Post-Christmas Post #4: Grand Central Baking Day

So there's this local bakery chain called Grand Central Bakery that I just adore. I will admit to stopping there on my way to work nearly every Friday morning of the last several years for a freshly-baked blueberry muffin and a latte. They make the best muffins--so fluffy and just the right amount of sweet with a lot of sass (I've learned it's the buttermilk in the recipe).

Anyhow, Grand Central recently published it's first cookbook and right away my trusty sidekick, Stacey, and I knew what we wanted for Christmas--that cookbook and a day of cooking. It didn't take much convincing to get a group of our teacher-friends into the kitchen for some baking. We made pumpkin bread, molasses-ginger cookies, the decadent triple chocolate cookies and decorated a slew of sugar cookies.

In lieu of gifts this year we had a festive afternoon of baking and whoopin' it up in the kitchen. Plus we ended up with enough treats to share. We're thinking of turning this into an annual tradition.


* * * * *


By the way, if you like cookbooks I think this one is worth checking out. The photos are frequent and good quality (always a requirement for me to chose a recipe), the directions are clear, and there are lots of additional baking tips and techniques to make the muffins, jammers, galettes, and such turn out perfectly every time.


* * * * *

I'm having some formatting issues here so if these pictures are all wanky I apologize!