Emily's Birthday Cupcakes

I was thrilled when Steph asked me to make Emily's birthday cake again this year! She suggested cupcakes because Emily is really in to them these days, isn't Em so trendy! But I wasn't expecting to get super sad making them with out my two baking companions from last year! Seriously, Carrie, Mom and I had the most fun staying up super late making Em's First Birthday Cake! If you haven't seen it already, you can check out our post from last year here.
Even though I missed Mom and Carrie very much, I still was so glad I got to make sweet Emily's Birthday Cupcakes.

I tried out a new recipe for cupcake batter that I found on Pinterest and it was so easy and the cupcakes turned out so moist and yummy! I highly recommend it!

Then I made some yummy Royal Frosting:
4 lbs Confectioners Sugar
3/4 c of Meringue Powder
Mix together until well blended.
Then mix together
1 1/3 c warm water
3 T Vanilla and
1 tsp Almond extract
Then slowly add liquid into powder mixture while beating at a med-high speed until soft peeks form. (About 8 minutes.)
Then mix in food coloring/dye until you reach the color you want.
I think the flavoring in this recipe is key and makes it extra yummy!
I forgot to take a picture before I colored it, but basically the key thing, is you want to icing to be real stiff so don't over mix and don't add anything containing oil!

Then I decided to try to frost them like this, which I also found on Pinterest. However, I couldn't really pull it off. I think maybe I didn't have the right tip? That's my story and I'm sticking to it. So on the rest of them I went with 2 other frosting methods I'm familiar with that also have a flower-y look.

All in all I was pleased with the result and I hope Em is too!

I'll update this post after the party!

Low Carb Pound Cake

So recently I've been attempting to stick to a low carb and low (or no) sugar diet due to health issues that seem to be exasperated by sugar and carbs. When you research these issues, it is so interesting how too many "white carbs" can be blamed for all kinds of things! We think of low carb as a diet choice to lose weight, or as something that is necessary for people with diabetes, but it goes beyond that. For me, carbs and sugar increase fatigue, and because I have Fibromyalgia, I have to do everything I can to combat fatigue issues. We all know that carbs and sugar have the tendency to make you tired - who hasn't heard of (or experienced) a "sugar crash?"

Well, following through on reducing things like bread and pasta has actually been much easier than I thought, and generally speaking going without sugar is not so difficult either. Where it has frustrated me, however, is in regards to baked goods. It's not that I eat a lot of baked goods or that I eat sweets every day. It's that I LOVE to bake! I think my previous posts on this blog will attest to the fact that I love to make food for other people, especially baked goodies! So I was faced with a difficulty - either figure out how to make baked goods that are lower in carbs and sugar - but still delicious - or never taste / sample what I bake! (Note that I did not believe an option would be to NOT bake!)

I've read cooking websites and diet websites and all kinds of blogs about various low carb options, and there really are lots of great looking recipes for all kinds of things out there. But I decided that rather than follow a recipe that is already labeled as "low carb" I wanted to figure out how to take a recipe that I already knew, used and loved, and make is low-carb-diet-friendly. Already being familiar with almond flour (see here) was a big help to this process because it turns out - almond flour is a great substitution!

I decided to make pound cake, because since it is already a "denser" cake, I thought the consistency wouldn't be as negatively affected by the switch to almond flour and the use of a sugar substitute. I started with the recipe for Cream Cheese Pound Cake out of my Southern Living Cookbook, and then made substitutions and adjustments to the ratios. I made it last weekend to take to a friend's house for dinner, and I think it turned out pretty tasty! So...

Here is my recipe for Low Carb / Low Sugar Cream Cheese Pound Cake:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups butter or margarine, softened
1.5 packages cream cheese, softened
1.5 cups of Splenda Blend*
6 large eggs
3 cups almond flour
1/2 cup of all purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt & a pinch of baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of milk

*I used Splenda Blend, which means that this was "low sugar" rather than "sugar free." The next time I make it, I am going to use Stevia Extract instead and see how that turns out (I made a low sugar version of financiers at Christmastime for my family - who called them "fancy ears" and loved them - using Stevia Extract, which worked great!) If you choose a different type of sugar substitute - the original measurement of sugar for this recipe would be 3 cups, so use the guidelines on the package to figure out how much of the sugar substitute you should use.

