a belated Thanksgiving feast

Last night we (Mark, Amber, Anthony, and I) put on a thank-you belated Thanksgiving dinner for special friends of ours that have been a blessing to us this year. Everyone went home full and blessed. Here's a few highlights.


Here's Mark with Lil' Wayne, our turkey that he butterflied and made with the greatest glaze I've ever had on a turkey.


Our googly turkeys made from Oreos, PB cups, Whoppers, and candy corn.


The feast! We each took parts of the meal and cooked all day.


Dessert #1 - Pumpkin bread pudding with vanilla creme anglaise and spicy caramel apple sauce. (This is the dessert Bobby Flay made in his Throwdown with Pioneer Woman. It was delicious!)


Chocolate caramel bourbon pecan tart. Delicious, except for the fact that the caramel bubbled over the tart in the oven and burned around the edge of the tart pan. (And also set off the fire alarm and dripped in their oven.)

nintendo power

Our friends Theresa and Andy got married last weekend, and Mark and I made Nintendo cupcakes to contribute to their cookie table. I made the red velvet cake with white whipped frosting, and Mark did the fondant designs. (I can't figure out how to flip some of these photos, so bear with me.)

the last few months

Here's what I've been doing/baking/making the last few months.

Mexican hot chocolate cookies (chocolate, cinnamon, and chili pepper)

Raspberry Lemon Cake (a wedding cake flavor test)

An AMAZING German chocolate cake for Mark's 31st birthday

Star Trek sugar cookies with the custom cookie cutters I had made for his birthday.

Cupcakes for my bridal shower - lemon with lemon cream cheese frosting and white cake with toasted coconut buttercream and chocolate filigree hearts

Sugar cookies for Amber's bachelorette party

Mark and I also did an entire practice run of our wedding cake, which was a two day ordeal that I'll recap at some point with photos of the actual cake.

But if you want to see some professional photos, from the wedding, you can click here. The great photos make us look more sophisticated than we actually are, but the smiles on our faces are totally real.

still here

I've obviously neglected this blog for awhile, which I promised myself I wouldn't do. I blame being generally busy with large life changes for my lack of updates. However, I've been busy with baking during that time period as well. So to start yet another phrase with "once the wedding is over," I promise to fill you in on the in between time when I can.

In the meantime, here's something to tide you over. We'll be baking our own wedding cake starting tomorrow morning. These photos were from the practice in July. Tomorrow it's on for real...and when I return to the blog, I will have made a three tiered wedding cake and married my love, the icing to my cake...









(These photos are by One Way Street Production. A great photographer couple that really humored our awkward non-photogenic selves.)

bridal shower blossoms

I didn't do any new recipes for these cupcakes, but the design was new. Vanilla cake with coconut buttercream, and chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. And cherry blossoms. Because they are Amber's favorite, and after all, it was her shower. The cupcake papers were AMAZING - Bake It Pretty rocks. We also put glitter dust on the cherry blossom petals, which were made from fondant and punched into shape with a ball tool and foam. The branches were melted chocolate.

better than just girl scout cookies - amber's birthday cheesecakes

For many a long month, we had some Samoa cookies sitting in the cupboard. They were being saved for the right moment - and that moment was Amber's birthday. I tried out a new pan (mini tart pan with removable bottoms) and it was FANTASTIC. I took a basic cheesecake recipe and improvised a little to come up with a crust that would work. My first crust was an epic fail, since using the actual cookies proved to be a big mess when the chocolate in them melted. Not good for crust. So here's what I did.


My improvised crust was made from coconut (toasted of course)


Chocolate graham crackers...


Add some butter. And behold the deliciousness (which actually looks like a pile of mud, but tastes like heaven).


Fill the crust in the little wee pockets. (I lurve this pan. I'm telling you.)


The filling comes next. The usual. Cream cheese, sugar, and some cornstarch (to prevent cracking - which actually didn't work b/c they all cracked, but it worked to my advantage. but i'm getting ahead of myself).


Cream it together and add the eggs.


Crush some Samoas and mix them in. Like a blizzard.



Chop some Samoas into little baby pieces for garnish...


Once the cheesecakes are done, push the baby Samoa piece into the crack at the top. Sprinkle some leftover toasted coconut on the top. And....


Heaven.

And birthday heaven.

bridal shower cupcakes

Last of today's catch up posts, and this one is actually timely. Mark and I made 72 cupcakes last night for my coworkers/friends Sharon and Dorie whose niece/daughter had a bridal shower today. I didn't take a million pictures during the cake baking/frosting making part, but here's the finished product(s).