Baking Bonanza

Baking Bonanza
Originally uploaded by The Stitchin Sheep.

Why, it's a regular ole bakery around here. Tomorrow is the American Women's Group Thanksgiving potluck, and I'm ready! Not only did I volunteer to make a few knitted goodies for the charity sale, but I was also suckered into (okay, well, somebody called and asked) baking something as well (you never really have to twist my arm hard to get me to bake).

I was up earlyish this morning and had a hankering for pancakes. Yeah, I'm telling you about the stuff that's not in the picture first. I really wanted to try this recipe I've had for a while that serves the pancakes with an apple sauce/syrup. Problem is, I didn't have any apple sauce. So, I enlisted our favorite husband to chop up some apples. A few minutes in the pressure cooker (love that thing!), and we had apple sauce all ready to go.

Breakfast was tasty, but I all that leftover apple sauce to deal with. You can only eat so much of that in a week, so I bottled a bit and then made apple butter out of the rest. Yum (well, yum for later)!

Then, it was on to the baking spree for the potluck. First, I made a huge (and I really mean enormous) ball of dough. That sucker was fun to knead. I've never made more than 2 loaves at a time, and it was interesting to change things up a bit. This was a batch big enough for four loaves. Three of them became cinnamon swirl bread (center in the photo) and the other became cinnamon rolls (left and bottom right). Those will get sold at the charity bazaar tomorrow (yeah, we'll be taking our commission, of course). While all that was rising, I put together a little pie (top right).

That pie is interesting, too, and I'm really curious to know what it tastes like. I didn't have any pecans on hand, but that's my husband's favorite pie. I did, however, have a ton of fresh walnuts still in their shells. So, I sat down with my meat mallet (the kids seem to have run off with the nutcracker - but it's better for working off steam when you whack at them with the mallet, anyway). So, this thing's REALLY from scratch. The only thing I didn't do was gather the nuts myself, but my mother-in-law did, if that counts for anything. Anyway, so, I modified a really delicious recipe I have for pecan pie (some of the modifications include maple syrup, which is the best way to make pecan pie, and the addition of cranberries, because I love them with walnuts). Well, see tomorrow how it turned out. I'll just have to make sure I get some.