Directions:

With an electric mixer, blend together the softened butter and cream cheese until it is creamy. Then add eggs, two at a time, blending after each addition until it is mixed it. Add salt, baking powder, and regular flour and blend until mixed in. Gradually add almond flour, one cup at a time, and blend. Note that almond flour is more "grainy" than regular flour, so don't expect it to be as smooth as it would be in a "normal" cake batter. Stir in vanilla and milk.

Preheat oven to 300 and prep a bundt cake pan. I used butter flavored Crisco to coat the inside of the pan. I think generally, almond flour sometimes sticks a little more, so be prepared for that. Spoon your batter into the bundt pan (my bundt pan was a little too small for this amount of batter, I put the extra into a loaf pan). Let it "settle" about 5 minutes before you put it into the oven. Bake at 300 for about 1 hour, until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool still in the pan on a wire rack for 15-20 minutes, then remove from the pan directly onto the rack and cool the rest of the way.

Enjoy!

Christmas 2011 and other thoughts......

So, Jeff and I finally got the tree up yesterday. He went and picked it up on his way home from work, and it really made me realize once again how our lives have changed. He told me a story about how he was walking along at Trees of Joy, hearing a family "discussing" the perfect tree for their family, and it reminded him of our kids "discussions" through the years! He made a comment about how much fun we used to have going to Bethany Christmas Tree Farm in McDonough for so many, many years, and how much we looked forward to that as the start of our Christmas each year.
Christmas seems VERY different this year, in many ways; the most obvious, of course, is that my Mother is no longer with us. Although it is so reassuring to know where she is and that she is well, and standing up, if not TALL, at least STRAIGHT, I still miss her and often can hardly believe it even after almost a year. A note on her shortness, she was, after all, a Griffin/Eppinger woman, and they are NOT tall women! My grandmother (Mama) was not even 5 foot tall!
We have many many things to be thankful for! Jobs and a roof over our heads; all of our children will be with us for at least a few days, we have another beautiful granddaughter to look forward to meeting in February, and yet, I feel......sad? meloncholy? (How do you spell that word?) I can't seem to shake it. As I read my grief share devotions, and workbook, I understand and realize that what I am feeling is normal - that doesn't mean I like it!
I am trying to feel positive and excited, and I know that I will be fine once they all start arriving on Thursday - THURSDAY! - but I wonder already how I will be when they all go back to other places (I refuse to say "home). I'll be fine - I know that the Lord will hold me up through this season of my life, just keep praying for me!

Fabric as a Wall Covering

***I can't believe I'm just now getting around to writing this post... This was a DIY project I did several months ago, but things have been so hectic since then I haven't had time to write about it! When I realized that, I wanted to get on here right away and share this with you because I was so excited about it when I did it, and I think it turned out great!


The bathroom in my apartment has been in dire need of a makeover, but there is only so much you can do when you are renting. After the whole "tree-incident" (if you don't know about the tree growing into my bathroom through the wall, well that's a whole story in itself for another time!), the landlord did some "repairs" and put in a new floor, but I was still desperate to overhaul it and decorate. The wall where the tree had once grown has never been the same since, even with repairs, and I wanted to cover that thing up with wallpaper or something. Alas, wallpapering is a forbidden sin for renters...

Here is the boring old bathroom wall:



In comes an absolutely brilliant idea - DIY fabric wallpaper! Originally I got the idea from this blog post on Design Sponge about a faux headboard made of fabric that had been attached to the wall with liquid starch - absolutely adorable (and by
the way, the headboard project itself is still a coming attraction in my apartment!). The selling point - attaching fabric to the wall with liquid starch makes a wall covering that is totally removable later! I did some research (i.e. googling - or as we call it in the Watts family - doing a "whoogle search," haha) and found all sorts of articles and blog posts about this technique. The more I read, the less skeptical I was about it, and I started to believe it would (1) really work, and (2) actually be removable. Some people even claim you can take that fabric off the wall later, throw it in the washing machine, and then use it again for a whole different project! Genius!

