*m*

my favorite part of the holiday season is having a reason to bake an obscene amount of treats. i think last season i spent several hours of every day making a goodie of some sort. this season started last week with a pumpkin pie for lincoln. i even made the crust this time (last year i bought them, sometimes it is just not worth the hassle). then i made snickerdoodles for the first time on sunday. then yesterday i made a chocolate turtle cheesecake and 2 pumpkin rolls. tonight i will be making 2 more pumpkin pies. and tomorrow an apple pie and a lemon meringue. yes, more desserts than necessary but i thoroughly enjoy the whole process.

well, most of the time.

last night i think i was jinxed. i had a pretty rough time. first off, i realized i bought the wrong kind of canned pumpkin. dang safeway tricked me and i got the "pie mix" can instead of the "pure pumpkin" can. after lincoln's insistence that it is not thanksgiving without a pumpkin roll or two, i had to run back to safeway for the right can. i had intentionally done all my shopping early saturday to beat the crowd.

i thought i would start the chocolate cheesecake before running to the store, which was a good thing because while i was melting the caramels for the bottom layer, i somehow managed to drop my oreo cookie pie crust in the sink. i still cannot figure it out. so there in my sink is a huge mess of black powder. my first reaction was to cry. why? because i am a cry baby, ok? gotta problem with that?

i took a few deep breaths, called lincoln and ranted for a few minutes, then begrudgingly went to safeway.

the next step of the cheesecake involved cream cheese. the recipe (which was in a book i got from my mom-in-law several christmas's ago and have tried something out of it every year since) said to throw ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. lesson learned: do what the recipe book says. do not think you are smarter than whoever wrote the recipe. do not think that the hand held blender that ups gave lincoln for x years of safe driving will cut it. because it won't. trust me. all it did was make the entire process even more time consuming and the cream cheese did not blend. i had to get out my hand mixer, turn it up to full speed, and i still have a slightly lumpy cheesecake. oh well. cover it with fudge syrup and pecans and no one will ever know... oh wait...

next on the agenda: pumpkin rolls. so now that i have the right kind of pumpkin i start the batter. lincoln is home by now and says he would like me to make 2 rolls. i realize i only have enough cream cheese for one roll. at first, lincoln says just skimp on the filling, but quickly realizes that the filling is what makes the roll "the roll" and is kind enough to run to safeway again. while there he calls and asks if i want chocolate chips for anything which is his way of saying without really saying it "please make chocolate chip cookies." fine.

so i'm plugging along, getting everything going for the roll. the cake part comes out smelling fabulous. the filling scrumptious. i start to spread the filling onto the cake and am about to roll it up into its roll form when i realize that for some reason, the cake stuck to the towel (you cover a linen cloth with powder sugar before rolling the cake). i cannot roll the roll. either one. both are a complete disaster. lincoln tries to help and we get these giant logs of messy cake and filling. they both taste great but are completely unpresentable.

i called it quits and went to bed pouting.

now i am scared to proceed with the remaining desserts. you can't really jack up a pumpkin pie, especially when it came in the can all ready to be mixed. dang safeway...

wish me luck. and i will post pictures of all the final desserts. i'm sure lincoln will polish off one of the rolls tonight though. he's good like that.

*side note - my leg surgery was successful! i ran 2.2 miles today with no pain. very excited.*