Mother's Day - Brunch

This one is going to fall under the category Shannon set up last week: a great recipe but I have horrible pictures for it. Like I said on Friday, since this was our 5th time hosting Mother's Day Brunch, we have a good handle on the menu. We served baked ham, mac and cheese, baked beans, baked french toast, mini quiches, and hash browns. I also had some fruit salad out and my mom brought over bagels and danishes. I have made this baked french toast

Source: All Recipes

every year and its always a hit. I have made it for a couple other occasions as well. I have seen other (overnight prepped) baked french toasts that take less prep time the day of, but the delicious topping with this one is totally worth the effort (and calories!). 

These pics actually span a year. I started taking pics last year during the prep so I could post about it then, but didn't get any finished product shots. This year I only remembered to take some when I was reheating a piece for dinner so please forgive me if it doesn't look that appetizing.

Its actually really simple - just slice up some french bread (I used challah last year) and line up the slices in a buttered baking dish. Mix up the eggs, milk, cream, vanilla, and cinnamon and cover the bread with the mixture and refrigerate overnight.

To make things easier on myself for Sunday morning, I measured out the ingredients for the topping (minus the corn syrup) and threw it all in a ziplock bag so I wouldn't have to do that while I was managing all the other food. 

The next morning, just bring the topping ingredients to a bubbling boil, pour over the bread that has soaked up most of the egg mixture, and bake at 350 for 40 minutes. 

I really wish I remembered to take a picture of it right out of the oven. The bread puffs up and gets really high. These photos are from later on in the day after the leftovers had been in the fridge and then reheated. Still tasted great, it was just a bit deflated.

The Verdict: Clearly I love this recipe if I have been repeating it every year. Its always a big hit and I actually double the recipe to make sure we have enough. It was a light year this year so I probably could have gotten away with one batch, but I didn't mind the leftovers :) It's light and fluffy and sweet - the topping almost caramelizes in the oven. 

Things to Consider: There is lots of sugar and butter in this recipe. It is in no way healthy or diabetes friendly. That being said - I make it once or twice a year and if a mother can't eat bad on Mother's Day - what's the point? I do have to juggle a bunch of things in the oven so I usually have it in longer than 40 minutes with the oven set at 325. I just leave it in until its all puffed up and I can see the juices bubbling. 

Maybe next year I will remember to take a decent out-of-the-oven shot! I have one more Mother's Day roundup post on the gift JJ gave to all the moms. Hopefully I get a chance to type it up this week. Have a great Monday! 


Baked French Toast
from ANTLALA on Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:
1 lb of French Bread, cut into 1" slices
8 eggs
2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups half and half
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup butter
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
3 tablespoons light corn syrup

Directions:
1. Butter a 9"x13" baking dish. Arrange slices of bread in bottom. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, milk, cream, vanilla, and cinnamon. Pour over bread slices, cover, and refrigerate overnight.
2. The next morning, preheat oven to 350. In a small saucepan, combine butter, sugar, and corn syrup; heat until bubbling. Pour over egg and bread mixture. 
3. Bake in preheated oven, uncovered for 40 minutes.

Mother's Day - Grandma Gifts

Happy Friday everyone! As Shannon said Monday, Joe and I hosted our 5th Annual Mother's Day brunch - my second as a mom. We have the menu pretty much down to a science, but this year an emergency call to the plumber was necessary to clear out a backed up drain. Nothing like a little drama to throw the day into a panic. Thankfully it was cleared very quickly and didn't really disrupt our festivities. 

Anyway, I have a post planned for one of our menu items, and another one for the gifts JJ gave all the moms in attendance, but I wanted to start with the Grandma Gifts. I skimmed Pinterest for a couple of ideas - there are lots of cute ones out there involving handprints and footprints. But like I said back around Valentine's Day, the thought of letting JJ get his whole hand covered in paint makes me twitch. He's a very active little guy and I can imagine handprints all over my house. I did have some success with thumbprints, so when I saw this:

Source: Disney Dreamer Designs

I knew I could come up with something. I did some googling and found this awesome page, Kids 4 Crafts that had a lot of examples of cute little bugs made from fingerprints. 

I didn't get any pictures of the first steps, but basically I just gave the pots and saucers a light coat of spray paint primer. Once dry, I used a sponge paint brush and some acrylic paints to put some green "grass" on the bottom and saucers, and a blue "sky" on the top half. It took about 3 coats and still wasn't perfect, but I knew I was covering it anyway so that didn't really bother me. Once dry, I busted out the stamp pads, distracted JJ in this highchair with a crayon and some paper, and took over the use of his left thumb.

Ignore JJ's can of crunchies in the pic - it took a little bribing at first but then he loved  it.  If you look closely at some of the pics you can even see where he drew with his crayons on the pots too.

JJ's little thumbprint heart.

