30 December 2009

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!
















4 comments:

Mary A. Miller said...

Looks like a FUN day, and, something to show for it at the end!

kate oates said...

Yummy!

Have you heard of Monkey Hooks?
http://www.monkeyhook.com/
Our friend who is a drywall guy told us about them. They hold a TON of weight and only make a small whole...easy to patch. I picked mine up at Hobby Lobby.

Happy New Year's!

Melissa said...

Oh this makes me nostalgic for Lancaster ... a bunch of friends used to get together for a Festivus Banking Bonanza when we would bake cookies out the wazoo! We would have had lots more cookies without Amar present, as he ate more batter than he baked. A friend of ours is/was atheist, thus using "Festivus" rather than "Christmas". Good times ...

Stephanie Breuner said...

that sounds like FUN!

Happy New Year!

Followers