The most lovely home-made and personally delivered birthday cake, by my sweet mother.  Red velvet, buttercream, pecans, and raspberries – what more lovely treat could you have for a cold winter afternoon? Back in December when my birthday rolled around, I was still pregnant and in the throes of hyperemesis sickness and honestly, couldn’t enjoy much of anything.  Sadly, this included celebrating my birthday, which we did with a low-key Chinese food dinner out followed by a movie – the second Hobbit, of course.   There was a vague plan at the time involving getting cupcakes, but honestly all I…

I love autumn and Halloween and usually we like to go all-out for the season, but this year I am so overwhelmed with my jam-packed schedule that we didn’t get to do as much fun stuff as usual. So, I decided to try some random new traditions… like dinner in a pumpkin! Tater Tot Casserole is a big hit in my house, and this is similar, so it also went over well. Plus it looks adorable. I’ll definitely be making this again year after year! Recipe – 1 small to medium Pumpkin1 Chopped onion2 Tbs Oil1-2 lbs Ground Turkey2 TB…

I love pumpkin pies… and this one was extra-delicious because instead of evaporated milk I used light cream… thanks Betty Crocker! You can tell by the extra-light color and mousse-like texture, and the flavor was great. Only drawback was a store-bought crust… Pillsbury just isn’t as good as homemade. I need to find a nice, soft, and sweet pie dough recipe. Open to suggestions!

We were at the Indian store the other day to buy some masala spice mixes for my cooking. Bobo came in and was not having a good time, even though I was! Go figure. So in order to distract him while I was weighing the pros and cons of cumin and ginger to ground mango powder and chili, my mom grabbed a bunch of little cookie packets which were on special. One packet she grabbed was… CARDAMOM flavored. If you’ve ever tasted cardamom… well, I wouldn’t say exactly that it belongs in a cookie (or anything, imho), but that’s great…

So as I was pouring the last of our farm-fresh ridiculously expensive glass-bottled heavy cream (which we got while strawberry picking) into my hot cocoa, I once again pondered the various types of cream and dairy products. I could never get a straight answer as to what the difference between heavy cream and whipping cream was. I tried to look it up before and things were still unclear, and finally tonight, wikipedia cleared it up for me! Hurrah! So here in the US, this is the differences between creams: Half and Half (10.5–18% fat) Light, coffee, or table cream (18–30%…

When my mom came home from Mexico, she told us about this amazing french toast she had for breakfast there, and how it was to *die* for. She was going to recreate it for us, and bought a loaf of thick Texas Style bread to do so. She didn’t quite get around to it, so I decided to give it a try based on her description… so here is my Mexican Cinnamon Sugar French Toast: First start with some thick bread, my mom found this Texas Style bread at the store. Then whip up some french toast batter… throw in…

When I saw this recipe for Monkey Bread by Pastor Ryan on Pioneer Woman Cooks… I immediately put the ingredients on my shopping list. It looked SO yummy, and personally I had never heard of it before. Click that link for the recipe and step-by-step instructions, I’m too lazy to write them out here. 🙂 I should say, this was like a heart attack in a bag, probably because I did something wrong? It calls for an angel food cake pan, and I used a bundt pan, which may have resulted in uneven butter absorption … all the butter soaked…