I love how these quick and easy delicate desserts came out. They are rich, tart, soft, and crunchy all in one bite! I will be defiantly making these for our next dinner party.

Ingredients
• 1 package of phyllo cups
• Fresh Raspberries rinsed and dried
• Ganache (Find recipe here)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350º
2. Arrange phyllo cups onto a non-stick baking sheet
3. Blind bake the phyllo cups for 5 minutes, to prevent sogginess
4. Using a small star tip, pipe in ganache in cooled phyllo cups
5. Top with fresh raspberry

Last month I learned the Knights of Columbus at our parish was hosting a Valentine’s Dance and I was instantly excited and volunteered to make chocolate-covered strawberries. Much to my surprise, the gentleman that was organizing the event asked me if I would be interested in doing the whole dessert table! I genuinely felt honored to be asked and happily accepted. He requested pastries along with cupcakes, which isn’t something I normally make. I told him I would come up with a few ideas and would do a tasting at their next Knights meeting. They were all a big hit but was able to narrow it down to five types, plus four flavors of cupcakes. Oh, plus the 80 chocolate-dipped strawberries I was still doing! Talk about ambitious and it was a lot of work, a lot of planning and scheduling, and a lot of support, but I pulled it off and couldn’t be more proud of the dessert display!

I was blessed to receive so many sweet compliments as Jack and I enjoyed the wonderful dinner and dancing.
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I will be sharing the pastry recipes in upcoming posts if you want to try them too.

As with my barn board table, I reused an old breakfast bar and some of my grandma’s barn wood to make this awesome garden potting table. After sanding two pieces of barn boards, I glued and screwed them to a leftover piece of plywood. I then used the same 1x2 trim that we used on the table to trim out the tabletop.

I also used the trim to make the shelf on the bottom. I started by building a box that fits snuggly between the metal sides. I then equally spaced pieces and nailed to create the top of the shelf. I preferred this over a solid shelf so dirt could fall through.

The next step was to stain and seal all of the wood; I used the same stain color (American Walnut) as the big table so they matched, since more and likely it will get used as a bar during parties. To finish it off I added three black hooks to hang garden tools from.
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I am really excited to have this project finished and have it in my beautiful garden area!

This is such a cool and bold cake! Each tier was covered in bold red or blue fondant before adding the details. I cut out gray stars using fondant cutters then sprayed them with edible gold spray paint and set them aside to dry. To create the flame I freehand cut out orange fondant and then brushed watered down red gel food coloring. Since I don’t have an edible printer, I printed the character out on regular and put him on a piece of red fondant that could be removed before eating. I added the matching color rope fondant to finishes off each tier and to help hold everything in place. The last step was to roll out thin ropes of red fondant to create the name and age.

​I’m really proud of how awesome this cake came out!

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!​​

Okay, I am in love with these cupcakes! To me, they are everything what Christmas is:  beautiful cupcake liners, peppermint, sparkles, cinnamon, fluffy white frosting, simple, classic, and elegant. Oh, and delicious!

After I piped up on the peppermint frosting, I made a holly leaf out of an old metal reshaped cookie cutter and cut out green fondant. I added a little sugar water on each leaf and then sprinkled on green sugar sprinkles. The holly berries were even easier since they were those red cinnamon candies.

Super easy and so beautiful!

Our ornament for the year! We decided on a pinecone this year and I found this beautiful vintage metal one on eBay. I like that it is silver since it goes nicely with the gold acorn we added to our Christmas tree in 2016. The pinecone represents Andrew’s first trip to Bass Lake, one of our favorite places. Like our gold acorn, it represent​s a little of how nuts (pine nuts) this year have been for us. Lots of soul searching has happened this year, lots of tears and many laughs and even more restless nights. But in the end, we are truly blessed with an amazing life, and this vintage metal pinecone sparkles on our Christmas tree!

