Saturday, April 16, 2011

Watch your back Martha.

Yesterday, I caught the cooking/baking bug.  It must have been the yummy blogs I read that gave me the inspiration. 

After 5 hours in the kitchen, I was exhausted and told Steve I need one of those chef's mats if he wants this to become a regular thing.  My feet were killing me!

I made a DELISH lasagna for dinner.  The recipe is from The Pioneer Woman.  I made a little change to it though.  Rather than using beef and hot sausage, I used some of our venison/boar meat we have stocked in the house.  When Steve and Dale ground all of the meat they seasoned it different ways and some was spicy Italian, so it worked perfect.  I highly recommend this recipe...it was very yummy!
This is all we ate, so if you want some lasagna...come on over!

We are going to a party/BBQ this afternoon, so I made this pasta salad (also from The Pioneer Woman) to take.  It is so yummy and refreshing.  My favorite part are the little buttery, salty nuggets of Feta.  It looks pretty too.
My last creation were these adorable Easter Bunny cupcakes.  I used carrot cake (get it...bunnies...carrots...) and cream cheese frosting.  The ears are marshmallows that I cut up and then put sprinkles on.  They didn't turn out quite as cute as they looked in my head, but not too bad for a first try.  I prefer to cook rather than bake 10 times out of 10, but this blog has me thinking I can do fancy things with pastries. 
The whiskers are chocolate sprinkles and were a PAIN in the BUTT, so after making 2, I decided the cupcakes didn't really need the sprinkles after all.  (I think this is why I don't like baking...I have no patience...I also don't like to measure.)
This was my work station.  The wine definitely helped keep me motivated.  After I made a few, I would reward myself with a sip. 
The finished product.  I didn't want them to dry out in the fridge so I left them on the counter overnight.  This was a mistake.  All of the marshmallows got soft and started to fall off.  Steve helped me perform several Earandectomies (yep...just made that up) and now some have "floppy ears" (read: they are laying down) while others maintained their perky ears.  They are now in the fridge until the party. 

I love to cook and haven't done too much of it lately....but that is all about to change.  Steve better loosen his belt a notch.

1 comment:

  1. Funny, I love baking much much more than cooking but I end up doing a little of both these days. One of my fav baking blogs is Tuesdays with Dorie - its based on a book from Dorie Greenspan & is a very interesting premise for a blog. Cute cupcakes :)

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