Women's Christmas Dessert 2012

Another successful year of joining together and sharing in the beginning of the Christmas season with some of my favorite ladies!   B, D, and Jackie did lovely jobs with their tablescapes and in the end we sang Silent Night.    This night is best shown off in pictures and this year I snuck out of the program a tad early to grab a few shots of the tables alone in their candlelight.  Enjoy  :)

Danielle's table

Jackie's Table

Brianne's table

Desserts were really hyped this year and I have to say they were pretty tasty!

Merry Christmas!

Cranberry Bliss Bars

Oh yes, the oh so famous treat from Starbucks! They used to be available starting November 1st. A date a could hold out for and wait for... but last year they decided to wait until December 1st to release them from their bakery 'vault' - tragic! I was quite sad for some time (30 days to be exact) last year. This year, I was getting ancy and then several people started to create their own from recipes they had found/created. When one of my friends did, I jumped all over that recipe! YUM! I made them up and enjoyed them muchly! Might need to make some more. :)

The only thing that I altered to this recipe was to add a bit more white chocolate and cranberries that went into the mix, and for the frosting I did not have any orange zest so I put in an ever so slight and tiny splash of lemon juice instead.... and by splash I mean drizzle, drips... hardly any. :) They were delicious!

Second Birthday Cake

Time for another birthday cake! This year I went with the theme of 'dinosaurs' - my son is obsessed with them. He loves them. He calls them 'dinees'. We have quite a few. So of course I was on the hunt for a cake design to make his cake this year special. Since last year his cake was such a hit, I didn't want to make that a one time thing - so I went on the hunt for a good design. After searching and reviewing several ideas and techniques I settled on this cake design. Officially it's a dragon and not a dinosaur, but the effect is the same. :)

I followed the design of the cake carving based on the instructions, deviating a little bit (aka I didn't use ding dongs in my cake, I just created extra large cake 'muffins') I required 3 tubs of frosting to frost the entire thing between piecing the cake together for construction and then also covering it in green frosting. Sorry I forgot to take a picture prefrosting.

After I got him all frosted (taking 2 tubs to get it fully frosted) I then broke out the spray 'paint' food coloring. I hadn't used this medium of food dye before - but man was it fun. :) I used a darker green and orange and did some shading and spot placement on the dinosaur.

Then I made some fondant using the recipe that I used last year... leaving some white for the eyes and dyeing the rest orange for the dinosaur's spikes. Just used a knife to cut the spikes out and simply set them on the cake. After that was complete I frosted the entire board, and spread dyed coconut around it to create grass, along with some brown sugar for sand, and some colored blue sugar to make the lake and placed the volcano down... and wala the cake was complete.



Aside from cake baking time, construction, frosting, etc.. took about 3 hours off and on with me taking small breaks in between. Not too shabby. I finished it off by 'painting' with food coloring a '2' on the volcano and his name on the dino's leg. Sadly the only ones that got to enjoy it was our little family and Gran and PopPop because when our son woke the day of his party, he was sick. :( But the cake was tasty... even though the birthday boy had to wait until Sunday to enjoy any.

Raspberry Tart

Ok I've established that pregnant women should NOT be allowed to watch the Food Network - it's dangerous and results in even more 'cravings' or salivating moments. The other day I switched it on and Paula Deen got my taste buds watering from multiple angles (in fact she was the initiator for my baked potato craving.) In that same episode she made this delicious tart and it instantly moved to the top of my list to create and consume.

I didn't own a tart pan, but there is no time like the present to go and purchase one - and so on Friday, amid my other errands, a quick trip to Bed Bath and Beyond with a coupon was at the top of my list. They had the perfect dish and it came home with us right away.

I'll leave the recipe details up to Ms. Paula Deen and allow you to go directly to her link to obtain the instructions. I did two things differently. One on accident, which was to use granulated sugar in the crust instead of powdered. I just was on auto pilot and it was too late to correct it and I wasn't terribly enthused at the thought of wasting 3/4 cups of butter - so I figured I'd give it a go with the granulated sugar. I think it caused the crust to thicken a tad more, so a little tougher to 'cut' through than the powdered sugar, and the 'sweetness' was a bit less with the granulated sugar. Where as, I think it would have been sweeter with the powdered, but it worked out just fine. The only other alteration to the recipe was that I didn't use blueberry pie filling, I had just recently picked raspberries at a U-Pick farm, so I used those as my topping instead.

The worst part was waiting. :) I cooked the tart crust during the afternoon (before I put in the potatoes.) The tart crust has to fully cool before you can put the filling in. So I created the crust and then waited until after Ace went to bed to finish.

Tips that I would offer to make the 'cooking' process easier or less guess work. Make sure your heavy cream is super cold, slowly add the sugar to the bowl (so none collects on the bottom) and then ramp up to a fast beating of it. I had left it on a medium speed on the mixer and it just wasn't fluffing, my mom suggested to speed it up because what you're trying to do is get air into it... well that makes sense. :) So after I cranked up the speed, it was quite fluffy pretty quickly.

It was delicious. And yes it was my breakfast :) With the pecans on the bottom of the tart crust when eating it, it almost has the flavoring like you're eating a pecan pie without all the goo, but then also add in a light cheese cake flavor, but without the thickness and the fresh and sweetness of raspberries. This is a dangerous recipe! SO GOOD!

A fun feature of this tart pan that I bought, is that the base of the pan lifts out - so you just push on the bottom and you can easily move the tart out of the pan for super easy cutting and of course display.


sooo hard to put this in the fridge and go to bed!

Dessert!!

Don't fret - again as usual - my family is still eating! Yet with pregnancy comes morning sickness and getting inventive in the kitchen isn't at the top of the priority list.

Dessert though is a must and when I hopped onto Two of a Kind's blog I found this tasty treat! What better occassion to make this dessert than the 4th of July!

Ingredients I used:
Box of brownie Mix
3/4 cup sugar
2 8oz blocks of Cream Cheese
bananas(I used 3)
Chocolate Chips(use as many or as few as you'd like)

I would have used only 1.5 blocks of cream cheese - it was a bit thick - but still yummy and I also added more sugar to make the cream cheese 'frosting' a bit more sweet. Tossed on some patriotic sprinkles on top and it was ready to go! It was tasty!

Christmas Sandies

Tis the season for baking cookies! I always like to try new recipes - which can sometimes be dangerous if you plan on feeding them to other people. However, this round actually worked out pretty well. I obtained the original recipe here. I adapted it mildly simply by adding a little extra lemon peel and cranberries.

Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped dried cranberries*
2 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
White, red, and green nonpareils

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Blend the butter and powdered sugar until smooth. Add vanilla and mix in well. Stir in cranberries and lemon peel and slowly add in flour. If the mixture is crumbly simply remove from the mixing bowl and kneed it into compliance.

Shape mixture into 1/2-, 3/4-,or 1-inch balls. Roll dough balls in nonpareils. Arrange balls 1 inch apart on prepared cookie sheets.

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes for about 1/2-inch balls, 13 minutes for 3/4-inch balls, or 15 minutes for 1-inch balls, or until bottoms of cookies are light brown. Transfer to wire racks and let cool. Makes about one hundred forty-four 1/2-inch cookies; seventy-two 3/4-inch cookies; or thirty-six 1-inch cookies.

*Tip: Place dried cranberries in a food processor. Cover and process until finely chopped. Or finely chop cranberries by hand.