Sometimes I Need a Few Practice Shots

Day 75 - I know it will sound suspicious if I say that I need to practice making cookies and candy but the truth is, it's not as easy as it looks. Have you ever noticed that the cookies and other baked goods always look so beautiful in magazines and advertisements. Do your cookies ever come out like that? (If they do, I don't want to know.) Mine don't. They aren't ugly usually, but they aren't, by any means, perfect little uniform sized or shaped, and inevitably a batch or two gets burned or dropped on the floor. This being said, if I want to try out something new to give as a gift, it's not a good idea for me to wait until I actually want to give them away.
 

Case in point:  I got this really cool mold to make candy Christmas trees. Think about it, what better treat would a Living Christmas elf want to make?  The tree part is made with green colored white chocolate and then I add a big pretzel stick as the trunk. So I decided to make some this morning to take to The Workshop for a meeting we were having. First, the chocolate didn't really melt very well, then the pretzels broke, then I spilled coffee on a couple of them. They ended up lumpy, and I broke a few more "trunks" off getting them out of the fridge. Memo to me: these will have to be made well in advance, with back up pretzels on the side. The finished product wasn't too bad, although I had to trim off the excess chocolate that spread on the outside of the mold and a few of the "branches" broke off. On the upside, no one complains about having to eat the rejects. For that matter, no one complains if they aren't perfect either. Heck, unless they taste horrible (another good argument for practice) no one cares what they look like at all for the most part.

So have fun practicing your baking, and candy and treat making. Share the mistakes.  And even if the final batch isn't perfect, don't sweat it. It's a gift that comes from your kitchen and from your heart, and that will make it all the better.





What they are supposed to look like (Wilton)



And these are mine  :)

Merry Merry!!

Care'n Presents

C is for...

In the immortal words of someone I've admired since I was a wee elfling:

"C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me..."

Seriously! Oh, I know I could have said "C is for Christmas" but that seemed a little too predictable. Besides, cookies make the world go 'round. My mom's name was Ginger, as in Ginger-bread, and she made (and still makes) the best cookies in the world! No really, I checked. I personally have never met a cookie I didn't like. I guess cookies aren't too big a stretch from "Christmas" when you consider Santa's reputation. Scotty Claus likes a cookie now and then too I've heard, but since he'd rather not go the "belly like a bowlful of jelly" route, he tries to resist.

Scotty Claus thinks C should be for Conservation, but I thought that was just too big a word for a small elf like me. I decided to look it up though, and as it turns out, it is a pretty good word to know. On dictionary.reference.com it says that conservation is

"the act of conserving;  prevention of injury, decay, waste,or loss; preservation".

The Living Christmas Company is all about that idea. Our trees are not injured by cutting, they are not wasted, because after Christmas we pick them up again and take care of them, and they are not lost, because even when they get too old or too big to be Christmas trees any more we let them retire. They are planted somewhere where they will help improve the environment, or beautify an area.

Finally, last but hopefully not least, C is for Care'n Presents (that's me!) Merry July!