Thanksgiving 2010

For those of you who have read previous posts, you know how much I love to play with paper. I had made a whole slew of coasters in matching boxes maybe 6 months ago (or more, I always lose track of time). The first time I made the caramallows recipe - from Better Homes and Gardens magazine - it made a ton, and I was quickly realizing that my efforts to lose weight were going to go down the tubes if I didn't get rid of them quickly. I also off-load a lot of treats to my neighbors across the street, but even after giving them a plate full of caramallows, there were too many left! Anyway, I am making this story really long, but I gave some to Roman's speech therapist, and I wanted them to look nice so I ran downstairs (this occurred to me, of course, about 10 minutes before we had to leave for therapy!) and dumped the coasters out of a box and put four caramallows in the box and tied it with string. It looked so beautiful, that an idea was born. I remembered last year in BH&G they had a spread on mini-pies. I really liked the idea, and when I thought about combining a fun box with a mini-pie, I loved the idea!!

Mom, my favorite accomplice, found pie pans on-line for a great deal and there you have it : personal pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving!

Pies cooling on the countertop.



Packaged up and ready to give away!






Thanksgiving dinner at mom's house was great as usual. Here is the turkey hot from the oven - beautiful!



I had really been craving something chocolate for weeks before Thanksgiving. Knowing this, Mom asked me to bring a chocolate dessert. Well, I had all of these ideas going on in my mind of new techniques I wanted to try and how could I get the max chocolatey-ness out of one dessert. Well, this is what I came up with. It was a four layer cake, filled with chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache, chocolate buttercream, and a chocolate "collar" (that is the chocolate surrounding the sides of the cake). I topped it with pecan "acorns" as a garnish. I'll be honest, I was a little disappointed with the texture of the cake - it was much drier than I expected, I think I should have brushed each layer with a sugar syrup. I also think I may have overwhipped the chocolate mousse since it was stiff instead of creamy. All that said, it was intensely chocolate, which was what I wanted!!!



The dessert table.