Easter Tradition

Some of you (imaginary readers) may be familiar with the Easter Pinata tradition that my classmates/friends and I started in grad school.  Well, the pinata has come to the east coast.  I brought a cute little blue and white cow pinata, and all the little cousins had a blast with it.

Over the past year or so, I've also gotten more into using royal icing to decorate cookies, and I made some cute chick and egg cookies.

When Boyfriend and I got back to Lancaster, we had some fun with the peeps my aunt gave us in the Easter basket she so nicely made for us. :)

Amazingly Awesome Cake

My parents and grandfather were in Tucson this weekend for commencement, and I made this caramel chocolate cake from Annie's Eats for Mother's Day.  Holy crap was it delicious.  So, so good.  I wound up not using salt...I know my mom and I both love salted desserts, but I wasn't sure how popular it would be otherwise.  I do think it would be good salted, but it was also incredibly delicious without salt.  I also made this with store-bought caramel...I just can't make caramel to save my life.  I've struggled with it since the first time I tried, and from my three attempts this go-around, I wound up with 1 slightly burnt batch, and 2 crystallized batches... Boo.  The upside is it still tastes fabulous with non-home-made caramel (even if I did catch some flack for it).

At this point I've tried a lot of recipes, and I know I bake pretty well, so it takes a lot to impress me, and I was totally blown away by this cake.  I'd say this is probably in the top three things I've ever made. This cake made such an impression on my grandfather that Little Sister said he was still raving about it when they got home tonight.

Here it is.  Dark chocolate cake, caramel Swiss buttercream filling, fudge-y chocolate frosting.

Cinco de Mayo & Supermoon

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!  Ok, so that about exhausts my knowledge of Spanish.  Ok, so not quite, but I really don't know much more even though my vocabulary has probably doubled since moving to Tucson.

I made margarita cupcakes and cookies for a Cinco de Mayo party this afternoon.

I made the cupcakes (from Annie's Eats) about two years ago for a Memorial Day party, but brought them out again for the more appropriate May holiday.  We thought we had conquered the oh-so-finnicky Swiss buttercream frosting, but even though we eventually got it to the right consistency, it still tasted funny to us.  Too buttery.  While butter makes things delicious, you don't want things to actually taste like straight up whipped butter (although I have one friend/former labmate who might...).  They turned out ok overall, though not quite what I thought they should be.  I swear the frosting tasted better the first time I made them when I hadn't really figured out Swiss buttercream yet.

The cookies (from Smitten Kitchen) were delicious, though E didn't think they were nearly as margarita-y as she expected.  I wouldn't mind a stronger tequila flavor, but I thought they were tasty and pretty close.  While I really liked the bit of salt around the edges, I would totally make these again without the salt rim for a non-Cinco-de-Mayo occasion.  I think the flecks of orange and lime zest are just so pretty.

And finally, here's a shot I took of tonight's "Super Moon" after I got home from the party.

Easter Tradition

Happy Easter!  My first year of grad school, somebody brought a pinata to Easter dinner.  My French classmate though this was very strange, but we assured him that it was an American tradition to have a pinata at Easter.  We have faithfully maintained this story, having a pinata at Easter every year since.  I present to you, five years of Easter pinatas!

First Year

Second Year

Third Year

Fourth Year

Fifth Year

The pinata this year was rock solid.  Last year one crack took down the unicorn, but this year probably a dozen people got to take some swings.  It's always more fun when it lasts longer.

Somehow I suspect I'm going to be hunting for a pinata for wherever I have Easter next year...  I wonder what my family would think of that... :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

For your drooling pleasure, Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes!  Guinness chocolate cake, Irish whiskey ganache filling, Bailey's buttercream frosting.  In my mind, chocolate cake is the only worthwhile use of Guinness.  I loathe the beer, but Guinness and chocolate do absolutely magical things together.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy Pi Day!

Cranberry pear pie...used up the last of my frozen cranberries!

