birthday dinner

I got a new camera for my birthday this weekend.

I can’t wait to take sweet pics of yummy food!

Taylor worked her butt off for my birthday dinner this Saturday.

All food was per my request.

Sorry the picture is dark.  Remember, I am lazy.  It takes too much time to edit.

The chicken she marinated overnight in a garlic parmesan salad dressing.  Our Dad, the grill master, grilled them on a charcoal grill for about 20 minutes.  It was so good!

For the summer squash and zucchini, we pretty much steamed/sauteed them with some  garlic and onion and green pepper (from Taylor’s very small garden) with a little bit of butter, salt and black pepper.

Taylor made classic mashed taters, with a little bit of cream cheese.

And the corn bread is Jiffy. Yum.

Best birthday dinner.  THANK YOU TAYLOR.

Tags: birthday dinner, dinner

Cinnamon Pull Apart Bread

We’re baaaaaccccckkkkkkk.

Last night, Taylor and I tried something truly amazing.

Cinnamon pull apart bread.

This is something Taylor found a while ago on stumbleupon.com which in turn brought her to this blog.

It was absolutely amazing.

Tags: baking, cinnamon pull apart bread

cupcakes

Cupcakes are my favorite.

Taylor and I got lucky with the frosting on these.  The consistency was just perfect, even though it was totally unplanned.

Tags: baking, cupcakes

hot chocolate cheesecake

Yes.  I have been slacking with the updates recently.  Hey, cut me some slack though.  I have a lot going on in my life right now.  Family visits, deployments, school, excuses, excuses..

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Taylor and I finally tried a recipe that we have been wanting to try for a while now.

Hot chocolate cheesecake.

It turned out okay.  We have big plans to revamp this baby and make it our own….one day.

And once again, I know, I am LAZY.

Ingredients:

Okay and the directions:

Like I said, the cheesecake turned out okay.  It looked perfect, though.

This recipe didn’t call to chill the actual finished product.  And the word “hot” was in the name…so we ate it warm.

And of course, we had to have some fresh whipped cream on top.  Whipped cream is so fun to make!

But, like I said before, Taylor and I have big plans for this recipe.  We feel that this has the potential to be oh so yummy you wanna eat the whole thing.  And we will work on perfecting it…soon(hopefully).  We are going to change the ingredients a bit and definitely chill the cake.

 

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Jeb really wanted to be in a picture.

 

 

 

 

Tags: baking, hot chocolate cheesecake

cream puffs with chocolate sauce

Sunday we made cream puffs.  Taylor has been wanting to try these for a while and I am glad we did.  Super easy and not very time-consuming.

And once again, you get pictures of the ingredients and instructions. (muahahaha)

Ingredients:

Directions:

We had a lot of fun with this one.

They turned out extremely good.

And because someone in the family (coughcoughjebcoughcough) does not drink alcohol, we just didn’t add the brandy in the chocolate sauce.  Still turned out yummy.

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Have you ever made fresh whipped cream?  Watch it turn from liquid to fluff. 

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Tags: baking, cream puffs

(semi) homemade pizza

Semi homemade because we did not make the dough.  Instead we purchased Trader Joe’s .99 cent dough.  (Which is awesome!!!)

nom noms.

 

We sprinkled a little cornmeal (to make crispy), pepper (because we love it), and flour (so it wouldn’t stick) on the pan to start.  We added a little bit of fresh parsley on the dough before adding the jarred pizza sauce.

Then, you can just add anything that you like on your pizza.  This one has mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, sausage, and more cheese.    Cook at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes.

We made three pizzas total.  All with different toppings.  All were really good (except for the special one we made for Dad that had mushrooms and onions…eeeeewwwwwww).  He liked it though, so that is all that matters.

Well, hopefully Taylor and I can get some baking done this weekend.   Hope you all enjoy your Friday!

Tags: pizza, whats for dinner

chocolate cream muffins

This book…

…is wonderful.

Taylor and I have talked many times about just baking our way through this thing.  Everything in it always looks so good.

Sunday, we decided to try chocolate cream muffins.  And because I am lazy, you get a picture of the ingredients and directions.

I would suggest baking them for 16 to 20 minutes.  We did our first batch at 20 minutes and they turned out a tad overdone.  Our second batch we baked for 18 minutes and probably could have baked for a bit less too.  They were still pretty good though.

Tags: baking, chocolate cream muffins