Individual Quiches

These spinach and bacon quiches are great appetizers, especially because they do not require a fork. When using mini muffin pans, this recipe will make 50 quiches, but if you use a regular sized muffin pan, it will make 12 quiches.

Appetizer Spinach and Bacon Quiches

• 4 slices bacon
• 1/2 small onion, diced
• 1 (10 oz.) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed, drained and squeezed dry
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• pinch salt
• 1 (15 oz.) container whole milk ricotta cheese
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten

1. Pre-heat oven to 350. Spray mini muffin pan.
2. Cook bacon in large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp. Drain on paper towels. Let bacon cool, crumble.
3. In same skillet, cook and stir onion in remaining bacon fat for 5 minutes or until tender. Add spinach, pepper, nutmeg and salt. Cook and stir over medium heat for about 3 minutes or until liquid is gone. Remove from heat. Stir in bacon; cool.
4. Combine cheeses in large bowl. Add eggs; stir until well blended. Add cooled spinach mixture; mix well.
5. Divide mixture into mini muffin pan. Bake 20 minutes or until filling is slightly browned on top. Let stand for 10 minutes on cooling rack. Run a knife around the edges to release the mini quiches. Serve hot or refrigerate and serve cold.

Caramel Icing with Cupcakes

As a treat/thank you for 1,000 blog hits, I decided to try out a new icing recipe - caramel icing. I love caramel! I made golden vanilla cupcakes, something basic so the icing could be the real star of the cupcake!

Ben suggested that I put mini chocolate chip morsels and caramel in some of the cupcakes before I baked them, just to try it out. I put a dallop of caramel in 4 of the cupcakes and sprinkled some chocolate chip morsels on 4. As you can see from the picture of the cupcakes after they baked, the caramel is no longer visible. It sunk into the cupcake while it was baking and this turned out to be delicious! (again, only if you really like caramel, because it is a lot).

This icing was supposed to be butterscotch-caramel, but I only had caramel at home, so I went with that and it turned out really well!

Here's the recipe for the icing:

Caramel Icing
Yields 2 1/4 cups
Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/3 cup caramel sauce (I used the kind you dip apples in)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 (16-oz.) package powdered sugar
• 1 - 3 tablespoons milk

Preparation
1. Beat first 4 ingredients at medium speed with electric mixer until creamy.
2. Gradually add powdered sugar, alternating with 1 Tbsp. milk, beating at low sleep until blended and smooth. Beat in up to 2. Tbsp. additional milk for desired consistency.

This is a picture of the icing in a glass bowl. It looks like cake mix, so if you wanted to put food coloring in it I think that would work out nicely.

To ice the cupcakes, I wanted to try something different. Rather than just using a small icing spatula, I put the icing in a bag and used tip #5. As I was icing the cupcakes I made a spiral/swirl motion. I liked this idea, because it is something new to try. However, I would suggest that after you make the icing put it in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes, because sometimes it was kind of hard to control at room temperature. Thank you for reading my blog and if you ever have any questions, just ask it in the "Comments" section!

Gourmet Camping Food

What's the most basic dinner when camping? Hotdogs and hamburgers. And while there is nothing wrong with these 2 foods, why not cook something better? While camping this weekend, Ben and I fixed a dinner that would normally be served at a real table, with real plates and silverware. All it took was a little planning. Our menu was: steak, potatoes, asparagus, Caesar salad and a slice of sour dough bread.

This is a picture of something I think every camper should have. It has just about every spice you could need when you're camping, all in one container. It was purchased at Wal-Mart for about $6.

We used the ice chest as our table (how romantic).

To season the steak, we used garlic powder, salt, and pepper. For the asparagus, we used salt, pepper, butter, and olive oil and wrapped them in aluminum foil. We put both the steak and asparagus in a grilling basket and placed it over the fire.

We also cooked the potatoes in salt, pepper, garlic powder, butter and olive oil, all wrapped in foil. Obviously, potatoes take longer to cook, so we left them on the fire for about 30 minutes, rotating every once and a while.

A bag of Caesar salad with dressing, cheese, and croutons all included and the meal was ready!

