Do you guys remember last August when I flew out to San Diego to hang out with Amy and attend BlogHer '11?
Well guess what?? Today Amy is flying in to hang out with me and check out what Canada has to offer!
She will be here for the next week, I cannot wait! We plan on eating copious amounts of poutine and donairs, checking out the mountains, visit WEM, and who knows what else :) I just hope this pregnant lady has enough energy to keep my guest busy!
This past weekend a great friend of mine married her perfect guy. The wedding was so much fun, with lots of tasty food (how can you go wrong with a Ukrainian wedding?), great friends, and an awesome reason to celebrate!
I was so honoured when they asked me to make the wedding cake and cupcakes! The wedding colour was orange, and while the bride requested vanilla and chocolate for the cupcakes, I was given free reign with the wedding cake flavours.
Remember these doughnuts and how they blew my mind because they were just SO good and the brown butter glaze was insane?
I found another use for that tasty tasty glaze :)
I had some leftover in my fridge after the doughnuts had disappeared, just taunting me to dig in with a spoon. But I held strong! Instead I made some chocolate cupcakes, topped them with some vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream, drizzled them with the remaining glaze, and BAM, proceeded to shoved them in my face.
So. Good.
In May one of our closest friends gave birth to an insanely cute little boy, Emmett! This little dude is so awesome; we couldn't be happier for the new parents.
My friends and I eagerly waited until we could throw little Emmett and his mom a prime baby shower. Since our friends spend almost every weekend in the summer camping all over Alberta, we decided that a camping-themed baby shower would be perfect!
We served all sorts of camping themed food such as mini burgers and mini hotdogs
This past weekend we celebrated my sister's...21st birthday! (again?)! Yay!
She had originally requested a lemon poppyseed dessert, but then we found out that a family member was allergic to poppyseeds so the morning of her birthday I woke up and had no clue what I was going to make!
Another one of my sister's favourite desserts is strawberry shortcake, so I decided to make a vanilla cake and fill it with vanilla buttercream and strawberries to try and bring some of the flavours together.
Can this be? TWO posts in a row and neither is dessert??
Oh dear, I promise I'll do my best to get back on track for you guys. I'm pretty sure you have come to expect more than your/our fair share of desserts on this blog these days! I promise that I do have some new sweet things to share, so no worries alright? :)
In the meantime, let's fire up the BBQ! When we had our Greek-themed dinner a couple of weeks ago (when we served the Marinated Feta and Red Peppers salad) we decided to take advantage of our amazing summer and throw something on the BBQ. Not only does it get us outside, but it takes the cooking portion of the meal off of me, win-win right?
How about something fresh and easy for your summer BBQ's? I am all about the easy (but tasty!) dishes these days, and this marinated salad totally fit the bill.
A couple weeks ago we had a Greek-themed dinner at our house (more tasty recipes to come!) and we put out this salad as part of the appetizers and to enjoy with dinner. This salad was delicious on it's own, and also great spooned on top of some fresh bread that we had put out.
Despite the noticeable decrease in activity on this ol' blog of mine, I have been keeping quite busy in the kitchen this summer. It seems like almost every weekend I end up with some sort of event or party to bake for. There have been a ton of weddings, showers (wedding and baby), stagettes, birthdays, etc etc that I have been whipping up something sweet for over the last few months. It has been a blast!
Cupcakes still seem to be a huge hit for weddings, so my cupcake pans and stand mixers have been getting quite the workout! At the end of this month I will have my biggest challenge yet, a 2 (or 3 maybe!) tier cake AND cupcakes for up to 400 guests! Oh dear, wish me luck! I think my stand mixers might to into hiding when they find that one out.
Remember last week when all my husband wanted was some 'normal' food for supper? He had requested these super easy Fish Tacos, but instead I couldn't get this cake out of my head?
This cake was so good! Incredibly moist (you might want to store it in the refrigerator, not on the counter of your AC-less house like I did), tons of banana and caramel flavour, and it really classed up my counter since it turned out so pretty.
