Happy 4th of July!

Red, White and Blue! We have the most amazing local cherries and we've been eating pounds of them a week! I was in heaven yesterday at the 75% off sale at Sur La Table and I found my newest kitchen gadget.....A hand held cherry pitter!! How I ever got along without one is crazy! I thought a cherry tart would be a great end to our family BBQ. It's not too sweet or too heavy. I made a pastry crust of GF flour, salt, xanthan gum, shortening and ice water. I think I'll leave the xanthan gum out next time, as the crust was a little too firm for my taste. I used half the normal amount of sugar in the cherries and used a bit of cornstarch as a thickener. The vanilla cinnamon cream is a mixture of vegan vanilla yogurt (soy or coconut), vegan cream cheese and a bit of cinnamon. Topped off with some blueberries from our garden, it looks very patriotic!

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Who doesn't like chocolate chip cookies?! Well, if you're gluten free and/or vegan, you may not like them so much. My daughter and I went downtown Portland yesterday on a gluten free/vegan bakery tour (self guided). I wanted to taste what my competition had to offer. The PSU Saturday Farmers Market boasts many of these bakeries all in one place, so we just moved from booth to booth eating way too much! The consensus at the end was conveyed my my daughter, "When are you going to start your own bakery? Your food tastes so much better!" Everything we sampled was heavy, choke-on-it dry, crumbly, or had a weird aftertaste. It made me want to come home and duplicate everything we tasted. I started with these scrumptious cookies. They are slightly crispy on the outside, gooey in the center, and the entire batch disappeared in a short afternoon! We had company for the 4th of July, and everyone loved them, not just the gluten free and vegan guests.

**Another bonus is that you can eat as much raw batter as you want....No eggs!!

Good Morning Chocolate!

My kids get all the healthies for their weekday mornings: Oatmeal, fruit smoothies, omlettes, zucchini pancakes etc... Sundays, however, I let them pick what they want. This morning was all about the chocolate chip muffins! I admit, when I dumped the chips in, more escaped the bag than planned, but I cut some sugar out, so it's all good! This recipe made 6 giant muffins. Even my 8 year old could only eat one!

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Muffins

2 1/2 cups Pamela's pancake and baking mix

1/3 cup sugar

3/4 cup water

2 eggs

2 TBS oil

1 TBS vanilla

1/2 cup chocolate chips (mine may have gotten closer to a cup....)

Pre-heat oven to 350

Spray muffin tins with cooking spray (makes 6 giant muffins or 12 regular size)

Mix all ingredients together

Fill muffin tins 3/4 full

Bake 20-25 min for regular sized muffins or 35-45 minutes for the giant ones

So amazing about 5 minutes after they've been taken out of the oven!

Welcome Baby Girl!


This was one of my favorite cakes I've done. It's whimsical and fun! The bow and ribbons are modeling chocolate and the dots and lettering are fondant.

Happy Birthday Mama!

I think when you become a mom, that's about the time you stop getting birthday cakes, unless it's a milestone birthday. My mom is the most amazing woman ever and I wanted to make her an amazing cake. The roses are white modeling chocolate. They held up great on a really hot day! She cried when she saw it and I cried when I saw her reaction!

Graduation time!

The graduate had received her master's degree in teaching, what a great accomplishment! This was also my first attempt at making my own fondant. I really liked working with it, but it wouldn't dry for anything and it was quite greasy. It was a buttercream fondant, not a traditional fondant. It tasted great! I stacked 2 'books' and created a graduation cap in her school colors. The design on the top book is actually the school logo. I looked at a photo of it and hand piped it with buttercream. The bottom book and cap were chocolate cake, the smaller book was my orange dream cake.

Pre-decoration

It's Fireman Sam to the rescue!!

The birthday boy was turning 4 and he loves the UK cartoon Fireman Sam. His mom told me the theme of the party and told me I could do whatever I wanted with this theme. This is what I came up with. All of the decorations are fondant except the ladder which is hand piped white chocolate.

Fireman Sam!

The kids even got some time in the firetruck and the awesome firemen hooked the hoses up for the kids to spray down cones. How fun!