Tag Archives: dessert

Happy New Year!  I hope you all had a fantastic New Year’s Eve, I’d love to hear how everyone celebrated!  Daniel and I procrastinated, so we ended up just going out for dinner and then watching New Year’s Eve specials while drinking champagne at home.  Even though it was pretty low key, it was one of my favorites thus far!  We realized we had never spent New Year’s in our home!  It was fun to experience something new, and it was also our first New Year’s Eve in Portland!

Now that the holidays are over, I can finally catch my breath and start blogging about everything we did.  If you read my post about holiday party ideas, you know that pretty much all inspiration came from Pinterest.  And now I want to share my results with you!

Let’s start with food, shall we?  You may remember that I wanted the food to act as the decorations, and I had quite a few examples of festive cheese platters.

You can see I chose to do a combination of all of the examples I found, and did a mixture of salami, cheese, and grapes.  I thought it was pretty cute, and a very quick and easy appetizer to whip up before a party.

Another Christmas-y food I wanted to replicate were these cookie cutter pizzas.  They were adorable, and were a big hit with my guests!  I will say they were a little difficult to work with because they were so small.  If you can find bigger cookie cutters, I think it would be a bit easier.

Because the pizzas were a little hard to make, they took a bit longer than we had planned.  Luckily, we had a backup plan and made one full sized pizza… in the shape of a candy cane!  Equally as delicious and adorable!

For dessert I made melted snowmen cookies, and they turned out beautifully!  You can find the gingerbread cookie recipe and what I changed on my previous blog post.  The only suggestion I made that I hadn’t tried out at the time was replacing white sugar with brown sugar.  I made that adjustment for the party, but I didn’t notice much of a difference in taste, so you can really use whichever you prefer.

I made a simple royal icing with powdered sugar and a little bit of milk.  I definitely recommend making sure the icing is on the thick side for optimum results.  You can see 3 of the cookies have better coverage, whereas the one in the back is a little see through.  Merely an artistic suggestion, as they were all tasty no matter how the icing looked!

Here are a few more pictures!

Before placing the marshmallows on the cookies, we microwaved them for a few seconds to give them a more melty look.  And we used colored gel icing from the baking section at the supermarket for their faces and bodies.  Pretty good for our first try, don’t you think?

If you stumbled on my holiday party ideas board on Pinterest, you may have seen a champagne drink that gained a lot of repins.  So many repins that there was no way I couldn’t try it out at our party!

A very simple drink that had so much wow factor!  I found green colored sugar at the grocery store, which I used to rim the champagne flutes.  I bought pomegranate seeds already deseeded to save on time, put those in the bottom of the glass, filled with champagne – boom, done!  They were seriously too pretty to drink (almost)!

I also made party favors for my guests, which sadly I forgot to hand out!  Word of advice:  keep party favors in a prominent place, and near the front door!  Then you won’t have to sheepishly hand them out after like I do.

Other than forgetting to give them out, I was very happy with my results.  Very easy and quick to do!  Because I could only find large candy canes, I used two marshmallows for each (most examples I saw only used one).  Then I just dipped them in melted chocolate and coated them in crushed peppermint candies.

I found these super cute snowmen bags at the Dollar Tree store, and put a hot chocolate stirring stick with a packet of hot chocolate in each bag.  A very nice gesture that doesn’t require a lot of time or expense!

I also made a white elephant gift, which I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  All I did was Sharpie instructions onto the mugs and baked it in the oven.  I had a hard time getting the Sharpie to come out as dark as the original, but perhaps my pen was just running out of ink.  It was also a little difficult to find dessert in a cup recipes that had good reviews, but I finally found these that seemed to be the best (leave me a comment if anyone wants the recipes!).

Tip:  Apparently people have a lot of trouble getting the Sharpie to actually stay on the mug after normal use and washing.  A few suggestions I found were to increase your oven temperature to 425 and bake for 30 minutes, do not preheat your oven first, and allow the mugs to cool completely in the oven after they’re done baking.  I rubbed the writing pretty hard afterwards, and it seemed like it was on there permanently!

