Hives! Hives! Hives! Stupid Stupid Hives!
One of our dogs spent yesterday at the vet since he was having an allergic reaction to something. Poor pup.
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All about my adventures with cooking, crafts, and travel
Hives! Hives! Hives! Stupid Stupid Hives!
One of our dogs spent yesterday at the vet since he was having an allergic reaction to something. Poor pup.
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I hope you had a wonderful weekend!
My mom had Autumn this past weekend and it was awesome for everyone all around.
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Okay Okay Okay, this will be my last summery recipe.
After today I will now switch over to things like apples and pumpkin. I just couldn’t resist sharing this Blueberry Sour Cream Crumb Cake that I made a few weeks ago.
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So this cake is typically called a dump cake, but I just can’t deal with making a cake with such a horrible name.
For real, it’s horrible.
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I saw Bad Moms this weekend and I freaking L-O-V-E-D it!!!
It was hilarious and dead on with how I feel related to being a working mom.
In summary… It’s god damn hard, but it’s the best thing ever. Hectic life filled with hilarious moments. And it really does take a village to raise kids. Maybe the village is for the kid, maybe the village is for you.
Finding great mom friends is key. Shit, finding any great friend is key, but having people you can really relate to helps. Plus, there is a good chance you can dump your kid off at their house so you can get a break. And then you can do them the same favor. Also, it totally works to just hang at each other’s houses and let your kids run a muck while you chat (with some wine!)
I think you should go see it. The whole cast is great. The story is great. The sad moments are great (yeah, I cried). The funny parts are great.
Get some girlfriends together and go out for some drinks and then go see the movie.
And if you can’t, then I suggest you watch the ladies of “I Mom So Hard“. I watch their videos and I cry laugh at them. they are so awesome and real.
In addition to going to see Bad Moms, I insist you make this Tres Leches Cake to celebrate this week’s Taco Tuesday. It’s a wonderful way to finish off  a taco dinner.
I mean, you can’t resist a big slice of cake that has been soaked in a mixture of condensed milk, evaporated milk, and half and half. Damn good. Plus then it’s topped off with a whipped cream frosting.
I don’t know about you but I think a cake that is soaked in a mixture of 3 rich milks is pretty damn awesome. I am temped to add some rum to it next time. Oh that would be some trouble!!
Lately, I have been putting vanilla bean paste in just about everything that calls for vanilla extract. I love getting to see all those flecks of vanilla beans in there. Bliss.
Something that this cake requires is a kitchen scale. It makes for more precise baking. Really, I try to use it for all of my baking. You can convert it to use a measuring cup but the weight will make the amount of each ingredient more exact. (Plus, you can weight your dogs food… fatties are on a diet!!!)
Grab yourself a big slice of this Tres Leches Cake for dessert!
makes 1 9×13 cake, 24 small pieces
Ingredients
For the glaze
For the topping
Process
Adapted from Alton BrownÂ
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Tomorrow is a big day!
It’s going to be Autumn’s first time having a friend over. In fact, she is going to sleep over so it’s going to be a very special time for the girls.
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Growing up in New England, I know winter storm season well.
The season is long and it can produce winters filled with lots of snow or just a wee bit. There might be some epic storms that drop 20 inches with blizzard conditions, or you might just get dusting after dusting.
I loved tracking the weather patterns and the predictions of accumulations so much more than I loved dealing with the snow.
That is one of the many reasons we are now living in Florida.
So now I get to follow Tropical Storm and Hurricane Warnings.
And that is what I am doing right now. Tropical Storm Colin… I’ve got my eyes on you.
The storm shouldn’t be so bad, thankfully. So my plans to stay home in my PJ’s dissolved as the storm’s targeted landfall location moved North. We should still get plenty of rain and have some wind squalls but there should not be issues where we are specifically are located. So my day of baking, PJ wearing, and blasting music to dance around with Autumn will have to come with another storm.
For years and years I did not like butterscotch but I started to turn the corner when I started to bake up the  Oatmeal Scotchie Cookies from Krusteaz and I now I am hooked. I even had ice cream the other night with butterscotch in it.
So now this cake is a favorite of mine since I am now hooked on butterscotch. And chocolate always is a winner. The glaze, oh man, that glaze ties it all together.
Stormy weather or not, you need some cake in your life. Especially one that packed with butterscotch and chocolate chips and topped off with a chocolate glaze.
Makes 1 bundt cake
Ingredients
For the cake
For the glaze
Process
Adapted from Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook
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Boo! Halloween is less than a week away and we are still scrambling with our costumes.
