Family Day!

So I just found out that today is Family Day, A Day to Eat Dinner with your Kids! Did you not know about it either, well whew, I thought I was the only one. Well apparently it is recognized as a National Day of Observance the last Monday of every September. I found a great website called e-mealz that is taking it to a full week and they are providing a "Family Week" menu, so you can just go shopping and poof have a great dinner on the table. I'm going to try it out on my two little picky eaters to see how they like the food, then that will determine if I subscribe to their pre-planned menu. I generally put my own menu together, but if I can pay a small fee to have someone else do that for me, then by all means I will do it.

So more to come....

Wedding Cupcakes

I offered to make 125 cupcakes and a 9" cake for a friends wedding. They decided to go with a Red Velvet cake and a cream cheese frosting. I ended up finding a fantastic Red Velvet ckae recipe on the New York Time recipes that was adapted from "The Confetti Cakes Cookbook" by Elisa Strauss. The Cream Cheese frosting was pretty much your typical Cream Cheese recipe, but I did use the one from Paula Deen. I also add a little something extra in the middle a Cream Cheese Mousse filling, which I adapted from the JELL-O/Kraft Foods website for their Firecracker Bites. I also went with a finishing touch, the chocolate double hearts, which I think turned out great.

Cupcakes complete with dollop of cream cheese frosting a double heart on top.

The finished product, presented at the wedding along with the 9" four layer cake.

S'Mores Cupcakes

I decided the other day that I wanted to attempt the S'mores Cupcakes from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book. I'm not sure why but my cupcakes were more of a blonde color then a dark chocolate as shown in her book. I wasn't a complete fan of the cupcake and maybe it was because I used the only Graham flour that I could find which was Bob's Red Mill Graham Flour, which was a whole wheat variety. Well after all is said and done, the teenagers that I made them for ate them all, so overall I think they were a success.

Creaming the butter and sugar together

Yummy, I think this is always my favorite part of baking.

See in the picture, they appear to have cocoa in them, but no where in the directions does it call for cocoa. I'm using the pampered chef big scoop, which I love for cupcakes.

All pretty and ready for the oven.

Making the chocolate ganache for the filling.

So sily smooth, yum...yum.

Now making the marshmallow topping. This was real marshmallows after it setup, I think I'm more of a marshmallow cream fan for S'Mores Cupcakes.

Filling with the fabulous Chocolate filling.

I let them set up for a little bit before adding the marshmallow topping.

Done! I couldn't find my husbands torch so I couldn't make them with the brown edges.

Pretty Flowers

A friend of mine brought Kennedy over a little treat last night, these darling flower head bands and clips. Kennedy was so excited that she was trying to wear two at a time. My friends says they are so simple to make and I can't wait to try making them myself.

We got 4 different headbands and 1 clip

Kennedy in her favorite.

She loves pink!

First Day of School

Well Kennedy and Colin were off today on their first day of school. Actually in about 10 mins I need to go meet Colin at the bus to see how his first day of 1st grade went. The kids had their clothes all picked out the night before and Colin was so excited that he wanted to wait for the bus almost an hour early.