Throwing up pictures...so to speak

Happy All Souls! We are caught up in a whirlwind here but there's some serious baking going down. Will write more over the weekend, but please enjoy the images of us making soul cakes and day of the dead cookies.
-H

This little guy in the apron is Ian. I found a soul cake recipe online and we followed it...except I changed the white flour to whole wheat pastry flour and added some chopped black walnuts to some of the cakes. When they were finished cooking, I was disappointed to find they had not risen so much as a centimeter. We powder-sugared them anyway and ate them after returning from mass on Thursday night...and lo and behold it turns out they were DELICIOUS and perfect for dunking in milk or coffee. They had the grainy consistency of a shortbread cookie but were just sweet enough to be fantastic with a little bit of jam or nutella spread on them. So, even though the recipe didn't turn out anywhere near the way it was supposed to, it's still a keeper.

These are some of the Mexican Sugar Skull Cookies we made. I used my mom's tried-and-true sugar cookie recipe, cutting the sugar by half and subsituting almond extract for the vanilla she uses. I figured it was fitting, given marzipan's presence in the traditional celebration. We did two trays with lots of decoration and one tray with just the names of our friends and loved ones who have gone on before us written on them. I think my mom got a little choked up. I have to admit, this was more meaningful to me than I had initially anticipated. I definitely plan to do this every year.

Loved-ones remembered.


Ian fashions his cake to look like a donut...