Summer Fun and Honey Buns

I know.....the 30th came and went and I didn't post anything..........Because we have been having too much summer fun! Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the fun we have been having lately.

Now on to the Honey Buns, Honey Bun Cake that is! We attended a company picnic this last weekend for my husband's work and I made a honey bun cake to take. It is a wonderful and easy dessert. I read a lot of cooking blogs and look at Pinterest for inspiration and ideas for my own recipes. One thing that I kept seeing time and time again was a honey bun cake. Instead of giving you my recipe, I'm going to have to just give you the link for the recipe that I liked best. While I did make a few changes, I feel they were minor changes and that I can't take credit for it being my own recipe. Here is the link to the honey bun cake I like best. And here is a list of the minor changes I made to better fit our tastes/liking:

I used 3 eggs instead of 4
I used 3/4 Cup brown sugar instead of 1 Cup
1 used 5 Tbsp milk instead of 6 Tbsp

This cake is so delicious and moist, I really hope you will try it!

Honey Bun Cake: http://www.thecountrycook.net/2011/02/honey-bun-cake.html

Cake Boss

My friend Madelyn recently got back from New York where her and her family went on vacation. While there, they visited Carlo's Bake Shop, home of the Cake Boss. Here is the cake they bought:

How cute is that?! The top layer was white cake and the bottom was chocolate cake with a chocolate filling in between the two layers. Madelyn's daughters loved it and what a opportunity to have!

Sangria

It's hot out there......too hot. And I'm not about cooking and baking when its an oven outside so I thought I would share how I make sangria.

Using a chilled sweet red wine, fill your wineglass a 1/3 of the full. I used a nice apple raspberry wine my parents brought us from Maine. Then fill the glass another 1/3 full of chilled seltzer. You can add any fruit you like but I added a wedge of orange, a wedge of lemon, a wedge of lime (I also squeezed all of the wedges into my glass) and a couple of slices of granny smith apple. Enjoy and stay cool out there!

Jason's Birthday Cake

On July 4th my husband celebrated his (I won't the his age) Birthday! Last year I made him a Mario Bros. themed cake and wanted to stay with that theme this year as well. I had an idea ready but unfortunately didn't have the time to get it done (hopefully next year. So I typed "Mario Cakes" into a Google image search hoping I could find something easier to do then what I had planned. I came across a very cool picture of an 8-bit Mario made out of cupcakes and thought "I can do that!"

I made 141 mini cupcakes in three different flavors: Vanilla Funfetti, Carrot, and Dark Chocolate. I used boxed cake mix but made my own butter cream icing that I dyed the appropriate colors and laid it all out on our coffee table. Thankfully we had friends and family over to help us eat these cupcakes.

Here is Jason with his friend Ryan whose birthday is also July 4th. The two of them have literally known each other and been friends since birth! They think their moms shared a hospital room when they were born.

Hope you enjoyed seeing Jason's Birthday Cake!

Fresh Pineapple Part II

Now that you may have all this fresh pineapple as we did, you may want some ideas of what to do with it all. Here are some of our favorites:

I really enjoy it with yogurt and granola for breakfast

It works wonderful on homemade pizza.

This is a pepperoni, pineapple and green pepper pizza.

My favorite is the BBQ Chicken Kabobs!

Cut chicken breasts into bite size pieces and marinate them in your favorite BBQ sauce for about an hour in the refrigerator. Alternate the chicken, fresh chunks of pineapple and chunks of green bell pepper onto kabobs and grill. Serve over rice.