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.