Strawberry-Mania

Southern Living's website has a great special on strawberries: 25 Indulgent Strawberry Treats

I've picked out a few that look particularly delicious and that I am going to try in the near future.

Strawberry-Buttermilk Sherbet

• 2 cups fresh strawberries*
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Garnish: fresh mint sprigs

1. Process strawberries in a food processor or blender 30 seconds or until smooth, stopping to scrape down sides. Pour strawberry puree through a fine wire-mesh strainer into a large bowl, pressing with back of a spoon. Discard solids. Add buttermilk, sugar, and vanilla to puree; stir until well blended. Cover and chill 1 hour.

2. Pour strawberry mixture into freezer container of a 1 1/2-qt. electric ice-cream maker, and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. (Instructions and times may vary.) Garnish, if desired.

*1 (16-oz.) package frozen strawberries, thawed, may be substituted.

Croissant French Toast with Strawberry Syrup

• 4 large day-old croissants
• 3/4 cup milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Slice croissants in half lengthwise.

Whisk together milk, eggs, and vanilla. Pour into a shallow dish. Dip croissant halves into egg mixture, coating well.

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add four croissant halves, and cook about 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Repeat procedure with remaining butter and croissant halves. Sprinkle with powdered sugar; top with Sweetened Whipped Cream, if desired, and Fresh Strawberry Syrup.

Strawberry Sparkler

• 1 (10-ounce) package frozen strawberries, thawed
• 2 cups cranberry juice, chilled
• 1 (750-milliliter) bottle champagne, chilled*

Process strawberries in a blender until smooth; pour into a pitcher. Stir in cranberry juice and champagne, and serve immediately.

*1 (1-liter) bottle sparkling water, chilled, may be substituted.

The rest of the strawberry treats can be found here.

St. Patrick's Day Brownie Cupcakes

For St. Patrick's day I made some brownies, but instead of using a rectangle-shaped pan, I put them in a cupcake pan. Once the batter was made, I poured enough so that it would cover 1/4 of each cupcake then I placed a peppermint patty and poured the remaining batter on top. I saw this idea on another website and thought I should try it out because I love mint chocolate flavored desserts (if you couldn't tell by the cake I just made). Since I was baking brownies and not chocolate cake mix in the cupcake pan, it took longer for them to bake (about 25 minutes).

For the icing, I used the same buttercream recipe that I used for the previous post, but this time I put 5 drops of green food coloring. To top it off, I put green sprinkles.

Mint Chocolate Cake

Over the weekend I made a 2-layer mint chocolate cake. I used one 9" round pan and one 8" round pan. This cake was the same shape as the lemon cake I made last week. To make the cake taste like mint, I added about 2 teaspoons of peppermint extract to the chocolate batter. Some people may want to add more or less extract, depending on how minty they want the cake.

I made buttercream icing using the recipe on the back of the powdered sugar package (butter, powdered sugar, milk, vanilla extract) but I added an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract to the icing for more flavor. After making the icing, I mixed 1 drop of green food coloring, but saw that it was not minty-green enough, so I added 1 more drop. Perfect!

After letting the cakes cool, I transferred the 9" one to a silver platter and began icing this cake just in the middle, because for the design I was going to do, I thought it would be easier to ice certain parts of the cake, then decorate, and ice the rest. Well, this proved to be more annoying than helpful, so I decided to ice the entire cake.

For the decorations, I used mini chocolate chip morsels and sprinkled them around the sides of the 2 cakes. The bottom layer was much easier to apply chocolate chips to, because if they did not stick to the side they would fall on the plate, which was fine. But for the top layer, if the chocolate chips did not stick to the side, then they would fall on the bottom layer and I would have to pick them off (once you see the next picture this will make more sense).

When putting the chocolate chips on the top layer, I had to put them on one by one so they would not fall, kind of tedious, but totally worth it. For a little extra pizazz, I put some on the top of the cake, too. I was going to flavor the icing with peppermint extract as well, but like the lemon cake, I didn't want to have a mint overload!

Last Minute Chocolate Pie

If you are ever in need of a last minute dessert, this chocolate pie is your answer. All you need is a graham cracker pie crust, a large box of chocolate pudding, cool whip, and a milk chocolate candy bar.

