Queen of....Tarts?

One of the things that often comes with this time of year is baking. I absolutely love to bake, and look forward to all of the extra baking I get to do in the holiday season. I often feel that I don't have enough people to bake for, and have thought of opening a bakery or catering business of some sort. Maybe in the future, a girl can dream!

My husband's birthday is November 24th, and that means pumpkin cheesecake. This year I tried a new recipe and I really liked it. It has some lemon extract in it and a few other ingredients that I wouldn't normally have used and it just added such an interesting combination of flavors. We all enjoyed it so very much.

Here is where to find the recipe for the cheesecake: Pumpkin Cheesecake

The other thing we made were English butter tarts. Isabella has been doing a literature study on Alice in Wonderland and this is one of the activities. We got the recipes for these from <a href="www.allrecipes.com"></a> , also. I used  a separate recipe for the crust and the filling. I don't have the direct links to the recipes with me right now because I printed the recipe off weeks ago and put it in my lesson plan book. What I liked about the tarts were that they are such a non-traditional food in the U.S. that I didn't have to worry about being in competition or offending anyone by bringing something that they typically bring to the holiday meals. If you forget to ask in advance what to bring this is a good dish to bring because you know there won't be two of it! Also, it is delicious and tastes very holiday-y if I do say so myself. We opted to put walnuts in ours (not black ones) but no raisins. Everyone who tried them thought they were very good. Also, my daughter was quite proud of her culinary prowess when bringing her own dish to Thanksgiving dinner!