The Nightmare Before Christmas

When I was a kid, I remember seeing commercials for a new movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Now, I'm not sure why, but I had made up my mind long before I actually saw it that it was going to be a.w.e.s.o.m.e. I literally counted down the days until it premiered on tv with excitement and made sure I had the tv reserved for that night. Yes, I said tv, as in one tv. Look, I'm a baby of the 80's so one tv was normal back then, I promise you. When it finally aired, I was so disappointed and a little horrified. I guess it was a little over my head and I never watch it again. But, someone who did enjoy it growing up is my good friend Stephanie. She loved it and watched it all the time. So, when she put out the word she was wanting a Jack Skellington snuggie for Christmas last year I took a mental note and made sure that when her birthday came around, I would make her a Jack Skellignton cake, because who could possibly want the snuggie but not the cake?!

We met up at The Loading Dock Bar and Grill in Grafton, Illinois and prayed that the rain would hold off. Luckily, it did and we were able to take in the spectacular views of the water, fireworks!, and a bonefire across the river. Not to mention, we managed to get the best seat in the house. Nothing but the best for Steph! After our dinner and many, many celebratory drinks, we sliced up this bad boy and managed to stuff ourselves silly with a slice of both chocolate and vanilla cake. Happiness ensued.

Seattle Seahawks

A friend of mine got married a few months ago in Jamaica (jealous!) and after her and her new husband got back home and settled in, they were able to plan a small reception in our hometown, at her parent's house. Emily said she wasn't looking for anything too special and had actually just planned to order a couple of sheet cakes (eek!) but I was able to convince her quite easily to let me make the cakes instead. Her mom and I put together a sketch of a beach themed cake that unfortunately I wasn't able to snap a picture of before I dropped it off. However, I did manager to take a few of the groom's surprise cake: a Seattle Seahawks themed cake to be exact. Too be honest, I wasn't too familiar with their logo but after a quick google search I got the general idea.

Go Team Go!

More Picnic Fun

In addition to the Peanuts gang cupcakes I whipped up for the church picnic, I also made a few dozen Seseme Street themed cupcakes and about twenty cookies. I really didn't have time that weekend to put together a whole smorgasbord of goodies so I limited the cookies to two themes: more Snoopy (can't get enough of that lil guy!) and some St. Louis Cardinals themed cookies. I live in Southern Illinois and it's the only respectable major league baseball team to root for around here ; )

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to snap a few pics of the other cupcakes (that included cookie monster, oscar the grouch, and the count!) but I'm sure you can use your imagination!

I hate shelling out the money for tons of new cookie cutters (especially the ones I will only use a few times each) so I make it a point to google a few good pictures of the design I want to use for the cookies and then save and print them out onto card stock. From there, I just cut out the images and lay them over my rolled out cookie dough. Using a clean x-acto knive I carefully cut around the cardstock design and then remove the cardstock from the cookie dough. I make sure to keep the cardstock cutout nearby when I'm decorating the cookies though, so I can better free-hand the designs onto the baked and cooled cookies.

Birds!

Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and the whole Peanuts gang

My church throws an annual church picnic the first Sunday of August. Lots of locals are kind enough to donate food, beverages, crafts, and their time. Up until this year, I've only donated my time and by donate my time, I mean work the dime toss. The dime toss is usually good fun as it's in a shaded area with a fan blowing nearby and gives us a chance to interact with the church youth and youngsters. This year brought two big changes however....my beloved dime toss was shut down and replaced with a football toss game that I got the chance to work at and I donated some bakery goods too. 

I wanted to make some goodies that the young and young at heart would appreciate so I whipped up a few dozen batches of cupcakes and after filling and frosting them I applied fondant cutouts I had made the day before. I picked up a set of four edible ink pens that worked really well for drawing on facial features to the fondant cutouts. For anyone new to them, I would suggest letting the fondant dry for at least a few hours if not an entire day before drawing on it though. 

Here's one batch of the Peanut's themed cupcakes I sent to the "country kitchen" that the church sells freshly baked goods from on the morning of the church picnic. 

Homemade Pizza

For a while now, I've been dying to try a semi-new restaurant in town called Peel.  The only problem is that it's so good, it's always packed and waiting outside in 100 degree weather for an hour just to get a table didn't really seem worth it to me. But, that being said, over July 4th weekend, we had the perfect opportunity to try this little pizza place out.  It was raining and 5pm so our wait time was only half an hour and our group of four was lucky enough to snag the last four seats at the end of the bar to wait. All the hype was worth it and we so enjoyed our meal, albeit a little pricey. So, this is more of a special occasion place rather than an every weekend place. But, since I did love the food so much, I wanted to try my hand at recreating it (on the cheap).

Peel is known for their wood fired pizzas and though I only have a traditional range, I didn't let that stop me. I made two different pizzas two different nights--one in the oven at 500 degrees and one outside on the grill. It's not that the one cooked in the oven wasn't as good, but heating the oven to that high of a temp in the middle of the summer just adds so much extra heat to the apt that I probably won't be doing that again until winter. Plus, trying to handle a pizza stone that hot is a job in and of itself. I nearly burned my hands even with my mitts so I'm apprehensive to try this method of cooking a pizza for a while.

