I had a delicious Thanksgiving and I hope everyone else did too.
A lot of people around me this year seemed to be celebrating Thanksgiving a little bit differently this year. I went home for Thanksgiving, as I always do. But my Thanksgiving was a little different as well.
Traditionally, I spend Thanksgiving with my immediate family as well as my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents that live in the Bay Area. It has been this way since we moved to California. But this year, a lot of my cousins didn’t come home. And a result, each family did their own thing for Thanksgiving.
It felt odd spending Thanksgiving with just my siblings and parents. In some ways, it didn’t feel like Thanksgiving, and instead felt like a regular meal with my family, except that we had turkey and some Thanksgiving sides. It was a more mellow experience, but I am still thankful I got to spend it with my family. I know quite a few people who weren’t able to make it home to spend Thanksgiving with their family, so it makes me even more grateful that I was lucky enough to still fly home and be with my family.
My parents originally suggested coming down to San Diego for Thanksgiving, but I insisted that we stay in the Bay Area. There’s something magical about going back home. In San Diego, I’m an adult with a job and responsibilities. When I’m home, I’m a kid again. My siblings are all in San Diego, so I see them all the time. But it’s different spending time with them at home. We sleep in our old rooms, in our old beds and just hang out on our beds like when we were little. At night, we knock on the adjoining walls of our rooms to communicate while lying in bed.
Normally I make a ton of different desserts for Thanksgiving. Since there was only my family this year, I didn’t need to make as many. But after spending two months testing out different recipes, I felt a little lost not being able to make so many desserts. Luckily, BF was still spending Thanksgiving with his large, extended family. So I made the crazy decision of volunteering to bake a bunch of desserts for him to share with his family.
I’ve never been a good baker under stress. And baking for Thanksgiving has always been stressful. Part of it is the number of desserts. Most of it is the stress of presenting desserts to other people to eat. I know I bake a lot, but I usually only share the desserts with only those really close to me. I always feel pretty shy about sharing my desserts with others and so I stress when I am baking for others.
So, as a result, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong when I was baking. I mean everything. I made a bread recipe using regular flour instead of bread flour. My premade pumpkin puree somehow froze over in the fridge. My sweet potato puree went flying across the kitchen when I tried to open the container it was in. I baked muffins putting only in the wet ingredients and completely forgetting to mix in the dry ingredients. My hand mixer fell off the counter and spilled batter all over the couch. Somehow, I managed to get it all together in the end…
I didn’t take pictures of our actual Thanksgiving dinner, but for those who are curious, here are the desserts I chose to bake this year for Thanksgiving:
Sweet potato cupcake roses
(I made these last year and they were a big hit. I didn’t have time to remake them again this year before Thanksgiving,but this post has a few shots of the ones I made this year before they were devoured. You can view the recipe by clicking on the above link)
Finally, I am doing a giveaway this weekend as well. In honor of this food holiday weekend, I was contacted by Foodzie. I met Foodzie when I attended the Foodbuzz festival last month. The company brings together artisan and small food companies from all across the US. You can shop for all kinds of food products on their site. They also have a monthly Tasting Box where they send out samples from five different companies. They contacted me and offered to provide two of my readers with a Tasting Box.
The contest is open to US readers only. Please leave a comment telling me your favorite Thanksgiving dessert this year (or any dessert if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving). I’ll use random.org to generate two random numbers to choose the winners. The contest ends at 5pm on Monday, November 29. Good luck! In addition, if you visit the website on November 29, Foodzie will be giving additional Tasting Boxes, so you can have another chance to win.
Well my favorite n best holiday desert is my Home Made Apple Pie Cheesecake it truly is one best ,takes me 3 hours to make plus cooking apples, I was raised to make a unforgettable deserts so people never forget where they at..People always talk about deserts at holiday feast so good an unforgettable, Beside baking my comfort zone , turn music up and get lost into your Betty Crocker It lol My
Thank You Awesome Recipes
Happy Holidays Everyone
Always Smile Dianna
Cheesecake. or icecream
I like your dog
ooo, I like your cupcake roses. I think I want to get a pan like that. I ended up making pumpkin whoopie pies with maple cream cheese frosting and they were really, really good. I didn’t take any photos though. But I will be making them again!
