The Sweetest Kitchen

This post has been a long time in coming.  This is where I’m going to tell you about that exiting thing that happened to me.  First let me prepare you a little bit by saying that it isn’t really that exciting, and most of you, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, will already know what I’m so excited about.  This exciting thing will affect my blog and baking so I feel there’s a need to tell you all about it, but some of you will roll your eyes when I tell you and some of you might be jealous and some of you might just simply be happy.

My exciting announcement is simply this…

I won it from A Table For Two!

Ultimately, I owe the pleasure of winning this KitchenAid mixer to Billy at A Table For Two and the food bloggers’ picnic that I attended – I never would known about Billy’s blog if I hadn’t have went to the picnic.  Billy was one of the organizers of the picnic.  He even gave away a KitchenAid mixer to the creator of the best dish of the day that day.  Boy, I thought, at the time, was that girl ever lucky!  She was so happy!

A few days later, as I was browsing through the blogs of the people that attended the picnic, I noticed that Billy was having a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer giveaway to celebrate his blog’s second birthday.  I thought I’d enter, just for the fun of it but I never expected to win.  This was my comment that I left on his blog’s birthday post:

I want my own KA so badly! I got to use my mom’s while I was living in the US and I can’t even begin to explain how valuable of a tool it is to someone who does as much baking as I do. The stand mixer I use now can’t even handle mixing bread dough without sounding like it’s dying!

If I win one (or have to buy one) I’d choose the pistachio colour and she would be my new baby, I’d even let her sleep in my bed if she got too scared at night in the kitchen alone, and I’d dress her up in pretty princess dresses to attend birthday parties. Just like my 5 year old daughter (except she actually doesn’t sleep in the kitchen).

I had to wait over a week to find out who the winner would be.  I even sort of forgot about it, because I never expected to win.  But the day came and I saw on Billy’s Twitter stream that the winner had been announced.  I didn’t even click on the link right away to find out who the lucky one was.  Eventually I did get around to it and read through the post to the very end, where I saw my name in the post.  This wasn’t right, I thought.  Why is my name here?  Wow, someone else must have the same name as me.  Honestly, I seriously thought that!  I didn’t fully realize it was me until I clicked on my name and the link took me to the comment I had left over a week before.  It actually was me, I had won a KitchenAid mixer!  UNREAL!

I thanked Billy over and over again, who said that I truly deserved it.  I called him my hero!

That day I made extra special celebratory chocolate chip cookies.

They are extra special because they are made with browned butter, Murray River pink sea salt flakes and my own homemade vanilla extract.  They were simply marvelous and delicious.  I was so pleased with them that I took some to my neighbor, who also enjoyed them!  The recipe is at the bottom of this post.

I chose the color pistachio for my mixer because I think it looks the best in my kitchen.  The mixer arrived at my door a couple of days later, and I decided to call her Katie (which is based on KitchenAid’s initials, KA).  And then a couple of days later, I got sick.  I was down for about 5 days, during which I felt awful and lost over 10 pounds.  During all this time I saw Katie sitting in the kitchen and I dreamed of what I’d make with her.

I also thought that I’d follow through with my comment.  I would sleep with Katie in my bed, and I would take her to birthday parties.  So when I started feeling better, I did just that.

We don’t have the world’s most attractive bedroom, but I felt I just had to take a picture to prove that Katie slept in my bed.

And parties?  We did that too.

She looks like a real princess!  Pistachio is such a lovely color.

Today begins week 2 with Katie and all I have made with her is a batch of snickerdoodles (we needed a quick cookie fix).  This week is going to be busy though, I have heaps of stuff planned.  I’m really going to break Katie in by making some chocolate-dipped meringues.  She’s going to whip those egg whites like nobody’s business, I know she will.

By the way, did you know that every KitchenAid mixer sounds different?  No two sound alike.  Or at least that’s what they said on the DVD that came in the box with Katie.  I noticed right away, actually, after I turned Katie on for the first time that she sounded different than my mom’s KitchenAid.

So anyway, to wrap things up, thank you again to Billy, and thank you to all my followers and fans for supporting me!  Here’s to many, many more great adventures in baking!

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