Baking Day

Welcome to "baking day" 

disclaimer1: I took these pictures on my ipod.... so to compensate for their lack of quality, I played a little (for the first time) on picik to spruce them up a bit, and I may now be obsessed. 

disclaimer 2: I live in Asia. This kitchen is not in America- 

I repeat, I did not choose for my kitchen to look this strange... it comes with the territory. 

You know it's gonna be a good day when my kitchen looks like this.... 

I have to say that we are exceptionally blessed with a "large" kitchen for where we live- and by large, I mean smaller than 98% of you who are reading this right now. But hey we do what we can with what we've got right? right. 

I have to admit- that for the almost 3 years that I lived in our house in Nashville, I don't think I went through an entire bag of flour.... maybe not even half of one. But why would I? I never needed to bake anything from scratch. 

How the times have changed- Every time I turn around, I feel like I'm going to the store to buy another bag. I think we go through a 5 pound bag every month. 

So on this baking day, I really went for it in the kitchen. 

Starting with this INCREDIBLE recipe for..... 

Baked Peanut Butter Oatmeal.

You know it's gonna be tasty when it starts out looking like this....

{Insert incredible smells wafting through the tiny kitchen while its cooking}.... 

and then.....

Done. This lasted about 5 minutes at our house. It was more like dessert then breakfast. 

  

Success. Thanks for the incredible recipe Tidy Mom.

On to the next endeavor....

Remember this fall when I made these with Ashlei? Well I've grown in my cooking skills, and ventured out into the world of baking making all by my lonesome. And I have to say they were most definitely a success! 

Thanks to this fantastic and simple recipe from Finding Joy in My Kitchen. 

Success. 

And now onto....

My sweet friend Kristin and her grandmother used to make these cookies together. It was my first adventure in cooking with molasses and I have to say they are sososo tasty! Thanks Kristin!

And a baking day wouldn't be complete without a DELICIOUS loaf of bread in my beloved bread maker.

I'm pretty sure that this is where a large majority of our flour ends up. At 3 cups a loaf for this tasty bread, it takes less than 6 loafs to go through a bag of it. 

I tell ya, Ashlei told me that she didn't know how to cook until she moved over here, and while I believed her I wasn't sure it would be true for me BUT I think she may have been right. I learn something new everyday! 

Joyfully Baking All Over the Place,