Housekeeping

Hi all! *dusts off blog cobwebs* 

I have a few new recipes to share, but truth be told, my food-making and recipe-sharing days have been extremely limited. There just aren't enough hours in the day, and the hours that do exist go primarily to my family, my job and my sanity (pretty much in that order, haha). Meghan is no longer posting on the blog, so basically, you're stuck with me and my meager offerings.

I love having the blog and enjoy referencing old recipes and cataloging new ones, so the blog is in no way going any where, and since Meghan contributed many of the recipes for so much of the blog's existence, the name won't change. But (as I'm sure you could already tell) new posts might be few and far between in the future.

If you're in search of some good blogs to follow, I have added three new blogs to the "Baking Blogs" blog roll on the right sidebar. They're some of my new favorites to peruse and bookmark new recipes to try. Also, if you're on Pinterest, follow me and we can share the yummy goodies we find!

So, dear readers, if you're still hanging with the blog, do you have any recipes you'd like to share? Any other food blogs I should add to the blog roll?

The things we do for love

I found some photos from my great Christmas Baking Adventure of 2010, which yielded such yummy gems as Brownie Crackles and Chocolate Caramel Cracker Candy.

While I am fully aware these were taken months ago, it's not the first time a late-night baking session has occurred in our home, and I'm certain it won't be the last. I had agreed to bake up a few plates of cookies for Tim's holiday work potluck, and I also needed some cookies to send out with gifts we were mailing the next day.

I came home from work around midnight, and Operation Bake All Night commenced. Tim was working days back then, so he went to bed hours before I was done with this project. I think I made five or six different kinds of cookies and had a pretty good routine down by the end of it. But I was exhausted. And tired of washing dishes, particularly my mixing bowls and baking sheets. And if I remember correctly, minutes after I finished the last batch, washed the dishes and covered and packed everything up appropriately, my daughter woke up. She'd been sleeping through the night for months, yet apparently the little Betty Crocker in her woke up that night and decided she wanted to party with Mommy ... at 4 a.m.

After getting Elle back to sleep, I stumbled to bed for a few hours - no time for sweet dreams, I just wanted sleep.

Ah, the life of a Baker.

Some of my creations.

Ugh.

Oven on, and it's 3:40 in the morning. Kill. Me. Now.

What's the craziest baking adventure you've had? Stayed up all night to finish a birthday cake? Promised to make dozens of cookies for a work or school function and then finished them at the last minute? Share your stories, folks - just remembering this night makes me feel a little nuts, and I'd like to know I'm not alone :)

Calling on bakers ...

As was blogged about earlier this year, Meghan and I have been busy gestating little bundles of joy for the last few months. And now, as the time quickly approaches for those babies to make their entrances in the "real world," we realize that we might, um, be a little busy for the next few months as we enter motherhood.

To keep the flow of blog posts steady even if we're up to our eyeballs in dirty diapers and sleepless nights, we wanted to put out another call for any of our fellow bakers to offer up future posts. It isn't hard or all that time-consuming to do - you just need to bake something, take a few photos of it, write a short little intro and include the recipe. It can be some new, something tried-and-true, something super easy or the most complex thing you've ever attempted - we're all about baking diversity here! And just think of all the sugary joy and gooey happiness you'll be sharing with the rest of the blogging world.

If you're interested in submitting a blog post at any time, please contact us by leaving a comment on this post or e-mailing us a easttowestbakers@gmail.com. I KNOW you all have fantastic recipes that you're dying to share, and we'd love to share them on the blog!

Baking with my brother

My husband and I were in Ohio last week for a few days, and we got to spend some quality time with a lot of friends and family. My little brother is a lot like me, and at age 11, he's old enough to help with baking but not old enough to really handle the oven. Over the few nights that I was home, we bonded over egg-cracking techniques and the importance of putting ingredients away as you use them (because Mom gets mad if you don't!).

The first night I was home, we baked the cake mix cookies, this time with chocolate cake mix and chocolate icing. Doug has renamed them "Cakies." We added sprinkles for effect.

We took some to my grandma's house the next day and talked about our mutual love of baking, as well as my 10-year-old cousin's new-found finesse with baked goods. Samantha has been churning out yummy cookies and beautiful cakes, and Doug has decided we need to have a bake-off with her, Grandma, me and Doug.

I think I take for granted how easy it is for me to crack and egg without getting shell in the bowl, and Doug was also a bit overwhelmed when I tried to explain the idea of using egg whites for a recipe (he watched me separate the egg for that recipe). But it was really good to bond with Doug over baking and to teach him some tricks of the trade as we did it.

We made chocolate chip peanut butter cake another night before my sister and brother-in-law visited. Then, the night before we left Ohio, Doug and I made Cakies again, this time with spice cake mix and cream cheese frosting.

He's a pro in training. And that family bake-off could be *quite* interesting :-)

The bad thing about baking ...

Sigh. When I gave up baking for Lent, this:


was never an issue. Back to washing dishes ...

My (disastrous) return to baking.

Sunday marked my much-anticipated return to baking. I'd given up my beloved hobby for Lent. Although I've sacrificed things like pop, TV, candy, etc. for Lent in the past, this really hit me hard. I love to bake. It's therapeutic, it's entertaining, it's satisfying.

So I was extremely excited when my baking ban was lifted and I could warm up the oven again. My husband and I decided to make an Easter brunch - just for the two of us - and I was in charge of cinnamon rolls and bacon. He handled the eggs.

So. The cinnamon rolls.

Long story short, I was working on getting other stuff ready and let the rolls stay in the oven for a few minutes after the timer went off. The timer had been set to the minimum amount of time, so I figured a few more minutes wouldn't hurt, right?

Yeah, not so much.

Tim said, "Uhhh, welcome back to baking?"

They were rather crispy. Luckily, they had icing slathered on them to mask the burnt taste, but we still knew. Sigh.

However, later that afternoon I gathered up the arsenal of supplies (seen below) I'd been stocking up on for the weeks. It was time to dive back in, and I was not just testing out the shallow end of the baking waters. Everything you see in this photo is going to be used in my first 10 days back on the baking saddle. Tune in to find out how ...