Sweets for my Sweetheart(s)

Happy Valentine's Day!  With or without a boyfriend (previously it's always been without) I like Valentine's Day.  I'll always take an excuse to get dressed up and go out for dinner with my girlfriends.  And you can't be surprised to hear I'm a fan of all the ridiculously adorable Valentine's-themed desserts out there.  This year I sent packages of goodies to Boyfriend, my little brother, and one of my college roommates (I would have sent a package to my other college roommate, but she only eats 3 food groups now, none of which are butter or sugar.), and the cookies just turned out so freaking cute that I had to share them.

I made these chocolate cookie sandwiches from Sprinkle Bakes - a lot of her her desserts are more involved than I'm generally looking for, but man are they gorgeous.  But these cookies were just the right amount of involved AND they used up every last sprinkle I had!

I also made these conversation heart cookies from Annie's Eats.  The sugar monster inside of me loves conversation hearts, and the cookies are just so cute.  And it was fun to throw in a couple "specialized" ones.  This was my second attempt at decorating with royal icing, and I've decided it's a lot of fun (though rather time consuming).  Please ignore the icky-looking butter prints on the paper towel and consider how delicious and buttery it means these cookies are.

For my labmate.  My labmates got the extras that didn't get mailed.

I also made these yummy toffee blondies from Lovin' from the Oven.  I didn't take any photos since they taste much, much better than they look.  Also I substituted regular chocolate chips for the white chocolate chips because white chocolate is icky.

Sorry to post this so late, but I wanted to wait until the packages got to their destinations before posting.  Hopefully they all beat this!

Furthering My Education

After Christmas I flew down to Arkansas to visit Boyfriend and his family.  He grew up on a rice farm in a rural area.  Needless to say this is VERY different from my upbringing in suburbs outside of major cities.  I'd been to Arkansas a couple times with my college roommate (aka Boyfriend's sister...), and it's always been a very enlightening and amusing experience (for me and them).  The first time I went to Arkansas I had to ask what grain bins were.  Another time in college, my midwestern/southern roommates collectively decided to refuse to explain chicken fried steak to me.

Itty bitty plane like the one I took to Arkansas.  Apparently not many people fly to Arkansas.

We spent a day driving around the farm, where Boyfriend had a great time getting his truck super muddy.  (He found this more entertaining than I did, especially when I had to watch him scrub it clean the next day.)  I had a lot of fun with the rusted out ancient equipment on the side of a field.  I also got to drive a tractor, only to be laughed at because I was so excited about it.  Boyfriend also "made" me climb to the top of the grain elevator.  Heights don't really bother me, but climbing up the ladder was scary.  Good thing the view from the top was pretty nice...  Then we took his dad's dog (who couldn't quite make up her mind whether she liked me or not) out on a tramp through some pastures and around the rock quarry.  I'm calling it a tramp because it was more than a walk given the terrain and mud, but not really a hike because it was mostly flat.

Eagle's nest

Beaver dam

Fourche River (Pronounced "Fo-shee."  My French teachers would die.)

 

 

Check out my beautiful donut!

We ate a couple meals at his grandparents' house, where I worried about offending his grandmother with my ability to clear the 3 lb plate of spaghetti and meatballs she put in front of me.  I love his grandparents - they're great, but I have never even tried to eat so much spaghetti before, nor followed it with a piece of super rich (and delicious) pina colada cake (complete with lots of rum!).

On New Year's Eve we drove up to St. Louis, where we paid a quick visit to G-Pa before hanging out with my other college roommate and going out to First Night for New Year's.  Once we could drag ourselves out of bed we spent the rest of the very long day driving back to Pennsylvania (with a pit stop in Columbus, OH to say hi to my old labmates!).  Later today I'll head back to Tucson, via both Chicago and Dallas...ugh.  But hey, the ticket only cost me 12,500 frequent flyer miles and $5, and Boyfriend doesn't have to drive three hours round trip to get me to the airport.  Looking forward to the warm weather!