Giveaway Winner! And a taste of NOLA

My first-ever giveaway winner is Joycee from Granny Mountain! Congratulations!  The winner was chosen by random.org.  Joycee, please e-mail me your mailing address and I will get those ramekins to you ASAP!

By now you know that I went to Mardi Gras last weekend.  No trip to NOLA is complete without crawfish, oysters, and shrimp!  For our first meal in New Orleans, Ben and Rob had oysters at a restaurant called Catch.  I will admit, oysters are not my favorite, but I heard these were delicious (Ben asked me to try one and I politely declined).  For dinner the next night we had this lovely spread:

I like crawfish, unless they are too spicy, which these were on the verge of being.  At Rhodes, there were lots of students from Louisiana/people who love crawfish so we were blessed with multiple crawfish boils each spring.  In fact, we are tentatively planning one in Memphis to celebrate Alex's birthday this spring!  If you have any questions about cooking crawfish, I will have to refer you to Ben.  He was the crawsfish-cooker last May when we had one for my parents' 25th anniversary. 

Make sure you stop by next week, because I'm going to be putting my ramekins to use again this weekend and only one word can describe what I am going to make: YUM!

1 Year Blogiversary and Giveaway!

Today is my 1 year blogiversary!  I can't believe it's been a whole year since I first started this blog!  I really feel like I've come a long way in my cooking and baking.  Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read my blog and leave comments!  Because I am go grateful for all of my readers I have decided to do my very first giveaway!

The lucky winner will receive 8 white ramekins!  These are great to bake goodies in (see Molten Chocolate Cakes below!).  To enter, leave a comment by Friday, February 19 at noon CST!

You're probably wondering if I made these delicious molten chocolate cakes just for my one year blogiversary.  Well, I hate to disappoint the blogging world, but I actually made them for Ben's birthday (which was on Sunday!) and it happened to coincide with my blog's anniversary.

I was perusing is aisles at Williams Sonoma not too long ago and came across this box.

I thought to myself, "what occasion do I have coming up that I can use as an excuse to make these?" Aha!  Ben's birthday!  So I bought the box and began my search for the perfect ramekins.  Pier One was the only store that had more than 10 in stock and actually had 2 different kinds to choose from.  So I went with basic white (exactly like the ones I'll be giving away!) 

Yes, technically I used a "box" mix for Ben's birthday, but who really cares?  They tasted wonderful and I think I put so much stress into them that it was more like baking them from scratch than a box.  I did, however, make some raspberry sauce from scratch to top the cakes.

Raspberry Sauce
10 oz. package of frozen raspberries
1 tablespoon corn startch
1 tablespoon water

Let raspberries thaw.  Add raspberries, corn starch, and water to a sauce pan on medium heat.  Stir until thickened.

The cakes were to die for.  They were rich, but not too rich, and the raspberry sauce provided the perfect balance.  Thanks, again, for reading my blog!  Love!