Make the chocolate pudding as directed and pour it into the pie crust, evenly spreading it around. Put this in the refrigerator until a few minutes before you serve it. To make the chocolate shavings, I use a carrot peeler and a Hershey's chocolate bar. I run the peeler down the side of the candy bar to make small shavings. Before you serve, add the cool whip and chocolate shavings. Simple as that!

You can substitute the type of crust and pudding flavors to whatever you desire. If you're in a rush to make a dessert, this is your best bet, besides store bought cookies!

Spring Drinks to Wet Your Whistle

There is no doubt that when Spring and Summer arrive lemonade is a top drink choice. Well, here are two drink recipes, one for those of us that are over 21 and one for the younger, less fortunate folks. Both recipes are from the Southern Living website.

Frosty Lemon Martini

• 1 tablespoon sugar
• lemon wedge
• 1 cup crushed ice
• 6 tablespoons chilled lemon-flavored vodka
• 2 tablespoons chilled lemon-flavored liqueur
• 4 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 thin strips lemon peel

1. Pour sugar onto a small, rimmed plate. Rub rims of two martini glasses with lemon wedge to moisten, then dip rims into sugar to coat.

2. Place ice in a cocktail shaker. Add vodka, liqueur, and lemon juice. Shake until mixture is very cold, about 10 seconds. Strain into glasses. Garnish each with a twist of lemon peel.

Makes 2 servings. For extra frostiness, put the sugar-rimmed glasses in the freezer for 8 minutes. December 2003


Fresh-Squeezed Lemonade

• 3 cups fresh lemon juice (about 20 lemons)
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 12 cups water

Combine juice and sugar in a one-gallon container; stir until sugar dissolves. Stir in water. Serve over ice.

Makes 16 servings. July 2003 issue

Enjoy!

Very Strawberry Cake

To celebrate Race for the Cure weekend, I made a 2-layer strawberry cake with strawberry icing and topped off with sliced strawberries. If you don't like strawberries, then you definitely won't like this cake!

The cake was pretty easy to make and decorate, just your basic 2-layer round cake. The sliced strawberries were a last minute idea and actually if you ever put fruit on top of a cake, make sure they are washed and completely dry. These strawberries had been washed, but had not had enough time to dry before I put them on the cake, and they started to slide off, so I had to stick wooden toothpicks in them to make them stay. oops!

The table was decorated in pink and white, of course. We served lettuce wrap tacos, olive spread and baguette, sausage jalepenos poppers, and some veggies, unfortunately none of which is pictured but all of which was delicious!

Baking with Egg Whites

Last night I made some cupcakes with egg whites. It was the first time I had ever used egg whites and I don't think I'll ever go back to using the whole egg again. With the egg whites, the cupcakes were fluffier and lighter than normal, which is always a plus. This particular recipe called for 3 eggs or 4 eggs whites, not a difficult transition. I wasn't making the cupcakes for a special occasion, so I thought it would be a good time to try out egg whites and not have to worry about it.

I also wanted to give out some information about baking with egg whites.

1. When making cakes or pastries that involve egg whites, it is vital that you prepare all and mix all the other ingredients first.
2. Using older eggs will give you egg whites that are thinner and whip up more easily and give you a larger volume. However, fresher eggs will give you more stability, but slightly lower volume after whipped.
3. It is helpful that before you use the egg whites, you let them warm up to room temperatureyo. Keep them out on the counter for 3o minutes to do this. This helps the proteins to expand more resulting in increase in volume when you whip up your egg whites.
4. Egg whites are high in protein and low in cholesterol = good for you.

So if you don't already bake with egg whites, should consider starting. It's just one small step that you can take to have a healthier life (not that cakes and cookies and cupcakes are exactly healthy).

Springtime Luncheon Sandwich

I made Blue Cheese-Walnut sandwiches this weekend. This recipe is perfect to service at Spring lunches and get-togethers. The recipe was in the March 2009 issue of Southern Living.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
• 1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
• 5 oz. package of blue cheese
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
• loaf of bread
• 1/4 cup fig, cherry, or apricot preserves
  

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Bake walnuts in a single layer in a shallow pan 6 to 8 minutes or until toasted and fragrant, stirring after 5 minutes. Cool completely (about 20 minutes).


