I’ve been eating a lot of granola bars even since our babe was born. Waking up throughout the night and nursing makes me very hungry and thirsty, and I keep a glass of water and some snacks by the chair. I stopped to read the label at the grocery store the other day on the box of granola bars, and realized I was eating a lot of preservatives and artificial ingredients (not to mention spending a lot of money). I did some searching, and I learned how easy it is to make granola bars at home. We modified this recipe to include dried papaya, toasted coconut, chopped chocolate pieces (we’re out of chips), and walnuts. They are amazing and so much better than the store bought ones. The recipe also sold me with the mention of being a great food gift for new parents!

I have an appreciation for great cake due to Carrie’s talents, so when we try a new recipe that is super yummy and makes me want to share here, you know it must be good. This cake is one of those recipes!

A family friend brought us quiche and a version of this chocolate cake, and it was the first time since our babe was born that we sat down at the table and had a meal together. Does it matter that we started with the cake? (To be fair the quiche was in the oven warming up).

This cake has a secret though – a surprising one. No flour, but that is not a big deal. There are lots of flourless, fudgy chocolate cakes. Chickpeas! A can of drained and rinsed chickpeas pureed. Who would have thought – delicious and healthy.

The one in the picture above we made last night for a dinner with friends. We used a recipe found online, but it wasn’t as good as the one Susie brought over (it was dry so we compensated with some whipped cream). I’ve asked her for the recipe and will update this post once I get it. Then you can go make this cake! Wouldn’t a raspberry sauce be great on top?

First off, I apologize for not posting recently. I have been busy with life, kids, work, etc… and weeks go by before I sit down and post again. So here I am. Posting.

This weekend I made 2 birthday cakes. These cakes could not be more different. One is for a boy, one is for a girl. One is turning 3. One is turning 13. The similarities are there as well – they both chose the design for their cakes. They both bugged their mommas to make it for them. The mommas both called me. So here they are:

Brennans’s Toy Story cake:

The bed is Lemon cake with Lemon Cream filling. The Toy box is Chocolate cake with strawberry filling. The characters are action figures, the rest is fondant on vanilla icing.

Madalyn helped with the bed. The draping of the blanket was exceptional:

The only toy that was fondant was the etch-a-sketch. Brennan’s mom couldn’t find a good one for the cake.

The latch for the toy box was fondant with glitterdust painted on to give it more of a brassy feel. The wood grain was made with brown and white fondant.

On to cake #2: Sara’s birthday cake. First, here are the instructions given to me by Sara, herself:

The only other item not mentioned is that it would only need to be one tier as it only needed to feed 10 people. Here is Sara’s cake:

Everyone was happy with how it turned out, and pleasing a teenager is an accomplishment of epic proportions, according to all parents of teenagers. The cake was vanilla with a vanilla cream filling and buttercream icing. The zebra stripes and border are fondant.

So that is how I spent my Saturday. Anyone do anything extra fun?

My sisters, brother, and I used to make soft pretzels when we were younger. We had lots of fun making different shapes and our initials. My mom made the dough until we were old enough to do it ourselves, but I remember it being an easy process and kept us busy with the creating, baking, and enjoying the warm pretzels at the end. It’d probably been over ten years since I had made soft pretzels.

Then I found this website Waffleizer a few weeks ago, and Matt was determined that we needed to “waffle” something. I picked the soft pretzels. They looked so toasty and warm – perfect for these snowy days. The recipe came together very easily (love the dough hook on the mixer). We ended up baking them briefly in the oven after the waffle part to finish the baking and get rid of any residual moisture.

We also made some as rolls for fantastic egg salad sandwiches.

These were so good that we made them again the following week and ended up needing a new waffle iron after they were done (the old one was flaking its nonstick coating). The next time we made them we baked them only, but the waffling really adds a great texture and crunch. Once the new waffle iron arrives we’ll be making more I am sure!

If you aren’t familiar with Bakerella and her adorable cake pops, you probably live under a rock. Just kidding! But really, Bakerella is a seriously talented and creative baker. She makes these amazing cake bites and cake pops and she just came out with a book that Tracy bought me for my birthday. My first adventure (but certainly not my last) was to make these reindeer cake pops!

Do you see that smile? It’s the type of smile you just want to take a big bite out of!

The process is fairly simple: Bake a cake. In this case, I made red velvet. Crumble the cake. Add some icing and roll into balls. I put these in the fridge for a while to chill and prepped all of the decorations.

These cake pops required pretzels, m&ms, mini sprinkles, and an edible marker.

Each cake pop was then dipped in melted chocolate and decorated as quick as lightning (or really fast before the chocolate cooled).

They cooled off in a block of Styrofoam. I wish I had a picture of one with a bite out of it but they were all delivered the next morning – not a single one to spare!

These will definitely go down in history!