Food Friday: Birthday Cake

For the birthday we had last week (she's now double digits!) we had two cakes. One of them was the chocolate cherry cupcakes I've already shared the recipe for. We brought those to chess club on her birthday and had them at the end of dinner that night. The other cake was made for her party. Lily is much more adventurous when it comes to cakes than the rest of us. She often picks a recipe out of my cake doctor books and has me go for it while the rest of the family will only choose ones we know and love for our birthdays. Her cake was so yummy though!



It was a Macadamia Fudge Torte (although we made it with pecans instead of Macadamias). It was in my original cake doctor book, and it reminded my husband of our favorite chocolate scones (probably because they both are chocolate with cinnamon, but they do also taste similarly besides that).

Gingerbread Wrap-up

I know it's been a couple of weeks almost, but here were the completed Gingerbread Houses


(front and back views)

Some of these are still a little bare, as a couple of the students were not done decorating, but I had to snap a picture before I forgot. For the record, none of them collapsed and much candy was enjoyed by all.

As a tip for anyone making gingerbread houses in the future - please, bake and then let all the pieces cool - and then wrap and FREEZE all the pieces. Then, at your leisure, buy candy, prepare a foil covered platform, make icing, and put together frozen houses. They stay sturdy and come together much quicker if they are frozen solid.

Food Friday: Book Club Treats

What I decided to bring to bookclub:


Chocolate Cherry Cake (the only changes I made was to use just a fork to mix it so the cherries stayed together more, make it as a layer cake and put a can of cherry cake filling between the layers, and then make sure to cool and wait for the icing to thicken before you pour it on)


Apple-Berry Baked Oatmeal (This is a new recipe for me, I got it from someone else and made it once recently and loved it! It was good warm, but I really liked it cold. The only changes I made was to use a mix of pecans and walnuts, as I was running out of pecans, and I used whole milk and greek vanilla yogurt, as that's what I had in the house!)


A Veggie Ham Quiche:

My pie crust recipe is to take 2 sticks of butter, melt in microwave, add 1/2 cup hot water and then 2 Cups of flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp salt. Use a fork to mix these together and then wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put in the freezer for about 30 minutes, or fridge for at least 2 hours (up to overnight). Usually if I stick this in the freezer and start making the filling for the quiche I'm ready to roll out the crust about same time it's ready for me.

The filling varies slightly depending on what I have on hand but usually it is: 2 onions cooked up in olive oil. Once those look nice I add a large drained can of mushrooms and a bag of frozen pepper strips. I cook those until the liquid is mostly gone and the peppers are thawed and slightly cooked (not mush). I then add some cut up ham - let that cook for a minute and then pull the pan off the burner and add a bag of frozen spinach. Once that has thawed I add any cheese. Crack 12-15 eggs into a bowl and then add them to the now warm, but not hot, mixture. This will go right in to the pie crusts and then baked for about 45-60min at 325-350 (depends how full you fill the pies). You can tell it's done when you cut into it a bit and it gives clear liquid (instead of eggy liquid). I figure each pie has a stick of butter in it, as the crust recipe makes 2 crusts, and about 6-8 eggs - cut into 8 pieces it's less than an egg per slice, and lots of veg!


And I also brought some cut raw vegetables and dip

Now those of you who have moved away can pretend, between yesterday's post and today's post that you were able to attend bookclub!