Baking...the love of my life

So...it's been a while but I'm going to start shooting for once a week (come on, I'm not THAT busy and important).  Anyway, if you know me then you know how much I love to bake.  I bake when I'm happy, I bake when I'm bored, I bake when I'm sad, depressed, angry...etc.  I love it, it's like a stress reliever, it totally takes my mind off of any problem and I focus on the recipe, mixing it, measuring it, and caring for it with love. Mostly, I love to bake for other people...birthdays, baby showers, weddings, etc.  if you want to eat it you can be sure that I'll bake it for you!  (Don't go buy it at the store, my stuff is so much better.)

Baking is my passion in life and I would say that I'm pretty talented.  I rarely mess things up and it never turns out bad, I'm just lucky I guess.  I'm also very experienced at baking...probably from the age of 5 I was standing on the chair in my mom's kitchen learning how to measure ingredients and the order to which things need to be mixed together.  I was probably in the 4th grade when I cranked out my first lemon meringue pie (to this day I still don't know why I picked lemon meringue).

As we enter the holiday season I start thinking about all of the things I'm going to make this year and I get so excited!  I don't get to adventurous, I stick with the basics and my favorites.  Sometimes it's fun to try new things but for the Holiday's I say an oldie is a goodie.  I've already done two batches of my favorite pumpkin bars so I can cross those off the list...but here are a few items that I plan to work up... stay tuned for photos and descriptions of all the deliciousness!

1. Sour Cream Coffee Cake (ALWAYS a staple for Christmas morning)
2. Lemon Meringue Pie (My favorite)
3. Ranger Cookies (Dad's favorite)
4. Chocolate Chip Cookies (Husby's Favorite)
5. Pumpkin Cheesecake (My mom and I tried this last year and it turned out excellent!)
6. Gingerbread Men (because it's not Christmas without them)
7. Spritz Cookies (my mom's spritz press is older than I am!)
8.  Ultimate Cookie Bars (indescribably good!)
9.  Pecan sticky rolls (we cheat and use the break maker at my mom's)
10. Homemade yeast rolls (same here, the bread maker is a good shortcut for these)

P.S. Just to make your mouth water here are some recent desserts...

Paula Deen's Pumpkin Bars...these are CRAZY good.

Apple Crumb pie...my made up recipe

Mom and I's pumpkin shaped Spritz cookies for Halloween!