Last but not least, I had shared a holiday decoration with you all and this is how it turned out!  I already had the wine glasses, we saved trimmings from our tree, and I bought the ornaments and candles from the Dollar Tree store.  For a very elegant looking decoration, it only cost $2 and was super easy to setup!

We also used it for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations as well.

Here are a few pictures of our coffee table and main table displays!

Looking back on it now, I probably took on a little too much, especially since it was my first time hosting a party.  But despite a few moments of stress, everything turned out great!  We had blast and so did our guests, so I’d say our first holiday party was a success!

Tis the season for holiday parties, and Daniel and I will be throwing our first one this year!  If you follow me on Pinterest, you’ll see I’ve been fervently pinning holiday party ideas like crazy.  While I’m still pinning last minute ideas, we had to finalize our menu and activities so we could get our invites out.

If you want more ideas, definitely check out my holiday party ideas board, but here’s what we’ve decided on… We will be throwing a Christmas sweater (ugly optional), white elephant, finger food potluck!  The reason why an ugly sweater is optional is because Daniel bought a sweater that isn’t technically ugly, and I haven’t bought mine yet… So who knows what I’ll find!

I’ve always enjoyed playing white elephant at holiday parties, and it’s fun to see how creative people get with their gifts!  We chose to put a $10 limit on gifts, mainly because we don’t want anyone to feel obligated to spend too much.  I thought this would be a fun gift to give and very easy to do!  You could most likely find white mugs at a dollar store, then all you have to do is Sharpie the instructions on the mug!  Most tutorials I’ve seen say to bake it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  I’m thinking of adding a second mug and writing the “cookie in a mug” instructions so they can be a pair!

After searching through pins, I decided that I was a huge fan of food being the decorations.  I saw these great appetizer ideas, which provided most of my inspiration.

We plan to do combination of all of the these!

While the food will be the decorations on the main table, I plan to do this on our coffee table.  It’s going to be so easy and yet so chic!  Daniel also had a great idea to use some of our tree clippings to surround the wine glasses!  I plan on getting the candles and some new ornaments at the Dollar Store!

For our main course we will be serving cookie cutter pizzas.  These are actually the reason I chose to make it a finger food potluck.  They were just too cute and festive, I was smitten with them as soon as I saw them!

If you happen to be strapped for time though (which we might be), you could also just make full size pizzas like these.

I saw these melted snowman cookies all over Instragram, and I think they will be a hit for dessert!

It looks like they are usually sugar cookies, but I plan to switch it up and make gingerbread cookies instead.  I think it would be more Christmas-y, and they will also look like the ground the snowmen melted on!  Daniel and I made gingerbread cookies last week so we could test a recipe out, and it was a winner!  We used the Nauvoo Gingerbread Cookie recipe, and here it is with my changes.

Here’s what you need:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup and 2 tbsp softened butter
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 1 egg
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg

We halved the recipe and it made about 30 cookies.  The original recipe called for lard, but we replaced it with butter, because ew.  It also uses white sugar, which we ended up using, but for the party I’ll be using brown sugar because I think it will give it more dimension.  I also added a few new spices and upped the amount on others

Here’s what you do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, molasses, butter and hot water.  Mix in egg.  In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.  Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until dough forms.  Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or until firm.
2. Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness on a well-floured surface.  Cut out shapes with cookies cutters, and place cookies onto ungreased baking sheets.
3. Bake for 10 minutes and then cool on cooling racks.

We iced ours with royal icing and they were delicious!

Of course, we also need drinks at our party!  I saw this awesome looking pin, which has since been repinned over 100 times from me!  I clearly have to do it now.  The original pin was a broken link and didn’t have any information, but I’m pretty sure those are pomegranate seeds at the bottom, glasses are filled with champagne, and coarse green sugar is rimming the top.  If you buy ready to use pomegranate seeds, this drink will take no time at all, yet looks super impressive!

Another drink we’ll be serving is, of course, eggnog!  Which happens to be Daniel’s specialty, and the recipe he uses is amazing.

Here’s what you need:

•  6 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brandy
• 1/2 cup dark rum
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg, ground or grated

Begin with pre-chilled ingredients for the best results.