2. Stir together walnuts and next 3 ingredients. Spread on 1 side of each bread slice. Spread fig preserves on half of bread slices; top with remaining bread slices, cheese sides down. Chill sandwiches in airtight zip-top plastic bags up to 24 hours, if desired.

Instead of making finger sandwiches like what the article suggests, I made halved sandwiches, because this was not for a special occasion, just lunch at home. I also added apple slices to the recipe just to have that extra crunch!

Spring is in the Air

After spending the past week discussing Christmas, I thought it was time to move forward a few months and focus on the season that is upon us: SPRING! I love spring. I love the colors associated with Spring, the flowers, warm (yet not humid) weather. Pretty much everything except the pollen.

To celebrate the beginning of Spring and a beautiful Little Rock weekend (got up to 80 degrees!) I wanted to bake a cake. But I wanted to do something I had never done before, because variety is important!

I made a lemon flavored cake with cream cheese icing that I gradually added 3-4 drops of yellow food coloring to in order to create a pastel yellow. I made a 9" round cake and an 8" round cake (even though the 8" pan looked more like a 7" pan, which was good, because I wanted it to be different sized layers). After letting the 2 cakes cool on a rack for 45 min-1 hour I put them on a pink plate which was on my rotating cake stand. I iced the top of the 9" cake then centered the 8" cake on top of it and iced the top.

Then I began icing the sides of the cakes. For the tops of the cake I used my large icing spatula and for the sides I used my small icing spatula.

For the larger pearl border, I used Wilton's tip #12 and for the smaller pearl border I used Wilton's tip #5. I decided to to the larger border for the top of the 8" cake and the bottom of the 9" cake around the plate. Then the #5 for the smaller pearls around the base of the 8" cake.

To add that extra Spring touch, I sliced a lemon and arranged it on top of the cake with some bright green leaves from a lemon tree we have in our backyard.

Not the hardest cake to make, but it was a lot of fun. I opted out of using lemon icing, because I thought that might be too much lemon. Ben found that squeezing the lemon juice on the individual slices of cake made it taste even more delicious! Be looking for more Spring goodies later this week!

Christmas Party Menu

This post is about the menu Ben and I planned for my parents' Christmas party. Not to brag, but I think it was a nice variety of food. This is also the party where the gingerbread men and Christmas tree cookies were served. I'll add pictures of the food and table decorations later when I find where I saved them. Without further ado, here's the menu:

Festive Sausage Balls with Mustard-Mayo Dip

Ingredients

• 1 pound bulk breakfast sausage
• 8 ounces finely shredded Cheddar cheese
• 3 cups biscuit baking mix
• 1/2 cup finely minced green onion
• 1/4 cup finely minced red bell pepper

Preparation
Combine all ingredients and mix well. This can be done by hand, with a heavy duty mixer, or in a large food processor. Shape into small balls and place on a baking sheet (with sides). Bake at 350° for 12 to 15 minutes, until browned on bottoms. If desired, serve with Mustard-Mayo Dip. Link here.

Mustard-Mayo Dip

Ingredients

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 2 to 3 teaspoons prepared yellow mustard
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon dillweed

Preparation

Combine all ingredients. Serve with sausage balls. Makes about 1 cup of dip. Link here.

Applelicious Sandwiches

Prep: 20 min., Cook: 21 min. Makes 14 appetizer sandwiches

Ingredients

• 2 gala apples
  
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
  
• 1 (8-oz.) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (4.4-oz.) container blue cheese crumbles
• 1 tablespoon honey
• Freshly ground pepper to taste
• thin bread slices
• 1 (5-oz.) package arugula, thoroughly washed
• 2 tablespoons butter

Preparation

Thinly slice apples. Heat chopped walnuts in a small nonstick skillet over medium heat, stirring often, 3 to 5 minutes or until toasted and fragrant. Combine cream cheese, blue cheese crumbles, honey, and toasted walnuts until blended. Add freshly ground pepper to taste. Spread 1 side of each of 28 thin bread slices with 1 Tbsp. cream cheese mixture. Divide 1/2 of the arugula among 14 bread slices. Top with apple slices and remaining 14 bread slices, cream cheese mixture sides down. Melt 1 Tbsp. butter on a griddle over medium heat. Cook 7 sandwiches 3 to 4 minutes on each side until golden and cheese is melted. Repeat procedure with 1 Tbsp. butter and remaining sandwiches.

