One Day More

Well hello all. I'm set to submit my dissertation tomorrow, how you like them apples? It's not due until Tuesday, but a combination of I work really hard, I want to get it out of my life before another weekend goes by, and my supervisor has decided to (without telling me!) leave the country and not answer my last week and a half of emails and I set this time aside to make any changes he would be giving to me, has resulted in this joyous occasion. I have several things on which to report, those being my semester of dancing, what I've been baking, a British lesson, and general updates on my life over the past month, including reflection on turning (gasp!) 25. I'll save reflection on completing my Masters until I know I've passed, which won't be until February at the earliest. So, something to look, ehrm, forward to.

Let's start with what I've been making. Here is a fun idea. Use leftover Thanksgiving turkey to make turkey fajitas. Basically make fajitas like you would normally, but you don't have to take the first step of cooking the meat. Just be aware that you won't be cooking for a very long time, mine was just a bit overdone, which makes the veggies a little mushy and the turkey a little dry (cause face it, its a dry poultry anyway). But, it effectively used up all turkey we had laying around, and it was really good.

Did I mention Thanksgiving?? Well, I had one here, I just made the turkey and gravy, mulled wine (not very impressive, just used seasoning packets and cooked it in the wine for a good long time) and green bean casserole, which was really yummy. Other people brought the other parts, sweet potatoes and other veggies and such. Sadly there is no corn bread in this country but we got on ok without it. And the whole process was a million times easier than last year, as I used a frozen turkey and not one that had feathers and smelled like a swamp. Delight.

For my birthday I got ambitious and made sugar cookies. Yikes! Roll out cookies are a million times harder than drop cookies. My recipe was, from the Joy Of Baking website:

Sugar Cookies:

3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For sugar cookies: in a separate bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda. In the bowl of your electric mixer (or with a hand mixer), beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3 to 4 minutes). Add the eggs and vanilla extract and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and beat until you have a smooth dough. Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about one hour or until firm enough to roll.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove one half of the chilled dough from the refrigerator and, on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1/4 inch (1 cm). (Keep turning the dough as you roll, making sure the dough does not stick to the counter.) Cut out desired shapes using a lightly floured cookie cutter and transfer cookies to the prepared baking sheet. Place the baking sheets with the unbaked cookies in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to chill the dough which prevents the cookies from spreading and losing their shape while baking. Note: If you are not going to frost the baked cookies, you may want to sprinkle the unbaked cookies with crystal or sparkling sugar.

Bake cookies for about 8-10 minutes (depending on size) or until the edges are just starting to brown. Remove from oven and let cookies cool on baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. Frost with royal icing, if desired.

So, I 1 and a halfed the recipe. The evening before I made the dough and set it in the fridge over night. On Thursday I started cranking them out. No rolling pin, so I saran wrapped and floured a wine bottle and it worked just fine. The cookies baked a bit quicker than I thought, more like 7 minutes than 8-10. This recipe was slightly on the dry side, but I was frosting them anyway, and that made it perfect. I just used a tub of the ready made Betty Crocker vanilla icing and used little colored sprinkles on top. They were whiley, if you are pressed for time I might steer clear of the rolley kind, but that was all I had so it just took pressing them into the icing a bit before they would stick. I took my shower and got ready for the dance thing while the icing set a bit, packed them away, and they were devourer by the dance team.

So, more to come soon!

Shout out to my MAIPRs who are in massive crunch time finishing their own dissertations. Hang in there guys!