Martha Monday!

For Memorial Day festivities, and to use up some of my homemade applesauce, I made Martha's Iced Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies. Martha's cookies look like this:

And here is the TMI version:

I did a few things differently: I omitted the golden raisins because there were none to be found in my pantry, and instead of using pure maple syrup in the frosting, I used maple extract. That might explain why my icing is so much darker than Martha's.

You might notice that each of my giant cookies is really two of the size cookie Martha had intended. But at TMI, we like our cookies big. It's how we roll.

This is a very tasty recipe and a welcome change from the standard Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. My wonderful husband (who took the action shots, by the way!) prefers them without icing, but I think the maple flavor is a nice touch to the cookie.

To get the nice icing drizzle, pour the icing into a plastic baggie. I use disposable decorator bags from Wilton, but a plain old sandwich baggie will do. Snip off a tiny bit of the corner, and let the frosting run all over the cookies.

Enjoy, and happy Memorial Day from all of us at TMI!

Wilton tent sale

The 2009 Wilton Tent Sale starts Friday, May 29. For those who are not obsessed with all things cake/cookie/candy, let me explain: Wilton is my go-to brand for everything related to cake and cookie decorating and candy making. Every year*, they have a huge tent sale where they unload nearly every product they make. This includes cake decorating supplies, cookie sheets, cookie cutters, kitchen utensils, cake stands, cupcake lines, etc. And everything is at least 50% off.


*Note: except last year, when they didn't have the tent sale and it nearly broke my heart.


And you can find more than just Wilton stuff there. Their partner companies make tons of kitchen ware, photo frames, scrapbooking supplies, and ....HANG ON TO YOUR HATS....

...items from the Martha Stewart Everyday line sold at KMart. Be still my beating heart!


I'm working on my shopping list now, lest my spending and excitement get totally out of control. That usually happens when I get to the candy making supplies, just so you know.


I'll be at the tent sale bright and early on Saturday, and tweeting the whole way through. If you are planning to get to the tent sale Saturday morning, give me a holler.

Busy in the kitchen

With all the Memorial Day festivities scheduled for Sunday and Monday, I had a lot of baking and cooking to do today. Well, mostly baking.

I did this....




And this....




Not sure how this will turn out....




Looking forward to this....




But not this...



If you don't hear from me for the next few days, it's because I'm trapped under this mountain of dirty dishes. But don't worry--most of the dishes were used for cakes and frosting, so I'll lick my way out soon enough. Recipes are coming!

Martha's quiche, TMI style

The Little Guy and I had a night to ourselves recently, which is a perfect time at the TMI house to try a new recipe. Long story short: my husband's major food groups are steak/potato, cheese pizza, hamburger and Double-stuff Oreos. I'm down with the Oreos, but it's nice to branch out from the other three food groups, you know?

I made Martha's Crustless Broccoli-Cheddar Quiche. But in true TMI fashion, I did just a few things differently:

1. I put it in a pie shell. I used Martha's basic pie dough recipe.

2. I added way more cheese than the recipe called for.

3. I overbaked it. By about 15 minutes.

But no worries! It turned out great.

Little Guy even had seconds.

Not bad for a child who gets half of his DNA from a man who resists any kind of flavor. Hopefully my "TMI food adventure" genes are dominant.

Chipmunk rescue

We have three window wells around our house. They are deep, they are filled with trash and they need to be cleaned and covered. Getting safety covers for the wells was on our to-do list for the summer. Then, we found something that skyrocketed that little item to the very top of the list:

There was a chipmunk trapped in our window well. I don't know how long he had been there, but he seemed to have plenty of energy and no injuries, so I was hopeful it hadn't been long.

Obviously, I couldn't leave Mr. Chipmunk in the well to die. My husband is not big on wildlife rescue, and Little Guy is too little to do the job, so it was up to me to get him out. I headed to the basement to see what could be done from there. No dice. I couldn't get the screen open, and besides, the one thing worse than having Mr. Chipmunk trapped on your window well is having Mr. Chipmunk running around your basement.

After that realization, I climbed down into the window well with a step stool. After a lot of tries and shuffling around, I finally got the creature out using my punch bowl--he climbed the screen and fell right into it. I softly dumped him onto the ground, and he hightailed it to our neighbor's.

And as for that summer to-do list, we can cross one item off:

We should celebrate. Punch, anyone?