At an Apples of Gold dinner, one of the girls gave Stephanie and me the idea to bake Christmas goodies for our neighbors and invite them to
Watermark's Christmas Eve service. We also thought this would be a good chance to hopefully meet some of the neighbors that we have never met before.
We decided to do fudge and mini muffins. It all started with a trip to the store yesterday afternoon. Surprisingly, we were able to get everything we needed with one stop at Walmart. It was actually a pretty quick trip!
Math definitely came in handy on this shopping trip. For instance, how many cups can you get from a ten-pound bag of sugar? Of course, the only volume measurement on the bag of sugar is in teaspoons. How many cups are there in 1,153 t of sugar? All in all, our math was pretty good. We had very few leftover ingredients, and the only thing we ran out of were mini cupcake liners. That was because we underestimated how many mini muffins we could get from a mix that was intended to make 6 regular muffins. I had originally guessed 12-16, but we ended up getting 20!
We headed home to start making the fudge so that it could set overnight. We established quite the process! I lined a pan, measured all the ingredients and gave them to Stephanie as she needed them. Then as she used them, I re-measured for the next batch.
Stephanie was a stirring champ! The fudge gets pretty tough to stir towards the end, but she made it through all 11 batches, with me only helping stir on one of them.
Once it was ready to go, I helped her scrape it out of the bowl and spread it into the pan. Then as she started the next batch, I washed the bowl and got it ready for the first step again.
While we worked away in the kitchen, jamming out to Christmas tunes, the boys were quite happy to entertain themselves in the cafe. The found a great project to keep them busy!
At one point, we noticed that one batch of fudge seemed to have lost a corner. Hmmm...I wonder where that went? I think I know the answer - see artists above!
Finally at the end of the evening, we had 33 pounds of fudge ready to go! Whew...that is a lot of fudge!
This morning, I designed the card that we would put with each container. I think it turned out pretty cute for a fast project.
When Stephanie got to our house after church, she gave her approval on the card, and we sent the proof to Walmart for printing. It was ready in about 15 minutes, so while we worked on baking muffins, my sweet husband went to pick up the prints along with a few more cupcake liners and tape that we had forgotten yesterday.
The muffin process was going pretty smoothly, so when Michael arrived with the cards, Stephanie went to work taping cards onto all the container lids while I finished the muffins.
Finally all 39 dozen muffins were ready to go...Orange Cranberry, Cinnamon Sugar, Wild Berry (blueberry and strawberry), and Apple Cinnamon. They all turned out great!
Stephanie was in charge of cutting the fudge and filling containers. Then I took the containers, added muffins and a lid, and stacked them all up. The boys even got in on the end of the assembly line and helped us finish getting them all ready.
Once they were all together, it was time to deliver!
I was surprised at how many of our neighbors were home. It was interesting to see everyone's reaction. A few people seemed indifferent, but most were grateful. Some were very appreciative. One lady started crying because she was so touched and excited to get something. Another neighbor came running out front in her house robe to thank us after her husband had answered the door and returned inside with the goodies.
I'm sure some of the neighbors threw the food away, but hopefully it was still something nice that brightened their day. Overall, hopefully each one of them saw a glimpse of Christ's love and knows that He is the reason for the season.
Wishing you an early Merry Christmas!
