Tough Weekend!

I did some fun things this weekend! Two cakes and 4 dozen cupcakes on Saturday.... followed up by some inspirational cooking and baking today. Not sure if I am done for the night but I will post what I have so far.

First up-- a cake for a friend's little boy. I make the little boy's first birthday cake last year and I did my best to make the cake as ordered this year. I don't know what I missed but to make a long story short, the child's mother was NOT happy with the cake... :(. I have NEVER had that happen so I was really sad but I thought the cake was cute!

Next, I made a cake and cupcakes for my friend Nicole's little girl Lily. Lily had a Purplicious party with purple marshmallows and purple cookies and I did my best with a purple cake and purple cupcakes.

On Sunday, I was reading a blog about restaurant food so I decided to duplicate a few of our favorites. First I made Bang Bang Shrimp Po Boys... they tasted almost EXACTLY like Bonefish Grill's appetizer!
For dinner, I made fried pickle spears-- that I paired with homemade ranch dressing made by my darling husband!

So on to the desserts-- again! I bought some tiny tin foil pie tins a few weeks ago and I've been waiting to try them out. Today I made a pecan pie and an apple pie... neither of them were more than 3 inches across at their widest-- they are so cute! I also blind baked a few tiny crusts that I will turn into chocolate pie or coconut cream sometime this week-- stay tuned!


I accidentally bought some peanut butter at the club last week when I already had some so I now have a surplus! So what to do with too much peanut butter? Today was peanut butter and jelly cookies! Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe peanut butter cupcakes...

Then for some reason, I decided that pralines were necessary... so I cooked up a batch of those too!


To finish off the evening, I was determined to duplicate the recipe for an appetizer that we had at Ruth's Chris a few nights ago: it was an entire tomato, sliced horizontally and fried in an almost tempura-like batter. The slices are then reassembled back into their original shape but with goat cheese spread in between each layer... then the whole thing is topped with remoulade. My effort looked really pretty and tasted pretty good, but it is not yet right! Needs a better batter and a firmer tomato-- sounds like there will be lots more attempts in my future!