Christmasin' Me Crazy

Once upon a time, Christmas was the most relaxing time of year. No school, lots of free desserts, parties with family & friends, & excessive hours of TV....the days when I did none of the work and reaped all the benefits. I always use to think Mom was just throwing herself a pity party when she said she was exhausted from cooking all day around Christmas time, but now I feel her pain. Guess this means I might be an adult after all ....bleh. Juggling gift shopping, parties with family & friends, parties with boyfriend's family & friends, baking for loved ones & for order, & interviewing for the Advocate all in the same week was a whirl-wind.
And my baking perfectionism....lets just say it hasn't been getting along with baking deadlines. The day before Christmas Eve, I was so delirious I started speaking in an Indian accent to myself while trying to figure out where to store my 30+ croissants in my miniature kitchen. But, if "crunch-time" baking was the challenge.... then I said bring it on. The 3 days before Christmas I stayed up 'til 2 am & got up at 7 am, dropped one layer of carrot cake on my kitchen floor at 1 am, and ate only 2 meals a day. But I did it and succeeding was worth the physical and mental stress. Oh yea, it doesn't hurt that I's obsessed with baking either.

Enough of my blabbing, here are my lovely creations that I slaved over until the bags under my eyes drooped down to my chin, some of which I can barely remember making, all of which were delicious!!

King Cakes Galor!
I made 5 king cakes the week before Christmas. Baton Rougians' dedication to Louisiana tradition is out of control: LSU, football, Saints, king cake, gumbo....you name it, the people love it, and they'll do anything to have it.
My first sold king cake to my pre-med friend & third? cousin, Mary Grace. She got a traditional cinnamon sugar in a lovely pink box, cake boxes were a gift from my brother for Christmas.
2 Cinnamon Pecan Christmas King Cakes for a Dr. at Pennington! I gift wrapped!!


Another Christmas king cake for my aunt and uncle!
Christmas Berry Surprise Cupcakes
Sour cream cake with raspberry, blackberry, or strawberry surprise centers! I found it best just to use straight up frozen fruit for this, no strings (i.e. juices/syrups) attached.
So you wondering how did I get so many different sizes....overfilling the cups, only fill the cups about 4/5 full or else you get a huge mushroom top cupcake, the professionals use an ice cream scoop to make sure all cupcakes have the same amount of batter...I don't have one :(
Another tip, if you are making cupcakes for a health conscious group....make mini's like the LSU color ones here, even if you're on a diet, who can say no to one bite-sized cupcake! You will end up with less left overs for sure!
This order was for a friend, Matt Dardenne, peanut butter calls and LSU mini suprise cupcakes, I threw in giant monster cookie (oatmeal, peanut butter & trailmix) as lagniappe.
Pecan Pie
Everyone likes their pecan pie a little different. My mother likes hers full of pecans, I like mine with pecans at the top and a sugary base beneath. This one was made using a recipe given to me by Bingham's mom, Mrs. Vickie Giamalva. It's from Camelia Grill & the crust was homemade by myself. I made this one for my friend from work, Tiffany.
A trick that I did not use here is to place foil over just the crust to keep it from over browning.

Dinner Rolls
I tried a recipe from a holiday Taste of Home magazine for a family dinner. I suggest using salted butter rather than unsalted for rolls. It gives them a bit more flavor, although you may have to let them rise for longer since salt hinders yeast activity.

Croissants
My second go round with these fluffy, buttery and flaky babies. Creating the layers requires about 5 rounds of folding and rolling out a block of butter covered in dough. I figured out that each croissant has about a 1/2 stick of butter in it....but you only live once and they taste AMAZING. You can see a step by step from my New Baking Horizons post.
Be careful, these need to be baked in baking sheet with raised edges. I learned this the hard way, used a flat baking sheet, & ended up with a smoking oven and blaring fire alarm. Croissants also bake quickly due to their high fat content so they need to be monitored during baking or else the masterpiece you just worked on for 5+ hours will burn...which kinda happened to me last time.
Never stretch the dough with you hands always use a rolling pin since the warmth of your hands will melt the butter. I also watched a tutorial on youtube on how to roll these up.
I made 2 batches so I had a ton but I figured if I was going to do that much work it better be worth it.

Peanut Butter Balls
So rich and delicious. My mom, sisters and I always use to pile in the kitchen before Christmas and make these together, rolling the balls and dipping them in the chocolate. I found out this go round that doing it solo is rather tedious and less enjoyable. When I finished the chocolate dipping and resigned to my bed at 2 am, I realized baking with company is really the best part of baking.

So I didn't go through all the recipes for these goodies but I will in the future as I have noticed that some people enjoy using the blog as a "cookbook" of sorts. Lots more to come, at least until school starts :). Lick those plates clean people!