Portobellos and Tortellini? Yes, please!

I have never been a huge Alfredo fan, but I am a HUGE fan of portobellos. I saw a recipe in Allrecipes that had Portobellos, Tortellini and Alfredo, AND wine- sounded awesome. Well guess what? It was... Make it! Recipe can be found here.

Quick, Easy and Delicious

I know those were the words you wanted to hear... For a quick, easy and delicious dinner, why not some Chicken Parmesan? I made spaghetti using sauce from a jar, (don't laugh at me, I used the MEAT flavored Ragu for a chicken dish), Parmesan Shake N Bake, 4 thin cut boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and Kraft shredded mozzarella with a touch of Philly (for creamier consistency). I baked the chicken for about 20-25 minutes while I boiled the spaghetti. In a 8x11 inch glass pan I sprinkled some shredded mozzarella and poured the spaghetti over it after I mixed it with the sauce. Once the chicken was done, I placed it on top of the spaghetti, poured some more sauce over the chicken and sprinkled cheese on top. I popped it in the oven at about 350 for about 10-15 minutes, enough for the cheese to get melty. It made for a very yummy dinner!

Baby Boy Shower Cake

A friend of mine is expecting a boy and I volunteered to make her cake. I planned on trying to get the smoothest blue icing, but unfortunately, that didn't work out! That morning, I kneaded some blue into some fondant I had ready and decided to just cover it up. Whew! What a life-saver! Unfortunately, the cake also slid a wee on the "grease-proof" cake round, but oh well... Here is Baby Jesse David Scarborough's cake! Congratulations, Stacey and Jason! :o)

Sweet Cheesy Enchiladas, Y'all!

I was looking through the Woman's Day magazine the other day and came across a recipe for some Easy Chicken & Cheese Enchiladas by Campbell's- being that my hubby has been requesting Mexican for some time (even though these were more Tex-Mex), I decided to make them. Boy am I glad I did! If you like any sort of cheese, or chicken, or any form of deliciousness, you have to make these. Later!

TiKi CaKe!

It was decided Monday that we would have a Luau party at work to have another excuse to eat. (Who doesn't love to eat?!) Anyway, I said I would make a cake and decided to make it resemble the face on the plates. I made Devil's Food cake with homemade chocolate frosting that I tried to make look like real wood. The rest of the face is marshmallow fondant.

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15th Birthday Cake - 2nd Full Fondant Attempt

 

My niece (the one I made the Skittles cake for last year) asked that I PLEASE make her cake this year. Her request? A two-tiered zebra striped cake with a purple peace sign on the 2nd tier. She later requested that I replace the peace sign with yellow flowers. I know she likes the color green so I used it to accent the cake as well.

I know the “15” looks a little like “25” but it was the only thing I could work with at the time since I rolled the fondant out a bit thickly and I was afraid to do any more with it. I brushed the number with Wilton’s “Leaf Green” pearldust to make it pretty. Needless to say, my niece LOVED the cake which made me very happy. Here’s to practicing more with fondant, it’s so much fun!

 

 

 

31st Birthday Cake for Hubby

 

My dear husband had one request and one request only for his birthday cake. Too Much Chocolate Cake and chocolate frosting! I complied and had nothing but rave reviews, the cake was absolutely wonderful! Alas, I can only dream until I get to make it again! Anyone have this request? Anyone...?

Bridal Shower Cake, 1st Full Fondant Attempt

 

It had been a while since I had a little pack of marshmallows just DYING to be made into fondant. I had made some earlier this year with marshmallow fluff with no success so I decided to get the miniature marshmallows and follow the recipe I had true to form. A co-worker's bridal shower was coming up so I decided to try my hand at it since I was itching to make the cake. Her colors were hot pink and orange. I didn't want to use hot pink food coloring and have people walking around with pink teeth! The best way to avoid this was to... Ta-da! Make the fondant! It was a lot of fun, though I had a little bit of trouble with it cracking a little. It still tasted great and everyone loved it.

40th Birthday Cake

 

It was my wonderful sister-in-law's 40th birthday this past Sunday and I was more than eager to make a special cake for her. She requested yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I bought the mix since I am not used to yellow cake from scratch, but I completely decided against canned frosting. It's just not the same! I also decided to make some marshmallow fondant for the decorations. It was a sticky mess for a while, but a lot of fun to work with. As you can see, I made a "V" for the topper; her name is Vikki. I also sprinkled a few edible silver dragees to add some prettiness.

