Happy Easter!

Matthew 28

Jesus Has Risen

 ¹ After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

 ² There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴ The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

 ⁵ The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

 ⁸ So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them,“Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Although the death, burial, and resurrection should be reflected on weekly, since today is Easter I've been thinking about it more. We're so blessed that Jesus' story did not end at the cross. He conquered Death, giving us renewed hope! A chance to have everlasting life. What an amazing blessing! 

Last year, I was learning more about decorating cookies. I decided to make some for Easter. I think they were a big step in my cookie decorating. I was getting closer to getting the consistency right for the flood icing, which is pretty important. 

 I was so excited about these! I had the time to work on them and got better results than ever before.

I ended up giving these to a co-worker. This year, she wanted some more! Of course I was flattered and eager to make some since I enjoy it so much!

Alright, so they're basically identical to the ones from last year... But they were still fun to make! I like the purple tulips more than the pink ones. (I didn't make purple last year). I was kind of rushed making these too. Cookies just take time! I managed to get them baked one day this week. Then Thursday I needed to decorate them if I wanted to get them to her before Easter! My husband was giving me a hard time. So sweet... he wanted to hang out with me :) I did them as fast as I could, which still took a while. I ended up putting all the flood icing in a Ziploc bags and cutting holes in the corners. Ended up working quite nicely. Then no clean up!! (well less than usual ha)

Yesterday, I had one of my last cakes here in Mobile. Weird.... Anyway, it was for a little boy's first birthday. Baby and young kids' birthdays are the best. The mother gave me the colors and let me decorate as I pleased. That sounds all fun and dandy except I'm the most indecisive person ever!! Obviously, I came up with something pretty much as I was decorating the cake, and loved it!! I'm so excited how these turned out!!

 The colors were lime green, blue, and aqua. The cake is really light blue; although it's hard to tell. There's a little smash cake also.

This is the set of cutters I won from Cup A Dee Cakes. I used the one on the top for the decorations at the top of the cake. Seems so simple but that cutter helps a lot in achieving that design! I also used one of my wonderful pearl molds for the border. Love it.

Well I actually need to go pack up some of my cake things. Crazy. Wonder if my parents are aware it's all going to their house. No way that stuff is going in storage :)

And, I think I'm going to have to throw away my cake dummies... No need for them really, but kinda sad.

Gingerbread Cookies

I meant to post this like a week ago, but better late than never. I don't regret it either. I enjoyed a fantastic week-long stay with my family. We got to visit my family, my husband's family (including his grandfather that I hadn't seen in 3 years), and old friends.

For this visit, I made (for the first time) gingerbread cookies for my mom. She really likes gingerbread cookies so it was a no-brainer. Even better, Bakerella recently posted a recipe! Her decorations were adorable!! I would've loved to do that but (1) I don't have her large selection of sprinkles and (2) I didn't have that kind of time. I was surprised I managed to get them decorated. "Fortunately," I couldn't sleep the night before we left, so I stayed up and decorated them.

I just got these sprinkles and since I didn't have the time to color icing and swap back and forth, I piped in white and then sprinkled with sprinkles! I think they were perfect for snowflakes.  

I had to make gingerbread men/women! C'mon, it's gingerbread! I should've thought ahead and made one for each member of my family.

I really liked this recipe. It was really easy to work with.

Appealing???

 Ready to bake

Turned out quite nicely. The only challenge with baking gingerbread cookies is that it's hard to tell when they're done. I wanted them soft. I don't like crunchy gingerbread. I managed to not burn any and most were soft! Pretty successful for the first time.

So it's 2012... goodness things in 2012 seemed so far away. Now everything is going to be here before we know it!! Such as the annual cake competition in February! I've done it the past 2 years. I really look forward to it. I've got to figure out what kind of cake I'm going to do. So if you guys could give me some ideas, that'd be fantastic!! The theme is "Grandma's Attic." I need to come up with an idea soon. Any suggestions?? What's in your Grandma's attic?? There are raccoons in my grandma's attic! But I'll keep thinking... :)

Thanksgiving Dinner

My husband and I have been married just shy of 3 years. In that time, I have learned that holidays without family aren't very exciting. I wanted our first Thanksgiving/Christmas as a married couple to be just the 2 of us. It ends up being like any other day of the year; which isn't a bad thing, but it's so nice having family around for holidays! So my mom, dad, and brother came to visit and we had a real Thanksgiving dinner.

 Green Bean Casserole. Turns out that's all the onion topping I had, haha.

 Cinnamon Apples (First time to make)

 Sweet Tea

 Fried Okra (hubs did that)

The okra didn't even make it to the table. We ate it all first :)

Deep Fried Turkey

My husband did this on his own for the first time this year.

Nothing burned down!! :)

Deep Fried Turkey is delicious!!

Sweet Potato Casserole (First time recipe)

 Homemade Cornbread (first time also)

yum yum

Everything actually turned out pretty well! I'm especially happy with the sweet potatoes and cornbread.

By the way, my brother is (again) the one who took the awesome pictures. Man, I wish he was around more!

Of course, there's dessert. I got a Southern Living magazine and it had a big article about 3 cakes. I thought one of those would be perfect! I decided on Layered Peppermint Cheesecake.

 Pictures from the magazine

Here's the recipe. You can read that right?

 Mixing the cream cheese and sugar

Adding the eggs...

All of the peppermints

Crushing the peppermints

Preparing the pans for the cheesecake

Putting the cheesecake pan in a larger pan, filled with water

Cheesecake cooling

Sorry I didn't take pictures of the icing or cake. The cake is just a basic white cake. No big thing. But, following the recipe from the magazine, I did not get three layers out of it. I barely got 2. Also, I would bake the cake before making the cheesecake, unless you have five 8" cake pans. The cheesecakes stay in the pans for around 6 hours. Fortunately I had 2 other 8" pans to use for the cakes. 

 There's my bro taking the good pictures.

 The finished product. Looks just like the magazine, right? ha

Here are some good pictures:

I didn't love the cake... it got eaten, but I really wanted some chocolate pie once I finally got to try the cake. Maybe it's that I don't feel like peppermint and cheesecake should go together (now that I've tried it). Or the fact that it was my first time to ever make cheesecake and I might need more practice. Or that I don't think I quite got the icing just right or that I don't like white chocolate. Ha, who knows. But I tried it.

It was a fantastic Thanksgiving and I can't wait for Christmas! I'll be headed to my hometown and look forward to seeing lots of family and friends!