101

Our Great Grandma Hau turned 101 yesterday! Isn't that awesome! We had a birthday celebration for her on Sunday and the Duffey girls were in charge of the cake. We made a big marble sheet cake with a french silk chocolate frosting. Krista used her amazing skills and made gorgeous roses.

Here is the cake in all its glory!

101 Birthday Cake

We decided to take a different approach for the border. The cake was a little on the short side and we felt if we did a big frosting border it would make it look silly. So we opted for some chocolate jimmies. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Chocolate Jimmies

Here are some pictures of Krista's amazing work! She is the BEST at making roses.

Flowers and Fall Foliage

Close-Up

So when I arrived at the nursing home for the party I asked my favorite Auntie Shannon for assistance carrying the cake in. While she was attempting to get it out of the car I forgot to mention how heavy it was (it was on a bread board). Well throughout this whole process her hand slipped and landed in the cake! Whoops! Ohh well, nothing a couple candles cant fix!

The Accident

Here I am with the lady of honor. She is looking pretty darn good for 101! Heck she is looking better than I am. I am so happy we were able to be apart of her special day!

Happy Birthday Great Grandma Hau!

Lindsay

My good friend Lindsay is moving to Korea in October. She will be teaching English for the next year to little Korean children. Friday I had a going away lunch with her at Punch Pizza. Lindsay had yet to experience the infamous cake pop, so I whipped a few up for her with anything leftover we had! Which ended up being, white and blue candymelt, baby blue M&M's and some multi-colored sprinkles!

[The Slew]

Please ignore the blue-smurf looking cake pop in the back. That was an experiment gone horribly wrong.

Kind of ugly, but Lindsay enjoyed them! Good luck Lindsay, I will miss you a lot but Asia is going to love you!

Special K Bars

Special K Bars are our dad's all time favorite treat. Ever since going on his diet he has sworn these bad boys off. I think he is going through withdrawals. I made a batch of these for a friend's birthday and decided to post some step-by-step pictures. Just maybe it might be the ROTM in October.

This is one of my favorite things to make because its super easy and does not involve a lot of clean up.

Ingredients

Special K Cereal, Karo Syrup, Peanut Butter, Sugar, Chocolate and Butterscotch Chips

Start by boiling the syrup and the sugar.

Then add the peanut butter.

Imaginary Picture - After the syrup, sugar and peanut butter are mixed add the Special K cereal.



Pour cereal mixture into cake pan
This is my favorite part of the dessert - I could eat this all day long

Melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips in a bowl

Spread over cereal mixture

Cut and serve! Pure deliciousness

Well there you have it! I am pretty proud I only missed one picture opportunity. Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go eat the last bar before my dad has second thoughts about his diet.

Pumpkins

I tried my hand at the first pumpkin cake pops of the season. They turned out ok. My candy melt wasnt being very cooperative but I was able to get a few decent looking ones. I see a lot more of these in our future!

Pumpkins

Happy Fall

Nothing says Fall more than a Yankee Candle Autumn scent and Molasses cookies. Ok well there might be some other things like pumpkins and the leaves changing colors, but in the baking world its all about molasses cookies.

I sent Happy Fall gift packages to Ty's family that involved these goodies. I am kicking myself because I should have kept one for me =]

Lava Cake

I know, I know. I already blogged about this way back when....but I made these delightful treats again and actually remembered to take pictures! I am getting better at this whole picture-taking thing so I wanted to share how delicious this dessert looks. I made a few changes this time around. I added caramel (my favorite) and chocolate syrup. Heaven on a spoon!

It's just like any other restaurant lava cake, except it's about 8 dollars cheaper!

Serving Tray

So do you remember this picture from the last post?

Well I know you were all probably shocked to see cookies on an actual serving tray! Most of our pics are taken right from the paper towels where the cookies are settling. Well I was obviously feeling adventurous with my photography skills and decided to put my cookies on a fancy tray.

There is quite a story behind this tray. Ty and I decided we needed to get better about going on dates and doing new, exicting things. We....more like me and Krista....made a Date Jar where we put ideas down for dates, then we alternated weeks of who picked and planned the date. Well one of my ideas was to go to a ceramics store and paint pottery. I know, it's totally dorky, but it was definitely something different and we actually had a lot of fun! I made this super cute serving tray (yes these pictures were the first time it got used) and Ty made an irish mug.

