baking anyone...

as in, does anyone want to finish my holiday baking? i actually don't have too much more to do, just make my cutout cookies, frost them, make macaroons & chocolate cover some pretzel sticks, easy peasy. today (feeling very ambitious) my sister & i set out to make a double batch of kiflies (amazing hungarian pastry with walnut filling), cutout cookies and a few other things. We started around 10 this morning and even though we raced to the finish around 5pm we still didn't get everything finished. Now, I'm sure that some of you have no idea what kiflies are or why it would take 7 hours to make a double batch but really, the process is actually much longer. It started last night with my sister making a double batch of dough for the pastry which not only has to be made, but kneeded for a long time and then rolled into individual balls so that they can be refrigerated overnight before being rolled flat (like a mini pie-crust but paper thin), filled and then rolled back up. The process isn't necessarially difficult, the volume is. A single batch of dough and filling makes about 10-12 dozen kiflies and we made a double batch and ended up with just over 20 dozen. That means that 20 dozen balls of dough needed to be rolled, filled & then re-rolled and baked then cooled and i only have one rack in my oven so we could only bake a tray at a time. on the upside, we finished with the kiflies (thanks to mom, casi & paige for helping). lisa got all of her cut-outs made (thanks to rockne for eating a little less than 1/4 of her dough, i'll tell that story later) and i made 2 batches of buttercream frosting for her cookies. i made my batch of cutout cookie dough (thanks paula deen for our new fav recipe for that (again, i'll tell it later) and after we cleaned up the mess from that it was 5pm and lisa had to get home to go to dinner for a friend's birthday and i made tree & gingerman shaped brownies and my peanut butter sandwich cookies and got them covered in chocolate... i have a couple presents to wrap tonight and would like to make some macaroons before bed but i'm not sure if i'll get the energy to do all of that...