Tip: If you don't have a griddle, omit butter, and cook sandwiches, in batches, in a lightly greased large nonstick skillet 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until golden and cheese is melted. Link here.

Tortellini Kebabs

Ingredients

• red and green dyed, cheese stuffed tortellini noodles
  
• whole black olives
• cherry tomatoes
  
• Italian dressing
  
• wooden kebab sticks cut in half
  

Preparation

Prepare the noodles as directed on the package. Put noodles in a bowl and add Italian dressing until desired taste. Arrange kebab sticks alternating between tortellini, olive, tortellini, tomato, tortellini. Refrigerate until time to serve.

Olive Pecan Spread

Ingredients

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 (5 oz.) jar sliced green olives, drained
• 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
• baguette or other type of bread to serve with the spread

Preparation
Mix together the cream cheese, mayonnaise, olives and pecans in a bowl. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving. Slice the bread. Link here.

Hot Crab Spread

Ingredients

• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
• 1 can (approx. 7 oz.) crab, drained, cartilage removed
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dry sherry
• 1 tablespoons lemon juice
• dash cayenne pepper
• 1/3 cup silvered almonds
  

Preparation
Heat oven to 350°. In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese, crab, sherry, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce. Mix to blend well. Spoon crab mixture into a small shallow baking dish; sprinkle almonds evenly over top. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Serve with a sliced baguette. Makes about 1 1/2 to 2 cups. Link here.

This menu was definitely fun to prepare, but sometimes a challenge because of a lack of oven space. I tried to prepare what I could the night before (noodles, dips, olive spread, etc.) then preparing the rest the night of the party. I used Southern Living, a Southern Appetizers website, and just googled for ideas and pulled everything together. I hope this has all made sense and is easy enough to follow.

Decorating for Christmas

My parents built a vacation home on a mountain in Arkansas and that's where we spent Christmas this year, so we needed to figure out what kind of decorations/theme we were going to go with since it would be our first Christmas at the mountain house. Since the house is on a mountain, in the woods, the most obvious theme was nature/woodsy and that's what we went with.

I know this post has nothing to do with baking, but it has to do with Christmas and that's what this week is all about!

I tried not buy a whole lot for this tree, because I wanted to make things from limbs and pine cones to make it more authentic, but some stores have great nature items for Christmas trees that were just too good to pass up. I bought fake birds (yes, fake birds) to hang in the tree. They went really well with the nature theme. I also bought plaid ribbon with wire in it so it's easier to shape around the tree branches. I found large (very large) plastic acorns and scattered them throughout the tree. Red berries were also very prevalent on the branches and the fireplace mantle in the house. I found that I could buy fewer berry branches if I fanned them out as much as possible.

The homemade decorations consisted of large pine cones with red ribbon hot-glued on them so they could hang from the tree. Also, Ben and I made wooden stars out of small sticks. We broke the sticks so that we could have 6" pieces. First we made a cross, then put 2 sticks on the diagonals and hot-glued them together and put a small pine cone over the hot-glued center just to add a little extra flair (does that make sense?). I think that the cutest homemade decoration was the bundle of cinnamon sticks tied together with a gold or red ribbon. We added small fake berries and branches to make them look more nature-like.

At the top of the tree, instead of putting a star or angel, we put a large rooster, and then added these sticks with feather-covered styrofoam balls on them (which my sister hated, but I loved).

I bought the decorations at either Hobby Lobby or Garden Ridge. Both had 50% sales before Christmas, which is always a plus!

For the dinner table, my mom and I bought 3 birch wood vases from Pottery Barn. I put small styrofoam blocks in the bottom of them so I could stick pine needles, berries, and other things in the vase and they would stay. The 2 table runners were also from Pottery Barn and we decided to use 2 shorter runners, instead of 1 long runner just to add a different element to the table.