I really enjoyed the buffalo chicken pizza and the Grecian pizza at Peel so I visited their website to check out the ingredient list. Even though there's no recipe, I figured I could just eye-ball it between the ingredient list, pictures of the pizzas on Yelp, and my memory of the pizzas. To round out our meals, I also tried my hand at recreating their salad and mac n cheese we ate there as well.  Some of the ingredients can be pricey to come by but Aldi has a great deal on shredded, crumbled, and fresh chunks of cheese and I was able to forgo an entire bottle of  kalamata olives and just pick up the amount I needed at Dierberg's olive bar. Also, to save time and money on ingredients, I picked up a bottle of sun dried tomato pesto from Shop n Save rather than taking the time to make it myself. 

After getting all the ingredients home, I realized I had more than enough food for one meal so I decided to only make one pizza that night and to make the other a few days later. So, first up was the Grecian pizza which really wasn't difficult to assemble as the salad called for many of the same toppings. Plus, it's 100% vegetarian so it's a great contender for our "Meatless Mondays."  It was Wednesday, but none the less, I still felt good about cutting some meat from our meals. 

Don't mind the cutting board, I don't currently have a real serving dish large enough for the pizza. 

After rolling out the crust, I brushed on some olive oil and put it in the oven for a few minutes to crisp up. Then, I carefully took it out of the oven and dressed it. I spread a thin layer of sun dried tomato pesto over the crust and then sprinkled some gorgonzola cheese over that. I had meant to pick up feta cheese but somehow ended up with gorgonzola. After a bit of googling however, I found that it's a perfect substitute so all was not lost. Then I added some baby spinach, roasted garlic and pearl onions, a hand full of sliced and pitted kalamata olives and roma tomatoes. Finally, I drizzled a few tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil over the entire pizza and put it back in the oven for another ten minutes.

In the mean time, I prepared our salads. A few cups of mixed greens with left over gorgonzola cheese, freshly grated mozzarella, (I put the ball in the freezer for fifteen minutes so it would be easy to grate) diced onion and roma tomatoes, and the rest of the kalamata olives. For the dressing, I just used a simple balsalmic vinaigrett recipe I found on Epicurious and drizzled the salads with a few tablespoons. 

And while the mac and cheese was our favorite part of the meal at Peel, it was almost an after thought when I started cooking. As in, I nearly forgot about it. Peel only lists their mac and cheese as a parmesan cream sauce gratin. With that in mind, I did a quick google search of parmesan cream ratios and heated a bit of heavy cream on the stove top and then whisked in some shredded parmesan after the cream came to a bubble. Then, I just poured the sauce over my cooked macaroni noodles in a dish and baked for the twenty or so minutes in the oven while we ate our salads.

Mac n cheese: parmesan cream sauce gratin

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For our next pizza, the buffalo chicken pizza, I decided to prepare more dough but to freeze it for a few days and then defrost it in the frig and roll it out before use. In the future, I will be doing this as the dough was much easier to work with and I was able to roll it a bit thinner than with the Grecian pizza a few nights before. Plus, it cuts down on prep time before the meal which is a big help on week nights. So, we brushed both sides of the rolled out dough with a little olive oil and put it on the pizza stone that had been heating on the grill. I cannot say with certainty the temperature as we used a charcoal grill, but it was quite hot and there were flames coming from the coals. After a few minutes, we then turned the crust, and let it cook for another two minutes. 

Then, we brushed the crust with the sauces. Nothing fancy, just some we had on hand.  I used about a 1/4 a cup of the honey bbq and smoked bbq and then added a few drops of hot sauce for a more traditional buffalo chicken taste. After mixing the sauces together, I brushed the crust with the mixture and spun the cubed chicken pieces in it also for some good bbq flavor. 

stocking stuffer from my mom this year : )

Here's a picture of the pizza, hot off the grill. Again, all I did was brush the sauce on the dough, add the cubed chicken pieces that had been roasted and coated in sauce, sprinkle on some mozzarella cheese I had left over from the other night, and  cover the grill letting the cheese melt. This really only took about four or five minutes. After that time had lapsed, we just removed it from the grill, and added some ranch dressing and fresh basil and cilantro from my little herb garden. The fresh herbs aren't necessary but they do wonders for presentation.

Cakes, cakes, and oh yeah, more cakes

This weekend was especially busy for me. About a month ago, I agreed to make my niece's birthday cake as she just turned one a few days ago. (Happy Birthday, Hayleigh!) After I posted some pictures of cookies I had made recently, a friend from back home on my fb asked if I would like to make her daughter, Meika's cake for her second birthday. I happily agreed to this as well. And, after speaking to someone I work for about cookies I had made with some of the neighbor kids across the street, she asked if I would be up to making her two kid's graduation cakes. Obviously, I didn't turn her down either. All in all, I agreed to make two half sheet graduation cakes, two smash cakes, a cake to feed party goers and a batch of cupcakes...all to be made and delivered this past Friday and Saturday.

the 100+ degree weather began to take a toll on the cake after about an hour

I stayed up way too late, put in much more time than I thought I would, and my entire body ached when I was finally done baking and decorating all the cakes. But, to be perfectly honest, I am overcome with happiness to be able to help them celebrate their special days. I am looking forward to my next event, a bridal shower at the end of the month and have already started my cake and cookie sketches (which, I hope to share with you soon). Until then, I would like to share the few pictures I have from the birthday parties this past weekend. I hope you enjoy!