Here’s what you do:

1. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs together until they’re very frothy.  Add sugar and continue beating.
2. Sprinkle in nutmeg and vanilla, continue beating.  A little at a time, add in the whipping cream and continue to beat.
3. Beat in the milk also a little at a time.  Lastly, beat in the rum and brandy.
4. Chill for 1-2 hours and serve cold.

Last but not least – party favors!  I’ve never hosted a dinner party before, or been to one that gave out favors, but I personally think it’s a nice touch.  I also think that homemade gifts are often the best kind, and these hot chocolate stirring sticks seemed like a great choice!  I think they will be fairly easy and fast to make – we plan to pop a few in a cellophane bag with a pack of hot cocoa!

Other than white elephant, we also plan to play board games, and if we want to get a little rowdy… a Christmas Vacation drinking game!  We will also have a variety of santa hats and other Christmas costume pieces, for anyone that wants to take photobooth-esque pictures.

I hope this gave you a few ideas for your party, and if you want more, remember to check out my Holiday Party Ideas on Pinterest.  I can’t wait to show you all how everything turned out!  Happy Planning!

As promised, here is the 2nd round of apple recipes we tried after apple picking.  If you missed my first batch of apple recipes, be sure to check it out!  Lots of tasty meals to try!

The first recipe we tried this time was Momma Pritchett’s Grilled Pork Chops and Apple-Pear Topping.  If you eat pork, you must try this recipe.  The pork chops turned out so juicy and tender, and the marinade added delicious flavor.  Based on reviews, we didn’t change anything except the serving size (we reduced the recipe to 4 servings).

 For the apples and pears, I did not bring the sugar mixture to a boil as suggested.  I simply whisked the sugar until it dissolved, and then added the fruit to the pan.  We also placed the fruit directly on the grill rather than use a grill basket.

We don’t have an outdoor grill, so we just used our grill pan.  As you can see from the photos, both the pork chops and the fruit turned out picture perfect.  If you’re in the market for a grill pan, this is the one we have.  We are more than satisfied with it, and I highly recommend it!

We paired our entree with a Sausage and Apple Stuffing.  If you recall from my first apple recipe post, I used apple smoked bacon in a turkey dish.  I also used chicken breakfast sausage in our Apple and Sausage Penne recipe.

Well, we used the rest of those ingredients in this stuffing recipe!  What was great about the recipes we decided on was that a lot of them used the same ingredients, so we really got the most bang for our buck!

The recipe did not call for bacon, but other recipes we saw did, so we decided why not add it in!  I mean, who doesn’t love bacon?  I diced the bacon and cooked it with the sausage.  We used a cornbread stuffing mix, and we used water instead of chicken broth since the recipe only called for 1 tbsp.

The stuffing turned out really well and paired beautifully with the pork chops.  We chose this recipe specifically because it was quicker than most.  I must say, even though we used a stuffing mix, there were so many fresh ingredients added in that it didn’t taste like a mix AT ALL.  This would definitely be an easy and fast stuffing for Thanksgiving, not to mention impressive!  And no one needs to know it was semi-homemade… If you make it for a large group, I suggest doubling or tripling the recipe.  Maybe we just like heaping helpings, but this didn’t last 12 servings, probably only 5-6 between the two of us.

The entire meal was SO good, and a lot quicker to make than we thought it would be.  I would highly suggest trying these recipes out!

The next recipe I tried was a pin I saw on Pinterest.  I’ve been wanting to cook a faux pasta dish for awhile now, so when I saw this Gluten-Free Cheesy Veggie “Pasta” Bake, I knew I had to try it!

While grocery shopping, we were trying to figure out other ways to use up our apples.  So when I saw this gorgeous spaghetti squash at Trader Joes, I immediately thought of the “pasta” bake.  I mean, apples and spaghetti squash are both typical fall flavors, so adding apples to the recipe seemed logical.

If you’re not familiar with the spaghetti squash phenomenon, it’s a great alternative to pasta if you are gluten intolerant, trying to cut back on carbs, or just want to try something different.

After cooking the squash (fastest and easiest method would be microwaving) and removing the seeds, you use a fork to scrape the flesh out.  You eventually end up with a big pile of spaghetti-like strands like this picture.

