seeing orange?

It's the end of the month, which means it's time for me to post about my Daring Bakers challenge for March - insert blog checking lines here:

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

This dessert consists of all sorts of wonderful elements, all which were made from scratch. A cookie like crust, whipped cream, marmalade and lots of yummy oranges. The most challenging for me was making the orange marmalade from scratch. I have never made any sort of jam or jelly in my life, and really had no idea what to expect. I decided to make mine a blend of oranges and strawberries in hopes that the boys would eat leftovers on sandwiches and such.

Ready to be blanched for the marmalade

Strawberries and oranges about to go for a spin in the food processor

The marmalade turned out very nice, and I have been using the leftovers on toast - yum yum. I think I need a bit more practice though because mine was a bit runny, but still firm enough to work for the dessert.

The assembly of the dessert was also a challenge, not because it was hard, but because I managed to make a complete disaster of my kitchen!! Caramel sauce ALL over my fridge, spilled drinks while cleaning up said caramel sauce, orange juice, cream...it's wasn't pretty. But I managed to get it all put together and to my astonishment, even turned out with a pretty final product. Here is a picture of my kitchen floor with all sorts of food on it that had to be pulled out of the fridge, wiped down, and then put back in after I cleaned the caramel off everything...

The finished product was well worth the mess...or at least it looks like it is. I took it out of the freezer for photographing purposes only, and now it is back in there, wrapped up nice and tight, until Sunday when I will serve it for dessert. I can honestly say I have never had, or made a dessert like this one, so I am curious as to how it will taste, but from what I hear, it's not going to disappoint.

Finally a few pictures of my finished challenge:

Straight out of the freezer on the left and on the right a view of the cross-section after I cut a piece out.

Ta-da: finished and plated with the caramel sauce

the bubble stays...for now

I like to joke about how right now we live in this wonderful "shore tour bubble". It's a special place where husbands are home for dinner, schedules can be kept (for the most part) and duty days are pretty much unheard of. I love this place - which is why I have immersed myself in this bubble and live in the present as to not worry about the future. However, as the two year mark gets closer and closer, I've been hearing words like "detailer" and "orders" come and go, which has caused the bubble to deflate just a bit. It was in serious jeopardy of popping for good until the other day when the hubby got an email saying that, due to some other circumstances we have the option of staying a bit longer!! Yahooo the bubble has been re-filled!! As long as the owners of our house approve an extension of our lease, we will be here until early to mid August, instead of the end of June. So, while it's not that much longer, I'm still a happy camper. What's not to love about spending another summer with my family and enjoying a bit longer with the friends we have here??

So, that's really our news as of now. Hopefully we will hear from the owners by the end of the week so we will know 100% what we are doing, but I am pretty sure they will be okay with that. It's really only another 45 days - and it just seems like everything else just fell into place. Praise God!

Kids are doing well. The big kid has his first loose tooth! I can't believe it. We went to the dentist this AM for checkups and there is a wiggly one. Of course he is super excited and thinks its going to come out ASAP, but he's got awhile. It's just barely wiggling around. The little munchkin is fun as ever. I just love this age. He talks all the time now, just like his brother, and I love watching him learn new stuff, and he is a funny kid. The faces he makes and his little personality are just too much sometimes. If you missed my last post, scroll down and just check out the little picture of him in his cowboy get-up and you will see what I'm talking about.

Well, I'm to the point of rambling so that's it for me, but I'll be back soon! I get to post my DB challenge this weekend, so keep an eye out.

Springing forward!

Well, spring is here, not that you would really know it from our crazy weather. Yesterday we had snow on the ground still (from a snow we got Friday) but what can ya do? It's melting rapidly now and this week promises higher temperatures again, so I'm cool with that. I'm really ready to get outdoors with the kids more. Thrusday we did have some amazing weather and we took advantage of it and went to the zoo. It was a very good time!

It's a bright and sunny Sunday morning, and I am actually dressed, and READY for church with about an hour to spare, so I thought I'd post a little update, and some photos. Not too long ago I made some oatmeal cookies, straight from the recipe on the back of the Quaker Oats container. I threw in chocolate chips and dried cranberries that I had lying around, and they turned out really nice.

mixed and ready to bake
waiting for the oven to warm up

These were for a thank you gift for my parents when they came and stayed with the boys while we went to Hawaii. So I guess it was awhile ago when I made them, but I came across the pictures the other day and wanted to share. If you like oatmeal cookies, I reccomend these, and I really reccomend the choc chips and cranberries...much better than just raisins!

