VACATION!

I'm leaving for the beach tonight. Hopefully Bethany Beach, Delaware has some yummy food! :)

Experimenting with the Deep Fryer

It's no secret to anyone that knows me that I like food. I love fried food. I know it's unhealthy, but it's just so yummy. A few months ago my dad decided to buy a deep fryer. We didn't try it out until last night. Now that I've done it I don't think I'll ever stop! We had french fries with our dinner last night. Quite a simple task, just pull them out of the bag, drop them into the deep fryer, drain them and eat them. They were delicious! I added Old Bay seasoning on mine, which made them extra yummy.

This morning I woke up and had the urge to deep fry again. ' I've got time today', I thought, 'so why not?' I walked into the kitchen and there it was. It was calling my name. Hmm, what to deep fry, what a decision to make. I thought back to my favorite cooking show, Good Eats. Pocket pies, that's it! As I was anxious to use the fryer and had a somewhat busy morning, I decided to just do it the easy way. I stopped by the grocery store and picked up some refrigerated pie crusts and two cans of apple pie filling. This should be simple. So I researched on the internet and found the pocket pies recipe from the show and I compared it to the one in the deep fryer manual. Pretty much the same. I changed a little for my own comfort also.

I rolled out the pie crusts and sliced it into quarters. I opened the can of filling and noticing that the apples were kind of large, I chopped them down. I took my time and filled the first quarter. It was good. I rubbed on some egg wash and closed the sides using the tines of my fork. It was time for the fun part. I pulled off the lid of my fryer and laid one pie in the basket. Two minutes. Flip. Two more minutes. Beautiful. Extra special when sprinkled with cinnamon! So good! I can't wait to make these from scratch after we go apple picking in the fall!

The Princess has gotten her wish!

I know this is kind of late, but my niece turned 9 in June and I was put in charge of making her cake. I love to bake, so naturally I accepted the challenge. I went to work planning a nice, simple princess cake. My goal when creating my own cakes is to create something exciting and new and this time was no different. I thought first of just a simple sheet cake, nothing difficult or crazy. Easy to transport and just enough for all the guests. Then I visited my Aunt and Uncles home for my grandmas party where my Aunt Ginny heard I was making the cake for my nieces party. She asked if I wanted to make a castle cake and without thinking it through my big mouth opened and out came yes! Oh I know, I'm crazy. She stepped out of the room and brought back a Wilton cake box with a picture of a beautiful castle cake on the front. It had two tiers, some flowers and towers; how hard can this be right? Wrong, oh so wrong. It consists of 236 TINY flowers! 236! Yikes, what did I get myself into?!

As we drove the 45 minute drive home I quietly planned my path of action to finish this cake. The party was the following Sunday and I know this will take longer than a day to do. My plan was the shop for everything on Tuesday and Wednesday, start the flowers on Thursday, ice what needed to be iced on Friday and bake the actual cakes on Saturday. Most of my plan worked out. My younger sister became my right hand man and actually proved that if she takes her time she's pretty good at piping. We completed the flowers with the help of my mom, I successfully make at least 10 batches of royal and butter cream icing and baked four cakes.

Saturday came and it was time to really put what had to go together. I iced the cakes and packed everything that needed to go, which included my "cake emergency kit" which was made up of basically everything that I had used up to that point to make the cake. I was scared to pack this cake into the station wagon and drive it two hours to West Virginia, but it made it without any harm. My sister and I finished stacking and decorating and finally it was finished! It was beautiful! It was a difficult task, but besides spending $100+ on supplies and the stress of getting it done on time, it was fantastic. Let's just say I'm not planning to do it again anytime soon....