Well, we have Autumn’s all set as she is going at Minnie Mouse – of course! But Price and I are trying to figure out what to do for us. Get dressed up? Skip it? Do a family theme? Do whatever?
Ultimately, it will be fun as Autumn will love it, so it will be great but right now I’m all over the place.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Halloween but the dressing up part leaves me all panic-y until the last minute. We’ve had years when we have gone all out for parties but the past 3 years have been hard with either being super pregnant, having a wee one, and now a toddler who gets to bed at 6.30. Limits out trick or treating time, plus not many people give out candy by us, which is why we don’t get many, which is why I say to myself, why bother dressing up? I’m just in a quasi sick funk this week and need to shake it off!!
What are you doing? Are you getting dressed up? Skipping it? Handing out candy? Turning the light off?
I recently brought these Monster Cupcakes to Autumn’s daycare for the kids to enjoy. They enjoyed them as a fun afternoon treat to celebrate the upcoming Halloween.
These cupcakes are really easy to make. You can follow my instructions and use a boxed mix and cans of frosting, or you can make it all homemade. It just depends on your preference (and time constraints). You really can’t go wrong with how you decorate them either. It’s fun to be creative. Plus you can def involve kids!
Whip a batch of these frightfully delicious cupcakes for Halloween!!!
Makes 18 cupcakes
Ingredients
Process
Yesterday was Price’s Birthday!! Yay!!!
Price’s favorite cake is German’s Chocolate Cake so I had to make these in his honor.
Price love German’s Chocolate Cake as it’s not your typical chocolate cake. It’s a nice dense cake that is then loaded up with a rich frosting that is made from cooked evaporated milk, shredded coconut, and pecans. That caramely coconut pecan frosting is signature to the cake. It makes every bite the perfect way to celebrate a birthday. (Plus, Price thinks it’s at it’s very best when served with some coffee ice cream!)
I believe that you should be able to celebrate your birthday all day and if that means eating waffles that are basically like cake, then go for it!!
While Price enjoyed his German’s Chocolate Cake Waffles, he was a bit bummed that it wasn’t like when I made brownie waffles or when I made Birthday Cake Waffles using cake mix. He was looking for the typical super sweet coconut frosting to be spread on the waffle. And I was trying to go for a more breakfasty waffle so I decided to be more inspired by the frosting than just adapt it.
I just reason that you can have breakfast AND cake later on. HAHA!!
For these waffles, I made a chocolate waffle with a chocolate and pecan compound butter that was then topped off with loads of toasted coconut and chopped pecans. And pure maple syrup. And whipped cream. (Price is spoiled!)
I think that the compound butter was perfectly sinful! It was chocolatey, nutty, and perfectly sweet. And butter is butter so that’s always good. I prefer using Kerrygold because it is such a great quality and is flavorful. You might ask yourself why should you care about the butter as the rest of the ingredients are going to mask any flavors from it. Trust me, it’s still worth it.
Most of all, I loved the combination of the flavors and the textures. It’s exactly why Price loves
Ingredients
For the Waffles
Toppings
Process
Waffle recipe adapted from Alton Brown
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Kerrygold has provided me with butters to use in the creation of these waffle recipes for my #WaffleWednesday series. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thanks for all of your comments. I appreciate them all.
You’ve Got Mail.
If it was 1998 my phone would be SCREAMING at me right now.
You see, I tried to really disconnect this July 4th vacation. We went up to Price’s mom’s house in Maine on Wednesday night and just got back tonight (Monday night, as I write this while watching The Bachelorette). In that time I finished a book and read another, worked on my tan, drank some refreshing wine, and ate way to much food. Hello food baby. So bad, but so good, no?
Aside from some IG and a bit of FB checking I was really disconnected. I didn’t turn on either laptop I brought. I didn’t check Twitter. There is no TV in the the house. Well, there is but there is no antennae so you can’t actually watch it. ha! But, I mainly took an email break. And it felt so good. I’m dreading check it again, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. At least it was a nice break.
I think we should all unsubscribe from all out junkie email alerts. Who’s with me! Let’s do it! I’ll start… ready go.
Anyway, this cake is something you need to subscribe to. What? Ugh, I’m tired and I am making no sense. Just make and enjoy this cake. For real.
I love zucchini bread so I knew I would love this Double Chocolate Zucchini Bundt. Yes! And then I trashed it up with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting. And then sprinkles. Sprinkles make it so pretty. And the zucchini makes it healthy. Totes.
I struggle with getting bundts out of their pans. It kills me when I mess it up. But I was actually successful this time. But then I covered it all up with frosting. Go figure! But if you mess up your bundt just remember that you can cover up any mess with the yummy frosting. No one has to know! shh!!
