Fall

Savoring the last days of fall...




In the park...



With my family.



It’s been a good day.

Tres leche cake and my moms birthday.

So my mom is pretty awesome. She’s gorgeous and sweet and fiercely loyal. She has a fantastic sense of humor and this laugh that’s contagious, and so loud. As a kid, I could always find her in a huge store because of that laugh. She’s so, so smart, and likes to make jokes about Visigoths and John Calvin. She’s full of hilarious contradictions - she loves People Magazine and National Geographic, documentaries about the environment and the TV show Psych. She was raised a city girl, but now thrives in the country. She’s so strong, and everything I want to be when I grow up.



Her birthday was yesterday so I baked her a cake, one she had been wanting for ages, tres leche cake. It’s really perfect for her - not pretentious, and sort of messy. I’d never made it before, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. It really good! The sponge cake soaks up all of that delicious milk, leaving it gooey and sweet. Definitely a keeper, since she loved it. Happy Birthday, Mom!



Tres Leche Cake
from The Pioneer Woman

1 cup All-purpose Flour
1-½ teaspoon Baking Powder
¼ teaspoons Salt
5 whole Eggs
1 cup Sugar, Divided
1 teaspoon Vanilla
⅓ cups Milk
1 can Evaporated Milk
1 can Sweetened, Condensed Milk
¼ cups Heavy Cream

FOR THE ICING:
(I skipped this part, it was great without it)

1 pint Heavy Cream, For Whipping
3 Tablespoons Sugar

Preparation Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 x 13 inch pan liberally until coated.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Separate eggs.
Beat egg yolks with 3/4 cup sugar on high speed until yolks are pale yellow. Stir in milk and vanilla. Pour egg yolk mixture over the flour mixture and stir very gently until combined.
Beat egg whites on high speed until soft peaks form. With the mixer on, pour in remaining 1/4 cup sugar and beat until egg whites are stiff but not dry.
Fold egg white mixture into the batter very gently until just combined. Pour into prepared pan and spread to even out the surface.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Turn cake out onto a rimmed platter and allow to cool.
Combine condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream in a small pitcher. When cake is cool, pierce the surface with a fork several times. Slowly drizzle all but about 1 cup of the milk mixture—try to get as much around the edges of the cake as you can.
Allow the cake to absorb the milk mixture for 30 minutes. To ice the cake, whip 1 pint heavy cream with 3 tablespoons of sugar until thick and spreadable.
Spread over the surface of the cake. Cut into squares and serve.

I’ve been thinking a lot about traditions and family lately. This always comes to mind during the holiday season. You see, I don’t have a lot of extended family. It’s just my parents, siblings and I. I’ve never had big family dinners to go to, Christmas time isn’t filled with traveling and visiting. I’ve never woken up on Christmas morning to my grandmothers signature breakfast, or made my great aunts famous sugar cookies. I don’t have recipe books filled with page after tattered page of age old family recipes, passed down through the generations.

Sometimes I wish I did. I think, wouldn’t it be great to sit around a table, surrounded by grandparents, aunt, uncles and cousins? It would, of course, but that’s just not the hand I was dealt in life.

I was given an amazing, loving family though. I was placed here on purpose. I live in this house full of laughter and singing. Our Christmas mornings are small and happy, filled with smiles and thanks. We make our own traditions, like our silly gingerbread houses, handmade ornaments and my brothers goofy santa hat, and although they aren’t decades old, they mean something to us. And that’s what matters, right? So, although there’s a part of me that longs for a huge extended family and the traditions that come with that, I remind myself that it’s what you do have that counts, and I’m beyond blessed.

Purple (well...brown) Velvet Cake.

Today is my lovely sisters 15th birthday. I can’t believe she’s driving. It seems like just yesterday we were yelling at each other in the back seat of the car. She’s become this awesome bluegrass loving, mandolin playing, Jesus following young woman. She rocks.



And how else could I celebrate but to make her a cake? She requested her favorite, Red Velvet. Since red velvet is essentially just chocolate cake dyed bright red, I thought it would be more fun to dye it purple. Sadly, it came out more brown, but it’s the thought that counts, right?



This is definitely the best recipe for red velvet I’ve found, it’s a little more chocolate-y
than most, super moist and slightly tangy. Plus, the cream cheese frosting was delicious, and I don’t even like it normally.



To top it off I used this little birdie, he was once a christmas ornament. It’s so Sarah.

Happy Birthday baby sister, I hope you liked your cake!


let's pretend I can actually frost cakes! haha.

Red Velvet Cake
Adapted from “The Confetti Cakes Cookbook” by Elisa Strauss via Smitten Kitchen.

Yield: 3 cake layers

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3 1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (not Dutch process)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups canola oil
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) red food coloring or 1 teaspoon red gel food coloring dissolved in 6 tablespoons of water
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons white vinegar.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.

2. Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.

3. Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.

4. Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.

5. Divide batter among pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes 6 cups

8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter room temperature
3 cups confectioner’s sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Place cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl. With a handheld electric mixer, beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add sugar and vanilla. Beat, on low speed to combine. If too soft, chill until slightly stiff, about 10 minutes, before using.


Oh, for those interested, I did get a new lens! I upgraded from the 50mm 1.8 to the 50mm 1.4. So far I love it! You can see the shots I've taken so far with it at my flickr.

Mom's Birthday.

Today is my mom's birthday and my siblings and I decided to throw her a little party. It was just dinner and cake, but we had fun.





I made her a cake using this cake recipe, this frosting recipe (it's her favorite!) and spread some raspberry jam and some frosting in between the layers.



We made decorations using this tutorial for the pom poms and we wrapped some twine around styrofoam balls. My sister and I had a ton of fun making them, and it was so easy.



Happy Birthday Mom! You are the best mom anyone could ask for, and I thank God for you all the time. I love you!

Family Portraits.

Dad.


Mom.


Sister, Brother.


Sister.


Brother.

I love them. : )

cornbread made early in the morning for dressing.


everything had frost on it.


it was a good day.


I'm so thankful for so many things. I'm thankful for my wonderful family, I'm thankful for this amazing place I live in, and most of all I'm thankful for Jesus, without Him I'd be nothing.

Oh yeah, and green bean casserole. mmmmm.


christmas is on it's way.

Yesterday was a busy day. I met my good friend Kelsey for lunch. I hadn't seen her in over a year! She got married and moved to New York on me. It was good to see her.



Later in the afternoon we went geocaching. Which is so much fun. It's basically high-tech treasure hunting. We drove along the ocoee river, to Goforth Creek, which is one of my favorite places in the world.



It's so beautiful, even with all the leaves gone.



speaking of leaves, I already miss them. I really, really love leaves. I'm always taking pictures of them, even when there aren't many to be found.





I love winter, but I really miss flowers and leaves and green during these cold months.



I'd love to know what kind of flowers these are, we always see them in the winter, the only thing growing.


It was a good day.