 

 

 

Zoo-kee-nee

 

Desperate for something sweet the other night, I figured the lonely zucchini in my refrigerator wouldn't mind if I used it for something sweet rather than salty. I don't seem to be very good with sauteeing this vegetable so I went for the sugar- adding in some chocolate chips for good measure. YUM!

Birthday Cake!

 

I made my birthday cake this year (having the chance to make it is a part of the fun!) and I thought I was about to run out of chocoate frosting- there was a 3 inch section and maybe a tablespoon of frosting and somehow I seemed to come up with more than I needed! However, it didn't smooth out like I wanted it to, but that's okay. The cake itself was a mix of Too Much Chocolate Cake and Betty Crocker Golden Butter cake mix. The colored frosting is buttercream frosting and it blended very well with the rest of the cake. We served it with a mix of vanilla and chocolate checkered ice cream as the cake itself was supposed to be checkered. Note I did not supply a picture of the inside? It didn't turn out. But I will try again! It tasted delicious anyway and I had a wonderful time. Many thanks to my family and friends that came out to celebrate another blessed year! I also made a punch that turned out really good, with strawberry jello used as a base. It is a slushy punch that is just downright delicious!

 

Baby Burgers!

 

I couldn't help but think of Burger King's commercial when the guy opens up his bag of food and gets flocked by women, one of them purring, "What cute little buuurrrggeerrs!" when we made these last night. I was in the mood for homemade burgers and I have wanted to make sliders for the longest time so I bought Pepperidge Farms slider buns and asked Billy to do me the honors of mixing the hamburger with some yummy spices for us to eat. Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy them as much since I was sick, but they were very delicious nonetheless. Aren't they cuuuuttteee?

Rabbit Food!

 
Okay, so it's not really rabbit food, but a really REALLY great salad I discovered thanks to a coworker taking it on one of our many days of food parties. I just fell in love with the colors and of course, being that it's healthy, I made as much as I could! It's very simple, yet very delicious. For serving a large crowd, here is what you need:

1 Head of lettuce, torn into pieces and washed
1 bag of Fresh Express (or any brand) Spring Mix (it helps to wash this as well, gets rid of the plastic bag flavor)
1 hothouse cucumber (or any, the hothouse comes wrapped in plastic and it is very delicious)
1/2 red onion, sliced
1 red, 1 green and 1 yellow bell pepper all sliced
1 quart cherry tomatoes, cut in half
Croutons (whichever you like)
Ranch or Italian dressing. Either of these seems to be pretty good for this salad.
Toss everything together and enjoy!

CuPcAkEs!

Thursday night I was itching to use a buttercream frosting I had previously frozen, just to make sure the rumors were true that it froze well. I had only had it for about 2 weeks so it wasn't surprising that it was still absolutely DELICIOUS! This frosting is supposed to freeze well for up to three months. No way could I wait that long to make something! I used the Daisy Sour Cream Chocolate Cake recipe for the cupcakes and took it from there.

 

Aaahhh, Cookies!

 

What can say yumminess better than peanut butter cookies with some chocolate? I had bought some NATURAL Skippy peanut butter that was just awful by itself, so I figured I could fix that sticky ooey gooey-ness with some sugar and chocolate- hence the cookies! (Natural Jif is definitely better tasting). Anyway, I didn't have any kisses to make the blossoms, so I made do with semi-sweet chocolate chips. They did JUST fine. What was even BETTER was the fact that my NEW Christmas present creamed up the peanut butter and sugar so well that tears were brimming in my eyes, I was so proud. Okay, I didn't cry, but pretty close to it! ;o) I begged for the KitchenAid mixer a couple of Christmases ago and the 3rd time was the charm. I got it before Christmas (no, it wasn't a surprise, but that's okay!) I used it Christmas Eve and made red velvet cupcakes, cream cheese frosting and chocolate cheesecake truffles with it. Now I want to bake anything and everything I could think of just as an excuse to use it. (Sorry Billy!) Recipe for the cookies can be found here.

