Little Peach Pies

These little peach pies from Cooking Light were part of the menu for tonight's dinner. The recipe made 12 little pies. Six went to a friend who just had a baby. Six stayed home with us. Needless to say, they are ALL gone now.

CL's recipe calls for a sweet cream cheese pastry dough. It has less fat in it than regular pastry and is pretty easy to put together. The food processor did all the work. The hard part was rolling out the 12 little circles. So that you don't have to add lots of flour and make the pastry tough, the recipe tells you to roll each circle out between two sheets of plastic wrap. Let me tell you . . . that's a lot of plastic. It almost felt wrong to use so much plastic just to save a few calories. Not good for the earth. Not good for my pocketbook, either. Now I need to go buy a new roll of the stuff! Argh!

The filling was pretty easy - dried apricots, frozen peaches, some spices, sugar, lemon juice. The filling is precooked since the pastries only spend 18 minutes in the oven. The best part was glazing them after they came out of the oven and cooled. You all know how I love icing!

These were pretty good. Three of us ate two apiece. So much for less calories! Even Jonathan thought they were tasty which is impressive for a 5-year-old, I think. I'm not sure this recipe is a keeper. We'll have to see what my friend says after she tries her batch tonight.

Easter Pigs

A few years ago I purchased some knitting kits from Magic Cabin. With the kits I was supposed to be able to knit a pair of cats, a pair of pigs, and a pair of horses. As a new knitter I really only knew how to cast on, knit, and bind off. The only kit that promised a creature for such simple skills was the cat - so I did that. My first cat is still laughable to look at. The second is much cuter but has lost his tail in the ensuing years. Anyway, this Easter I was determined to put something cute and homemade in my sons' Easter baskets so I pulled down the kit for the pigs. This one was much more complicated, requiring me to knit, purl, increase, and decrease. Yikes! Never fear, though. One can find directions for anything online. I went to a few sites and watched a few video demonstrations. And tah-dah, some piggies appeared. I think they are adorable. My five-year-old was delighted with his. My one-year-old could have cared less. I'm mighty proud of them. Maybe in a few years I'll tackle the horses.

Pillsbury Bake-off

So, Anne has convinced me to enter the Pillsbury bake-off. I decided what flavors I want to work with - maple, walnut, whole wheat. So, for a month or two I've been playing with different ideas and different recipes. I couldn't resist letting you take a peek at this one. I don't think it will be my entry for the contest but it was pretty yummy and tasty too. It is sort of a yeasted coffee cake. Jamie's taking one to work tomorrow to see what his coworkers think. I wonder what Anne is working on . . .

Ships Ahoy!

Not to be outdone by Anne . . . I too made a cardboard creation. Jonathan wanted a pirate themed party for his 5th birthday. Anne had sent me to the site that inspired her train and I noticed a pirate ship there so I got the plans and started work. My husband procured bike boxes for me instead of the requisite refrigerator boxes so I had to scale the ship down a bit and rework it but after a few days of work the results were totally worth it. I surrounded it with blue balloons which, with a little imagination, was to be the sea. Inside I stashed black balloons to act as cannon balls. All eleven children had a blast with the balloon fight, lobbing cannons at each other and trying to "sink" the ship by filling it up with blue balloons. The cake was a pirate ship, too, courtesy of Martha Stewart. It tasted great! My only complaint is that the chocolate chips were supposed to just get pressed in but they didn't stay. So, I melted chocolate and made them stick. Unfortunately all that melted chocolate was very hard to cut at a moment's notice. Other than that, it was a yummy cake, a fun party, and a jolly good success!

A first birthday flower cake

A first birthday is always special, and it comes with the tradition of giving the birthday girl/boy the cake to explore, destroy, devour—basically do with as she/he pleases. But are guests as excited to eat a baby-palmed cake as a fresh, clean one? Hmmm... Not sure.

One way to make the cake palatable for party guests while following tradition is to give the baby a smaller cake, keeping the larger one for everyone else. But the designer in me wondered, was there a way to make both cakes work in one, fun, colorful design? As it turns out, there is, so that's what I did.

For Lydia's first birthday I made a 5" cake plus cupcakes and arranged them into flower shapes. The flower cake turned out to be the perfect solution. We gave Lydia  a cupcake to play with. Plus the cake was colorful, fun and easy to serve. All in all, a perfect cake for this very special occasion.

By the way, I used the Martha Stewart's Yellow Butter Cake recipe, which yielded 20 cupcakes plus the 5" cake. I made 2.5 batches of Betty Crocker Creamy Vanilla Frosting and found it very easy to make and use.

Easy Vanilla Cupcakes

This cupcake recipe published by Cooks' Illustrated is the best cupcake recipe I've ever made. Perfect for birthday parties. Great flavor. Tender texture. Very vanilla-y. I made their Yellow Cupcakes with Easy Vanilla Bean Buttercream. The sprinkles are green and blue dolphins from our local Amish store. Oh, and by the way, my husband has a new camera. It has "food" mode for taking pictures of my baking creations. Doesn't it look fabulous?

Ooo! Cake!

The doctor informed me a few months ago that I had high cholesterol. Very high cholesterol. No cheese. No butter. No eggs. Lots of oatmeal. That is supposed to be my diet. But as you can tell by my posts . . . I haven't been that successful. I have been searching for recipes that use olive oil instead of butter so that I can satisfy my sweet tooth with a little less guilt. So, when I saw the recipe for Olive Oil Bundt Cake with Tangerine Glaze in my Cooking Light magazine, I tore it out and put it in my recipe file. This week, I finally got around to making it. Since tangerines didn't seem available at my market, I substituted fresh-squeezed orange juice in the recipe. And, since I thought it would boost the flavor, I added the zest of one orange to the cake AND the zest of another orange to the glaze. The cake received mixed reviews in our house. At first bite, my four-year-old pronounced it disgusting. But then in the ensuing days he ate four pieces. My husband thought the extra-virgin olive oil was a little strong. I thought it's flavor was very delicate and not too sweet, more like a quick-bread than cake really. The glaze was the best part (which, by the way, I had doubled because I LOVE icing). Not sure I'll make it again, but it was tasty and healthier than most cakes!