I have developed a skill.

It's sort of a weird skill, but being at the age where I throw quirky parties and baby showers... I think it's a good skill to have.

I make cute food.

I've been thinking about this Halloween party a lot and I realized that I've done this enough times now, I feel like I can consider it a skill set.

Dog food cake for Tolpel and Jazz's birthday party

Baby Owls for Amy's Owl themed baby shower

Baby Sheepies for Anne's "UNC Ram/baby lamb" theme Baby Shower

Noah's Ark punch for Bess' Baby shower

Settlers of Catan cakes I made for Jacob's 25th Birthday

2 Halloweens ago - there are Oreo spiders, Witches' hats, Breadstick fingers and mummies in a blanket:

And of course, last Halloween:

Yay Internetz! Without you, I wouldn't have known such things existed!

Fall is here! (And so is Halloween!)

Fall is my most favoritest season.  It's starting to get crisp, there are apples and cider and fireplaces. Mmmm.  And, my most favorite holiday party is here. Halloween.

This is the 4th annual halloween party and costume contest I've thrown, and I need to start figuring out what is going to go on my spooky table...  Last year, I impressed myself with this spooky zombie cheese head as the focus.

Recipe from the not martha blog.

(Also, candy, cookies, mulled cider and my very favorite mummies in a blanket)

But what on earth to make this year...............

The smell of spice in the air.......

Today I am identifying with this webcomic.  (It's called Wasted Talent and it's an autobiographical comic about a Canadian Mechanical Engineer named "Jam" and her boyfriend Trevor and you should totes read it cause it's awesome...)

Another kitchen tip

Whenever I make cupcakes they come out uneven. Some are tiny, some are huge, and no matter how many cupcakes the recipe claims to make, I end up with a different number.

Then I read about measuring with the ice cream scoop. Perfect measure, easy to get into the cupcake pan and MAGIC! I ended up with 12 cupcakes!!

How do people think of these things?  Ice cream scoops: making you look like you know how to make cupcakes.

Amazing Frosting Tip

I am a new convert to Pinterest.com (and I adore it).

This means that I see lots of neat ideas, crafts, tips, and articles each day, and I share them there. However, i just saw a video linked from Pinterest that needed immediate sharing on my blog. If you use frosting tips and bags EVER... watch this video.  (Here's the source)

Kitchen Tricks

As much as I love cooking, I can get easily overwhelmed by complicated meals.  I have started doing a few things that I'm sure every cooking 101 class covers... but here are my favorite cooking tips!

1. Read the recipe first.  Not all recipes are equal. Sometimes they aren't obvious that the 2 tbsp of butter are divided.  Sometimes they have that treacherous word "meanwhile". *shudder*. A quick read of the recipe before you start makes sure the "meanwhile"s don't defeat you.

2. Prep the food!  If you need 1/8 cup onion chopped and 1/2 cup bell pepper chopped, chop before you start! I only recently started doing this, and the onions would start burning while I furiously chopped peppers.

3. Relatedly, the most amazing "prep bowls" in the world - a muffin pan! Isn't this ingenious?! Only one dish to wash!

4. When measuring multiple scoops of something, count while pouring each scoop clockwise.  Let me explain.  Say you need 2 TBSP of sugar, but you only have a tsp clean. Fine. You need 6 tsp.  No big deal.  But inevitably around tsp 4... Or was it 5?  Oh no, you've lost count.  When I do this, I put tsp 1 at the "12 o'clock" and the second tsp at "1 o'clock" in the bowl.  When I lose count, I can actually see where I am by where I just dumped my last tsp.  Brilliant!

Does everyone already know these? I feel like I'm the last one coming to this party.  And share your awesome tips with me!

When is it really too late for cookies?

Last night, around 10:30pm, I saw a friend on facebook post how she really just wanted a homemade chocolate chip cookie and to read a book.

Me: Jacob, is 10:30pm too late too make a batch of chocolate chip cookies?
Jacob: It is if you want to go to the gym tomorrow.

Me: ...