Ready to give away

This week was busy, and really flew by. I can't believe a week ago was the baby shower, and that the hubby has already gone and come back from his week work trip. Time sure does fly when you're keeping busy.

The other week at school big kid had a week of "theme" days where each day they dressed up in different "outfits". One day was hat day, western day, pj day and so on. So, the night we were digging out the western gear both boys had some fun after their baths. Here are a few pictures of my little cowboys.

The big kid
The munchkin

Are they not the cutest?? I really love the picture of the munchkin in his diaper and utility belt along with the hat and boots that are too big.

Okay, well I need to run otherwise my being ready early will be for nothing because I'll make myself late. Plus I want to have another cup of coffee and go grab the paper and check out the adds before we have to leave...ahhh I just love Sundays! Hope you all have enjoyed your weekend!

Sugar cookies and diaper cakes

So, last weekend I hosted a baby shower for my good friend Angie here at the house, and I have to say it went really well. Although in true fashion for myself, I got sick before the big event. This always happens to me. I get all anxious about things, go crazy planning it, then right before "it" is about to happen...I come down with some aliment. Oh well...moving on. The shower was wonderful, another gal helped me plan it, she took care of the games and such and I did the food - was there ever a doubt.

For her gift I made my first ever diaper cake, and let me just say I was tickled pink (pun intended) at how it turned out. Take a look. The lighting in the pictures is bad, so forgive me for that, but you get the idea.

Diaper Cake

For favors I made these sweet sugar cookies with royal icing. I'll post both recipes below (or links where you can find them). These sugar cookies were the BEST I have ever made. I've been on a quest for sometime now to find one that lived up to my high sugar cookie expectations and this one does. Anyway, here's a picture of the favors, and some of just the cookies as well.

The Favors
Cookies - I made onesies, teddy bears, and baby carriages

And finally the cake...YUM. It was white cake with a lemon curd filling and strawberry and whip cream icing. It turned out so wonderful!! The only change I would make is to use a different recipe for the actual cake. The one I used was a bit on the dry side, which the lemon curd helped with, but still...I've made better. But definitely a nice "spring" cake - I think I may do it again for Easter!

Cake

So, there you have it, my weekend was pretty much all cooking and baking and when I wasn't doing that, sleeping.

The fam is doing well. My munchkin has a sinus infection at the moment, but is feeling better now that he is on antibiotics. Last night was the first night in over a week that I wasn't up with him at least a few times, so that was a nice change. Big kid is out of school this week. We had his parent/teacher conference yesterday, and it went very well. His teacher had nothing but good things to say about him, which is always nice. I know all parents think their children are wonderful and little geniuses but it's nice when you hear from others that they are doing as well as you think they are.

Alright, well I need to get a move on the day before the boys wake up. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that daylight savings seems to have broken the "wake up at 6 on the nose" cycle that we have had going for so long! YAhoooo for the little things! Oh and a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout-out to my mama - and Happy St. Patty's Day to everyone else out there!!!

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

Recipe adapted from here

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon Almond Extract
5 - 5.5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

In mixer, cream together butter, cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add in eggs and vanilla, beating until smooth. Mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt until incorporated. Cover and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight) to make rolling out simpler. NOTE: I started with 5 cups of flour, but after letting it chill it was still really sticky so I ended up adding about 1/2 cup more just to be able to handle it a bit easier, and they turned out wonderful.

Preheat oven to 390 degrees F (yes 390 it's not an error). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter or by hand. Place cookies 1 inch apart on cookie sheets lined with parchment or a Silpat.

Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Allow to cool completely.

Decorate with royal icing if desired, I use THIS recipe for my royal icing and it turns out really nice. Although I do add a bit of almond extract to flavor it a little.

Daring Cooks - Cozy Comforts

I'm getting this posted just in the nick of time.

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

This was another great challenge. I've made risotto before, but never on my own. Mine usually came out of a box where most of the details were already handled for me. For this challenge we made risotto with homemade stock (mine was chicken stock) and a standard "base" recipe. Once we were to a certain point we were free to doctor it up as we desired. I chose to make a sweet potato risotto and served it with some spicy pork chops and greens - YUM!

Here are a few pictures of my process.

The key ingredient
one of the important elements in getting started - onions
homemade chicken stock - this alone was worth making again - so much better than what you buy in the store!!
And - the finished product.

My hubs and I really enjoyed this dish, and it made a TON so we got to enjoy it for many many days. Thanks for a wonderful challege. I'll be trying a new flavor again soon!

If you're curious about recipes used, please check the link here: Risotto

Enjoy :)