Kirbie,
My favorite Thanksgiving dessert this year has to be this Pumpkin Cheesecake Torte that my boyfriend’s mom makes every year. While it takes a while (she is a fan of making everything from scratch…from the pumpkin to the graham cracker crust!) to prepare and bake, the end result is heavenly! It’s light and not too sweet, but definitely a crowd pleaser! The best part about it is how pretty it looks at the end, with the three differing layers of crust, cheesecake, and pumpkin just waiting to be eaten!
Pecan bars w/ extra extra melted dark chocolate!
My favorite dessert this year was the pumpkin mochi with chestnut paste filling. I love pumpkin and can’t wait to try some of your recipes out!
The sweet potato cupcake roses are lovely.
I love my upside-down apple pie! I make it every year!
I make apple pie every year! It’s the dessert that snagged me my boyfriend. 😉
Hehe, seems there’s quite a few FOODZIE giveaways out there. 😉 I’m hosting one myself.
Your pumpkin garlic knots were a hit with me and Husband and he is not a pumpkin fan at all! A friend of mine also made them for her meal and she and her guests loved them as well. Thanks for the recipe!
I saw your post =) so glad the garlic knots worked out for you. I was going to make them, but with all the baking disasters, I ran out of time and I didn’t want to push my luck.
I have the opposite problem of you! This year, we have so many family members over, we didn’t know what to do with them. But, even though I baked way less than I did last year, I still ended up with tons of leftovers. I think it was too sweet for their Asian taste buds.
But, yay, giveaway!! My favorite Thanksgiving dessert would have to be pecan pie!
What a great lineup of baked goodies! My favorite is Pumpkin Pie – although this year I also made some cute Pumpkin hand pies as well!
My favorite Thanksgiving dessert has always been Pumpkin Pie but this year it was eclipsed by the best ever Sweet Potato Pie a friend made for me – YUMMY!
I love cheesecake, but this Thanksgiving I had a delicious apple crumble pie a la mode. It was soooo good. Your desserts look yummy as well!
My favorite dessert was pumpkin cheesecake!
Pumpkin pie, the only thing that really hits the spot during the fall. Apple pie is pretty great too!
My favorite Thanksgiving dessert is apple pie a la mode. I was in Northern California for Thanksgiving, too. I hadn’t been up there for several years to spend it with my family; we usually stay in town since my husband’s family lives here.
Your sweet potato roses are so adorable! My favorite dessert for Thanksgiving is zucchini bread topped with vanilla ice cream, or sometimes Cool Whip 🙂
me again – just wondering – is that your dog or your parents’ dog? So cute!!!
It’s our family dog, so I only get to see her when I go home because she lives with my parents. Her name is Mochi, which just shows how much my family likes food. =)
Hi kirbie – my fave thanksgiving dessert is pecan pie. 🙂
I made tons of pumpkin bread this year. Its my favorite 🙂
My dog looks like yours!
Do yams count as a dessert. We had lovely homemade marshmellows on them.
Otherwise I think I like green cool whip jello I had.
I really love claim jumper pumpkin cheesecake. its’ so delicious!
I want to win!!! 🙂
All your baked goods look amazing, as always. Random question – how do you eat those all up? For a while i was baking a lot (I had this goal of using my kitchenaid mixer at least once a week this year) but then it was hard to get rid of all the baked goods, even when i took it to work.. A lot of it got wasted so i stopped baking so much.
I try to halve recipes when I can. I also eat way too many of each of the things I make than I should be eating. For what I don’t eat, I give some to the BF, some to my brothers, and occasionally I’ll bring to work or give to friends. I’m going to try to give more away so that it doesn’t end up in my stomach.
My favorite Thanksgiving dessert is pumpkin pie served with vanilla ice cream. It is the only time of the year that I eat it.
my favorite dessert this past thanksgiving was sweet potato pie! I can’t wait to try making those sweet potato roses!
I actually made this really delicious Chocolate Peppermint Meringue Cake this year for Thanksgiving… it was a definite hit with the family!
My favorite dessert this year was pumpkin cheesecake–Yum!
My favorite dessert was one my mom and I improvised – pumpkin cheesecake layered with apple piie filling and spice cake crumble!
It looks delicious. Love the sweet potato roses 🙂
This is something that i call a perfect give away and it does look so delicious and i cant wait till i put my hands on it
Mango Pudding! 🙂
Thanks for always posting great stuff, I really enjoy reading your blog. 🙂