Anouk's BFF Miri came over the other day for a morning playdate, and we made cinnamon sugar snowflakes for snack. It's pretty much the easiest, most toddler-friendly baking project ever -- all you need is flour tortillas, melted butter, cinnamon and sugar.

After microwaving the tortillas for 10 seconds or so, to make them softer and easier to work with, fold the tortilla into fourths and cut as you would a paper snowflake (I helped a lot with cutting the snowflakes for the kids as little kid scissors aren't the best at cutting anything bread). Brush melted butter over each snowflake and top with cinnamon and sugar (we used the pre-mixed cinnamon sugar from the spice aisle at the grocery store).

Bake for 5-10 minutes at 350 degrees on a lightly greased baking sheet and enjoy with berries and whipped cream (we ate ours with fruit salsa made with the last of the frozen strawberries from last years' visit to Cullipher Farms).




 ^^ SUGAR!!! ^^

On our snow-day-before-last (? they've all started to blend together), when boredom was setting in with a vengeance, I learned how to make bagels at home. This might sound really stupid, but I'm not sure I ever really knew that you could make bagels at home. I mean, I guess I knew ONE could, but not an average person like me. I think I thought you needed special training or equipment or something like that.

Turns out -- you can make bagels at home! You make the dough, you let it rise the appropriate number of times, and then you boil your bagels in water before baking them in a very hot oven. It's all a lot simpler than it seems it should be (although once you get going things move pretty quickly, which is why we have only iPhone photos to mark this post, sorry about that).

And yes, I will admit that ours are not the most attractive bagels ever but you have to trust me: they are so, so good. I never had had a fresh, just out-of-the-oven bagel before and now that I have, I don't think I can ever go back.

We've sampled several different recipes over the past few weeks but keep coming back to this one for New York Style Bagels by the Sophisticated Gourmet because 1) it's tastiest and 2) you don't have to let the dough proof overnight, which I hate because I am impatient. We like this recipe so much that we've been making up a batch every Sunday. A. really loves the whole play-dough aspect of this recipe and I really love having my family together in the kitchen baking for the week ahead, it seems like such a wholesome (read: generally unlike us) thing to do. And James really loves these bagels with butter, and he's not a carb guy, so that's saying something.

Happy Thursday!