More baking.... I didn't clean today either

Amazing the reasons I'm finding to not clean the house. The good thing is I threw around enough flour in the kitchen today that as soon as I'm done this blog I have to go turn on the vacuum. Or, I could try and convince one of the kids to do it for me. Hmmm, that sounds like a much better option.

Jenna has to bring in enough cookies for 20 kids tomorrow. Their class is having a mini store set up to teach them about money and how it works. Each kid has to sell either a good or service to help them learn about making money transactions. Jenna picked cookies. Shocking eh?

Of course Mr. Fancypants Jacob does not like chocolate, so I made him some scones. I was thinking about them yesterday after making my pop tarts. The last time I had a scone, my sister and I went out to a tea house in Rhode Island. We were both so disappointed as they were not at all the scones we remembered from our childhood vacations on Vancouver Island. On top of it, they were much, much too big. I made smaller scones (still more than big enough I felt) and put the homemade jam from yesterday on them. He was pretty satisfied!

Here's the table with my baking insanity on it

When they get along with each other they're BFF's. Jacob's helping Jenna decorate the boxes the cookies are going to go in

Jenna's stuffing the boxes with cookies. It was "one for me, one for the box" for a bit; but we got that under control!

The final product, all ready in their baskets to go to school. 

Little kid hand trying to grab one last cookie!

Avoidance tactics leads to baking in the kitchen

I was supposed to clean house today. So, naturally I found many other things to do to keep myself occupied to avoid the dreaded housework. I like a clean house, I just don't like cleaning house!

My morning started off with my Zite magazine on my iPad. Love, love, love this app. Going through it is one of the more enjoyable parts of my day. This morning gave me two really good ideas to avoid housework... I mean recipes to try out.

The first was chocolate covered peanut butter. Two of my favorite things. I got the recipe from The Brown Eyed Baker.

Here is a picture of her finished product (so you know what it *should* look like)

Feeling up for the challenge, I headed off to the Co-op, ground up my own peanut butter and bought Callebaut chocolate chips in the bulk section. I also spent a great deal of time holding a bag of these

but since I basically have eaten my weight in them over the past couple of weeks (and I have three bags stashed around the house - in vain hopes my husband and daughter won't find them) I put the bag back.

Got home and started on my peanut butter delight

Peanut butter, butter and brown sugar melted together

Then icing sugar added to it

At this point I had to pay the price for my laziness. I didn't sift my icing sugar and it had terrible lumps in it. I threw the whole thing in the Cuisinart and blended it

 The peanut butter was supposed to cool to room temperature before it got shaped into cute little eggs on the pan. I could not get it to stay solid. Finally I put the peanut butter in the fridge for a while. After I got some peanut butter blobs on the pan I stuck them in the freezer to get a better shape. I had completely lost any hope of having "eggs" by this point.

I melted the chocolate chips with some shortening

Here are my peanut butter blobs waiting for their chocolate bath

After the bath. I should have tidied up the chocolate, but the extra run off was so yummy I hated to do that.

Checked out by my official taster, Jenna

The peanut butter inside

I had bought sprinkles, but completely forgot about them. We were driving home from soccer tonight when Jacob asked why there were sprinkles in the back seat of the car. Oh well....

They were delicious!!! Most definitely will do these again.

There was more time left and I still didn't want to clean, so I made homemade pop tarts I found on Scientifically Sweet

Fortunately, I had some pastry in the freezer, but the homemade strawberry jam was not ready right away so my first batch was with peach jam from the farmer's market.

My taster could barely wait to get in there...

Later on I did make them with the strawberry jam. Much, much better. but, I love strawberry jam...

You know you want some....

My other taste tester thought these were rather yummy

then I made banana bread....

Tomorrow I'll clean, I swear :-)