The spirit of the holidays will be upon us soon with the start of the “ber” months a few weeks from now.  It may be a little early for some, but I decided to start exploring some gift ideas and get a head start on my holiday planning this week.  During the past years, we have been sending out food baskets and pastries as Christmas presents for some of our friends and relatives.  Having these pre-packaged gift items around is christmas shopping made easy.  All you have to do is call-in your order and have them picked-up from the store.  This year, I would like to add some treats of my own in our gift basket selections but first I need to test my kitchen skills and see if there is any promise to this possibility.

Given that I had no previous experience in making any pastry from the oven, I decided to start with some Maya oven toaster pastry mix.  The first on my list was the Maya Oven Toaster Chocolate Cake Mix.  I simply followed the directions on the packaging for the chocolate cake mix and added some chocolate bits on an impulse. There was a pack of Goya white chocolate buttons on the counter so I decided to cut it into quarters and include it in the mix. I was hoping for a moist double chocolate cake but I wasn’t quite successful with the end result.  Since the chocolates weren’t really intended for baking, some of it melted and settled on the bottom creating some sort of a glaze.  There were some bits that didn’t melt completely which created some creamy filling is some spots in the cake.

My first try on a moist double chocolate cake may not be a success but it was good enough to be enjoyed by the kids.  It looks like my baking skills aren’t ready to create some gift giving goodies yet.  But since I started early, there is still hope for me, after all I still have a couple of months to practice before the holidays.  Plus, there are still plenty of sweet recipes for me to try at the Maya Kitchen Recipe site.