Madeleine's 1st Birthday

My youngest daughter, Madeleine, turned one at the end of May.  How that's possible, I have no idea.  It doesn't seem possible that she could be a year old and now she's almost 14 months old and I still have a hard time saying she's a toddler and not a baby!

For her first birthday, we planned a "cute as a button" celebration.  Since we all know that 1st birthday parties are really for the parents anyway since one year olds don't really care what they do, I came up with this one early on.  I found a button cake on Pinterest a long time ago -- probably sometime while I was pregnant with my first baby.  I filed it away and thought nothing more of it until I was pregnant with Madeleine.  Then I thought about using it for a baby shower but didn't have an opportunity to throw one and then I decided it would make a great theme for a birthday party as well.

The cakes are both traditional vanilla birthday cake - you can find the recipe on this post, but it's a slightly adapted recipe from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook.

This was a pretty light theme, we had cute as a button cookies, a button cake, and a few decorations but we also just had a great summer birthday party and let the kids play outside and tried not to go overboard on decorations and such.

For the main button cake, I covered it in homemade marshmallow fondant, and then made little button cutouts out of pink and yellow fondant to decorate the cake and add to the sugar cookies as well.  Marshmallow fondant is really easy to make and simple to work with.  You can find my recipe as well as some tips on this post.   If you want another example, check out this post from Aubrey's 2nd birthday party for a look at her Sesame Street cake.

For food, we did a self-serve burger bar and grilled up beef and turkey burgers and offered tons of choices for condiments.  We had the standard ketchup, mustard, pickles, and cheese but also offered more fun toppings like chipotle mayo, sriracha sauce, jalepenos and banana peppers, grilled pineapple, and crispy bacon.

We had a variety of chips and dips - a hot and spicy corn dip, hummus and crackers, and guacamole, because we don't have parties without guacamole.  We had a vegetable platter and fruit salad as well.

For desserts, we had cookies and cake and homemade vanilla ice cream.  The cookies are my normal sugar cookie recipe - these are so easy to make and you can make the cookie dough ahead of time and freeze it to save time for the party.  You can also bake the cookies in advance and freeze if you prefer but I would recommend waiting to frost and decorate until closer to party time.  I always like to do mine within a day or two of the party and then store between layers of parchment paper once the royal icing is completely dry (overnight) in an airtight container.   You can find the recipe in this post.

Of course, I made Madeleine her own smash cake.  She had some fun getting into the icing and cake but wanted nothing to do with the cold ice cream.  A few weeks later she tried it again though and decided it was pretty good stuff so rest assured, she's a normal kid!  For the smash cake, fondant isn't really practical.  It's too hard for the little ones to get through so I always stick with a simple buttercream icing.  I also tend to put it on pretty thin so it's not quite as gooey for them.  Also make sure you don't decorate with anything that could be a choking hazard.  I used the large thin candy wafers on this one.  They basically dissolve in your mouth and break up really easily.

Thumbs up for cake!  

Happy birthday baby girl - I can't believe you're already a toddler.  The first year was so much fun and the days just keep getting better.  You and your sister are the best of friends and you are the sweetest little girl.  I'm so thankful everyday to be blessed with two beautiful, happy, healthy baby girls.  I love you with all my heart sweet birthday girl!

A Book Baby Shower

My little sister is having her first baby - literally any day now - and we had an absolutely adorable shower for her a couple of months ago.   Yes, it was in April, and I'm just now posting about it - it happens.

I started out on Pinterest to find some ideas and quickly had about four different themes planned when I realized that they all revolved around children's books.  Reading with my kids is one of my favorite moments of the day and they both love books.  I hope that Nikki will enjoy reading with baby Colton just as much and we wanted to get her library started for him.

I love how this shower turned out and was so happy to get to throw it -- now I just can't wait to meet baby Colton!!

I took a few shortcuts with the food on this shower since I was travelling by plane to get there.  We ordered the cake from a bakery and everything on the menu was quick and easy to prepare.

For the invitations, I just put together some images of the characters in several of the books we were using.  I made coordinating signs for each of the dishes on the menu as well to tie the food into the book theme.

The menu and book pairings included:

Sam I Am's Green Deviled Eggs - complete with the egg whites dyed green instead of the egg yolks - based on a Pinterest tutorial I found here, you can dye eggs any color you want and it doesn't affect the flavor at all.

Guess How Much I Love You Veggies and Hummus - it was a stretch but it's "bunny food" and I love this book.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Fruit and Yogurt Dip

Where The Wild Things Are & Max's Turkey "Muenster" Sandwiches - a simple sandwich with shaved turkey breast, muenster cheese, baby spinach and mustard.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - with a quick chili sauce and grape jelly sauced meatball.

