Baking Bonanza!

At, Geoff's school, there's a tradition of having the seniors preach for a chapel service. It's pretty nerve wracking knowing you'll be preaching in front of the student body that has class that day in addition to the professors that poured their hearts out training you the last couple years.

As much as the guys and a couple girls enjoy hearing their peers speak, they're pretty excited about these chapels because of the FOOD! Each day, there are coffee & fresh donuts set out on a counter for $.50 ea. Geoff bought one cup of coffee his first year, and since he's a coffee connoisseur, never bought another cup. He has NEVER bought a donut in all 5 years because he’s cheap (he calls himself that, so I can say it too) and he doesn’t like all the sugar & extra calories that are in them. :) The age-old tradition for the student speaker is to buy everyone donuts, so that they’re free that day, and he does have the option of bringing in baked goods (courtesy of the wife) if he would like.

This morning was Geoff’s turn to preach. For the introduction, he told everyone that he wants to keep his trend going of NOT buying donuts. He had asked me to bake some things for him to take in. I was told to plan on about 60 people or so. I love baking, so I agreed. He also, told his fellow students that there was some real coffee from Starbucks for today (Praise the Lord for giftcards!). That got quite a response. :)

On Saturday, I had great intentions, to bake away, but only got a dozen muffins made & the rest of the ingredients bought. So, Sunday afternoon I got my booty into the kitchen, and made three-dozen muffins.

Oops, I forgot to mention that I ate 5-6 of the first dozen that I made on Saturday – it was breakfast & lunch for Saturday. :)

So, on Monday night, the heat is on. Two loaves of pumpkin bread, a coffee cake, monkey bread, and an additional dozen muffins to make up for the ones I ate. At 11 pm, I realized that one of my loaves of pumpkin bread wasn’t baked through & was trash. A few tears shed, I gave up caring, and went to bed smelling of cinnamon & sugar. We still had enough to cover everything, but I don’t want to see another breakfast bread for a long while!

On a whim, I asked off work, and showed up at the seminary to hear Geoff preach without him knowing I was coming. He didn’t see me until he got up to the pulpit. After he started speaking, he says, “Oh! Hi, hon! I didn’t know you were here!” It was cute. He did a great job with his sermon & I was proud.

I wish I had taken pictures of all this, but I left my camera & Geoff's grandmom's house on Easter. :( The pics are from Taste of Home from the recipes that I used.