Thanksgiving Spread

Thought I'd let you all know that I successfully cooked Thanksgiving Day dinner according the "the plan". We were a 1/2 hour later than I planned to eat but that's exactly how long it takes to burn off a small piece of the plastic turkey bag that hit the top oven burner... That was the only mishap besides the fact that I didn't leave enough time to cook the green beans (they just got served later). I'm very excited that I also got to use my china and crystal for the first time ever!

Remember to use coupon code Black12 through Monday when checking out in my shop!

Sweet Potato Pie - Really?

I don't eat Sweet Potatoes - love the pretty vines, will plant them but, nope, no orange potatoes for me... My in-laws asked for sweet potato casserole - um... I had to start making phone calls. I called my friend who's mother makes everything from scratch. Turns out, it's my friend who makes the sweet potato casserole! Win! That means it's no fail (Sorry, Dudders)! Best part - it's topped with peeps

Wait... exactly HOW MUCH butter? There's almost a whole cup of butter in that between the sweet potatoes and the pecan topping! And sugar? There's less sugar in the 3 pies and pudding than in this "casserole". So here's the recipe:

3 cups of mashed sweet potatoes (but who prints a recipe on how to cook mashed sweet potatoes? Turns out, there's no difference between sweet potatoes and white potatoes in cooking them)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup milk
couple of beaten eggs
splash of vanilla

mix and put in 2 qt casserole dish (um... yeah, so a 1 quart casserole dish ain't cutting it)

top with this mixture:

1/3 cup melted butter
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans

bake for 30ish minutes at 350, add peeps and bake for 5 more minutes

Ready for the oven tomorrow - will add snowman Peeps

Pre-Holiday Baking

I'm the queen of "semi-homemade" - that Sandra Lee's got nothing on me! This morning, I checked me email  to realize that I had signed up to bring pumpkin pie to my son's class tomorrow! AHHH! I love making pies but I had to brave the grocery store the week of Thanksgiving - ALONE! duh-duh-dun... but I'm great at making pies so this shouldn't be a problem!

Note that this is for my son's kindergarten class and it's after lunch during snack time so I think small is probably better. I usually fake a pumpkin pie by using graham cracker crust sprinkled with cinnamon (really, how many people eat a pumpkin pie for the crust?) but the store didn't have the mini graham pie plates or even mini pie plates so I came up with a great, on-the-spot idea - this is for a bunch of kindergartners - Pilsbury refrigerated cookie dough! And I'm dubbing it "pumpkin pie a la cookie" (there would be accent marks in there somewhere if I could figure it out).

Home from the store, I made the filling from the Libby's Pumpkin recipe (sub McCormick's pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon, ginger and cloves) and set it aside to rest. I'll put some cookie dough in a cupcake paper and pressed it to the cupcake pan, topped it off with 1/4 cup of pumpkin pie filling and followed the directions for mini pumpkin pies. I hope they turn out good but I wouldn't know since I don't eat it! update: doing it again, I'd probably bake the cookie dough a little bit so it doesn't bubble up.

PS - do you think speed bake will help?

Holiday Crocheted Baby Bonnet

Update: The Pumpkin Pie a la Cookies were a BIG hit! Several kids asked for seconds!