If You Give a Mouse a Snickerdoodle - we subbed in Snickerdoodles since they are my sister's favorite.

Jamberry Pies - if you've never heard of the book Jamberry you should look it up, such a cute rhyming story.  I made mini cherry, lemon and apple pies in a muffin tin taking some help from refrigerated pie crust for this one.

And from Giraffe's Cant Dance, Gerald's (non-alcoholic of course) Jungle Juice.

We also used Good Night Moon as a guest book, asking guests to leave a message for Mom or baby.

I made a simple diaper cake and added signs from the book Little Blue Truck and found some animal baby toys to add in for extra fun.

One of the best things about the baby shower was the onesie decorating station we set up outside in lieu of playing traditional shower games.  We had so much fun decorating onesies with fabric paint and stencils and iron-on transfers and they turned out so cute!

Fresh Cranberry Cake

What's on your Thanksgiving menu this year?  I may have to go buy more cranberries so this cranberry cake can be a late addition to mine.  For the most part, I'm sticking with classic recipes this year but adding in a few new items as well.

Cider Brined Turkey and Gravy

Mashed Potatoes

Sweet Potato Casserole - I'm doing a cross between this recipe and a copycat Ruth's Chris Steakhouse version

Dressing with apples and cranberries

Broccoli Cheddar Quinoa

Stove Top Macaroni and Cheese

Cranberry Sauce

Harvest Salad with Roasted Butternut Squash

Crock Pot Apple Butter Yeast Rolls

Classic Pumpkin Pie

Salted Caramel Apple Pie

Pumpkin Roll

If you haven't nailed down your desserts yet, I've got a new one for you to try.  This takes about 20 minutes of prep time, but with a stand mixer about half of that time is just running the mixer.  It's so simple and likely the only thing you don't already have in the pantry are fresh cranberries.  Take advantage of the cheap fresh berries in every grocery store and make this cake while they are in season.  The tart cranberries are perfect with the sweetness of the cake and the light glaze.  Served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, this is a great finish to Thanksgiving dinner.

Fresh Cranberry Cake

Cake:
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 T orange zest
2 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 cups cranberries

Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 T milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a 10" springform pan or 9"x13" baking pan with baking spray and set aside.

Combine sugar and eggs in the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl.  Mix 6-8 minutes on medium speed until pale yellow and doubled in volume.  Add in butter and extracts and zest and mix two more minutes.  Add flour and cinnamon and stir until combined.  Fold in cranberries.  Transfer batter to prepared pan.  If you are baking in a springform pan, put the pan on a cookie sheet and put in the oven.  Bake approximately one hour (about 45 minutes in a 9"x13" pan).  Cool completely and remove ring from pan.

Put powdered sugar in a small bowl, add milk one tablespoon at a time, whisking until smooth.  Add vanilla and drizzle over cake.

My baby girl turned One!

Yes it was two months ago... and I'm just now getting around to sharing a few of the details.  I know, life has been a little crazy around here as we prepare for baby number 2... can't believe she'll be here in another 6 weeks or so, and try to finish up all the remodeling projects - the new nursery and master bathroom being at the top of the list.  But even in those two months, I still can't believe my baby girl is over a year old, walking, jabbering constantly and really developing quite the personality.

For Aubrey's party - we did a little bit of a circus/carnival theme - I'll admit largely due to the fact that I was slightly obsessed with the pennant flag banners that are popping up all over the place right now.  I just love them and thought they would make adorable party decor.  My sister Nikki, of Doodle Dog Advertising, made some adorable invitations for the party featuring a cute little elephant that I decided to use for the cookies too.

Photo by DoodleDog Advertising

I combined the elephants with some friendly little lions inspired by cookies that I had bookmarked quite a while ago from Bridget at Bake at 350.  I love the way they turned out, but a word of warning, don't ever try to layer your cookies with wax paper when you run out of parchment paper at 10 pm, the wax paper stuck to the frosting in several places and I had to do some minor cookie reconstructive surgery the day of the party.  My go to sugar cookie recipe can be found here.

For the cakes, I knew I wanted to make Aubrey a simple smash cake and I tied the main cake back to our circus theme with a mini-pennant banner strung from plastic carnival stripe straws.

I used a basic white cake recipe (also seen here) from Magnolia Bakery for both to keep things simple and filled and frosted them with a simple buttercream.  Sprinkles and a fun corkscrew candle were all the decoration the smash cake needed and a simple dot pattern adorned the main cake.

Finally I made a 3rd cake (2nd smash cake) for a photo shoot with Dede Holman Photography the following week so we could have some adorable pictures to document the occasion.

