Hibiscus Tea

Hibiscus tea is super pretty in a glass sprinkled with some mint leaves, but the concentrated hibiscus syrup looks quite similar to blood and not so appealing. 

The undiluted syrup

The tea

More Tea Cakes

More tea cakes! They're really fun to make but they take a surprisingly long time to cook considering their size.

Inside the house 

On the deck 

Blueberry Cobbler

For the fourth of July I made two trays/pans of blueberry creeping cobbler. It smelled really good when cooking but as soon as it was done it was whisked away -- and taken to a party. Everybody said it was nice and what creeping cobbler should be like.

Jasmine Tea Cake

Tea Cakes

One is chocolate chip and one is lime coconut.

Oops, you can see where I accidentally poked a hole in the poor little cake. 

I was shopping at Marshalls and saw this GIANT muffin tin on clearance and thought it would make cute individual cakes. The pictures are of two of the six cakes I ended up making in the tin. The base for each cake was from the white cake recipe I found here:  

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/simple-white-cake/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=white%20cake&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page

If you're going to make six cakes like I did here's what you need do to:

 1. don't add the milk in the recipe. You'll see why later.

2.  divide cake batter into six equal parts (use a scale) and put each part into a cup or bowl.

3. Each sixth needs 1 Tbs and 1 Tsp of liquid. Depending on your cake flavors use milk or lime/lemon juice.

4. Add 1 Tbs of nuts, coconut, fruit, or whatever you want to each cup. I added chocolate chips to one and coconut to another. 

5. Bake at 350 degrees mine took around 30 minutes, your time will probably be different so you need to check on them. 

I ended up with six cakes: lime coconut, lemon, chocolate chip, plain (it was supposed to be vanilla but I forgot to add the extract!), almond, and jasmine. 

Have fun!

Hey there

I'm hopefully *fingers crossed* going to keep posting pictures or recipes on this blog. For a while I've wanted to do just that but have never gone through with it. 

Have a sweet day :)

Strawberry Custard Poundcake

The strawberry loaf was made using a basic vanilla poundcake recipe with one extra egg. 

I ended up making this cake because there were a ton of leftover strawberries that had already been sliced for ice-cream that nobody was eating. 

I simmered the strawberries in sugar, some water, and two Tbs. of bourbon. After it reduced I scooped out the strawberries and mixed them into the batter. When the cake was done cooking the sauce was spooned over it sort of like a lemon drizzle cake. 

The cake is very dense and custardy. I think it's better frozen -- the frozen cake had texture similar to something... maybe hard ice cream? 

Coconut Chocolate Chip Pecan Pie Bars

Chocolate Chip Cherry Cookies