This is the best of two awesome desserts in one. It is a little time consuming, but totally worth it!

Ingredients
 For the crust:

• 9 whole (135 grams) graham crackers
• 5 tablespoons (72 grams) unsalted butter, melted

 For the filling:

• 16 ounces (454 grams) cream cheese, completely softened at room temperature
• 1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

 For the brulee topping:

• 1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar

Directions
For the crust:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8-inch square metal baking dish with foil, leaving an overhang.
2. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the graham crackers until finely ground. Add the butter and pulse until moistened. Press into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake until lightly browned and set, about 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool and reduce the oven temperature to 300°F.

For the filling:

1. In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the cream cheese at medium-high speed until smooth. Add the sugar and continue beating until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
2. Add the cream then the eggs, egg yolk, vanilla paste, and salt one at a time and beat until well combined and smooth. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Bake at 300°F until the cheesecake is set but still slightly jiggly in the center, about 35 minutes. Do not overbake.
4. Place the cheesecake on a cooling rack to cool completely in the pan. Cover and chill until firm, at least 4 hours. Using the foil overhang, transfer the cheesecake to a clean cutting board and cut into squares.
5. Sprinkle the tops of each square with sugar and torch the tops with a kitchen torch until it turns a deep amber color. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

PAW Patrol, PAW Patrol. We'll be there on the double. Whenever there's a problem 'Round Adventure Bay,
Ryder and his team of pups. Will come and save the day. Marshall, Rubble, Chase, Rocky, Zuma, Skye, Yeah! They're on the way! 

​Sorry, Andrew is really into this cartoon so I know all of the words. This cake came out so sticken cute! It was also a surprisingly simple cake to make too. Each tier was covered in fondant with a brown fondant ribbon along the bottom. I added a few little details to make it look like a dog collar. I even painted the metal with edible silver spray paint. I used different sized circle cookie cutters to make the dog prints. I then used a dog bone-shaped cookie cutters. I rolled out thin red fondant to make the name. I cheated with the Paw Patrol logo by using the cardboard logo that was on the box of the toy cards that I placed on top of the cake.

The cake came out so awesome and is already giving me ideas for Andrew’s next birthday!

Isn’t this such a cute! I love that it looks like it could have stepped right out of the cartoon. The sky blue fondant makes the other colors pop on the cakes. The grass was hills of green fondant with chocolate brown mud splashes. The tree was also made from chocolate fondant shaped into the tree with green fondant leaves, all shaped by hand. I used a think piece of cardboard to help the yellow house stay upright, and I used a skewer and cake pop stick to create the free-standing sun. I finished the family by shaping and color blocking their clothes and then their heads. I added the feet and arm details before finishing off the face with a few dots of fondants and an edible pen.

​I had a lot of fun trying to problem solve some of the details on this cake and I think it came out great and gave me a few new skills for the future!

I love all of the shades of green in this adorable baby shower cake. The cake was soft mint green with several shades of green grass. I added some simple purple and white flowers with yellow pearls as the center. I used a grass piping tip to pipe green buttercream on the top of the cake to hold the Tinkerbell toy in place. I added a few green piped swirls with a #3 tip to complete the cake.
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A fun, beautiful, and simple baby shower cake!

The other day I posted the new removable shelf in the hallway closet and Jack just finished installing the second shelf. We put it in the office closet, right above my treadmill. It is the perfect height for me to use my computer to work on while I walk. He made me another shelf for a much bigger treadmill we used to have but had to get rid of it when we needed room for Andrew’s nursery. My current treadmill is smaller (small enough to fit in the closet) and the handles have pulse readers that wouldn’t allow a shelf to sit on them. When I run I can remove the shelf so I can see the time and speed. This is such a great way for me to get two things done at one time, walking and writing. However, the one thing I noticed is that I am going to need to put a light in there, the light in the center of the room casts a shadow on everything, because well I’m in a closet!

Lately, I have been trying to make the space we have in our home more efficient. In the hall closet, we had this big space above the shelf where we keep our spare paper goods, but since our attic access is in this closet we couldn’t build another shelf. Then I got an idea, why couldn’t we put a removable shelf? It was so perfect and I already needed one of these shelves for another project. To save a little money we got only two of the wall mounts and cut them in half. We only need one shelf in both areas so we didn’t need a long wall mount. Now the shelf can be filled with all of the tissue paper, birthday bags, and spare toilet paper and still be removed when Jack needs to get into the attic!​​