Eat Your Heart Out

This past year has been "the year of the cake" for me. 

As most of you know, I started my cake baking trend with Emily's 11th birthday moustache cake last June. Of course, that was followed by Matthew's 8th birthday F8 tornado cake. 

Well, the cake baking continued with Valentine's day and, yes, I got this particular idea from Pinterest. 

I used a red velvet cake mix and baked the batter in one round and one square cake pan. When the cakes cooled, it was time to "create" and what says Valentine's Day more than a heart. 

I cut the round cake in half and placed the half circles at the top of the square cake which was positioned in such a way to represent the look of a diamond. Ta da! A heart! 

The cake was iced with cream cheese frosting and Emily helped shape a heart out of mini M&M's in the middle of the cake. We also dusted the cake with some sugar sprinkles. 

It was a special dessert for the people I love and let me tell you it was yummy!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Oh my YUMMY Goodness!!!

Yesterday, Emily and I prepared our dessert for the week - No Bake Chocolate Eclair dessert. 

Definitely the most difficult part of this recipe is the "refrigerate overnight" step. The vanilla pudding, graham crackers and chocolate sauce created scrumptious aromas. Well, those aromas were nothing compared to the taste. Its amazing!!!! It tasted so close to an eclair and let me tell you preparation of this is minimal compared to the making of an eclair. And that annoying overnight step, well it softens the graham crackers (not making them mushy) to perfection.

This dessert is so good I could eat the whole thing myself. Usually when a recipe makes something this large I try and share with others so it doesn't go to waste. Well, there will be absolutely no wasting and I know I will be part of that effort.

Oh, so you want to know where to get the recipe? Hmmm.....should I share? Of course, it can be found at the blog The Kitchen is my Playground. I will be forever thankful and making this recipe quite often.  Enjoy!!

The Food Rating are In

Yay, I am back in the weekly dinner menu routine again.  
I took the time on Monday to make up a menu plan for the next month.  Our family has favorite "easy" meals but I find that I really do like to cook and expose the family to new food. 
We have instituted a food rating here to determine if a meal should be added to our family menu binder. It is a pretty simple rating: thumbs up for "yummy, make it again", thumb side ways for "okay, but not great" and thumbs down for "please not again" - majority rules. 
So, here are the new "items" we have tried so far this week:

Skinny Chicken Parmesan Muffins:

This meal got a thumbs up from everyone. The recipe can be found at Skinny Mom.  I think the kids love this because it was shaped into a muffin. Also, Emily had no complaints that it was made with chicken.

Slow Cooker Sweet and Sour Pork:

Everyone but Emily liked this meal. We tried to tell her "at least its not chicken".  I don't know where I go the recipe from but here it is:

Slow Cooker Sweet & Sour Pork

Crockpot: 4-6 High; 8-10 Low

1/2 c chopped onion

2-4 lb. hunk of pork

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 c water

1/2 c ketchup

3 T red wine vinegar

2 T brown sugar

2 T soy sauce

1 t dijon

1/2 t pepper

salt

Arrange onions in the bottom of the slow cooker. Place pork on top and spread garlic on pork.

In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients and pour over pork. For best results, cook on LOW 8-10 hours, or HIGH for 4-6. 

Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies:

It was time to try a treat. I found this recipe at Tidy Mom. Everyone knows how much I love red velvet so making this cookie should be no surprise. This one got 4 thumbs up, no surprise there either.

Baked Potato Soup:

Made this soup tonight for dinner. The recipe can be found at Skinny Taste. This one had mixed ratings:  Emily, side thumb; Matt, thumb down; me, side thumb; Dave, thumb up. Matt, doesn't like mashed potatoes so the fact the he gave it a thumbs down wasn't a surprise but he did eat the whole bowl. I liked it but wasn't "wowed" by it. 

So far it has been more good than bad ratings and we have more to go this week too!!  

A Sweet Dessert for Dad

Watching the filling get mixed

Today Dave had to work and I was still trying to get as many of my craft projects done as possible seeing I did take yesterday"off".

Emily of course wanted to do "something" fun and was disappointed that our schedules weren't jiving with her desires. 

We did decide that before I got busy with my work, we would make a dessert to go with tonight's dinner. A while ago, I purchased a Jello "No Bake Lemon Meringue Pie mix". Lemon meringue is Dave's favorite pie so that was what we decided to make.  Because of the new learning life skills "program" we are instituting here in the house, I had Emily take the lead on this dessert.  Technically I was her sous chef.  She did well I just had to make some technical corrections and remind her to read her directions.  We had a fun time!

In order to keep it a surprise to Dave, Emily posted a sign on the fridge so he wouldn't see it until the end of dinner. 

We tend not to eat dessert right after dinner but did have Dave close his eyes and brought it out for him to see.  He was very surprised to see lemon meringue.

The pie tasted delicious.....cannot believe it came from a box.  Dave was very surprised at how good it tasted too!! The only one who didn't try it is Matt because he "doesn't like pie". As you can see, we have plenty left if anyone is interested. 

Emily's sign

It tastes good!!