Wish me luck tomorrow when I really 100% connect to real life again and check my oodles and oodles of email. Ugh!
Makes 1 10″ bundt cake
Ingredients
For the cake
For the frosting
Sprinkles
Process
Cake adapted from Parsley, Sage & Sweet, Frosting by I am a Honey Bee
These cupcakes are so friggin’ amazing.
When Price and I finished our 2nd Whole30 at the end of April these were our big treat to celebrate completing it. And they were such a great way to celebrate!
As your diet while doing Whole30 is quite limited (amazing, but limited), you really should slowly introduce foods one at a time slowly while going back and forth to the Whole30 diet guidelines to see if things bother you. Since we had already (hap hazardly) done one reintroduction to ‘normal’ foods after our first Whole30 in February we just jumped at our chance to stuff our faces with these cupcakes.
They were everything we had been thinking of those long 30 days.
The bacon.
The chocolate
The peanut butter.
Come, on… shut up!
In fact I made these bad boys on Sunday, froze them, thought about them endlessly, and then inhaled a thawed Cupcake for dessert on Friday. They held up really, really well. Now I am scheming on making more and more cupcakes to freeze so we always have something sweet on hand. I’m thinking I need to get a deep freezer! ha!
I was tempted to make a chocolate frosting but at the last moment I asked Price if he thought a peanut butter frosting would be good and he picked that. I think it was the better choice in the end as well.
I prefer to cut my bacon before cooking it whenever I am using crumbled bacon in a recipe. I just find it easier to work with. Plus, I prefer the bigger pieces of bacon in the cupcake. If you don’t want ‘big’ pieces then feel free to cook the bacon and then chop it up, you’ll get a more crumbly bacon that way.
One thing to note when making them is that the batter is pretty thin, compared to most other cake batters I have made. Do not worry! They come out perfectly.
I mean, what’s better than a chocolatey cupcake studded with bacon topped off with a light and fluffy peanut butter buttercream!?!?
Makes 24 cupcakes
Ingredients
For the Cupcakes
For the Frosting
Process
Cupcake sourced from All Recipes, frosting by I am a Honey Bee
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Also…
Hey, remember that time I wanted to dye my hair like Joan from Mad Men? And it ending up being a total flop!!!
Ooph, Christina Hendricks can rock the red hair, me- not so much. I just never could achieve the right kinda of red. Plus, I really don’t have the right coloring for it. I liked this red, but then it would fade so quickly while staining all our white washcloths, towels, and pillowcases. Then I played around with it myself and it got bright red. And then gave up and decided that I wasn’t Joan and had to just live with it. ha!
The final season of Mad Men is starting this Sunday night and I am not excited about it. No, that’s wrong. I am really excited it is starting back up, but I am not excited that it is the final season. I’m so torn!! I already am dealing with the fact that Cougar Town had its series finale on Tuesday. At least we got to have fun with my Penny can and drink wine!
I love when I get to incorporate food into something, like when I did all my NASCAR related “Sprint Cup Snacks” posts and created recipes based upon where they were racing each week. So when this #MadMenBlogParty popped up I was really excited because it would mean I’d get to whip up something all vintage-y.
To me a Pineapple Upside Down Cake would be a dessert that Betty Draper would whip up for a dinner party. And then Betty Francis would actually eat. ha!
Typically Pineapple Down Cakes are made in cast iron skillets, but I didn’t have a cast iron skillet large enough for the cake so I just used a 9″ round cake pan. I adjusted the process of melted the butter in the skillet to just melting it and then pouring it in the pan. I think it worked out really well.
It looked beautiful. I loved the geometry of it. Plus, the red cherries in the center of the pineapple rings where so lovely. A nice pop of color in it.
So enjoy Sunday’s episode and the rest of the season! I know it will be amazing. It will be hard to say good bye to it once it wraps up, but at least it was a great run. Oh man, the fashion, the drinks, the story-lines. And Don Draper. Yum.
Plus, what’s Mad Men viewing without some drinking so check out this drinking game. Not drinking? No worries, I’m not either now while doing Whole30, so just play with Mad Men bingo!
No matter what, enter this fun giveaway and be sure to check out Tom and Lorenzo’s episode and fashion recaps on Monday morning. I can’t wait!
In the mean time…
Enter the Rafflecopter giveaway to win an adorable vintage 4.5 qt Pyrex mixing bowl (valued at $30)! Fancy martini glass! $100 giftcard from Modcloth! YES PLEASE!!!
Makes a 9″ cake
Ingredients
Process
Adapted from Martha Stewart
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