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: -)