It's here! Better late than never!!

I’d just finished cleaning up the kitchen for the day when guess who… Santa Claus showed up in his big brown truck with my new mixer!

It’s a good thing I ran out of steam, because I still have more cookies to make so I can try it out over the weekend.  Bread will be the real test!

 

Imagine my surprise when I put it on the counter next to my old workhorse, and discovered they were the same size!  Everyone has been emailing me to congratulate me on the new one and tell me how huge the 600 series machines are!  As you can see, only the bowl is bigger, and it might just be wider at that, I’ll have to fill it and see!

I prefer the looks of my old one, and I definitely prefer the sound of it.  The old one purrs, the new one sounds a bit on the whiney side to my ears.  It has nearly twice as big of a motor as the old one, so I guess they wouldn’t sound the same, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say the new one had the little motor in it from the sound of it.  That doesn’t mean it won’t operate beautifully, I’m just sayin’…

It fits just fine under my cabinets.

I did get some more sewing done, only I can’t share pictures until after Christmas.  Hopefully I won’t forget!

Peanut butter, molasses, and pecan (whatever they’re called, I’m so tired I can’t remember) are made.  I put a few in a cookie box to snack on and I freeze the rest, that way they stay fresh over the holidays and we just thaw out more when needed.  Stale cookies, ugh.

 Those pecan thingies… I’ll have to type up the recipe.  I know everyone has a recipe for these, but this one is the best I’ve ever tried.  The molasses cookies were excellent as well, although I didn’t follow the recipe.

 

Thank heavens for pizza.  I realized around three o’clock that I didn’t have anything prepped for dinner, so I whipped up some pizza crusts and started some marinara sauce… and I have two leftover Italian sausages in the fridge, some Greek olives and mushrooms, so we’re good to go! 

Speaking of pizza crusts… if you haven’t learned to hand toss your dough yet, you absolutely must.  I used to roll mine out, because it takes a little practice to learn to hand toss them, but it makes a world of difference in the texture.  Yum!

It's late!!! For a most important date!

Yes, that would be my new KitchenAid mixer… which was supposed to be here yesterday in time for me to bake cookies today!  Now UPS tracking is showing today, probably around midnight tonight.  LOL

So meanwhile, my twenty something year old original one is getting a final workout.  It’s old, it’s grungy, but still a workhorse… but the new one has a much larger motor, so I can’t wait to try it out. I wish the new one was this color and finish, I love the way it looks like cast iron.

I made Jim his requested peanut butter cookies this morning.  Who chooses peanut butter cookies for their special Christmas cookie request?

Three new fruitcakes, this time they will last until Christmas!

And butter softening on the counter, for the next three batches of cookies.  These are all new recipes for me, old ones from Cook’s Illustrated I’ve decided to try.

Pecan crescents, I want to try their recipe as it’s made with super fine sugar like you use for crème brulée, molasses spice cookies with orange essence, and Italian rum balls.  I have a rum ball recipe, but it’s nothing like these.  This is one I’m really looking forward to trying!

I don’t roll cookies… I don’t own a cookie cutter.  I don’t even like sugar cookies, although I do love Spritz cookies, but Jim has to crank them out for my, my hand can’t handle it, so I rarely make them.  

Two more free standing lace bookmarks made, and I think I’m finished with them.  I hope anyway.  I’d like to do some more snowflakes if I have time, but I have three more cosmetic bags to make first.

One more apron

And I think that’ll do me for awhile.  When these get grungy, I’ll make some more.  I have enough fabric left over from both of them to make several pouches, so I just may do that with the scraps rather than chop them up for future scrap quilts.

Williams Sonoma is killing me!  Today only, they have the big 610 Professional KitchenAid stand mixer on sale for $299… that’s quite a bargain!  And they have it in a gorgeous cherry red!

But… there’s nothing wrong with my old one… except the fact that it’s had twenty years of hard use, and I’ve been wondering for the last couple of years how much longer it will last.  You know if I pass up a sale like this, it’ll quit next week and I’ll have to pay $499 to replace it… but if I buy the sale item, it’ll just keep running for another ten years!