Amongst Giants

Last night was the TnT Management/Office Holiday Party and it's a potluck.... Bryan's been so busy with work that I offered to make something. After offering, I realized that bringing food to a catering company holiday party is no small deal. It must taste great! It must be presented well! It must hold well! You must make enough for everyone and not run out! Or... just make a dessert and hopefully after a few celebratory glasses of champagne, no one will judge the dessert. Luckily, with this crew, they're not too judgmental. It still feels like a big deal to me, though!

Last year, I made the Hamilton Family Cream Cheese Pound Cake. It was a hit. So, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I went with that again this year. I have to admit that it felt pretty good to walk in with the pound cake and hear "Oh yeah! You brought that again!" It's a winner.

This pound cake is awesome and easy. Typically, we serve it with apricot preserves mixed with amaretto (~1/4 c + 1T) on top of a small dob of mascarpone cheese and sprinkled with sliced almonds. Mmmmm. That's what I decided to do again this year. However, this pound cake is awesome by itself, with powdered sugar, or whatever topping you fancy. Enjoy!

Hamilton Cream Cheese Pound Cake

3 sticks unsalted butter

1 8oz cream cheese

3 cups sugar

6 eggs

3 cups self-rising flour or cake flour

1 T vanilla

- Preheat oven to 325. Grease bundt cake pan (or tube pan or whatever dish you want)

- Cream butter and cream cheese until fluffy

- Mix in sugar until well mixed

- Add flour and eggs, alternately, beginning and ending with flour (this may or may not be an important rule to follow, but it's easy enough: 1 c flour/3 eggs/1c flour/3 eggs/1c flour)

- Stir in vanilla

- Bake ~1 hour and 15 minutes or until top is crusty and toothpick comes out pretty clean... However, if you undercook it, your mother-in-law will like it better :-)

The Holiday Mix

Well, yes, we have been fairly horrible about posting here lately. It gets so much harder the longer you wait... just like anything else (laundry, dusting, etc.). The amount to catch up on is difficult, so here's the short of it.

I'm on Winter Break right now from school and it is my first true break without anything hanging over my head for the past year and a half. Ahhh. I'm still working on fully decompressing. School's been going well- ups and downs, of course, but well.

Bryan just finished doing 7 weeks worth of catering jobs in 3 weeks. He's still working on that decompressing part, too, but we had a great past two days off together and have done some great relaxing.

Erin and Matt got married just over a month ago and it was SUCH a blast! We had so much fun celebrating their awesome relationship. Congrats guys! (As you can see from the picture below they had a photo booth... FUN!) That weekend we also got to celebrate the future addition to the Hamilton clan- Garrett and Kenzie are expecting! YAY!

For Thanksgiving, Kristen came up and we had a huge gathering at Grandpa & Georgette's. The cousins went around the "kids" table saying what we were thankful for, and it was quite the neat moment that I will remember for awhile. The days after Thanksgiving were amazing, too. One of my favorite moments of the Holiday season was coming up to Mom & Dads, sitting by the outside fireplace in the snow, drinking peppermint schnapps and hot chocolate made by Kristen, listening to Christmas music and just... being... with the family. It was amazing.

Oh, I'm missing so much more, I know.... (Christmas shopping, walks at Lincoln Park, etc.)

Lastly, in my classroom, I have tutors who help out anywhere from 1 to 4 days a week with my students and a paraeducator who is there everyday in 1st period. I wanted to do something nice for them for the holidays and ended up making this great mix and putting them in mason jars with ribbon and little notes written on top in Sharpie. It's an easy mix that is super addictive, makes a ton, and is ridiculously good! You can find the original recipe here.

Yummy Holiday Mix

2 cups Chex Cereal (I used rice chex)

2 cups Honey Nut Cheerios

1 cup cocktail peanuts

2 bags M&Ms (holiday colors, of course!)

1 bag mini pretzels

3 T vegetable oil

2 bags white chocolate chips

- In a large bowl, mix together cereals, peanuts, M&Ms, and pretzels. I actually mixed together half of the recipe in one bowl and the other half in another bowl because it makes a lot of mix!

- Heat oil and white chocolate chips in a small sauce pan until chips melt, stirring constantly to keep from burning the chocolate.

- Dump melted chocolate into bowls and mix really well until all pieces are covered

- Immediately after stirring, spread mix out on parchment or wax paper to cool

- Let sit about 10 minutes and then enjoy! :-)