the item I miss the most

I undoubtedly miss bagels the most. It's funny really, because I ate them infrequently when I lived in the States, but for some reason I've been craving a good bagel like mad.

So not too long ago, Hol and I attempted some homemade bagels.

Forming the bagels...


boiling the dough...
after baking- plain and cinnamon bagels:My mom used to make homemade bagels when I was little, so making these with Hol in our Mongolian kitchen brought back all kinds of fun memories. They're not as good as say Panera bagels, but they will do :- )

cookie cake

sometimes you just crave chocolate chip cookies.

i was craving some a few weeks back, but needed to bake something to bring to our staff New Years party at the office.

i thought chocolate chip cookies would be too boring for a party, so Hol suggested I try making a cookie cake.

and let me say....yum.

layer one:
Add some chocolate frosting:

Second layer:
More frosting: (I cheated and bought frosting from the American food store- I can't find powdered sugar and I didn't have the time to try other alternate frosting from scratch recipes)And some decorative sprinkles:
There were zero leftovers:-)

chess pie

This was a first time recipe for me, although recommended by both Holli and Heather as a good Christmas dessert to make for one of the several Christmas parties we went to over the past few weeks.

The filling was heated on the stove and then poured into the crust and baked. I fretted over the baking of the pie, as it took way less time than the recipe called for- but let's recall our oven:

It is a creature of incredible unpredictability, meaning that one never knows if it will take half of the time called for or double. I will say that it never ever takes the amount of time called for in a recipe :- )

new years celebrations

Behold the massive amount of food prepared for the youth group's new years celebration:


Potato salad made in a massive bowl- my mom's recipe and without the chunks of ham that Mongolians usually put in their potato salad. I told them we were making vegetarian potato salad.

And the fruit salad in a wok (what can I say, we were lacking in large dishes). It has apples, mandarins and red jello.



And vanilla cake with caramel glaze:

We also made sugar cookies and bought some additional tomatoes, mandarins and cookies.

And while I was convinced there was no way all of this food would be consumed by thirty youth, I was proven wrong, as it was gone in 10 minutes flat: -)

peppermint brownie cupcakes

thanks to the wonderful arrival of a few Christmas-themed packages, I had cocoa powder and peppermints at my disposal when pondering what to bake for my secret santa.

the result of such lovely baking supplies (thank you Hollingsworths and Talbotts) was the creation of peppermint brownie cupcakes.

we don't actually have any sort of cupcake pan, but I just set them on a cookie sheet, figuring the funny looking shapes wouldn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

I cut up some of the peppermints and threw them into the brownie batter and then I placed whole peppermints on top.

The most wonderful thing happened- all of the peppermints melted and sunk down, forming a peppermint bottom to the brownie cupcakes.

Chocolate and peppermint has never before tasted so good.

And you better believe I left a few behind for Hol and I, and my secret santa got a Christmas sized serving of them as well.

cinnamon chocolate chip pound cake

It began with a recipe for vanilla pound cake...


and then I couldn't help but add some cinnamon...


and then some chocolate chips....because what are Christmas baked goods without chocolate?



and somewhere along the way my vanilla pound cake batter became cinnamon chocolate chip pound cake.
and all of the chocolate chips sunk to the bottom and formed a delicious chocolate crust.


and the pound cake became Christmas gifts for our fellow GBGM staff members here in UB.

thank you Christmas for being the perfect excuse to bake all sorts of delicious things.

baby ьууз

Friday night some of my English students came over for some Christmas cookie decorating. After cookies, cards and Scrabble, they asked if they could make dinner.

I'm always up for our friends teaching us how to make Mongolian food, so Holli and I readily agreed.

Tevna, Od, Jawa and Brdne took over our kitchen to make a Mongolian soup (phonetically spelled "bansh") that is made up of ьууз (dumplings filled with meat, onions and garlic), ground beef boiled in water to make the broth, along with some potatoes, onions and salt.



They had fun laughing at my calling the dumplings we made "baby ьууз," for they are smaller versions of the normal ьууз that are a staple Mongolian food. Thankfully the baby ьууз are much easier to fold than their "grown-up" version :- )