Baking for Turkey Day

I am so ready for Thanksgiving I can hardly stand it. As much as I enjoy being with my family on Thanksgiving, I was really looking forward to waking up this morning and spending the day in my favorite room of the house...my kitchen. I was able bake all of my goodies a day ahead of time so my stuffing can have my full attention tomorrow. I decided to make my pie dough first since I had doubts on how it would turn out. I have only made a homemade pie crust a couple of times and I have not yet been 100% satisfied with the results. Since I made it first, I still had time to recover if I blew it. Yesterday I went shopping for a pastry cutter. Of course I could have used a fork, but I am a serious baker and I need a pastry cutter, right? (Truly, I needed it to rev up my confidence and at least make me feel like I knew what I was doing.)

Here is my beautiful dough all rolled out. Still working on getting it to a perfect circle. Please disregard my overuse of flour...for some reason it looks like way more in the picture than was actually used. I swear I used a lightly dusted surface, it just all squished out to the sides.

I was worried about getting the dough from the counter to inside the dish without tearing or breakage, but I just folded in to a small square and gently folded it out into my dish (inherited from my grandmother by the way). Be patient and it will work perfectly. After all my googling for the perfect pie dough, I ended up using Ina Garten's. It worked out great!

Here I decided to get creative and decorative and use one of my fall cutters from last year (that I just had to have) to cut small flowers around the edge of my pie. Nice touch I think.

I poured my filling into my crust and outlined some pecan halves I had as extra to make it "holiday worthy". I was a little disappointed that the filling did not come all the way to the top of the crust. The recipe said it was for a 9 inch pie plate...I guess that is what I get for testing a new recipe. I used the recipe from the Pie Winner from Martha Stewart's Pie Contest this year. Obviously I used a different dough, and I also left out the toffee bits, but most of the same principles still apply. Time for baking.

Here we are. The finished product. Don't be too critical, it's my first homemade pecan pie. I hate not knowing what the center looks like, but maybe I'll take photo's tomorrow when it is getting enjoyed...I figure running or dense, Brian and I will eat it.


Ok. Moving on to the Pumpkin Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting. I was inspired to make this cake by the November/December 2009 Cooking with Paula Deen magazine. By the way, you should totally spend the $4.99 on this one because there are tons of good looking recipes in there. I have all of her magazines this holiday season (and last) and I have found the most potential in this one. I started the batter with my new hand mixer that I also bought yesterday...I have had my other one for 4 years and not that they ever go bad, but mine broke and I use that thing all the time. I have a fancy Kitchen Aid mixer, but sometimes you just need the ease and convenience of the good ole hand version. It was quite a difficult purchase by the way, who knew there were so many options and price ranges. I almost bought an $80 9-speed version until I woke up and realized that I would never need 9 speeds. 5 are fine, thank you, and only $40.



Added the wonderful pumpkin now...and oh how the smell is filling my kitchen. Oh, maybe that was my new Orange Pumpkin candle. Lovely.



Ok, my cake is in the oven...what to do...what to do. Oh, I'll make some sugared cranberries and rosemary that I already have on hand to decorate my cake! No, I unfortunately did not think of this myself...thanks Paula.


Ok, they are baked and gorgeous. Didn't quite get them on to my cooling rack like I wanted, but it's hard to do without my hubby to help. They do look gorgeous though don't they...


Here we are...the big Ta-Da. It looks so divine...I can't wait to cut me a slice tomorrow.


Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!