Bride and Groom Cookies

the idea for this lil cake came from the famous Bakerella  website  post: blue makes me happy

It seems like everyone is getting married this year. I don't know about you, but I have at least five girls on my 

fb page with upcoming nuptials. Brad's in one of these weddings as a groomsmen and while I was also invited, regrettably I won't be able to attend. In lieu of my absence, I wanted to make the couple something special to enjoy together before their big day. 

Celebration Cookies: Lego or Batman?

Brad's birthday is just a few weeks away and I've been frantically trying to plan a cake and some cookies in his honor. He's a big fan of the Lego video games but is also a lifelong fan of superheros--particularly Batman.

Toy Story 3 Cookies

I am a huge Toy Story fan, but, who isn't? It was the first animated film that got me interested in movies and how they are made as a kid. In fact, when I went to Walt Disney World two years later, I signed up to take an animation class at the Disney Institute. It was the highlight of my entire trip. As a kid, I was mesmerized with the animation process and hung on every word of the guest speakers for our class. Once I came home, I subsequently spent the next two weeks in my room trying to draw my favorite characters on my new, premium sketch paper.

I stood in line opening night to watch Toy Story 3 with all the other adult fans who had fallen in love with these characters over a decade ago. And, when I was on a weekend vacation in Branson with my boyfriend and his family I just had to make a pit stop at the Disney store. Well, two Disney stores. After walking into the first store, I was struck by the sight of an enormous and over-sized Lotso' Huggin' Bear. But, the sticker shock of $50 made me put him back on the shelf. After we stopped at the second Disney store a few days later and my boyfriend saw my face light up again when I spied that same, lovable, over-sized bear, he knew it was love and bought him for me as a surprise early birthday gift. Though, Lotso wasn't too much of a surprise as once he paid for the bear at the counter, he handed him over immediately as there is no good way to conceal a giant, purple stuffed bear.

So, in honor of my beloved Toy Story 3 characters (I'm lookin' at you, Lotso) I decided to bake and decorate their likeness onto some sugar cookies. This proved slightly harder than first imagined as there are no Toy Story cookie cutters out on the market. This led me to find pictures of them I liked online, size them appropriately, and then cut the dough with a knife, using the printed pictures as stencils.

Here are two of Bonnie's toys you might remember from the movie. 

Strawberry Jam

Ugh. It's hot. Really hot. I'm the kind of girl that dreams of days where the temperature is in the seventies, but this last week has been nearly unbearable in the upper 90's. I saw on the news that we had a record high of 98 degrees (yep, just like the boy band) this past Saturday. With weather this warm, I try to stay out of the heat as much as possible and cooped up inside keeping myself busy.

So, I made strawberry jam with some fresh berries my mom picked for me a few days earlier to help use up the last of the berries before they spoiled. The freezer jam was oh so simple and only required eight cups of strawberries, a bit of lemon juice, sugar to taste, and pectin to help it all gel together. It tastes amazingly delicious on a fresh piece of crusty french bread, too.

The jam will keep up to three months in the frig or a year in the freezer, but, let's be honest, I don't need anywhere near that much time to make this jam disappear. 

Herbs

So, I have a confession: Everything I've ever tried to grow has died. The last time I tried growing a small herb garden we nearly had a small flood and all the water was too much for my little buds to take and they died. It's been a few years since then and I tried to gather the gumption to try my hand at potted herbs again. So, here, I present my first buds of Basil. Hallelujah!

Beach Themed Cookies

As a housewarming favor I decided to bake and decorate cookies for Jayne once she was all settled in. Jayne loves Florida and the beach, but nothing more than palm trees. I used cookie cutters I got from a specialty store in Edwardsville, Chef Shoppe, for a few of the cookies and cut the others out with a knife when I couldn't find cutters for those particular items. As part of the beach theme, there are star fish, tropical fish, a few palm trees, a pink polka-dot bikini and matching flip flops. Since palm tress are Jayne's favorite things, I decided to include a few of my favorite things too, scottie dogs. Aren't they adorable? Who wouldn't want a scottie?

Hayleigh's Smash Cake

My sister asked me if I would be interested in making my niece's smash cake for a photo shoot she had scheduled for last week. I happily accepted and this is the end result of our collaboration. Ashley wanted the exterior of the cake to match Hayleigh's outfit so we chose violet, light pink, and hot pink for the cake with a white fondant shell. The cake itself is three layers of strawberry cake with white vanilla buttercream holding it all together.

 Here is a link to more pictures of Hayleigh digging into her cake. Yum! http://bensonphotography.zenfolio.com/p733478582/e398f0d8#h13e5ac24