Pumpkin and Spice

It's been a busy two weeks! As I mentioned, I've switched to the midnight baker shift at work, Kyle and the family have been in town, and I've been fighting a wicked cold (and missed a few days of work because of it! Blegh!) Before I tell you about all that, though, I have the promised Kyle-blog! (Kyle declined my invitation to write the blog entry himself- instead he gave me the 411 and the pics so I could write it myself.)

Kyle is a wonderful guy- he's patient and understanding, he puts up with my clutter, he didn't complain when I decided to come to Utah, and he gamely tolerates my Alton Brown/Good Eats obsession. He even watches the occasional episode with me... I'm not sure he likes it as much as I do, but I do appreciate the time together.

Sorry for the recent dead air- between my recent switch to the midnight-8am shift at work, Kyle and my parents being in town, and the wicked-nasty cold I've come down with, I have had next to no free time. Rest assured that once the dust settles, I'll give you the scoop on my new shift, all the family activities, plus the promised Kyle-blog!

Hope you all had a happy and safe holiday!

Sundays are probably one of my favorite days at work- the table service restaurant isn't open on Sundays, so the bakery closes around 5pm. During the day, there are only three of us in the bakery, and we don't have to fight for counter space come 2pm when the evening crew comes in. It makes for a much mellower work day.

Today, I made another two German Chocolate Cakes, and two Truffle Cakes. (The same kinds of cakes I made yesterday.) These cakes are sold at the bakery counter in the resort, so we go through them rather quickly.

As promised, I made sure I had fresh batteries in my camera at work! I was going to try to backtrack and get pictures of the stuff I did yesterday, but a lot of it had been wrapped/frozen. So, no pictures of the apple brown sugar coffee cake, or the meringue mushrooms. However, a few things I made yesterday became parts of things I made today!

For example, yesterday I baked chocolate chip cookies. Once they were cool, I layered them on sheet trays and froze them. Today, I made those cookies into massive ice cream sandwiches. Freezing the cookies made them firmer, so they didn't break when I sandwiched them together. It also kept everything as cold as possible so the ice cream didn't melt. Even so, I had to work fast, and have several trays going at once- so I could rotate in and out of the freezer as the ice cream softened. Aww, yeah, look at that. I know there's nothing in the picture for scale, but it is a seriously huge sandwich. You can't go wrong- two made from scratch cookies, ice cream with flecks of vanilla beans... Yum.

As soon as I turned my camera on at work today, it greated me with "Battery Exhausted". Great, right? So I'll have to wait until tomorrow to take pictures of what I made.

I did want to share something I picked up on my day off! It's gotten quite cold (as I mentioned before), and I've been chilly at night- even in my flannel pjs and under my down comforter. So, I decided I needed to break down and buy another blanket. When I was in the blanket aisle, though, I found a heated mattress pad! I was so excited, because I had toyed with the idea of an electric blanket, but they're not very pretty. The mattress pad is perfect- I can keep my pretty purple comforter, and I can be roasty toasty comfy! I love it! (As you can see, Spooky and Orson love it, too! Now they have toasty bottoms!)