Shelley's Birthday Cherry Cobbler

For my good friend Shelley's Birthday I made her request--Cherry Cobbler!

Having never made cherry cobbler before, I was excitedly up to the challenge! I checked through my cookbooks and some online blogs for recipe ideas. I finally came up with a combination of Pioneer Woman's Cobbler Crust and Cooking Light Cookbook's Cherry Filling!

2 pounds of fresh sweet cherries! Yummm!!!
Cleaned up!

Pitted by hand (this was also a learning experience--but I was able to come up with an at home pitter--the tip of my carrot peeler!) I recommend wearing gloves because the cherry juice is messy and will stain your hands.

This is funny---I really wanted a close up picture of some cherries, so I kept trying and trying (as you can see above it was quite blurry). So I finally got Steve to come over & help me with the camera settings...

And look--perfectly shiny cherries!

2 pounds of pitted cherries

Pits!!! After pitting, (and I forgot to take pictures on this step), you combine the cherries with 1¼ cup sugar, 4 tablespoons uncooked quick cooking tapioca, 1 ½ tablespoon lemon juice & 1/8 teaspoon salt...Pour into a pie Pyrex dish & set aside for at least 15 minutes...

Next part--crust! Combine 2 cups Flour, ¼ teaspoons Salt & 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder. Add ¼ cups Shortening & 4 Tablespoons Butter...

Cut the butter & shortening into the flour mixture (you can use a fancy pastry blender, but I just used a fork)

Mix together 1 Egg & ½ cup of milk

Pour into flour mixture...

And stir with a fork until smooth (and not sticky)...

Drop clumps of the dough mixture onto the cherry mixture...

Until it is completely covered with the dough. Brush with milk and sprinkle with 2-3 tablespoons of sugar...

Preheat oven to 425 degrees & bake for 30 minutes (should be golden on top) and you can see the cherry sauce bubbling. We let it sit for 30 minutes or so and it was still a bit runny. You should probably let it sit a bit longer just to be sure!

For an even yummier cobbler, eat with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

Warning: Do not eat too much because you will have a belly ache! But it is totally worth it!

Sprinkles Rack!

For Christmas my amazing husband got me this spice-less rack! I knew that I wanted to use it for SPRINKLES!

I still need more of some kinds of sprinkles, but isn't it just the cutest?

I really can't take credit for the idea...Bakerella did this a while back on her blog :)

bakerella's cake pops!

disclaimer: i can not take any credit for the creativity in this project!

bakerella, my favorite website, makes these awesome cake pops! i've been wanting to try to make her cake pops for a while now, so last weekend i had a free sunday, so i decided to give it a shot!

since we are just days away from thanksgiving, i decided to do her turkey pops (here is a picture of her version)...
and her cupcake pops in thanksgiving colors (her version in this picture again)...
of these 2, which do you think would be easier? i definitely thought the turkeys were going to be impossible and that the cupcakes would be super easy. boy was i wrong! the rest of these pictures are my cake pops...

the turkeys you had to act quickly before the chocolate hardened, but they were so easy and turned out so cute!...

kissing turkeys!

but the cupcakes were so hard to get in that perfect shape!

i think they looked more like acorns than cupcakes!

i wrapped them up in little baggies and brought them to our thanksgiving luncheon at work.

i think i will be trying these again soon! they were fun!

pumpkin cupcakes

when i found this recipe on real simple, i just couldn't resist!

(these photos are inspired by one of my newest idols, bakerella)

my ingredients with a little variation from real simple...

one 18.5-ounce box yellow cake mix (plus the ingredients called for in the package directions--except for the water!!! i also substituted egg whites for the eggs and did about 90% apple sauce/10% oil---you could probably skip the oil all together since the pumpkin is so moist)

1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

one 15-ounce can pumpkin puree

tw0 8-ounce bars cream cheese, at room temperature

2 cups confectioners’ sugar

24 pieces candy corn

pre heat oven to 350° f

prepare the cake mix as directed but instead of the water called out in the cake instructions, substitute the can of pumpkin puree and add the pumpkin pie spice

line two 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners (mine were probably a bit larger, so i only got 18 out of the mix)

fill the muffin tins about 2/3 full and bake at 350° f for 18-22 minutes (mine took the full 22) or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean

let cool on a dry rack

mix up the powdered sugar and cream cheese

(i actually found that you could add more powdered sugar to make it less runny)

dip in icing or spread on with a knife (knife was trickier, but looked the best in the end)

top each cupcake with a piece of candy corn (and try not to eat the rest of them yourself like i did!!)

girly flower cakes

this past weekend my friend lisa and i took on quite the challenge...making 2 (not 1) birthday cakes for a little girl birthday party! their only request was that we use lots of red, yellow, gerber daisies and sunflowers!!

to make the flowers we used gum paste! dyed it, rolled it out, & cut it with the flower cutter. 2 petals were used for each flower.
then the center was a circular cut out that was pressed against a metal colander.

so simple! and cute!

we made about a dozen big and 8 small for each cake.

the next few steps (baking, icing, decorating, etc.) i forgot to take pictures of (oops!), but here is the one i did get because charlie (lisa's english bull dog puppy) was biting my pants while i iced the cake! he is such a cutie!

the finished product! this was a chocolate cake with butter cream icing.

the 'red cake' was a strawberry cake with more butter cream icing (we went through a lot of butter cream!!)

this was such a fun project that i think i would enjoy doing more of ;)

sarah & steve's wedding cake

sarah & steve's wedding cake was absolutely beautiful!

i loved their cake topper too! super cute!!

it tasted awesome too! the filling was delicious! i ate all of mine!

steve and i at tower grove park

'the list serve' girls :) we had such a great time!