How cool is this cake!? I wish I could take credit for the patrol car, badge, and the walkie talk, but those were all purchased. The cake itself was pretty easy to decorate; the one challenging part was the cake had more layers than a normal cake I make. The cake needed to be taller than normal and the easiest way to do this was to add an extra layer of cake, but because of the extra layer of cake, I didn’t want the pieces to be too large. To prevent that I made two, two-layer of cakes stacked on top of each other with a piece of cake board wrapped in plastic wrap. This allowed the pieces to be smaller and serve more people.
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Next, I covered the cakes in blue fondant and made a belt out of a ribbon of black fondant. I added belt loops and a silver buckle. I added another strip of blue fondant to make the button fold and added black fondant buttons. The pockets were blue fondant rectangles with black fondant details. I curled a small thin ribbon of black fondant to make the walkie-talkie cord. The last thing I made was the name tag with a strip of black fondant and white fondant letters that I cut out using my alphabet cutters. I use a little blue or black fondant to hold the plastic pieces in place and that’s it! Such an awesome cake and I love that it’s two cake in one!

To go along with Andrew’s tree stump cake, I made mud cupcakes. They were the same marble flavor and had the same dark chocolate frosting. Instead of piping on the frosting, I dipped each cupcake in the warm frosting. Warming it up for just 5-8 seconds make it so much easier to dip and have a smooth finish, but warming it up too much can make it runny. After I dipped each cupcake in the frosting, I then dipped them in a bow of the leftover marble cake crumbs. This creates the perfect look of mud and was super fun to eat!

How is Andrew two already? For his second birthday cake, I made an adorable tree stump cake. The cake was marble with chocolate frosting. On top of the cake, I made lighter to make it look like the inside of the log. The bark was darker chocolate. I used a toothpick and created the rinds of log and added bark details. I even added a 2 on top and Andy in the bark. I added leftover crumbs along the bottom of the cake to make it look more like a tree stump in the dirt.
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The cake came out so cute and Andrew enjoyed destroying it and devouring it!

Today is Halloween, my favorite holiday, and Andrew had his first Halloween party at daycare! I know I am way more excited than he is but I don’t care. Since we’re talking about 1-4-year-olds I knew cupcakes would be a big hit. I had some cute spider web cupcakes liners leftover from the cupcakes I made for our Halloween party and some mini black and white striped cupcakes liner. I decided to make something similar to those cupcakes.

I kept the flavors simple with vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting. I sprinkled on some orange and black peril sprinkles on the mini cupcakes. On the normal-sized cupcakes, I added some orange sugar sprinkles before piping on a black spider web.
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They came out super cute and the kids LOVED them!

Our annual Halloween Party is here again! I tried to keep it similar this year and decided to make simple orange colored vanilla cupcakes with black colored chocolate frosting. I finished with chocolate webs that I made by piping warm white melting chocolate in the shape of a web on wax paper. Once cooled and hardened I placed a web each of the cupcakes.
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They looked pretty impressive for how easy they were to make!

To be fair, I had no idea who Inky was until this cake. Also to be fair this cake was super ridiculous easy. The characters were purchased on Amazon and the rest of the cake was covered in white fondant and black hot fudge! Yes, hot fudge. I was trying to figure out a way to make the black in and have it taste good. Black food coloring has a horrible taste which is why I normally make chocolate frosting before coloring it black. I liked the idea of the hot fudge since it would give me the shiny look and the drips would stay in place once cooled. I warmed up the hot fudge in a microwave-safe glass bowl (I didn’t want to risk staining a plastic one), once warm I added the black food coloring. I then poured it in a squeeze bottle and slowly added hot fudge on the cake, adding more in areas to create the drips, and to hold the characters in place. I really liked how the cake turned out!

Last month I came up with a new version of banana bread with chocolate chips. So this month I wanted to do the same for my pumpkin bread recipe.

Ingredients

• 2½ cups of flour
• ¾ cup of brown sugar
• 1 cup of sugar
• ½ tsp of baking powder
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• 1 tbsp of pumpkin pie spice
• 1 tsp of salt
• 3 eggs
• ½ cup of oil
• ¼ cup of water
• 1 can of pumpkin
• 1 bag of mini chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F
2. Combine flour, sugars, baking powder, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and salt.
3. In a separate bowl combine eggs, oil, water and pumpkin.
4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients.
5. Fold in chocolate chips
6. Bake for 50-60 minutes

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The new bread came out delicious! It was the perfect balance of chocolate and pumpkin. As the best bonus ever was the house was filled with the sweet smells of fall!

