Cook All Day, Work All Night

So, I was feeling a little overly-creative yesterday. There was a lot of throwing things together and seeing what happened in our kitchen all afternoon. Here for your viewing pleasure are "Something Blue" almond meringues with almond dust mixed in, miniature "Plain Old Chocolate" meringues and basic Vanilla. They were meant to be vanilla drizzled with butterscotch and sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs, but I ran out of time before I had to be at work.

The brownie/cupcakes you'll see are Dark Chocolate Coconut with toasted coconut and a Hershey's Kiss baked in. The Browned Butter Chocolate Buttercream I put together turned out too thick to thin, even with more milk. You know how I like to say "Waste not, want not?" Well, I took the frosting, broke it up and rolled it into balls, tossed it in powdered sugar and put it in the freezer. Yep, accidental FUDGE!!!!!! My parents will be thrilled.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this batch of vanilla. Paul bought a massive bag of organic sugar this week and it made the meringues look and taste a little different. I'm thinking that maybe the plain Kroger brand white sugar I've been using might be the best bet.

Too much sugar? Dinner was a bit of a throw together too. We still had two more servings of the Weight Watchers mac & cheese from last weekend. Sound good? Check it out here. 8 Weight Watchers points and 9 servings per pan. But I didn't know what to do with three tiny pork chop cutlets that have been hanging around since I made Pork Marsala for dinner Tuesday. So, here comes the weirdness...

Trim the fat from the chop with kitchen scissors. Sprinkle each side of the meat with a conservative amount of garlic salt. Place in a pan on medium-high with a touch of olive oil and brown both sides. Now, here we go. Add two soup spoon fulls of fresh apple butter to the pan about about one spoonful of tap water. Blend in the pan, roll the chops in the sauce and continue to heat on medium high for a couple of minutes. Give the mixture one good stir, cover and set to simmer for four or five minutes. But that didn't seem like enough. We had a ball of fresh mozzarella in the fridge. I cut a quarter inch thick slice of the cheese and laid one on top of each of the three pieces of pork. Serve all this with steamed zucchini to balance all the cheese. No joke. This was awesome.

Okay, now back to the sugar...

More like brownies than cupcakes. Mmmm. I took most of these to coworkers.

Wonder what else lives in our kitchen?

See? They can live together in harmony.

Organic Sugar Vanilla Meringues

I didn't realize at the time that this is Cookie Monster Blue. Awesome!

These were all half batches, so there won't be any waste, though there may be some extra waist. HA!

Almond and Chocolate, for Jess and Ash by request.

Sweetest thoughts, everyone. Have a great day!

Sara

Chocolate Coconut Meringues

...smeared with melted semi-sweet chocolate, dipped in fresh toasted coconut. Yes, the house smells like vacation.

Packaging options...

Using unused wedding materials. Still love the color and polka dots!

This is Steve's "Where's mine?" face.

Have a lovely day!

Cupcakes aren't usually my thing,,,

...but Peanut Butter, Chocolate, Banana Cupcakes? Yes, please! This is a basic Chocolate Banana Cupcake recipe, but I replaced the oil with an equal amount of tightly packed sliced banana, stuffed each cupcake with half of a Reese's Cup and mixed up a basic buttercream frosting and flavored it with creamy peanut butter. (The pure stuff, not the sugar-bomb kind. There's enough sugar in buttercream!) Without further ado...


Who doesn't love THIS MUCH chocolate?




Pre-baking, stuffed with Reese's Cups




This blob of frosting is for me. What? I had to check it out!





Dusted with pulverized almonds...



Don't worry. We didn't eat them all. They were shared with family, friends and house guests.

Sugar loves company...Happy Birthday to Me! Part II - So Entertaining!

I love my friends, therefore, I feed them. (Most of the men were in the back yard with Paul, being men.)

I love that this table has leaves. If only we had a bigger dining room.

The much-discussed meringues. Like the signs? That's leftover wedding invitation paper. Waste not want not!

This was a dessert party. The fruit was just to ease the guilt.

Flower from my amazing husband. (Before the cat started to snack on them.) As a matter of course, the adorable LED paper lanterns came from The Dollar Store. Yes, the were probably made in China, but I'm on a budget and could they be any cuter? My husband is lucky that I don't leave them up all the time!

Weight Watchers One-Point Cocoa Powder Brownies (Ha ha. I fed you W.W. and you didn't even know it!)

The also much-discussed cookie sandwiches. This? Was a great idea.

Strawberry (pink, duh) and lemon (yellow, also duh) sunshine cookies.

The few things that weren't sweet. White Bean Spinach Dip with crostini, chips and salsa, crackers and pub cheese. (Gasp! Holy processed dairy products, Batman!)

The guest of honor. Yes, we do wine about it.

The spread. Are you noticing a theme? The green was our wedding color and the pink is my signature color (insert "Steel Magnolias" reference here.) I swear, at some point you'll see something that's not pink and green!

A good time (and sugar shock) was had by all!

Sugar loves company...Happy Birthday to Me! Part I - Party Prep

Semi-sweet milk chocolate

Almond meringues as a base

Paint the bottom with chocolate, dip in almonds and...

"Almond Joy" meringues!

White beans, garlic, olive oil, sea salt...

Spinach and a food processor...

White bean spinach dip! To go with crostini. And it looks like the picture! Thank you, Real Simple!

Sugar cookies, evenly shaped

Remember the margarita and coconut frosting from Paul's party? It freezes beautifully.

ZipLock bag as a make-shift icing bag...

Grown up cookie sandwiches! (Yep! The green ones are still the best.)

Oh...and there was fruit too.

I'm not sure how we amassed this wine charm collection, but we have.