Another massive cooking day is in the books!

If you remember, a while back I took an inventory of the dishes I still needed to photograph for the cookbook and I was flabbergasted by the final list.  To say I was overwhelmed would be a huge understatement.  So, I decided to have theme days.  I would make massive amounts of similar dishes and invite people over to eat them.  Italian Day was a few months ago and a couple weeks ago I had Dessert Day.

A lot of work goes into these feasts.  They are exhausting but I LOVE doing it!  We started off by going to Aunt May’s house the weekend before and learning how to make some cookies.  We made biscotti, giuggiulena (Italian sesame seed cookies) and pinwheels.  It was a great day!

I froze a lot of those cookies and served them the next weekend on dessert day.  Then, on Tuesday I made snickerdoodles and froze them (raw) so I could easily bake them the morning of dessert day.  Can you believe I forgot to take a picture of the snickerdoodles!  The whole reason for doing this is to take pictures for the cookbook and I forgot!

I also forgot to take pictures of cannoli.  I made the filling on Wednesday and let is sit in the fridge (it actually gets better as it sits for a bit).  On Thursday I made cannoli shells.  On Friday, I made pumpkin pie, black cake with ganache, cheesecake and pineapple upside-down cake.  Saturday I baked off the snickerdoodles in the morning, made the warm apple crisp and angel food trifle.  My feet hurt just thinking back on it.

But it is all worth it!  I love having my friends and family come over to enjoy and critique everything.  Overall, it was a success!  The cheesecake and black cake were big winners (not a surprise) along with the pumpkin pie and apple crisp.

It was actually very helpful to learn that the pumpkin pie was a hit because I do not like pie.  I especially do not like pumpkin pie.  I mean, I really hate it.  So, the fact that everyone loved the pumpkin pie was huge because I really can’t tell if I make a good one… apparently I make a great one, woo hoo!  Aunt May told me the flavor of my cannoli filling was a little off.  She is the expert since it is her very unique recipe.   Luckily, she was able to figure out what I did wrong.  Problem solved!

So, a very successful day as you can see in these before and after pictures:

I still need to have a breakfast/brunch day and an appetizer day.  I will get there but lately I can’t stop baking so it might be a bit delayed.