We were due to leave for the beach immediately following the Week Seven sale on Saturday, so I tried to keep the prep as simple as possible to allow for packing and organizing and general pre-vacation madness. Traveling with 2 boys, a husband, and a dog is complicated enough, but we also had to get out early enough on Saturday to drop the parrot off at the vet for boarding. Everything was timed like a Swiss watch and very delicately calibrated. I humbly posit that this is not the best frame of mind in which to embark on vacation.
The obsessively pre-planned baking prep this week took the form of not only pre-measuring dry ingredients for Friday night power baking, but making actual "kits" for each recipe, thusly:
What you're looking at is a container holding separate baggies of ingredients, combined and sorted as to the order in which they are used in the recipe, as well as the pre-measured quantity of butter needed. One of the baggies is labeled as to the recipe and multiple thereof (x1, x2, etc.), as well as oven temp and the page number that the recipe is on for quick reference. If I were slightly more obsessive, I would have pre-sorted (and separated, where needed) the eggs as well. But I'm not quite that crazy. (Shut up.) As it was, it was very handy to not have to think about much aside from cracking eggs and checking oven temps. In between some final packing and picking up a rental van, the actual baking on Friday night took me a grand total of about 2.5 hours, which was a miracle.
Here are the results. In my count-down-to-final-week panic, I was convinced that I didn't have enough items for the sale, and ended up going somewhat overboard:
A double batch of Milk Chocolate Mini-Cakes, from Dorie. These are very good, but I miscalculated while assembling them. They have a ribbon of struesel inside, and I put too much batter in before the struesel, leaving me insufficient batter to top them off. I was out of milk chocolate, to boot, so I made one more batch of batter using bittersweet choc, and topped the pans off with that. You can see the darker ribbon of batter at the base of the bundt-shaped mini-cakes above. And here they are with their glaze -- I left the rose-shaped cakes au naturel.
These are very yummy indeed, and the glaze is nice and sticky. Saturday morning's highlight was watching a 4-year-old girl share one of these with her daddy on the Co-Op patio. Lots of finger licking. (These are big treats, so we sold them for $2 instead of our usual $1.)
Muffins had been a hit the prior 2 weeks, so I made a double batch of Dorie's Orange Berry Muffins. They were delicious, but inexplicably did not sell well. We brought a lot of leftovers with us to the beach, where they came in handy for breakfasts and snacks.
The recipe calls for rubbing orange zest into granulated sugar, which releases the zest's oils beautifully. I had a bag of blueberries in the freezer, which made a terrific combination.
One of my regular customers had been asking me to repeat the Peanut Butter & Jelly cookies, and as they are quick and easy, I threw them into the mix for Week Seven. Of course, this guarenteed that the requesting customer didn't show up! But they all sold, even the ones that Garrick decided should be chocolate chip faces:
Most of the faces were semi-toothless by the time customers saw them, but they didn't seem to mind.
Finally, an old favorite recipe from "The Joy of Cookies." This is a lovely little book with a terrific range of recipes. The Sesame-Anise Melts are killer. Pre-oven and post-oven:
This is a very soft, buttery cookie -- not too sweet -- delicately scented with freshly ground anise seed, and rolled in toasted sesame seeds before baking. The combination is outstanding, and I must bake these more often. I added them to the list this week because I missed them and wanted to nibble on some, but I didn't think they'd be a bit hit at the sale. Joke's on me -- every single one sold, and I didn't get to taste any. I think I'll make a batch just for me next week....
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Saturday was gorgeous, sunny and breezy, with temps in the low 80s. Beautiful weather. Week Six saw us blow past our original monetary goal for the bake sale, so I put an extension on our poster for Week Seven and a revised goal of $800:
The table was a bit crowded with all of the choices, but I managed to squeeze everything in.
The sale itself was fairly uneventful. Lots of visitors and friends, but a relatively slow day. Still, we made about $100, and I packed everything up a smidge early so we could get on the road to the beach! the beach! the beach!
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