I cant say I am very artistic, as you all know Krista is the decorator and I am just the baker. I really struggled with how I wanted to design my serving tray. My original thoughts were to leave it white and do a branch theme, but my free hand sketching skills, that wasn't happening. So I decided to do dots - very simple and I used the end of a paint brush. I envision this tray sitting on my own kitchen counter some day - probably being used for decorating instead of serving, because lets face it, I enjoy taking my cookie pics on paper towels.

Ok I cant lie the cookies do look pretty amazing in this picture
Its got to be the serving tray

Ty really did join my on this escapade and decorated a coffee mug. He actually uses his mug weekly so that is a plus! Here is proof...look at how happy he is!

Tyler John

Bonus Pic - ME!

College Bound

So as most of you know, our Little Bethany left for college a few weeks ago. I decided why not send her a little package. I know I always LOVED getting stuff in the mail (thanks to everyone who appeased me and sent me stuff). And of course I couldn't forget about my little nugget, that went off to school and is equally as homesick as Bethany is. I'm not sure if they are homesick or just missing each other...how precious.

Just to show how much the two love each other one of my chocolate chip cookies came out looking like a heart -i am pretty talented.

Both girls got some chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, fruit snacks, and Glee posters I picked up from the Great Minnesota Get Together (The State Fair).

The world's softest chocolate chip cookies

Minus the last pan because...well you all know...our oven is possessed

Banana Bread
Kasey's all time favorite treat - she puts signs on the bread that says DO NOT EAT
roomie beware!

Here are the packages all ready to go to the post office.

Little Bethany's

The Nugget's

Now girls, don't be expecting this every week!

The moral of this story is the Duffey house has been very quiet lately and my father has been picking on me a ton! So I am ready for Bethany and Kasey to come home for the wedding this weekend so I get a little reprieve.

Wedding Cake Pops Round 2

Our great Auntie Marie has a granddaughter, Angie, getting married in October. Marie attended Breanna's bridal shower where we made her Wedding Cake Pops.

Auntie Marie loved them ohh so much so she asked if we would make them for Angie's bridal shower. We of course said yes! Round 2 was a lot easier than the first time. We had our system down and were able to knock out the pops pretty quick.

A Ryan Pop

An Angie Pop

Here is the finished product. Congrats Angie and Ryan!

Slew

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

Our cousin, Brady, turned 8 last Friday. He is getting soo old, which makes me feel old. I remember babysitting this little guy right after he was born.

Last year, if you can remember, we made him a Little League World Series baseball cake.
Pretty sweet huh?

So this year we decided to surprise him with some good old baseball cake pops! These were super easy to make especially with our edible markers.

Batter up!

Slew

Look how happy he is! We love you Brady, our little brother!

CAUTION...this next picture is kinda disturbing.....well I suppose he is just enjoying his cake pop!

ROTM

So not sure if all of you AVID followers have noticed our ROTM (Recipe of the Month) tab but its been updated (I know, I know a few days late) for the month of September.

Go check it out, its showcasing one of the favorite cookies in our house.

Back To School

Our older sister Breanna is a first grade teacher at Saint Thomas Moore Catholic School in St. Paul. She and all of the other teachers and staff were required to be in school for meetings, work shops and classroom set up this week. Breanna thought it would be a great pick-me-up to bring cake pops to kick those end of summer blues. Naturally, we opted for the apple cake pops!

At first we made the cake pops a little too big and our sticks and leaves were all out of proportions. We were trying to be thrifty and use Christmas tree sprinkles as our leaves but they weren't cutting it. So I thought what if we cut an M&M in half? And guess what it was perfect!

Here is a cute little apple pop.

We couldn't do a post without showing you a slew of pops. So here you have it!

Slew

Bonus Pic - second slew

So we wanted to capture the teacher with her cute cake pops but she would not cooperate. She felt like a nerd. So this is the best pic we got. I think she looks pretty sassy!


Check out that ring, this lucky girl is getting hitched in 15 days! Exciting stuff happening around the Duffey household.