I let them dry overnight because some of them were pretty thick. The red didn't really show up too dark, but the yellow and brown came out great. I used a black sharpie to draw the bug features - using the pins as a reference and coming up with some of my own ideas.

That little guy in the top right is my favorite. He looks like he's ready to dance.

And I used a paint pen to write "Happy Mother's Day 2013" across the top and "Love JJ" around his thumbprint heart on the saucer. Knowing they would probably be put outside, I gave them three light coats of a matte spray sealer. Once dry, I finally filled them with some (apparently oversized) flowers on Saturday. I love a good poem (stay tuned for more poems with the other Mother's Day gifts) - so I came up with a short one, and printed it on some clip art of snail and popped them in using a bamboo skewer. I think they came out adorable!

I realize the plants are a little stuffed. Despite my years working at a flowershop, I have a black thumb when it comes to plants!

Overall it seems like a lot of steps, but to be honest I started them Tuesday night, and had them done by Saturday morning. The total working time is pretty short, you just have to allow time for drying (primer, paint, thumbprints, and sealer).

Hopefully JJ's Grandmas are better gardeners than I and can keep these flowers alive through the season. They were both happy to get a personalized gift from the little man. And it sort of helps set up future gifts - providing new flowers for the pot every year! Anyone else out there craft something up for Mother's Day?

Brownie Roll-Ups

Here’s another post about a pin I tried forever ago (April 2012 to be exact) but never typed up – this time because it was a total failure.

Let me start this post by admitting that I LOVE yodels –they are my guilty pleasure. I used to buy them every so often at the grocery store and hide them at the bottom of my cart because I was so embarrassed. I was [and still am] completely devastated when they were taken off the market because Hostess & Drake's went under. I’m hoping this article is true!

Now that you have some background on my love of yodels, you can see why I wanted to give these brownie roll-ups from cookiesandcups.com a shot.

Don’t they look sort of like yodels -just missing the chocolate coating?

I'm guessing these didn't work out for me because I tried to take the easy way out. Shelly gives directions on how to make the brownies from scratch. I decided to use a box mix and store bought frosting.

So I whipped up the brownies…

and cut them into squares.

Then I put the brownies between two pieces of wax paper

and flattened them with a rolling pin.

Next came the frosting.

And here’s where this whole thing took a turn for the worst.

They did not roll correctly at all.

I tried it with one or two different squares and then gave up.

Perhaps I will need to try this again, using Shelly’s homemade brownie recipe and see if they come out any better. If I do, I’ll let you know how it turns out! Have any of you tried anything recently that didn't come out quite right?

Cannoli Dip

Grace & I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day! Grace hosted her annual Mother’s Day brunch for our family. I’m sure she’ll have plenty to post about in the coming days.

For me, this is the first in a series of short little posts about pins I tried months ago but never shared –mostly because I didn't take any pictures or because they were complete failures (and I was too annoyed at the time to rehash them by typing up a post). This post is in the former category.

A few months ago, I hosted “book club” (we stopped the charade of actually picking book a long time ago). One of the items I made was Cannoli Dip from grouprecipe.com (we all know how much I love cannolis). This is one of the easiest, most delicious pins I've ever attempted.

Unfortunately, I was preparing the dip in a rush and only took one or two blurry pictures with my cell phone.

I basically followed the directions exactly -except I omitted the pistachios. Unlike PSY, I am not a fan.

I served the dip with broken pieces of ice cream sugar cones. 

The Verdict: This dip was delicious – very light. This is a great alternative if you want something different and lighter then cake batter dip. I honestly think this is my favorite dip that I've ever made. Mental Note- I need to make this again!

Things to Note/Consider: I wouldn’t change anything about this recipe. To switch it up, you may want to consider other items to serve the dip with – fresh fruit, vanilla wafers, or graham crackers.

Cannoli Dip

adapted from GroupRecipes.com

¼ cup semi-sweet mini chocolate morsels, plus some more for garnish

1-15 ounce container of ricotta cheese

¼ teaspoon vanilla

¼ cup powdered sugar

1-8 ounce container Cool Whip

• In a bowl, add sugar, ricotta cheese, vanilla and chocolate.
• Stir until well blended
• Fold in Cool Whip
• Sprinkle with additional chocolate chips
• Chill for 30 minutes before serving

Blog Updates

Have you noticed the changes on the blog recently? I had a random weekday off last week and I wanted to spend about an hour making a few quick updates to the blog – well that hour quickly became 4!

It all started when Grace mentioned to me that she wanted to have social media icons on the sidebar of the site. We figured that it would be easier for our readers to follow us on Pinterst & instagram or to email us.

I stumbled upon Ashton’s site- SomethingSwanky.com and she had a whole tutorial on how to create these icons. Her directions were so easy to follow! I won’t go through it step by step, but if you want to make something similar- stop by her site. Here’s what I came up with.