 

Mexican Layer Bake

 

I made this Mexican Layer Bake last night from the Food & Family Kraft magazine I get and let me tell ya- it's already gone! It was so delicious, we dug in like we hadn't eaten in months! Just a few changes I made, only because I was almost out of one thing and I couldn't find something in another- I will place the changes in the posted recipe below:

3/4 lb. extra-lean ground beef (I made about 1-1/2 lbs)
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 tsp. chili powder
1-1/4 cups chunky red salsa - I used 1 cup Pace chunky salsa and 1/2 cup Old El Paso Taco Sauce
1 pkg. (10 oz.) frozen corn - here is where I used a 16oz. bag because I couldn't find a 10oz.
3 high-fiber whole wheat tortillas (8 inch)-(I used large, about 9 or 10 inches)
1/2 cup BREAKSTONE'S Reduced Fat or KNUDSEN Light Sour Cream (I used Daisy Light)
1-1/2 cups KRAFT 2% Milk Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese, divided - I just used as much cheese as I wanted since I am such a fan... I did follow the directions below though!

HEAT oven to 375ºF.

BROWN meat with onions and peppers in large skillet on medium-high heat. Stir in chili powder; cook 1 min. Add salsa and corn; mix well. Simmer 5 min.

SPREAD 1 cup meat sauce onto bottom of 8x8 or 9x9-inch baking dish; top with one tortilla; next, 1 cup meat sauce, sour cream and 1/2 cup cheese. Cover with another tortilla, 1 cup remaining meat sauce and half of remaining cheese; top with remaining tortilla and meat sauce. Cover with foil.

BAKE 25 min. or until casserole is heated through. Top with remaining cheese; bake, uncovered, 5 min. or until melted.

 

Lingerie Party Cake

This is a cake I made in June for my friend Sherry's lingerie party- it almost turned out to be a "cake wreck" but somehow I managed! I almost had a panic attack while making this one is all I'll say (first time I had ever felt something like that coming on and hopefully the last, it was NOT FUN!)- that in combination with not having had much to eat in preparation for the party made for a bad time a few minutes before the party for me! I ended up using a 9x13 cake pan for the bodice and the small dome from the Betty Crocker ball pan for the boobies- ha- and shaped it myself. She requested a strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting, which I tripled- I think that was my one mistake- I should have made each batch separately, being that it came out too liquid and I couldn't decorate much with it- in a panic, I ended up using black frosting from a tube (which came in handy, even though I totally dislike the taste) and it saved me from having pale black "frills" on the cake. As it was, I decided I would work with what I had. The frosting poured over the cake and it settled in like satin- what's prettier than satin lingerie? Here are the pics Sherry took- yet another wacky happening that night- I took pictures for the blog and realized AFTER THE PARTY WAS OVER, that I didn't have a memory card in my camera. How awful is that?!? Thankfully Sherry took pictures and I got them from her. Here is the cake that caused me the stress of all stresses:

 

 

Financial Peace University Cake

 

For our last Financial Peace University class, I decided to make a cake to celebrate our freedom from credit cards! My original idea involved a 9x13 cake cut in half decorated as a credit card, but with the time crunch I had, I had to settle for drawing it. :o) It was delicious!

 

Baby Showers & Birthdays...

 

 

Oh, the busy life of a baker... So kidding. The weekend before last just happened to be one of those weekends where there is so much going on, you don't know which way to turn. I had a baby shower to attend and a birthday party later that evening. As it was, I was requested to make a cake for each event- to which I gladly accepted, being that I want to get more practice in decorating them! The baby shower was for a girl and I wanted to make a rattle cake- which I have made before, just never decorated it the way I did this time. I took a picture without the handle (pre-delivery) and then one with. One half of the dome was chocolate and the other was golden butter.

The birthday cake was a request of a cake I had made back in August for another friend's birthday, the devil's food with chocolate icing and topped with chocolate covered strawberries, always a fun one to make since I make extra choco-covered strawberries and I LOOOOOVE to eat those! This frosting of course, is the cool whip/pudding/milk combo. Much lighter than regular frosting but just as delish. Needless to say, the cakes were a hit and both parties were great! Can't wait to make more!

 

Blast from the PAST!!!

 

I know it's been a LOOOOONG year away, but I am just now posting my nephew's first birthday cakes- for some reason I keep forgetting they are there for me to post! His "smash" cake was his very own Winnie the Pooh- carrot cake (don't ask- my sister's idea) and cool whip/cream cheese pudding flavored icing. The caterpillar cake was an idea I picked up online, and I just love how it turned out. :o)