Next came the search for fabric, which was already documented on the blog here. I chose a white, red and pink striped fabric that coordinated with the "birds in a cage" fabric I had previously chosen to make a sink skirt out of (don't ask, that project has been going nowhere fast!). Then came the search for liquid starch. Would you believe you cannot actually find liquid starch in the store? Any store! I looked at Target, grocery stores, Walgreens. OK, maybe I didn't do an exhaustive search, but it was enough for me to decide to just go online. Back to google and I found it online at Walmart. Having no idea how much liquid starch I needed, I over-ordered, as usual, and ended up with something like 4 large containers (hey, they were only like $1.97 each!). My final shopping trip for supplies was to the hardware store, where I purchased spray starch (the regular laundry kind), drop cloths, painters cloths / towels, paint rollers, plastic putty knives, blue painters tape (which we didn't actually use), and paint pans. What I should have bought also in this trip was gloves, but I'll get to that later.

Having all of my supplies assembled, I planned a weekend day for the project and enlisted Mandy's help. We decided to use the outdoor patio area to assemble things and to measure the fabric so we'd have plenty of room.

Here's a step by step of what we did.

1. Measure the wall - Multiple times!!!

The first time I measured the wall was before I went fabric shopping, so that I'd be able to estimate how much fabric to buy. I measured all the way across, then from top to bottom. When I picked out a fabric, I figured out how wide it came, and decided how many yards based on how many lengths of wall I would need (basically the width of this particular fabric was about half of my wall space, so I doubled the height of the wall and then rounded up).

After purchasing the fabric, we measured the wall again, multiple times. We then did various calculations to determine the best use of the fabric, deciding to basically divide the wall into three "sections" across - the middle section would be above and below the window, and then there would be one section on either side with a panel going from floor to ceiling. We then measured each of those sections separately to determine how to cut our fabric.

2. Measure and cut the fabric into panels

After all of these overly complicated calculations, we laid the fabric out on the ground, measured for each section, and cut the fabric into two long strips of the necessary width for the two side panels, and two squares for above and below the window.




3. Prep for application

We then brought the fabric back inside into the bathroom, where I had removed almost everything, put down drop cloths, and set out the paint pans and rollers. We poured the liquid starch into the pans. Each strip of fabric was then sprayed with spray starch to stiffen it up before we applied it.




4. Roll liquid starch onto wall

Next we rolled liquid starch onto the wall on the section we were working on first. We started at the top of the wall and coated the starch on about 1/3 of the way down to start. Liquid starch is really messy - and sticky! This is when I wished I had gloves! It kind of went everywhere, but thankfully it was easy enough to clean up later.

5. Attach fabric to the wall, and apply more starch as needed to attach

Then (and this part definitely took both of us), we placed the fabric onto the wall at the top, smoothing as we worked our way down onto the area that had been starched. This part was especially difficult due to my fabric choice - those stripes had to be straight! After that section was "attached" we starched the wall the rest of the way down and continued smoothing the fabric onto the wall. Once one entire panel was on the wall, we used painter's cloths drenched with more liquid starch to apply additional starch on top of the fabric. We didn't do this over the whole panel, just in the corners, sides and areas that seemed to need it. We also used the plastic putty knifes to help smooth the fabric down and into the corners. Then we repeated this whole process for each section of the wall.



6. Let the fabric dry (break time!)

It took a while for the fabric to dry out. During this time, we cleaned up our mess, walked the dogs, had some food and took a break!

7. Cut "edges" off around the fabric wall

Once the fabric was fairly dry, we made sure there were no areas that were not attached (and where they were, we just dabbed on some more starch using the cloths). Then we cut the edges off of the fabric where there was "extra" using a box cutter. If I was doing this again, I probably would not have calculated for "extra" around the edges - I had read that the fabric would shrink as it dried and therefore this was necessary, but my fabric did not shrink at all and cutting off the edges was a pain.

8. Voila! Fabulous Wall!

My Mother's Cookies or the Quest for Tea Cakes

Recently Carrie, Alison, Vicki and I have been trying to find my mother's tea cake recipe, and I understand that there was a bit of a "discussion" with their Uncle Ken about whether or not she made cookies. Let me set the record straight - she did. (sorry, Ken - maybe she had stopped by your "only child" days, but she made them plenty of times!) These are the homemade cookies that I remember.