Delicious pancakes

Jake and I love to do pancakes on Saturday mornings. I've been a Bisquick kinda girl, but I recently discovered this delightful product on the baking aisle of my Food Lion. Cultured Dry Buttermilk which keeps in my pantry, but only replaces the buttermilk in my recipes...

My pancake recipe has evolved over time but here is my current delicious recipe for
Saturday Morning Pancakes
Yields 6 large pancakes. (2 is a plenty for one person at our house)
Each pancake is: 130 calories, 2.8 g fat, 20g carbs, 2.2 g fiber, 4 g sugar, 6 g protein.

- 4 tablespoons of buttermilk substitute
- 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
- 2 tablespoons flax seed (ground), optional
- 1 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp Stevia (sugar substitute). If you use sugar, use 1 tablespoon. Stevia is much sweeter than sugar.

Make batter by mixing all ingredients. Make pancakes. Eat, yum!

Notes:

• Both the Flax Seed and the Stevia were purchased at Trader Joes.
• I have a bag of ground flax seed that I keep in the fridge to add whenever I'm baking. This is optional, but it adds protein, which helps the Glycemic Index of the recipe.
• The stevia was an experiment today. My husband, super taster that he is normally complains about anything that isn't sugar. Stevia is actually a plant extract and Jacob said "I can taste it but it's very mild." I couldn't taste a difference at all.
  
• I add chocolate chips to the pancakes as they are cooking. This is because 1- otherwise the chocolate chips don't get nicely spaced out and 2 - I don't eat chocolate chips in my pancakes, so I can make them to order... giving my husband extra calories and happiness, whereas I can keep the sugar low.
• And of course, I top my pancakes with low sugar syrup. :)

Season's Gleanings

My husband asked me "You're going to blog about the cucumbers and the bread together? What are you going to call it? 'Season's Gleanings'."

Well, now I am!!!

So. Cucumbers and bread.

I wasn't even going to blog about my sad looking loaf of Rosemary Garlic bread, but when I got home, my husband had demolished an entire loaf of it, so I thought that regardless of looks, it must taste yummy enough to be posted here. I purchased "Brenard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads" on half.com (for like $5, woohoo!) and attempted to make one last night. It turned out okay - I need to buy some wheat flour and next time I won't smoosh it after it's risen... and I'll probably try some fresh rosemary... but all in all, not a I was pretty pleased with how my first breadmaking attempt turned out.

And cucumbers!! Tonight we picked our first cucumber and a couple of lettuce leaves (for our burgers.) Oh my my my. If I can ever get everything growing, I have lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, jalepenos and celery - that would be the best salad EVER! Oh and if my carrots ever grow....

So tonight, we nomed on our bread and cucumbers :) cheap and DELICIOUS.

cake!

I would like to begin by explaining the fate of my previous 3 two-layer cakes.

Cake one was a mountain dew pineapple cake (yay Cake Doct0r) for my mom's birthday. The cake fell and so the pineapple topping was more like soup in a cake bowl. It tasted yummy though.

Cake two was a box birthday cake for my sweet husband. I had just gotten my icing tips and I wanted to make something beautiful. It ended up breaking in half, and while I was slathering icing over the crumbs to "put it back together" and sobbing, while occasionally falling in the middle of the floor.... Jacob finally took it from me and threw it away.

Cake three was another Cake Doctor attempt - this time at a Strawberry cake, for my mother in law's birthday. This one not only got the soup bowl effect, but it tasted like strawberry powdered milk. Not my best evening...

So onward to cake four. I decided to offer to bring a carrot cake to my grandmother's house for Easter, because I had seen this very cute decorating video on allrecipes.com that I wanted to try. Given the fate of my previous three cakes, I thought I'd do a trial run this weekend, and if it succeeded, take it to a friend's party later.

Yaaaaay!!! (Note, my husband has insinuated that objects in pictures may actually be less lovely than they appear.)

But I would just like to proudly state that this cake is totally covered in frosting, the carrots resemble carrots and there is no huge dip in the center. I win the cake making game. :)

And if you'd like them, here are the recipes for Carrot Cake, and colored frosting (although the frosting was a little slippery... and a how to decorate video.