nothing short of thankful

Of all the reasons throughout the year that we have to celebrate, Thanksgiving is my favorite.  I love everything about it.  There is no concern of cards or gifts or wrapping paper, or midnight visits from mystical creatures, only of family, friends, and of course good food.  This year I was able to spend it with family that I don't get to see quite as often as I would like-yet another thing to be thankful for.  The food, as well as the company, was wonderful.  Taking time to relax and enjoy family, food, and football was the doctor ordered after a few rather stressful weeks at work.
This year I made pumpkin cakes for dessert.  I saw them on the cover of the Southern Living and thought they were too cute!  I didn't use the recipe in the magazine, but instead somewhat made up my own (although, the recipes in the magazine look oh so appealing.  I will probably have to try them in the near future!)  I made these twice; once for friends and once for family.  The first time I didn't follow the mags suggestion of using caramel for the stem and leaves and used frosting instead...they turned out looking more like Christmas wreaths.  The second time I decided to take SL's advice-apparently they know what they are talking about ;) 

 

celebrate

This weekend I baked for a co-worker.  It was her son's Bar Mitzvah and she and her husband threw a huge reception after the ceremony.  The reception had an NFL theme and the guest of honor is a Green Bay Packer's fan so I made him a cake of the Packer's field and cake pops in the shape of 'cheeseheads'.  From what I hear, the reception was a blast and the kids there loved the pops!

 

baby's on the way

About a month ago T asked me to bake a cake for a baby shower she and some friends were throwing for a co-worker.  The shower had a Dr. Seuss theme so I was super excited (not to mention nervous) about making the cake.  After scouring Google images for ideas from other bakers' creations, I came up with my own sketch of something I thought I would be capable of producing.  That idea changed a bit after I found these cute Dr. Seuss alphabet flash cards while shopping one day.  T and I were a bit worried that there wouldn't be enough cake to go around (...we were wrong by the way) so she whipped up some delicious cake pops to accompany the cake.  The shower was amazingly successful and the guest of honor loved her desserts.  I'm so glad I was able to be a part of her special day...now we just have to wait on baby :)

 

 

 

great balls of [brownie]

A friend from work recently asked me to make a dessert for her.  She was having some friends over for a game night and just wouldn't have enough time to prepare something.  As always, I was excited to make something new, and being the laid back person she is, she let me decide what to make.  I had a few other baking projects going on the same weekend so I needed something that would be easy, but still fun for her guests.  I decided to make cake pops and brownie pops.  I used red velvet cake for the cake balls and covered them in milk chocolate and used white chocolate to cover the brownies.  They were amazingly easy and fun to make.  I hope that she and her guests enjoy eating them as much as I enjoyed making them!  As a 'thank you' for the dessert she went above and beyond reason and bought me a beautiful covered glass cake plate has several other uses.  The gift was worth far more than the desserts, but I am thankful to have such thoughtful friends and can't wait to see it put to good use!

thunder rolls

For over a month now my students have been begging me to make Thunder Cake.  (for those of you who aren't up on your children's literature, it is a recipe that Patricia Polacco includes in a story about her childhood titled after the dessert)  I read the book aloud to my students to show how sensory images are used in writing.  With such a high demand for the treat, of course I decided to make it...but it didn't come without a price.  If I was going to make it, I was going to make it work for me of course ;)  We have a classroom economy where students earn tickets (money) for completing their homework and classroom jobs.  And if you give a child a ticket, they are going to need to spend it.  So, once a month we have a class store.  I try to keep the store limited to things that cost me little to no money (pencils, erasers, hw passes, computer time, etc), but there is always a food treat as well.  This month my treat was Thunder Cake.  I was a bit concerned about how these cakes would turn out since the "secret ingredient" is pureed tomatos.  The cakes weren't as sweet as I would like, but slap a little frosting on them and they were just fine.  'Traditionally' Thunder Cake is served with buttercream icing and garnished with a strawberry, but I just couldn't resist using chocolate icing and sprinkles--lets just say I know my customers (what 10 year old doesn't love sprinkles?)  Although it isn't my new favorite recipe, the kids didn't seem to notice.  And thats all that mattered :)

 

a pirate looks at forty (seven)

I've been wanting to make a pirate ship cake for a while now and with my father being the parrot-head that he is I thought there would be no better occasion than his birthday. I played off of Buffet's song "A Pirate looks at Forty" as my theme and came up with a pretty fun cake.  It was a cake of firsts for me--this was my first shaped and chocolate cake that I've made.  It was a lot of fun to make and didn't take nearly the time I thought it would.  To personalize it a bit I added Dad's favorite candies: Runts and Twizzlers for treasure and rope.  I was quite happy with the end result and think that Dad will be pretty surprised :)

every dawg

Halloween always falls near another special day for my UGA family: the GA/FL game.  Because of the holidays (yes, GA/FL is a holiday), and the fact that the whole family was going to be in attendance, we decided to make it a Festivus occasion as well.  Our Festivus does not resemble the ever famous Sinfeld holiday.  Ours is a day where age rules are thrown out the window and we are able to let out our inner child--anything goes, everyone brings their 'A game', and it is a guarenteed good time :)  For this celebration I decided to try cupcake bites from Bakerella's blog.  Once I got the hang of it they were super easy and too cute!  I went with GA colors, but I can't wait to use other color variations.  Molly had a beautiful (not to mention delicious) spread waiting for our arrival, and the costumes were quite creative.  Although the game was quite a disappointment, it wasn't able to put a damper our Festivus fun.  In the words of Corey Smith "every dawg has his day."  Happy Festivus everyone!

 The Hanson's Beautiful Home

Ms. Cathy and college Molly

Monopoly pieces

Knowshon and "The Ginger Ninja"

Taylor Swift and Kanye West

The Ninja Turtles, a lobster, and Captain Jack Sparrow