Day TWO: Aunt Ruth's Rosettes

After sharing these with friends yesterday, I realized just about everyone has a story about rosettes and who made them over the years. Grandmothers, moms, aunts - all the matriarchs of families - have led the way over the years to make these sweet treats. When I was little, I remember being in the kitchen at my Aunt Ruth's apartment, and gobbling up the finished product as soon as the powdered sugar was sprinkled on top. ( I wasn't much help back in those days!) I remember it being a process: the hot oil, the heavy cast aluminum iron molds, the batter...but I was all for trying it out this year (now that the kids are old enough to help!) I was most worried about the batter sticking to the irons, but that was NOT the case....

Our first attempt was great! The oil was hot and ready. The dough fried up and slipped right off of the irons. The key was to heat the iron before placing it into the batter each time. The heat allowed it to crisp up right away and fall off.

YUMMY!

...but if you were too quick on the draw...that first bite was HOT on your lips!

One solid bunch of rosettes...we made 2 dozen in the first batch. I say first, because we will definitely make another round or two of these because these are already gone! It only took us about thirty minutes from start to finish, too!

And since we had left over oil (yes, I know we are channeling Paula Deen) we cooked up a recipe Brandan pulled off one of those grocery store aisle advertisement thingys: Beer battered onion rings...

kid-friendly?
Well, maybe not, but isn't it true that the alcohol content evaporates when cooking alcoholic items? Not necessarily so! I found this informative chart, if you are curious about this too.

Yummy.

Today we are planning to get the sugar cookie dough prepared and Aly has her heart set on some mint meringue cookies...off to bake it up!