Thanksgiving madness

Do I have time for this? Why no, I certainly do not! We are leaving today to go down to Asheville and have our Thanksgiving festivities tonight, because the nephew has to work tomorrow. Darned Starbucks. I am, as always, in charge of desserts and Onion Bread. I made, tried to make, had no luck making  spent hours and hours last night on three desserts, and one of them turned out. Maybe. I hope. It is pretty, at least. And SEEMED to have cooked properly. 

Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this pretty dessert. 

OH! Here it is! I got it from Cooking Light and they have a picture on their website. Which I will steal. 

It is called Salted Chocolate Ganache Cake, and my salt does not look like this at all. But it still looks okay. I just about had a meltdown at like midnight, when after two other baking disasters I could not come up with a way to transport the one dessert that DID turn out. I put it back into the cake pan after cooling it, but nothing, NOTHING would cover it without fucking the frosting all up. And although I do somewhere own an ancient Tupperware cake carrier, do I have a clue as to where it is? Why, no. Of course I don’t. Somewhere in the horrifying hoarder-like basement is my guess. I did not see it upon a quick inspection, and if I had found it I’m sure it would have taken some sort of hazardous materials operation to clean. 

Finally, FINALLY, I came up with a solution. 

It’s the Not-Patented-But-Should-Be Hillbilly Cake Carrier! Too bad you can’t really see what it looks like. It’s a tin baking pan that I bent all up to fit over the top like some sort of alien abduction avoider foil hat, then I stuck it all inside TWO great big ziplock bags. Which thank god I did find way back in a cabinet. Because it was supposed to be stored in an airtight container if it was not going to be consumed immediately. 

So, hopefully that one worked out. But it’s small, just a one-layer 9" round cake, so I wanted to take something else too. Not that we won’t  have enough dessert, but– weHAVE to have more than enough. I think we’re contractually obligated. I get emails from Yoga Journal, and they sent me a recipe for Cranberry Bars. They sounded delicious. And not too complicated. Kind of like Lemon Bars. So I tried that.

DISASTER. I have no idea what happened but I think it was something to do with the initial cranberry cookery, when you boil a pound of cranberries with a half cup of water till they are soft, then process them in the food processor till they are liquidy, then strain them through a sieve to remove any non-liquidly stuff. I wonder if I cooked them too long – I did it for ten minutes as instructed, but they were very thick and even after being food-processed, they would not strain through the sieve. At ALL. I food-processed them some more and added like a CUP more water — finally managed to extract enough of what looked exactly like ketchup to use. That must have been what went wrong, since everything else seemed to work. Anyhow, they were supposed to set like lemon bars, and although they certainly looked set, when I tried to cut them they were all runny inside. Ewwww. They also did not have the pretty red hue I expected, but instead were more the color of Pepto Bismo. And they tasted like lemon bars, no real cranberry flavor at all. Anyhow, had to just toss them after all that work. Decided to make some mint cookies that I have made before – of course they turned out ugly and weird-textured. I used dark brown sugar instead of regular brown – that probably was why. I thought it wouldn’t matter, but they were weird. They didn’t taste as good as they should have either but I put them in the freezer so we wouldn’t eat them all, and Baker B discovered them this morning and oddly enough they are GREAT frozen. They taste just like Girl Scout Thin Mints. Well, they are supposed to taste like that, and usually they do – these were  a little … dark tasting. Almost burnt although they were not burnt. Thanks, Dark Brown Sugar! But they were a lot better frozen. 

Still not suitable for Thanksgiving, though. So today I gave up and went to Stick Boy and bought a pie. Stick Boy is the best bakery EVER. They are local, and always packed, but also are always fast and amazingly friendly. And they had a gazillion cakes and pies all ready to go, so I bought a Cranberry Pecan one. Now the Onion Bread is nearly done and thank GOD cooperated and looks fine, aside from a little breaking in the braid, which I can live with. You won’t be able to tell when it’s cut. 

OOooOooo, I actually took a picture of it a few years ago – it even has the braid issue.

And I have GOT to go now. It’s 2:00, we have to leave at like 3 or as soon as we can when Baker B gets home (luckily I took today off). He’s already been home once and we took a bunch of junk – mostly the old gutters that have laid in the side yard since we put on new gutters last summer- to the dump. Because I’ve got to take Daddy’s truck back to him today, and our motto is Never Do Anything Like Go To The Dump Until The Very Very Absolute Second You Possibly Can. 

SO off we go and I won’t have internet and won’t be back till Friday night, so Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans and Happy Whatever You’re Doing The Next Few Days to everyone else!