Snowball Cake for the Holidays

Recipe can be found here:

Gathered ingredients.

Preparing Cake as Directed on Box.

Drop in creamed cheese whipped with egg & sugar.

Bake 1 hour + 5 minutes at 350.
Cool 10 min, then invert and cool completely:

Staffles!

What do you do with leftover stuffing? Rachel Ray suggested waffle ironing for breakfast. Genius!!

Thanksgiving leftover preparations

When you go elsewhere for dinner, you get no leftovers. Thus I make my own pre-thanksgiving meal and stick it all in the fridge for munching on!

Heroes & Legends - Claremont

This was the biggest order of chili cheese fries I've ever seen.

The LA#19 Pastrami was off the hook. Tender meat, perfectly mixed slaw... REALLY GOOD.

Thus ended our adventure to Claremont. Except for a stop at "I Love Pie" for Snickerdoodle Pie. Oh, yeah.

Oreo, Peanut Butter Brownie Cupcake

Ingredients
*pb filled oreos
*creamy pb
*box of brownie mix
*cupcake papers & pan

Directions
Use pb to stack oreos in pairs of twos. Drop then in the paper cups in the cupcake pan. Mix brownie mix per box directions. Pour batter over oreos just to cover. Bake 20 minutes at 350°.

Givin' it the old college Thai

* Besides a homemade peanut sauce, I've never really had Thai food.  I've been a little afraid that the heat of it would overcome me.  Therefore, today I venture out at halftime of the Badger game to try out Wood Thai Restaurant take-out, which is literally around the corner from us and I've looked in and never attempted before.  It used to be Rosie Thai (for you locals), but they've changed their name and updated a bit.  I'm determined to branch out and try something new; stand by for the report!

We ordered the Shrimp Pad Thai lunch special (with salad and rice), and a Thai Style BBQ Chicken House Special (with shrimp fried rice and salad).  The salad was very tasty with the dressing which was tangy with a black spice- not poppy seed but something similar.  The chicken was tasty, but the skin was very rubbery and kind of gross.  It came with a red chili dipping sauce that I skipped.  The pad thai noodles with shrimp was very good, but that'll be dinner as this was a lot of food for us.  Shrimp fried rice was great; not overly sticky rice.  I'd get the pad thai again.  Love the crushed peanuts!  Yum!!

Macarons! Ooh la la!

I have a little girl who is my teacher aide, and she is my former student from last year.  Her little brother is friends with my son, too.  She's just the sweetest girl, and not only is she a proud nerd, she's a little foodie at heart.

Last year she gave me homemade macarons for the holidays. I had one, and Aidan at the rest.  They were bomb!

So this year, I asked her for her recipe, and thought I'd get a card or a one page internet print.  No...

I got 3 hand-written pages, highlighted in pink with great care where I was warned to "fold...don't overmix or undermix" in the "macronage stage".  A recommendation for a Silpat over parchment paper was given.  Steps ended with "Voila!" and "now for the ganache".  OMG!  Love, love, love her.

Today was the day for the test.  I followed her suggestion to make my own almond flour, as it is REALLY expensive in the stores.  This is where we began:

Following her detailed instructions, they dried for 1 hour on the counter before baking at 280 for 10 minutes on one side, turn the pan, and baking for 10 more minutes.  Cool completely and then add the ganache. 

I opted for chocolate buttercream today because I had all the ingredients at home; but my master chef suggests ganache made from heavy cream, honey, and Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate shavings. My heart beams with pride!

And now, after the long process:

Yummy!