Santa Surprises

I realized something today as I was baking up a storm in the kitchen. One of the reasons I haven't been blogging so often this month is because a lot of my time has been taken up by Christmas surprises. Before the Secret Santa Holiday Party that I threw last weekend I was busy prepping the menu, shopping for food,  making angels, cleaning, and then cooking for the big day. I like to keep everything a surprise when I throw a party and especially when I give a gift. Since most of my blogs are about my everyday life, what I'm cooking lately, or how I'm doing something around the apartment, I found that I couldn't blog so much lately because I didn't want to give anything away.

Last week I finished shopping for the person I drew in my family's annual secret santa gift exchange, and mailed it off. I can't wait to hear from that person to see how they like their gift. I also took care of all of the nieces and nephews and mailed gifts to the little ones out west that I won't get to see this year. Cameron and I have been enjoying his free time now that he's finished with his finals. We went to Raleigh Friday for lunch and to check out the ice skating rink at the City Plaza. Yesterday we went Christmas shopping at A Southern Season in the morning then to the Carrboro Farmers' Market. We picked up all of the baking ingredients we need for our holiday gifts and got busy baking up a storm.

I don't want to give anything away, but there was a rare sighting in my kitchen earlier:

Oh my gosh, is that Cameron in the kitchen? hehe, j/k. Cameron has cooked a couple of times in the past few months, and he definitely knows how to cook, so he'd probably resent that comment. Just ask him about the shrimp scampy he made me when we first started dating, yum!

Anyway, that's Cameron preparing holiday surprises for friends and family. I still don't want to give anything away, but here's a couple more pictures of all of the yummy goodness going into some of our Christmas presents:

That Christmas Cookie book was a wonderful gift from my uncles in PA. They actually inspired most of the cookies that Cameron and I are baking. Since I'll be spending Christmas with Cameron's family in PA, I figured I'd share some of my family traditions with them. One of my favorites, my uncles' cookies!

I also learned a little culinary nugget while researching some best tips and tricks for baking. My good chef friend at Acme told me to get a really good butter, high in butterfat for baking. I wanted to know why so I started looking around a little online. Did you know that butter is graded in the U.S.? The grade is based on flavor, color, texture, aroma and body and it's important to use the best butter, graded 'AA', when baking. There's something about the butterfat binding with the sugar to grab hold of the flour... Maybe if you know the exact chemical process, you could let me know. It turns out that Land O' Lakes, although not expensive, is graded 'AA' so no need to buy fancy butter that costs $6/lb. For the taste test, you'll all just have to wait until Cameron and I come home for the holidays :)

For all of our friends that are traveling this week - Travel Safely and Happy Holidays!