Today, beautiful, snowy, cold, windy with baking and an unexpected dinner party

I had put on social media a question about the cookie recipe I posted above - if I should stick to the 1 cup oil or use butter... here's what I did based on other's input and then talking to my Mom about the input:

So, the cookies! Here's most of them (above picture) (the rest were already packed in a bag)...so in the end I did half butter and half oil. I melted the butter. I also did not add walnuts but instead added more chocolate chips. They seemed really and a soft moist cookie. After Christmas I can report back on how they taste! :) 


So I ended up (due to a wonderful impromptu local blizzard dinner elsewhere!) making the best vegan chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache like frosting (melted chocolate chips and raspberry jam!)... the recipe is here but note that the frosting is 1/4 cup of jam NOT 6 1/4 cups! This is the cake I make for my beloved Husband's birthday and that he calls me a 'domestic goddess' for ;) :) (though the strawberry pie with cream cheese base and the sour cream apple pie that I bake also cause him to say such words!).... about the cake... I did not have time to melt the other bit of rasberry jam with water to put on cake before the frosting, but because I was short on time and the cake was still warm, it was better that way. Also I used, this time, seedless raspberry jam and it made a very very smooth chocolate frosting. I also used Guittard vegan chocolate chips which melt really well.... (note they have sunflower oil so I am careful NOT to use this when serving friends with this allergy). This picture has all of the frosting but only 3/4 of the cake as I made 4 mini-bunt cakes but one of them utterly fell to pieces (was too warm when I got it out of the pan! and it was so light!!!) Here's the recipe: http://old.post-gazette.com/food/20021219vegbooksc.asp

I got a text mid-afternoon for a blizzard impromptu fun casual dinner party.... was really delightful! Mr Husband and I shoveled the last of the snow out so we can DV go to Royal Hours tomorrow AM (it will be a bit of a drive, prayers for this welcome!)  (We are well prepared, cell phones, chargers, blankets in car, shovel, water bottles...)... Our roads are plowed well and hopefully the highways are too (they are usually really good)....we will check the weather and emails of course before we leave tomorrow.... it's windy here, and tomorrow is going to be super cold.  I will be wearing tons of layers, no worries about that, and the outer most layers (before the 'shell' jacket I have and then my long ll bean winter jacket that goes down nearly to my ankles) will be wool!  Remember, I used to live in Ottawa, I know to do cold really well. 

Anyway, I best get to bed.  DV after we return home, I have a lot to do - packing lots of goodies, gift bags and the like! and cleaning our home so it is ready and beautiful for Christmas! Thankfully it's just a bit more cleaning to do now! :)