Vanilla Buttercream
I spent all day Saturday making truffles. And I mean all day! I started first thing in the morning, and stopped 30 minutes before we had to leave for 2 Christmas parties that night. I thought Dave might want his date to shower and get out of her pajamas before we left.
I have a friend here who is the chocolate master. She knows everything about chocolate and cake decorating and all of that fun stuff. So I went to her house one day (brought my own centers that she gave me the recipe for) and she showed me how to dip the centers and make truffles. She has a
fancy chocolate tempering machine that tempers the chocolate. It was so much fun. I'm hooked to this hobby. I went home and made tonz of centers...250 of them. Then she let me borrow her machine for an all day dipping extravaganza. The girls helped here or there, Dave helped by having an all day date with Nate, and also making me lunch. The only time I sat all day was for 5 minutes to shovel down some lunch and then rushed back to the dipping.
Here are my helpers with the centers ready to dip. Maple fudge, caramel, chocolate chip cookie dough, vanilla buttercream, orange buttercream, chocolate buttercream and chocolate mint buttercream.
My friend showed me a discount website to order gourmet chocolate. I bought a 10 pound block of chocolate and I've never seen anything like it! I wish I got a picture of it before stabbing into it.
Maple Fudge
Chocolate Buttercream
At the end of the dipping day, I handed the girls a bag of Oreos and let them dip away. They had so much fun.
This picture has nothing to do with chocolate - except that it is sooooooooo sweet! This was a couple weeks ago during our first snow storm. Another big storm is coming in tonight.
Ashlyn and Sadie showing sporting their new Christmas pajamas. This is a tradition from when I was little. The girls have too many pajamas from last Christmas. I knew they didn't need more pajamas - but I just had to - for tradition's sake.
From left to right: Ashlyn - the angel. Sadie - Mary. Me - the donkey. Nate - Joseph. Sister Kenzler - a noisy lamb. Dave - photgrapher and narrator.
Mary and baby Jesus - she took the job so seriously.
Christmas jello that we had with our Christmas Eve dinner. I wanted to cut a bunch of Christmas trees, but one was hard enough - with a cookie cutter that didn't go as deep as the jello did.