I don’t get to make cakes like this very often, but they are a lot of fun to make. I know they sell doll cake molds, but since I don’t make them very often I rather save my money. I started by baking the cakes in an 8” pan, and three 6” pans. After the cakes cooled I frosted and stacked each cake on top of each other. I slowly started to carve out the shape of the skirt and once satisfied crumb coated the whole cake in purple buttercream and chilled. I wrapped the bottom part of Barbie in plastic wrap before placing her in the hole I carved out of the skirt. I then piped on the purple and turquoise rosettes all over the cake. I finished the adorable cake by adding purple and blue flowers all over the cake. I love it when there is always a toy included on a cake, it’s a fun keepsake to a delicious cake!

Our front door is ready for party guests and trick or treaters later this month! I used the black rose wreath I use every year but added some other cute additions.

I had been eyeing this Halloween doormat for months at Hobby Lobby and as soon as it went half off I bought it. I purchased the black and white buffalo rug from Amazon. Thee super cute and perfectly matched ladder sign was $5 from Walmart. The finishing touch was adding the mini pumpkins that I bought at the grocery store.

​Now every time I walk up to my front door a smile comes across my face!

If you ever lived or visited Bakersfield, and asked where is a great place to eat, more and likely you were recommended a Basque Restaurant. Our town is well known for its Basque foods and we even have four restaurants in an one block area, and all of them are full every night. I’m not even sure why we have such a big Basque culture here, hmm maybe something to look into. One of my favorite things to get is what they all call the “set up” which consists of Basque soup, beans, bread, and salad. My mouth is starting to drool just thinking of this. However, the surprising thing is if you try to look for a Basque soup recipe to make at home, you can’t find one. Some have called recipes Basque soup, but it wasn’t a Bakersfield Basque Soup. Here is my recipe for this amazing soup and I will tell you it is as good as some of the restaurants in town!

Ingredients:

• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 carrots, chopped
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 small head of green cabbage, chopped
• 8 cups vegetable broth
• 1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 16 oz tomato sauce
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• ** Homemade Salad and French Bread, optional but very traditional!

Directions:

1. Sauté your onion, garlic, carrots, and celery
2. Add the broth, tomato sauce, undrained diced tomatoed, and the seasonings
3. Stir it all together and bring it to a boil, then reduce and let it simmer for 30 minutes
4. Add the chopped cabbage and simmer for another 30 minutes
5. Serve with salsa and french bread if desired

I have known I wanted to make this quilt since I was pregnant with Andrew. Throughout his first year, I set aside my favorite onesies, pajamas, and shirts just to make this quilt.

To start the quilt I cut out a square of each item. Because of the small size of some of the items those squares were smaller, so to even it out I made bigger squares of others. I laid each square on our bed to figure out the layout. Once decided I started sewing them in rows, then sewed all of the rows together.
I used flannel fabric to create a border on both the front and the back. The rest of the back was a big square of flannel fabric. After all of the pieces were sewn, I used temporary fabric adhesive to stick the two sides together and sew them in place. The last step was to sew on the trim.
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This quilt is so precious to me and something I will probably cherish forever!
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Update:  My quilt won second place in the memory quilt category!

Andrew goes through eating bananas and just throwing them on the floor. There were a few times the overripe bananas just got thrown away because we were tired of banana bread. Instead of them getting thrown away or the same old banana bread, I looked for something different. I came across a recipe for banana chocolate chip bread and changed a few things.

Ingredients

•  3-4 medium, overripe bananas
•  3/4 cup sugar
•  1 egg
•  1 teaspoon vanilla
•  1/4 c. vegetable oil
•  1 1/2 cups All Purpose flour
•  1 1/4 tsp baking powder
•  1/2 tsp. baking soda
•  dash of ground cinnamon
•  1/8 tsp salt
•  1 bag of mini chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Prepare a 9x5 loaf baking pan by lining it with parchment or foil and lightly spraying nonstick spray.
2. Mash the bananas with a fork or whisk. Whisk in the sugar, egg, vanilla, and vegetable oil.
3. Mix in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. The batter will be lumpy.
4. Fold in the chocolate chips.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared baking pan (top with more chocolate chips if you want). Bake for 55-60 minutes.

​Y’all the bread was amazing, warm mini chocolate chips that melted in the mouth, with the subtle taste of banana was the perfect breakfast on a lazy Sunday morning!