Strawberry Blossom Cupcakes

These tasty treats are a rare occasion where I used a boxed cake mix, but...they are gluten free!! Moist cake filled with Strawberry Mascarpone cream topped off with cream cheese frosting and strawberry petals ended up tasting just like strawberry shortcake...but fancier! :P

They were baked in these elegant cupcake liners from Paper Chef!

Summertime Steak

     Using this recipe for pan seared, oven baked steak, I was finally able to make a steak with a nice pink center! Every other time I tried to make steak inside, because I hate being outside in the Texas summer, my meat has been dry, tough, and not something I would show off. This cut of Top Sirloin was reasonably priced! I marinated it with Worcestershire sauce and a dry rub, along with a tenderizer for only an hour before cooking. Made some Mashed Potatoes and Carrots on the side, super yummy! 

Old Time Tunes

Frank Loesser's song Heart and Soul makes me smile every time I hear it, so naturally I learned it on my ukulele today. It's a simple song to play, but will be stuck in my head forever!      

            

Bye Bye Berries

This little, 6 inch cheesecake is the perfect size for a small gathering, but it was surprisingly hard to find a recipe with portions I needed for my new pan, so I made one myself!

Lining with parchment paper is an important step!

By not opening the oven, and filling the pan up just enough, I got a perfect, crack free surface!

But I overfilled the second one, and the top of it cracked from boiling over, so be careful!

 But regardless of the blemishes, it really was immensely delicious! 

 

If you want, you can put some raspberry near the edge halfway through pouring batter, for stronger berry flavor. I changed up this recipe a little to write mine.

Vintage Revisited

Rachelle and I both got new dresses at Blue Velvet Vintage here in Austin, Tx that we are completely in love with. I got my sweet white sandals at A-Town, a local boutique, and am wearing a cameo that belonged to my amazing great-grandmother Ruby.

Postal for Postal

Here's a doodle over a photo of a really great door I saw in New Orleans. This song cover is beautiful.

 

Pink Lemonade Macarons

          There certainly is an art to making Macarons, but I firmly believe anyone can do it as long as a kitchen scale, and timer are used to keep things exact. I am certainly no expert myself, but have gotten some swell cookies in the past!
          This recipe, stuffed with this to die for lemon curd recipe, made some pretty divine tasting treats. When actually making the recipe though, I would highly recommend this walkthough.

Here's a little video I made of exactly how I use my kitchen aid(or mixer) to make a great, "lava" textured Macaron batter.

I brought some to my old French teacher, and he loved them, which of course made me all too happy!!