Photo by Dede Holman Photography

For other food at the party I stuck with some simple spins on carnival food - spicy whiskey BBQ sliders (slightly modified from Pioneer Woman - I used ground turkey instead of beef and cut out the majority of the butter and served them on Hawaiian roles), kettle corn, fruit skewers on a stick and animal crackers with a vanilla honey yogurt dip (a simple combination of vanilla yogurt, a little honey for sweetness and some lime zest), nachos with cheese dip and guacamole, mini corndogs muffins (recipe found on Iowa Girl Eats) and veggies and dip.

Traditional White Birthday Cake
Recipe slightly adapted from Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

Cake:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup whole milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 3 8" baking pans baking spray and line the bottoms with parchment rounds.

Cream the butter on medium high speed until smooth. Add the sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Combine milk and vanilla in a measuring cup. Add flour in 3 parts, alternating with the milk, beating well after each addition, beginning and ending with flour. Set batter aside.

Add egg whites to a clean mixing bowl and begin beating on low speed, gradually increasing speed to high as egg whites thicken. Beat until the egg whites make soft peaks. Gently fold into cake batter, 1/3 at a time.

Bake 22-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pans for about 5 minutes, loosen the edges with a knife if necessary, and turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.


Note: this recipe will make 2 2-layer 6" smash cakes or 1 3 layer 8" cake, so double the recipe if you want to make the 2-tier cake and a smash cake.  In the pictures above, the smash cakes are each built with 2 6" cakes cut in half horizontally to make 4 total thin layers and then torted with buttercream.  The 2-tier cake is done the same way with a 6" cake over an 8" cake.  I did use small wooden dowels for stability when stacking the tiers.

Buttercream Icing

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 lb powdered sugar

Beat butter in a large mixing bowl for 2-3 minutes until smooth and creamy, add in vanilla and cream and mix on low speed until incorporated.  Add powdered sugar in a several additions to prevent it from making a giant cloud of sugar all over your kitchen.  Mix on low speed until incorporated and increase speed gradually to medium high and whip an additional 1-2 minutes.  Icing should be thick but easily spreadable. 

Note: this will make enough icing to torte and ice at least one smash cake but you will need more to do all of the cakes above.

Thanksgiving 2010 Menu

This year's Thanksgiving dinner was a great mix of old and new recipes.  Thanksgiving is one meal you don't want to experiment with too much.  People expect the classic holiday dishes, but that doesn't mean you have to make them the same way they were made twenty years ago either.  Putting a few new spins and ideas on the table can keep things from getting boring.

I'll be posting several of these recipes over the next couple weeks -- bookmark them for next year or keep them in mind for your Christmas dinner.  I'll also be posting some great recipes using some of the leftovers too.

Thanksgiving Menu

Dinner:
Cider-Brined Roast Turkey and Gravy
Apple Cranberry Stuffing
Wild Rice and Butternut Squash Dressing
Mashed Potatoes
Cinnamon Streusel Sweet Potato Casserole
Roasted Vegetables
Spinach and Apple Salad with Cranberry Lime Vinaigrette
Macaroni and Cheese
Parker House Rolls

Dessert:
Deep Dish Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin Roll
Caramelized Banana Pudding

Our First Anniversary Trip

So I've been a really bad blogger lately. Between my husband travelling for work and being out of town two weekends in a row, I haven't done a lot of cooking lately so there hasn't been a lot of material to share with you. But don't worry, I've got some great stuff coming up soon.

Basically to appease my own guilt for not blogging, I'll tell you a little about my trip this past weekend. The husband and I celebrated our first anniversary on Sunday so we took a quick weekend trip to St. Louis.

We went to a Cardinals game - where the Cards beat the Brewers in extra innings! We bought cheap tickets but they ended up being great seats, basically as far up as you could go but right behind home plate giving a great view of the game and the city. The best part was the shade since it was over 90 degrees when the game started.

We went to tour the Anheuser-Busch factory on Sunday - I went when I was a little kid, but don't remember much. It was actually a really great tour.

We signed up for beer school, which ended up being very similar to a wine tasting session where we tasted 4 beers: Budweiser, Bud Light Lime, Bud Light Golden Wheat, and Beach Bum. My favorite (which I figured before the tasting) was the BL Lime by far. But either the freshness of the beer or the tasting tips or the fact that it wasn't a college party, actually made me appreciate all of them a little more. They suggested food pairings for all of the beers as well. I linked up some recipes based on their suggestions that you might like.

Budweiser: Since its a medium-bodied beer and doesn't have strong flavors, it goes well with most foods but its especially good with burgers or steak. Try it with steak or beef burgers.

Bud Light Lime: This is a great summer beer, very light-bodied and the lime flavor really comes through. It pairs perfectly with spicy Mexican food. Try it with these grilled chicken tacos or tequila lime chicken.

