread is supposed to be an imitation of Macaroni Grill's bread, though most people said its better. I would recommend this recipe to anyone, first-time bread makers or seasoned bakers!

Will do my best to keep up with the blog. Now that I'm done with school (!!!), I'll have a lot more time to try new recipes. A delicious basket of cookies could be just the trick to getting that new job....