We followed the recipe pretty exact, but we replaced the zucchini with about 4 cups of chopped apple.  We also cooked the dish about 15-20 minutes longer than the recipe indicated, as the spaghetti squash wasn’t as soft as we wanted.

Here is the finished “pasta” bake!

So tasty and a very healthy meal!

Now, I think we’d be pretty crazy if we had all these apples and we didn’t make caramel apples!  So we invited a couple of friends over for a caramel apple making/board game party.  We made this Apple Salsa for a snack!

A very unique salsa compared to a typical tomato based salsa.  We followed the recipe exactly, and it turned out really nice.  Fresh, tart, and sweet!  There wasn’t a whole lot of spice, despite the two peppers, but you could always skip deseeding them if you want more heat.

And now for the caramel apples!  We melted the caramel according to the directions on the package, we also melted some white chocolate for double dipping.  As you can see, we had quite the topping spread.  Our toppings included:  toffee bits, Nerds, cinnamon chips, crushed Butterfinger, peanut butter chips, and chopped pecans.

Here are a few pictures of some finished apples!

The apples Daniel and I made were:  Nerd covered, half Butterfinger covered, peanut butter chip and pecan covered, and the one pictured above…  Double dipped in white chocolate, and covered in cinnamon chips and toffee bits (which was by far the best apple).  This was the first time we made caramel apples, and they turned out pretty good for being novices!  The only trouble we had was the caramel and toppings sinking to the bottom.  If any of you have any tips to prevent that from happening, let me know!

And finally, the very last recipe… Apple Brownies!  Now, I will warn you, these are not technically brownies and do not have the texture of a brownie.  I’d say it’s more of an apple cake, and we knew this from reading the reviews beforehand.  Most reviewers said it was delicious despite the misleading name, so we still wanted to try it out!

We did change a few things after reading several reviews.  We added 1 tbsp of vanilla extract to the wet ingredients, and 1/2 tsp of nutmeg to the dry ingredients.  We creamed the butter with the sugar instead of melting it first.  We also diced the apples instead of slicing, and sprinkled the top generously with cinnamon sugar.

Not sure if you can tell by this picture, but after you’ve combined the ingredients the batter will be very thick.  It will look like only apples and barely any batter.  Totally fine!  The apples cook down and the batter surrounds them perfectly!

They came out incredibly moist and with a nice crust on the top.  Unfortunately, they’ve gotten a bit mushier with storage, but still very tasty.  Again, it’s more of a cake, so I’d say the best way to serve this would be warm and with a scoop of ice cream!  We started heating bars in the toaster oven to crisp them back up!

Whew!  I can’t believe how many recipes we tried in such a short timespan, and I seriously can’t believe how many apples we’ve eaten!  All in all, it was a fun experience.  It gave us the opportunity to try out new recipes, create our own, and cook with ingredients we don’t normally use.  So I hope you all enjoyed both part 1 and part 2 of our apple recipe adventure, found some new favorite recipes, and inspiration for your own everyday cooking!  Happy Eating!

The weather in Portland has been especially fall-like lately.  As I’m remembering what it’s like to have seasons again, I’m getting pretty pumpkin crazy!  After recently buying Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale and Trader Joes Pumpkin Ice Cream, I quickly realized what must be done:  Pumpkin Beer Float.

I first heard of a beer float when I went to The Golden State in Los Angeles (highly recommend for anyone in the area), but had never tried it.  The reason being, well, it didn’t sound as delicious as a regular ice cream float.  But something about this combination told me it was going to be good!

Here’s what you need:

• 2-3 scoops Trader Joes Pumpkin ice cream
• One 12 oz. bottle of Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale

I recommend putting the ice cream in first and slowly pouring the beer in after.  Be warned though, as soon as the beer touches the ice creamit will foam up A LOT, no matter how slowly you pour it in.

Boom!

Daniel seemed a little suspicious about the combination beforehand, but he later agreed that it was super tasty.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the Sam Adams on its own, as it was very pumpkin-y.  But the ice cream gave it the much needed flavor and sweetness, and it really balanced out the bitterness of the ale.  Although these two worked well together, I’m sure other brands would be great in this as well.

Try it out!  I will definitely be having another one before the season is over!