So, while I always find myself with no time to accomplish what needs to be accomplished in day to day life, somehow, I manage to carve out a few minutes to do something completely unneccessary and possibly crazy - go figure. I have a dream...well, a strong desire, maybe a wish...anyway, I like to bake. I'm not that good at it, but I'm not horrible either. I really like to decorate baked goods - again, I'm not that good, but I'm getting better. It's fun - and frustrating, but mostly fun. And, I thrive on the compliments when something turns out good. I think it is going from being a working, professional woman to being a stay at home mom that causes me to NEED positive feedback from those outside of my house. I used to get positive feedback/reinforcement pretty regularly at work - and while hugs and kisses from my kids are worth gold, I crave more - is that horrible? I feel like it's horrible, but I can't help my desires. Anyway, I have a good friend named Martha. Truth be told, I've never spoken with her, but I've watched her on TV plenty and our one-sided pen pal relationship (she sends me e-mails several times a day) are enough - for now. Martha sends me some crazy recipes. Some of them look disgusting (at least to my very not sophisticated palette) and some look delish! I dug up an old e-mail from her today (yep, I save the good ones) and decided to try it. Golden Toffee Blondies - yum! I don't like nuts in food, so I omitted the walnuts (yuck). According to the recipe, step one was to preheat the oven - got it. Next, butter a pan - put down parchment paper, butter and flour the paper. Seriously? That seems like overkill. I have some wax paper and a can of non-stick spray - that will have to do. Now to brown a ton of butter. Exactly how brown? I don't know. How long will it take to brown the butter? I don't know. Will the baby ever stop crying and pulling on my legs - probably not. Well, the butter got kind of brown, but not black - success!
One of the main ingredients in this recipe is brown sugar. While I like baking and I'm trying to do more of it, I don't do a lot of it, so I had to "find" the brown sugar. It really wasn't that old, I bought it at Christmas time (only 2 months ago). It had never been opened. However, apparently once a bag of brown sugar enters my house, it has to turn to rock - awesome. The package says you can heat the brown sugar up in the microwave to soften it - but once it cools it turns to rock again - so don't dilly dally. I guess I dilly dallied, because as I was mixing everything up, there were brown sugar rocks that refused to be broken. Actually, there were a couple of brown sugar boulders too - but, I'm thinking the heat in the oven should melt them. No, you say, that doesn't work...awesome! Something tells me this will not be one of the recipes I get a ton of kudos for. I guess at the end of the day, it's not a total loss - the kids will probably eat the blondies and if they don't what's a couple more pounds on my already increasing waist line?
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