SUGAR COOKIES: When I was a little girl, Mother & I always made cookies at Christmas time, and one of my favorites were plain old sugar cookies. Of course, my reason for loving those the best was because she would let me decorate them. I remember cookie cutters of Christmas trees, stars, and a gingerbread man shape. I am sure there were more, but those I remember. We would also cut out circles with the ring from a mason jar lid. Mother would mix up an icing using a little melted butter with powdered sugar, and if it got too thick, she added a few drops of water. Then she would divide it up in little bowls, and add a couple of drops of food coloring to each one. She would give me a butter knife and "sprinkles" to decorate the top. I loved to add the sprinkles and to make faces and buttons on the gingerbread men. (I don't remember ever making real "ginger" bread men, just the sugar cookies shaped like gingerbread men) When we still lived in Concord, Mother and Daddy would have "socials" after church on Sunday nights sometimes where the teenagers from Mt. Olive would come over and play games. I remember making sugar cookies for those, Christmas time and other times too. BTW - these cookies were often burned around the edges too; part of the "art" of applying the icing was hiding the burned edges!

ICEBOX COOKIES: These were the famous Grandma Sanvidge icebox cookies. Ken doesn't want to remember them because he didn't like them! No one in our house liked them except for Daddy and me. VERY rarely Mother would make up a batch. You shaped the dough into a long roll, wrapped it in foil and put it in the frig overnight before cutting it into slices and baking them. Still my very favorite cookie!

FRUIT CAKE COOKIES: My Mother's favorite cookie and my least favorite! I think the recipe is probably the same as the sugar cookie, but I'm not sure. Then she would add chopped pecans and pieces of candied fruit (the kind you put in fruit cakes) to the batter and spoon it onto cookie sheets before baking it. Something about those little pieces of candied fruit that I didn't like - I never liked fruit cake either (and yes, she made those too).

I believe that my mother's own quest for tea cakes came later in life, after she had grandchildren. I don't ever remember making them or even hearing her talk about them when we were growing up, but after I reached adulthood, she started talking about them. I think one of her older sisters (probably Sister, Sara or Janie) made them, and she wanted to make them too, but didn't want to admit to them that she didn't know how! She began making them, and like you girls remember, always had them in the jar for y'all, always burned around the edges. Mrs. Prosser made a wonderful tea cake and would bring her some a lot of times later in her life - I think that was after y'all were all grown, or at least past the age when she would share her cookies with you.

While I'm on the subject of her baking, my Mother used to bake a lot more than she did in later years. She used to make fruit cobblers a lot - those were a cheap dessert I guess when we were growing up. She would make fruit cakes and give them away a Christmas. Occasionally, she made pound cakes (a favorite of hers) but never thought hers were as good as her sisters, so didn't make them often.

We all joke about my Mother's lack of cooking skills, and I'll be the first to say, she was not the best cook in her bunch of sisters by a long shot. She didn't experiment; she kept things basic, although she was never one to worry about "substituting" often with disasterious results! However, although I never really had a cooking "lesson" from my Mother, I guess I learned some things from her, though not how to make TEA CAKES!

Hungarian Cabbage Rolls

When your dad and I first married, one of his favorite dishes that Nanny made was Cabbage Rolls, or stuffed cabbage. When she was living she taught me how to make them, but of course, I can’t find the recipe now. The other day Jeff came home with a recipe that he had gotten from a family recipe book that he was leafing through in a co-worker’s office. We have no idea who “Wanda Kittle” is, but this is her recipe, as I received it – as mixed up as it is written.

Hungarian Cabbage Rolls
2 Large heads of cabbage
2 lbs. ground beef
1 ½ cups rice (uncooked)
2 small onions chopped
2 large eggs
1 tsp salt
1/3 tsp pepper

Put cabbage in boiling water. Set 40 minutes so you can pull leaves apart. Chop rest of cabbage and lay in bottom of large dutch oven. Combine next 5 ingredients mix well set aside.
Take cabbage leaves and put 1 tbsp. mixture in each one and roll up. Lay on top of chop leaves.
Slice onions very thin. Take bell peppers slice very thin – chop garlic up – about 5 cloves very thin – 2 cans diced tomatoes 3 tbsp. brown sugar mix all of this together pour over top and bake on 350 until done about 2 ½ hours.