After I successfully made the icons, I found another tutorial on Ashton’s site that explained how to use image-maps to link multiple urls to an image. With these directions, I was able to make a section in the sidebar that highlights our most popular posts. Again, I won’t go through the step by step directions – Ashton does a good enough job of that. Here’s what I came up with:

From there, I came across a tutorial on how to create sidebar gadget titles. It was surprisingly easy to make these titles. Here’s what I came up with:

I also added the feature that allows readers to pin directly from each of our images. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found the tutorial for that.  If I come across it again, I’ll be sure to update this post!

All in all I think the updates have made a world of difference with how the site looks. I wish I had taken a screen shot of how the blog used to look. My next mission is to fix up the header a bit. What do you think of the updates? Any suggestions on what we should do with the header? Thank you Ashton for all the tutorials!

Smores Bars

I am excited to be linking up this tasty post to the latest Pinterest Challenge!

Check out all the other links at Young House Love, Bower Power, Red Bird Blue, and Sparkle Meets Pop!



Remember how I mentioned the next book club when I posted about the baked spinach dip in mini bread bowls? Well I was so busy and running around like a nut that week that I didn't have time to bake or cook. I shamefully ran to ShopRite and Target after work to pick up some cheese and crackers and a cute plate and this was just the best I could do:

Keepin it real: sometimes life just gets too busy to bring a homemade goodie to every event...

Pitiful, right? Anyway, I tried to redeem myself with book club last night. I wanted to test out this new Smores Bar pin:

from Sugar Cooking. It looks like Sarah's blog has become inactive, but thankfully this recipe is still up there. Its pretty easy, basically you just make a graham cracker crust dough:

Then layer it up with some Hershey's bars and a jar of Fluff (the original recipe made it clear to use Fluff and not actual marshmallows:

To put the dough on top, I just made a couple balls and flattened them. I laid them on top and then filled in any holes with a little smush of dough. Pop it in the oven at 350 for 30-35 minutes and you are left with this delicious creation:

And all cut up into delicious little cookie bars:

look at those yummy gooey layers!

The Verdict: Not only did they smell amazing while they were baking and cooling, they were absolutely delicious. I was nervous because it almost seemed like there wouldn't be enough graham cracker, but it was fine. I was also afraid they would be a little flat but the dough rose pretty high.

Things to Consider: While its a pretty simple recipe, it doesn't come together really fast. Between the dough mixing and the baking time, it was like an hour for me. Not that an hour is really that long, but its not a quick, throw together and out the door type thing. If you are looking for something a little faster, the smore cups might be a better fit. Also, its only a 8" x 8" square pan, so you might want to make two if its for a big crowd (although they are pretty thick and heavy - a little goes a long way). 


Smore Bars from Sugar Cooking
(originally from Lovin' in the Oven)
my edits in red
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 king-sized milk chocolate bars (e.g. Hershey’s) - I used 3.5 regular 1.55oz bars
• 1 1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows) - I used almost an entire small jar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in egg and vanilla. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combined.
3. Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. Place chocolate bars over dough. 2 king-sized Hershey’s bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick. Spread chocolate with marshmallow creme or fluff. Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff (most easily achieved by flattening the dough into small shingles and laying them together).
4. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars.

Makes 16 cookie bars.

Travel Keepsake Box – Part 1

Remember the Travel Keepsake Shadow Box I made a few weeks ago? Well, when I posted a picture of it on instagram, my sister Kelsey asked me to make her one as well. Instead of making her a shadow box, I decided to try something else I saw on Pinterest.

Martha Stewart

The keepsake box makes it easy to store photos, tickets, and any other type of memento that you collect during travel and it's cute to put on a book shelf!

Off to ACMoore I went to collect my supplies. I couldn't find the exact boxes that Martha used but I found something else that would work just as well.

Kelsey said she liked the combination of blue & green so that’s what I grabbed for the paint. I picked up a grey color by Martha Stewart for the lettering and a few stencils.

Step one was to paint the boxes. I mixed the paint with some water as Martha suggests.

Then came the stenciling – this did not go well.

I later painted the bottom of the boxes.

Whomp Whomp. Apparently stenciling is not in my crafting wheel. I tried to fix it up as much as possible by using q-tips and paint. I attempted a second box but it came out even worse.

I had a third box to stencil 'Australia' on but I decided to hold off. I wasn't going to attempt to stencil a word/country that long.

I've decided that I am going to buy some alphabet stickers to put on the boxes. I’ll just put them on the opposite side and tell Kelsey to keep the stenciled side towards the back. I’ll show you some pictures when they are finally complete.

I'll be linking this to the Pinterest Challenge hosted by YoungHouseLove and BowerPowerBlog. What are you linking?