Ben and I went on a walk around the house and we saw the perfect Charlie Brown tree! We decided that it was absolutely necessary to cut it down and bring it back to the house and have our own Charlie Brown tree outside on the porch. So cute!

Gingerbread Cookies

During the Christmas Season, I also made gingerbread men cookies. I purchased the cookie cutter at Eggshells Kitchen Co. in Little Rock. At that time they only had a gingerbread man cookie cutter, but I was in there recently and they had a gingerbread woman, so of course I had to get one! I really like these cookie cutters because they are a good size, not too small but not too big.

The recipe I used I found on cooks.com. It's probably the simplest gingerbread cookie recipe I've ever seen.

GINGERBREAD MEN COOKIES

2 3/4 cup of flour
1/2 tsp. of soda
1 tsp. of ginger
1/2 tsp. of cinnamon
1/2 tsp. of salt
1/2 cup of shortening
1/4 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup of molasses
1 beaten egg
1 tsp. of hot water
1 tsp. of vinegar

Mix all ingredients. Roll onto a well floured surface. Cut into gingerbread men. Place on a well greased cookie sheet dusted with flour. Bake at 350 degrees until brown, about 8 minutes or so, depending on the oven.

After letting the gingerbread men cool on a cooling rack I began to ice them. I didn't really ice them like I did the Christmas trees, because gingerbread cookies are not covered in icing (much to the disappointment of some people). Instead, I used a round tip and icing bag with vanilla icing and outlined the cookies and put icing dots down the middle in order to make sure that the redhots could stick. You can't have gingerbread cookies without redhots!

Make sure you use plenty of flour when you are rolling out the dough and putting the cookies onto the baking sheet, because this dough becomes sticky very quickly. As you can tell, some of these gingerbread men are not perfect. Some look like they are leaping through the air or doing a weird dance move. That's because when I was transferring them to the baking sheet their arms or legs landed differently (if that makes any sense). But I kind of like it. It makes them unique. Next year keep an eye out for the most adorable gingerbread women! I wish I had had that cookie cutter this year, but I couldn't find the perfect one and I didn't want to settle for a cookie cutter that was not the same size as the gingerbread man, because that just wouldn't be right.

Christmas Cookies

About a week before Christmas we had a snow/ice day and I did not have to come into work (woo!). After sleeping in a couple of hours, I decided it was time to get up and do something with my day and since my parents were having a Christmas party that weekend, it was obvious that I should make something for that. I decided to make Christmas cookies. They were shaped like trees and stars, but I only have a picture of the trees.

I used the sugar cookie recipe from this post and the icing recipe from this post. For the tree decorations I use pre-made icing, because the icing that you use to ice the cookies would be too runny for the details. You can do the tree decorations in whatever color you want, but I chose colors that would stand out on the cookie. For the stars, I made yellow icing and used a star tip. For icing the trees, I found it went faster if you use a sponge brush. So I used a 1" brush. This was a great project for a cold, icy day!

Festivus for the Rest of Us

For the past couple of years, Ben's dad's side of the family has started to celebrate Festivus. For those of you who are not fans of Seinfeld, here's a link to Wikipedia's definition of Festivus. This year, I made a Festivus cake, but since the holiday does not have certain colors or a theme really, I had to be creative. I thought about what actually happens on Festivus: the airing of grievances, feats of strength, the presence of a steel pole (or the Festivus pole). Then I began to think how I could incorporate those into a cake. Let me tell you, that was difficult.

The cake ended up looking like (or is supposed to look like) a sheet of white paper on which a person has written their grievances. Then I tried to make a Festivus pole. With the help of Ben's mom, we figured out that by wrapping aluminum foil around the cardboard pole-like-thing that comes on a hanger (removing it from the hanger, of course) it would resemble a pole.

The grievances I picked were just general ones: bad grammar/spelling, littering. Also, I found that when writing with icing it's best to keep it to 1-2 words. I believe the cake was yellow cake and cream cheese icing (I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record with the cake/icing combination, but people request it, honestly).

Just for kicks, I'm including a picture of Ben's Granddad doing his feat of strength. Pretty amazing, huh?