Fall Recipe Exchange

My friend Jill and I have wanted to do a recipe exchange party before the holiday season for several years and finally did it this past week.  It's great to go taste and collect new recipes to use for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's that are new and different.  

It was a perfect, crisp autumn evening and the house was aglow with candles and good vibes.

Not all of our friends enjoy cooking but they brought over tasty dishes and it was fun to see and sample.

We set up the food in sections and put the bar outside.

The ladies voted on their top 5 recipes and we awarded prizes to the winners.

Who wouldn't want to sit outside on a nice evening with a roaring fire, a glass of wine and lots of friends to catch up with?

We decorated with naturals...and harvested them the day before the party.

Everything looked so lovely...Jill loves to cook and decorate and has such a keen style.  Love it!

I had the ladies email their recipes to me and I formatted them onto uniform cards with quick little watercolors to play up on our theme.  They could pick up recipe cards for the dishes they wanted to try at home and store them in an envelope I designed that copied the invitation.

It was such a great evening and now we all have an bunch of new recipes to try!  What was the recipe winner, you ask?  I can promise you this...you will want to make this easy and elegant dish over the holidays!  See below!

Craft Camps 2015 Week Five...Cooking! Day One: Aprons and Breakfast

Cooking Week was amazingly fun and full of all kind of good lessons!  Miss Lucy arrived promptly on time full attired in her chef's cap and apron looking adorable!  She, and all of these great girls were ready to get after it!  So we did!

First was to make our aprons for the week.  I had carved out a few stamps and attached them to wood blocks and the girls stamped on fresh colors onto their aprons.

 

Bam!  Now we can cook!

Not every activity had 12 girls working on each item, but we did display basic techniques before all the girls.  How to crack an egg, how to separate it and most importantly, how to remove shells was first on the list (after learning to wash our hands first and often!)

We made Dutch Babies for our snack, so measuring correctly was very important.

Learning how to turn on an oven, adjust the racks and heat safety were discussed...then we did a little tidying up of the kitchen and started the next project while the Dutch Baby rose in the oven to perfection!

 Look at those proud faces!  We made a lemon syrup to drizzle on top with powdered sugar and gobbled it up with happy bellies! Yum!

Next we made delicious fritattas!

The girls followed the recipe and decided what fillings they wanted in their own.  They were taking these home to let their family sample.

Pouring in the egg mixture...

and ready to take them home!  We made personalized recipe cards while the fritattas were baking.

 Here are the recipes...

and we repeated the process with the afternoon class!

If you've never tried a Dutch Baby, do yourself and your family a big treat for breakfast or dinner!  

It's delicious!

Time for fritattas!

 While the fritattas were baking, I brought out what was left of our boys "Bean Boozled" and the girls had fun with that!  One of them even baked a skunk spray bean into a special fritatta just for her grandfather!  We could even smell it stinking up the kitchen when we pulled the pan out of the oven.  Her grandfather said it tasted like opposum!  Yikes!  This group also made blueberry muffins.

After this group finished cleaning the kitchen and made their recipe cards, they begged to play "Chubby Bunnies," so here you go...

What a funny group of girls...we have so much fun together!