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Baby Shower Cupcakes
I’m making cupcakes tomorrow for my dear sister-in-law, who’s hosting a baby shower on Friday night. I still haven’t decided what I want to make yet, so tonight I thought I’d play around with some fondant and try to get some good ideas. Instead, I came up with these. I also discovered that fondant and I don’t play well together. I think I’m going to need a lot more practice before I am good enough to make anything fancy. Plus, I totally hate the taste…
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Irish Apple Cake with Irish Whiskey Caramel Sauce
The weather was gorgeous outside today. Sunny, nearly 70 degrees, no wind – and my kids played outside. We went for a walk. We didn’t wear jackets, and we didn’t come in until almost bedtime. These things, along with the fact that college basketball tournaments are on TV and St. Patrick’s Day is a mere three days away can really only mean one thing – SPRING IS HERE! Well, almost. Still a week or so away but whatever.
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Chocolate Peanut Butter Torte
There’s a thing in this world…it’s called too much peanut butter. This is not that. This is the perfect amount of peanut butter. Which, I suppose is hard to measure because some people don’t like peanut butter. Who are these people? I’ve heard of them, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever met one of them. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not even sure that there’s a thing called too much peanut butter. That’s probably not possible. This is what happens when…
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Chocolate Dipped Holiday Cookies
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #NestleHolidayBaking #CollectiveBias My daughter had a couple of friends over last weekend to play for a few hours for a “BFF Gift Exchange,” and because she’s just like her mother, she wanted to decorate for her party and create a dessert table to display our cookie creations. The girls had pizza for lunch and we made some chocolate covered cookies with fun decorations for dessert. It’s a quick and…
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Three Layer Oreo Bars
So my life goes like this: yesterday my husband was out with his buddies, so I had an evening to myself. The girls went to bed at 8pm, and I marched right now the stairs, made a big glass of iced tea, bought the girliest-chick-flick ever, and pulled out my big stack of neglected magazines. It was awesome…for about three minutes. Precisely three minutes into my chick-flick, my youngest daughter was calling from the top of the stairs. It was “fundering” and she was scared.…
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Spiced Cranberry Apple Butter
Who still has cranberries left from the holidays? Anyone besides me? I always stock up and freeze what I’m not going to use, because I firmly believe that cranberries aren’t just a winter fruit. It drives me crazy that you can’t find them year round, so when I see ’em, I buy ’em. Our CSA has been overly generous with our apple deliveries lately too – so much so that we haven’t been able to eat them all quickly enough. We eat them like crazy…
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Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes
For those of you who have followed this blog for any time at all, you know that I have a pretty snobby aversion to boxed cake mix and pretty much any and all convenience food. That’s not to say that I don’t still have my favorites (Rotel dip, Dean’s French Onion Dip, store-bought Hawaiian bread, etc.) but generally speaking I’m of the opinion that anything you can make from scratch is not only better for you, but it almost always tastes better. Way better. Once…
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Butterfly Cupcakes
This past weekend we celebrated my baby girl’s second birthday with two family parties. For me, it was a busy weekend of cleaning, cooking and keeping the girls entertained but it was all worth it. I loved just watching how happy my girls were to be surrounded by everyone who loves them. It wasn’t about the presents, the food or the decorations. Especially in the wake of the tornado destruction in Joplin, MO and Reading, KS, I found myself counting my blessings. It was a…
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Orange Sweet Rolls
My to-do list today looked something like this: clean the pantry for an upcoming photo-shoot. Organize the mess on top of my desk. Finish the laundry. Go to the grocery store. Decorate for Easter. Put away the 2T clothes still in Mia’s closet *sniff*. See how productive I am in my head? Know what I actually did? Yup. I made Orange Sweet Rolls.
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Chocolate Chip Love Muffins
I’m one of those people who thinks Valentine’s Day is silly. Sure, I can appreciate a day that’s dedicated to making the loves in your life feel special and adored. But to me it conjures up images of people waiting in line to buy overpriced flowers, cards and chocolates with only half-hearted intent. I’ve always told my husband that flowers on a random Tuesday in August, or a card for no reason will always be more appreciated than forcing it on Valentine’s Day. Perhaps that…
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Hot Chocolate Cake with Homemade Marshmallows
So, my daughter’s 7th birthday is next week. First of all, it’s really just not possible that she’s turning seven years old. Not possible. Second of all, this means that I have a big family party looming on the horizon. That means my house has to be cleaned. It also means I need to plan a menu, figure out decorations and – oh yeah – do all that cooking and baking without undoing all of the cleaning and planning.
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Applesauce Doughnut Holes
Ok, I promise I’ll get off the fall-flavor train soon. Yeah, not really. I can’t promise that at all. I know there are some of you out there who aren’t into pumpkin, apple and cinnamon EVERYTHING, but I can’t help myself. I am very into pumpkin, apple and cinnamon everything. I’ll try to mix it up a bit. However, you should know that I still have 14 cans of pumpkin puree in my pantry, so I’m probably not going to keep my word on this…
