Rock the Vote!

I am volunteering on Tuesday to work the polls for the election. The hours are long, the pay is low, but I think it'll be a fun experience. Plus, it's a day off of work, and since I'm out of vacation time, this is as close as it gets as time off.

I was told that the hours are 5:30am to 7:30pm or until all the voters in line at 7:30pm have voted. I was also told that it's highly recommended that you bring breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the day because it will probably be too busy to go out for any breaks.

I thought I would be nice for the other poll workers and make some cookies for the day. What better thing to make than elephants and donkeys, the symbols for the Republican and Democratic parties.

I made more elephants than donkeys, because let's face it...the elephants are going to need a majority of something on Tuesday, and it's probably not going to be votes!

I'm happy to say that I've already voted several weeks ago for Barack Obama. It surprises me that there are still "undecided" voters out there. How is this even possible? You're either for a rational, intelligent individual, or you're either racist, ignorant, or an idiot. If you don't think any of those apply to you, then it's probably the last one. Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to elect a grumpy old man who's a 72 year old heartbeat away from putting in the dumbest bitch in the free world?

So my request is that if you're voting for Obama, get to the polls early and place your vote if you haven't already, and if you're thinking about voting for McCain, either don't go out, or do what Ms. Palin thinks should happen and just let "God do what's right" on election day.

Onto the cookies....

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely. (I baked mine only for 5 minutes because I love soft, chewy cookies.)

Pound Cake with Lemon Glaze

I recently bought some lemon pound cake at meijer, and it was excellent, but I think I can do better. We will see. It's in the oven now, and I'm going to bring it to work tomorrow, so I'll have to update this once I've taste tested it.

If it's shitty, I'll just pawn it off on the coworkers.

Pound Cake Ingredients:

3 cups cake flour
6 large eggs
1 pound butter
1 pound sugar
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preparation:

Sift the flour, baking soda,and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. Stir in salt and
the sugar. Use a large spoon for this. Next, add the butter.

Add the eggs, whole. At this point begin mixing on slow and slowly add the buttermilk, and then add the vanilla extract. After it is thoroughly stirred, turn the mixer up to medium for a few minutes, and then finally on high. If the mixture is a little thick add just a touch more buttermilk. If you don't mix things thoroughly you will have lumps that will form air bubbles in your mixture and leave holes in your finished cake.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Take your standard tube cake pan and oil it with butter. Then lightly flour the oiled pan. Shake the excess flour from the pan.

Pour the mix in, bake the cake for about an hour and twenty minutes. Keep looking at how your cake is doing through the oven door but avoid opening the door too much while it is cooking as I have seen this, or jarring a cake, cause it to collapse. When you think it is done, do the toothpick test. Stick a wooden toothpick into one of the thickest parts of the cake. If it's dry when you pull it our, the cake is done.

Allow the cake to cool 15 or 20 minutes in the pan. Then gently remove it, and stick it on your favorite decorative cake plate.

Lemon Glaze Ingredients:

2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

Preparation:

Mix the above two ingredients until smooth, and pour over warm pound cake.

I'll update this with a picture later on if I remember to take a picture before I bring it in to work.