How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

I've been off work for a little while and I've been absolutely loving it.
I've watched Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Elf, and made sugar cookies, chocolate espresso snowcaps, coconut brandy cookies, peppermint fudge, gingerbread men, champagne truffles (didn't add enough chocolate, may need to do a fixer-upper mission), and I currently have early grey tea cookies and green tea cookies in the freezer awaiting their turn in the oven.

A week and a bit ago, the baking extravaganza was kicked off with the most intense chocolate cheesecake the world has ever seen.

My friend Kashyap brought this idea to my attention last summer and we we had been trying to plan a date to create it. Unfortunately in the summer I had to cancel our original bake-day as I picked up this weird awful stomach bug from the bar I had been to the night before and couldn't get out of bed.

Just terrible luck.

Anyway, a couple of Fridays ago we finally put the recipe to the test and created that monster which you see above you.

Oreo crumb crust.

Cream cheese middle filled with pieces of mars bars and skor bars.

Topped with a thin layer of butterscotch.

Topped with a slightly thicker layer of melted chocolate.

Topped even further with more peices of mars bars and peppermint patties.

We brought it into work with us the next day and honestly could not even finish a sliver of a piece in one sitting. It is the most intensely rich cake one could ever imagine eating.

No joke, one of the guys we were working with is diabetic and he gave himself an injection of insulin just so he could try some!

Hahaha and true to my love of nursing I wanted to ask him if I could do the injection for him. But I held back.

This past Saturday marked the 5th Annual Bad Christmas Sweater Party.

It was amazing.

John made meatballs and I made pulled pork and ciabatta.

We tried not to have as much food as last year (waaayyy too many leftovers) so our spread consisted of some chips, those empty bowls were later filled with pot-stickers, spring rolls, and some other type of Asian hors d'oeuvres which I forget. There was some keilbasa and a cheese platter which disappeared almost before it was put on the table.

Fontina (very reasonably priced), goat cheese, a bit of cheddar, and brie baked with apricots and figs, drizzled with a bit of maple syrup.

And since no Sweater Party would be complete without a group shot:


We thought the staircase would make it look like a really nice family portrait :)



Well that's all for today - I've got to get those cookies in the oven!