The Bake Off :)

For the bake off, I didnt make anything out of my recipe book, but believe me, I had enough to do! Kate, the one who invited me over, asked me to make a cheesecake called Chocolate Liquer Cheesecake. She wanted me to make it because it was yet another :) coworkers b-day, and she has been wanting to have this cake. I gotta tell you, I was quite nervous to make this cheesecake, as I had never made one before, and Kate just thinks that I am a great baker (thank you Kate for the confidence), but I was not so confident when she told me that her mom always gets stressed when making this one. Oh man, Im thinking, how am I gonna be able to do this? There was a lot of pressure, and I was very nervous. So this cake has chocolate "bisquits" or cookies, butter and coffee liquer as the base, cream cheese (lots and lots of it), sugar, chocolate, whipped cream, and more coffee liquer and some peppermint liquer mixed in. YUM! Here I am, contemplating the recipe and hoping that all will go well. :)

Here it is with everything except the whipped cream. Already looks yum yum yummy!

So I forgot to mention that the whipped cream, was just cream that had to be whipped. Oh yeah, and Matt wont let me not mention this part - I thought that we had the right kind and the right amount of whipped cream. When I realized that I didnt, guess to had to be runner to get the right stuff? Matty of course! The store is not very close to where we were either, so he literally had to RUN to the store and get back in time so the mixture didnt get ruined. Now he can say that he contributed to the bake off haha :)

Me mixing in the whipped cream.

Here is Kate, although you cant see her face, but making her peanut butter cookies, which turned out super yummy, even though we were all having issues baking things, thanks to the different climate. I never realized how much climate changes can effect baking.

Here is my victory pose, after Kate told me the cheesecake looked and tasted exactly the way it was suppose to! Oh success!

Here is what the finished product looked like. We had it yesterday, and man it was so great! Nick appreciated it (b-day boy), and we paired it with canned whipped cream and frozen raspberries. YUM-O!

Here is Tiffany, who is making her yummy savory cookies, which had cheddar cheese and jalapenos in them. I have to stay I wasnt too sure about these, but YUM YUM YUM. I even got the recipe from her, so I can make them sometime.

Here are the three bakers of the day. Me, Tiff and Kate. We are already pretty exhausted by this point, and we arent even close to done with our baking adventures.

Kate eating her cookie batter before she even baked them. How dare her lol. She will probably kill me for putting this picture up too! :)

I did lie a little bit before when I said that I didnt make anything out of my recipe book. I wanted to make cake balls compliments of Bakerella. Her website says to make any kind of cake that you want, so I chose one out my recipe book. It was chocolate with white chocolate chips, and chocolate frosting. So I made it the day before the bake off, just so I wasnt taking up too much of the oven on the day. I am so glad I did, not for that reason, but because I was already exhausted and I only made the two things! So here are the cake balls before they got dipped.

Here they are being dipped in chocolate melts.

Heres Tiff's finished savory cookies.

Haha, although Im not asleep here, I was sure wishing I was!

Kate's yummy peanut butter cookies.

Tiff also made chocolate chip cookies and M&M cookies. Man they were all so great!

We had such a fun day and we all got to enjoy them on Saturday then also yesterday for Nick's b-day. It was a lot of fun, and although note very soon, I do want to do that again! :)