BL Golden Wheat: This is a medium-bodied beer with coriander and hints of orange and lemon. They tour guide told us this is their most popular beer at Buffalo Wild Wings and recommended it with wings, pizza, or chicken. Try it with Spicy Chicken Supreme Pizza or these Dijon Chicken Club Sandwiches.

Beach Bum Blonde Ale: This seasonal ale is a summer beer that pairs great with traditional barbecue foods and summer flavors. Try it with Spicy Hawaiian Burgers, Chipotle Chili Grilled Corn, Pesto Pasta Salad, or this Spicy Shrimp Mango Salad.

While we were in St. Louis we also went out to a couple dinners, hung out by the pool, walked around the park by the arch and downtown and just relaxed.

I brought along our frozen top tier from our wedding cake - which survived fairly well, the icing wasn't very good after freezing but the cake was surprisingly okay - and some champagne so we broke out our toasting flutes from the wedding and had cake and champagne to celebrate a great first year.

Bake Sale

Tomorrow is the 1st Annual National Food Bloggers Bake Sale, part of the Great American Bake Sale organized by Gaby Dalkin of WhatsGabyCooking.com.



Funds raised from the bake sale will benefit Share Our Strength, an organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger in America. All across the country, food bloggers have joined together to host bake sales in more than 25 locations on Saturday, April 17th. To find a location near you, click here to see the list of sites. Tomorrow, I'll be joining Melissa from My McDonald Meal to help with a bake sale in Georgetown, Kentucky at the Georgetown International Kite and Culture Festival at the Cardome Center so if you are in the area, stop by and get some delicious baked goods between 10 am and 2 pm.

For tomorrow's bake sale, I'm making:

Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Bars
Orange Creamsicle Cookies
Pecan Pie Bars
Lemon Poppy Seed Bread
Cinnamon Crunch Coffee Cake
Homemade Granola or here
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Check back over the next few days for all the recipes!

Bridal Shower Menu

It has been a busy couple of weeks... first a trip to Tennessee, then a quick trip to Arkansas, then a trip to Iowa this past weekend to host a bridal shower for my sister. All the travelling didn't leave a lot of time for new updates. Plus, I had to do a craft project and put together this sign... I'm not really a crafty person so things like this usually work a lot better in my head than they turn out but I was pretty happy with how this sign worked. Don't laugh, crafting is not my strong suit.

For the bridal shower, we did light hors d'ouevres and cupcakes since it was an afternoon affair. Pretty easy to put together, most of this stuff can be made in advance so you can put it together the day before and refrigerate. Then you'll just have to assemble the day of the party.

The menu:

Vegetable Platter with Roasted Garlic White Bean Dip
Fruit Platter with Lemon Cream Cheese Dip
Spicy Chicken Tortilla Roll-Ups
Cheddar Ranch Cheese Ball with Crackers
Cinnamon Roasted Almonds
Triple Lemon Cupcakes
Cherry Coke Cupcakes

I'll be posting the recipes through out this week so check back soon!

Valentine's Day Menu

Todd and I celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday because we were planning to be out of town this coming weekend with some friends. I wanted to cook us a nice dinner with some things that I don't normally make.

The Menu:

Appetizer:
Crab Cakes

Dinner:
Baby Spinach Salad with Feta, Walnuts and Dried Cranberries with Raspberry Vinaigrette
New York Strip Steak with caramelized onions and mushrooms
Smoked Mozzarella Risotto
Crusty Herb Bread

Dessert:
Yellow Cake with Dulce de Leche filling and Whipped Cream Icing

I used a bottled dressing and bread from Kroger bakery but other than that everything was homemade. Aside from the experiment with the dulce de leche, everything was extremely easy to put together and turned out great. I'll post the recipes over the next couple of days.

Thanksgiving Menu

Dinner:

Cider Brined Roast Turkey with Apple Cider Glaze and Gravy

Spinach Salad with Apples and Feta with Cranberry Orange Vinaigrette

Sage and Onion Stuffing with Mushrooms

Sweet Stuffing with Apples, Dried Cranberries, and Pecans

Cranberry Apple Chutney and Jellied Cranberry Sauce

Mashed Potatos

Sweet Potato Bake with Cinnamon Crunch Topping

Parmesan Roasted Butternut Squash

Roasted Garlic Green Beans with Bell Peppers and Almonds

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Classic White Dinner Rolls and Garlic Knots

Dessert:

Caramel Apple Cheesecake

Traditional Pumpkin Pie

Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie

Thanksgiving Cookies

I'm hoping everything turns out. I've made most of this stuff before so I'm not too worried on an individual dish level, its just getting everything to fit in the oven and come together at the same time. I'll post recipes and pictures later this week!