Now, I didn’t tell your dad this, but this recipe has me pretty confused to put it mildly. What peppers and garlic? They are not mentioned in the ingredients at all! Brown sugar? Tomatoes? Where did that come from?
The similarities to Nanny’s seem to me to be: cabbage, ground beef and rice – that’s all. But I am going to try it. Immediately, these are the changes I am making:

1 head cabbage
2 lbs ground chuck
1 ½ cup rice uncooked
1 large Vidalia onion chopped
1 bell pepper chopped
5 cloves garlic chopped
2 large eggs
2 cans diced tomatoes
3 tbsp. brown sugar blend

Boil cabbage in large pan (I’m using my soup pot with the colander insert), completely covering the cabbage with water. I’ve just started it cooking, and I have left it whole, and set the timer for 40 minutes as instructed. However, I am thinking that I could have separated the leaves before cooking, and they might have cooked quicker.
I am going to sauté half of the onion, bell pepper and garlic until just tender, then mix this with the ground chuck, rice, salt and pepper. I am going to roll enough meat mixture into the cabbage leaf to make a roll about the size of an egg roll. Then I am going to place a layer of chopped cabbage leaves in the bottom of a large casserole dish and place each roll on top. I am going to mix together the brown sugar, the rest of the onion/pepper/garlic, and the tomatoes and pour over the top. I will cover the dish with foil, and bake at 350. For how long? That remains to be seen. I find it hard to believe that it will take 2 ½ hours! More later………….
That was my plan. However, while the cabbage was cooking, I started looking online at recipes, and changed things yet again. It was DELICIOUS!!!!!!! But, as we were eating, we realized a couple of more changes that needed to be made to perfect the recipe. So, the final REAL recipe is below.

2 heads of cabbage
2 lbs ground beef
1 ½ cup long grain uncooked rice
1 large Vidalia onion sliced thin
1 large bell pepper sliced thin
2 large eggs
2 cans diced tomatoes
¼ cup brown sugar blend
2 cans sauerkraut
salt
pepper

Cut the bottom off the cabbages, and place in a large soup or stew pot. Cover completely with hot water. Boil until cabbage is tender enough to be flexible. Remove cabbages from water, but save 3 cups of the water the cabbage cooked in.
While the cabbage is cooking, mix together ground beef, rice, ½ of the bell pepper, 2 large eggs, salt and pepper.
After the cabbage is taken out of the water, let it cool enough to handle, then carefully separate the leaves, and spread them out on a cookie sheet. Have a box of toothpicks handy! Take a small handful of meat mixture, and shape it into a “log”. You will get the feel for how much meat to put in each one quickly. Beginning at the bottom end of the cabbage leaf, wrap the leaf around the meat, and secure with a toothpick. You will have enough meat for about 20 – 25 small cabbage rolls. Take the inner most part of the cabbage (too small to use to wrap) and chop it up. Place it in a small and mix with a can of sauerkraut. Put a layer of cabbage/sauerkraut on the bottom of the soup pot. Top with a layer of cabbage rolls. Place a layer of bell pepper & onion slices, and another layer of rolls, placing all the rest of the cabbage rolls in the pot (on top of each other is ok). Top with the rest of the cabbage/kraut mixture. Top with 2 cans of tomatoes and sprinkle the brown sugar on the top.
Put the top on the pot. Turn the burner on medium high and set the timer for 1 hour. After an hour, check to make sure there is still plenty of liquid in the pot, and set the timer for 1 ½ hour. (add water if needed) At the end of the 2 ½ hours, eat up! I served it with mashed sweet potatoes.
They were fantastic! Of course, I have enough for Pharoah's Army, as Grandmother would say! Looks like I know what I'm having for lunch this week!

Fabric Shopping in LA's Fashion District

This past weekend I dragged Mandy downtown in search of some great fabric finds in LA's fashion district. Being a "planner," I read reviews of places on Yelp, and read about people's experiences on other blogs so I'd know what to expect, but it was still a bit overwhelming.

Here's a link to the official webpage for the Fashion District: www.fashiondistrict.org. As you can see, there are simply TONS of stores selling fabric! I have a few projects in mind that I needed large pieces of fabric for and thought I'd be able to find better deals by going to these places than ordering it online, and hopefully better selection than at Joann's.




