Someone's in the Kitchen......

I know, I know........this blog is supposed to be about rug hooking and quilting and so far it has pretty much been about everything except that. What can I say.......Life, she can be a stern mistress and I must follow where she leads..

So......baking. Let me just say that I am not much of a cook. When my kids were home, I did cook. Nothing inspired, but food got on the table at regular intervals. However, since the kids left home, I've pretty much given up on cooking. I did my 25 years of dinners and I felt I deserved a break. I will make dinner during the summer when I'm off work, my husband cooks to fill in the blanks, and we go out to eat way too often. What can I tell you? We get by.

I do like to bake, but rarely do so because sugar is like crystal meth for me. Seriously, is there is sugar in the house, I cannot stop thinking about it. And then I eat it. And let me tell you at age 58 with no ovaries (was that too much information?) I cannot eat sugar without gaining weight. And since diet and exercise seem to be the best thing you can do to avoid a recurrence of breast cancer (I am a eight year survivor), I am trying hard to avoid it. Unfortunately, it is mostly a case of the spirit being willing while the flesh is weak, but I'm trying.

Now.....where was I....oh yes, baking. My ex-husband's wife and I are having a wedding shower for our daughter-in-law to be. Since I am still on crutches and really didn't want to have it at our house, we decided to have the shower at the cutest little tea room near us. I had been thinking of favors to give to our guests, and since I tend to leave everything until the absolute last minute, I spent a day this week googling everything I could think of to come up with some sort of idea. In the end, I used an idea I had bookmarked a while ago......cake in a jar! It seemed easy. It seemed quick. It seemed cheap. How could I lose?

So I set up to do some baking. And pretty soon, this:
became this:



I made chocolate zucchini and Michigan blueberry (with the blueberries picked by our own little hands.) You are supposed to be able to use any cake recipe that uses baking powder. You can even use cake mixes. The one piece of advice I have is to not fill up six jars with cake mix and put them in the oven without first doing a practice run to determin exactly how much cake mix you should put in the jars. I filled my jars within an inch of the top on my first attempt and they all overflowed. I then did a couple of practice jars and ended up filling the jars just a little more than 1/2 full. This may vary with the recipe and the size of jar used. So there you go.....cute little favors for our shower tomorrow.
I went to Borders this afternoon and bought three books, so I am off to do some reading.
See ya!