Out with the old

Eww! What's that ugly range doing in my kitchen?

It must go, it must!

Ahhhh, much better. I like, I love, I'm oh so happy!

Pretty, but wait, there's more! It works and I can actually see through the window. Life is grand.

Eventually we'll replace that HUGE eyesore of a white microwave. I can hardly wait.

Yummy Summer Dinner

Spinach salad with fresh black berries, strawberries, pear, and pistachios. The hubby made a wonderful dressing for it.

Cold cucumber and avocado soup. Fabulous on a hot summer night. Very refreshing.

The hubby's awesome quiche, so good!

Muffin Medley & Cherry Overload

I was hungry for something small and sweet for breakfast and couldn't decide which type of muffin to make, so I made three, from left to right: apricot white chocolate, blueberry almond, and banana walnut. I like all three and it's just as easy to make 72 muffins as it is 24, so why not? Of course, after that I realized I had a ton of fresh cherries I needed to use before they went bad, so I pitted them (staining my hands a bloody red, looked like I had just committed murder!) and cut them into little pieces. These I added to corn muffins:


and the rest of the cherries I added to devil's food cake cupcakes:


The frosting is a chocolate cream cheese, sour cream. Very rich and creamy, quite delicious.

Bourbon White Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding Cupcakes

I made Martha Stewart's 7-minute frosting for these cupcakes. WOW! It's good stuff, tastes like marshmallow. It's kinda a high-maintenance frosting as it requires boiling sugar, water, and light corn syrup to 230 degrees and whipping 6 egg whites into a frenzy, then adding the boiling mixture without scaling yourself, and finally whipping all that for about 7 minutes... but it's so worth it. Melts in the mouth. Mmm mmm YUM!

The hubby likes bread pudding, me, not so much. But, hey, it's the 4th of July so why not give it a shot. I figure with enough booze even bread pudding can be good - right? I found your typical bread pudding recipe online, however, I greatly modified it to make them into cupcakes. I didn't use any milk, just a cup of Bourbon! Anyway, I added the white chocolate chips simply because I had them. For the bread we had two loaves of sandwich bread: French and Sourdough. I used about equal amounts of both torn into little pieces and mixed thoroughly into the wet batter. I wasn't really sure if these would turn out or not, but they did. Yeah! I doubled lined the paper cups to be on the safe side and that worked nicely. The flavor of these bad boys is wonderful.... the bourbon is present, but not overwhelming. The white chocolate chips impart a nice sweetness, and the over consistency is fabulous: not dry, not mushy, but just right. A success if I do say so myself! Can't wait to hear what our friends think about them. I'll be bringing these to the 4th of July cookout, along with the Raspberry/blueberry corn muffins.

Raspberry & Blueberry Corn Muffins

Happy 4th of July! For the cook out we'll be attending later I made raspberry/blueberry corn muffins. Very simple recipe the hubby found online. And, quite tasty! Hope our friends like them.

Cheese cake and cupcakes

This is a cheese cake with a sour cream mixture on top... I can't wait to try this. I made this from Kelly's dad's mother's recipe. I hope I did it justice.


The cupcakes are white cake, from scratch, and the frosting is a butter cream with Kahlua, dark chocolate and coffee. These are a few of Kelly's dad's favorite flavors, hope he likes them. Probably the best thing about the cake is that it only makes a dozen cupcakes instead of the usual two dozen, so I'll probably be adapting this recipe a lot.

The dough for the focaccia is still resting. I'll knead it one last time and prep for baking about 45 minutes before Kelly, Steve, and Kelly's dad are due to arrive. The hubby's making pasta and sauce from scratch for the evening meal. Should be good. I think we have enough veggies on hand to make a simple salad to round out the dinner.

The bar is built... mostly

This was what we started off with. It worked, but we knew we could do better.



We purchased stock cabinets, upper cabinets since the depth of the area wasn't deep enough to accommodate a standard cabinet, and here's Jordan the cat inspecting our progress:

We managed to get it level, but heck it we'll ever get it squared with walls that aren't plumb! As long as the booze stays on the shelf I'm happy.


The booze in need of a proper home.


Ta-da! A more or less proper home. Someday, money permitting, we want to clad the top in copper! But for now, it does the trick.

We've finally done it, built a place to house all our booze. Woo hoo, let's have a party.

Bourbon Brownies & Strawberry Cupakes with Tequila Frosting

Yesterday I made Bourbon brownies and strawberry cupcakes with Tequila frosting. The brownines were wonderful, I can't wait to make more. The strawberry cupcakes were good, but I was bummed that the 7-minute frosting I made didn't turn out quite as intended. It tasted just fine, but didn't set up properly. No worries, I topped of the cupcakes with some lemon cookies and a Lemon Drop and everything was fine, see:

No TV - Day 18

Things are going well. Now I don't even miss TV or even think about it. I thought I'd do a lot more baking, but have been busy with other endeavors. I've been reading more, spending time with friends, and making cards. Tonight Kelly and I plan to make lemon cupcakes. I'll post pictures later.

Bitburger Beer Cupcakes

These wonderful cupcakes were indeed made with Bitburger Beer. The frosting was butter cream with malt. They weren't sweet nor bitter, but just right. And they were a huge hit at the Post Office.