I parked towards the south / east end of 9th street, on San Julian in a kind of sketchy looking lot with unclear information about when it closed.



Mandy and I then started walking up 9th street, where we were immediately inundated with dozens of small store fronts overrunning with fabric. Right away we started noticing a problem - even the ones that had cute-looking patterns did not have anything "useable" for anything we were doing / making, as the fabrics were all polyester or something stretchy and weird feeling - Here are some examples:

A little ways down, we reached Maple Street, home of Michael Levine, Inc., a "mega-store" of fabrics that I had read all about before we came. One one side of Maple was their regular store, while the other side of the street was the upholstery fabric and the "Loft" upstairs. (we did not make it to the Loft on this trip, but apparently the fabric in there is in giant bins already cut, and you have to dig through to find what you want, and then it is sold by the pound - like $2.50 / lb!).

In Michael Levine, we found LOTS of great fabrics! The selection of good quality choices was really amazing! So even though the prices weren't dirt-cheap by any means, it was still slightly less expensive than what I usually pay online - and I could see and touch the fabrics before choosing! Here's what we found:

clockwise: Me picking out striped fabric (see below); Mandy with her stack, waiting in line at the cutting table; my stack of choices waiting to be cut

After Michael Levine, we were pretty much done. The combination of the heat (why is there NO breeze downtown?!), and the overwhelming effect of all of the fabric options was exhausting! So even we only made it like 2 blocks, we were ready to go. I would say the adventure was a success, and lots of fun, even though ultimately I only found 1/3 of what I actually went in search of!


Of all of the fabrics I found that I just had-to-have, this was the only one that allowed me to check something off my list - I'm going to use this striped fabric to make a fabric covered wall in my bathroom! The little piece is a sample of fabric I'm using to make a skirt for the sink, which I brought along to coordinate.

From the Woods to Your Table

One fabulous thing about our house in NC: The Woods Behind Us Is FULL of BLACKBERRIES!!!

I picked a few tonight and made a cobbler for two! It was delicious!

It ended up being about 1 1/2 cups :)

Melt 2-4 table spoons of butter in the bottom of an oven safe pan.

Add berries and sprinkle with sugar.

Combine in small bowl: 2/3-3/4 cup of four, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp. baking powder, and 1/2 milk. Mix until smooth.

Pour batter over the top of the berries.

Sprinkle with a little brown sugar or cinnamon (optional).

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until browned to your liking!

Pour yourself a glass of milk and eat while it's still hot ;)

Easy, Breezy, Nice and Cheesy

When my friend Erin Powell first moved to Athens to start Pharmacy School (yes, she's a smarty-pants), she invited me over to hang out with her and her awesome son Maddox! She cooked me a yummy dinner (yeah, crazy I know, she's brilliant and a good cook) that has since become a stable in the my cooking menu. It's so simple and SO GOOOOD! Erin has been my friend for a long time and I'm so glad I have her!

Me, Sally, and Erin at a UGA Game

Me and Erin on my wedding day!

I hope you enjoy her yummy recipe just as much as I do!

Fast, Easy, Creamy, Chicken Enchiladas:
4 oz Cream Cheese
2 Chicken Breast
1/4-1/3 of White Onion
4 Flour Tortillas
1 8oz can of Enchilada Sauce
Heavy Whipping Cream (probably about a third of carton?)
Shredded Mexican Cheese (a hand full)
Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder, Cayenne Pepper (Optional)

Cut Chicken Breast into small pieces.

Cook with butter and seasoning of your choice. (I usually sprinkle a little of everything listed above.)

Sliver 1/3 to 1/4 of a white onion, cook with a little butter or oil.

Combine onions, chicken, and cream cheese in bowl.

Spoon out mixture on to your four tortillas.

Roll up the tortillas and place them side by side in an oven safe dish.

Alternate, drizzling with enchilada sauce, then heavy whipping cream, until all the sauce is used up.

Top with shredded cheese and bake for 30 minutes (or until all cheese is melted) at 350.

I like to serve them with these:

Why? Because they are also simple and delicious. If you would like instructions, they are as follows: Open can, dump contents in pan, place pan over medium heat, when contents are warmed, they are ready, now eat them :)

Yep, I like a lot of sour cream, you can blame my mama for that one ;)

Until next time, happy cooking and even happier eating!