Banana, Peanut Butter & Chocolate Vegan Ice Cream

Kaylah from The Dainty Squid just posted a super yummy recipe for Banana, Peanut Butter & Chocolate Vegan Ice Cream! With a name like that, who could resist trying it out? And I had all of the ingredients already, so that was a plus. This ice cream is super easy to make, and oh so good. You can get the full recipe here on the ♥elycia blog. (Can I just say, I absolutely love those two blogs. I have a serious style crush on both of those lovely ladies!)

It was a good thing I decided to make this last night, because our friends Thane and Esther came over today to play games and Esther can't eat dairy. She was so excited to have a non-dairy ice cream alternative while we all ate our desserts! I'll definitely be making this again. Next time I'm going to play with add-ins after it's all blended. Like diced banana chunks or peanuts!

MORE Cakes!

I have been baking up a storm this month! First, I made this mini-cake for Mother's Day. Then this week I baked an awesome rainbow cake for a fundraiser cake auction and a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse birthday cake for a friend. The rainbow cake was fun!

Here it is at the cake auction with the Queen of Lollipops herself.  Yay for cheesy animated gifs!

And here is the Mickey cake. I only had time to snap a couple of photos before I had to leave. The clubhouse is made of fondant. It was tricky, but it turned out super cute!

Mini Cake Challenge - May

 Here is my mini cake for May. I decided to do a Mother's Day cake for when my mother-in-law came to visit. Overall, I like the cake, but I don't LOVE the cake. It turned out alright. A little boring. This cake was my inspiration, and I should have stuck with the green. The blue turned out a little too bright I think. And I still need to practice my lettering. Hmmm... that gives me an idea for next month! *plotting*

I love how the colors in these photos is a little crazy though.

Mini Cake Challenge Past Months: January, February, (I missed March, I had a baby!), April

Oh, hi there.

The past week has gone by in a blur! We had a lot of fun with family in town last weekend and it's taken me 4 days to get back into a normal routine! I DID have the house cleaned all up on Tuesday, but I decided to do some sewing and well... Let's just say, my creative process tends to be a bit chaotic.

So what better way to end my bloggy silence than sharing this recent obsession? Peep smores! (I totally just wrote poop smores... eww) Microwave a peep for 20 seconds, and stick it on a chocolate covered graham cracker. Oh. My. Yum. I may or may not have eaten 5 of these today... It's settled. I'm never going to lose this baby weight...

Best Cookies IN THE WORLD.

Today has been an extremely long, and extremely good day! But that is a story for another day, because I'm too tired to write! BUT I couldn't go to sleep without sharing these absolutely beautiful cookies!!

So, these Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies have been popping up all over the web lately. I thought they sounded amazing, so I sent the recipe to a friend of mine to make for an activity we had tonight. (Not the activity I THOUGHT we were having!! But more on that later!)

And this is what we ended up with!! Are they not the most fantastic cookies ever! So they may not look EXACTLY like the recipe photos, but they make me happy ♥ So thanks Lexi for the wonderful cookies. I'm off to bed, got another long day ahead of me tomorrow!

Best Valentine's Ever

Ok, I know Valentine's Day is past and gone. But I'm not really into celebrating Valentine's Day. I'm more into celebrating the Valentine's Day clearance sales! I love cute, romantic, mushy things every other day of the year. And I especially love them for 50% off.

I think this is the BEST Valentine's Day clearance purchase I have ever made. In fact, I might even say it's one of the best edible purchases I have ever made. So much fun!

The kit comes with 35 heart candies and an edible marker so you can create your own 'conversation hearts'. The kit was $2.50 at Walmart, and that's before the 50% off mark down! I bought two boxes, but I think I need to go back tonight and pick up some more because I can't find them anywhere online. Of course, the Mr. and I had SO much fun coming up with some super dorky things to draw on our candies!

 

Have I mentioned that I absolutely LOVE Spock? ♥

Anyone else have some hilarious and dorky Valentine's Day ideas for these sweet guys? I still have a whole box left!

Mini Cake Challenge - February

Well, so far the one birthday resolution I've been able to keep is my challenge to decorate one mini cake a month! Of course, it's only February soooo... 2 down 10 to go! Here is my 'much-cuter-than-last-month's-attempt' Valentine's Day cake!

I definitely need to work on my leaves, but I'm so happy with the end product this month! The cake is red velvet, and I just baked a circle cake and cut the heart shape out myself. This cake was one giant pain to frost though... Red velvet crumbs everywhere!

 PS. I really love this fella ♥

Mini Cake Challenge - January

Number 12 on my "26 Before 27" list is to decorate a mini cake each month. And since Monday was my birthday, I decided this month to make myself a tiny birthday cake. It came out terrible.. I almost don't want to post pictures of it!! The icing I used was WAY too thin. I've never really used icing tips before either, and I've learned that I don't have a very steady hand.

Just so I don't feel like a complete fail, here are some of the cakes I've made in the past. See, I'm not really that bad of a decorator!!

 Fondant with gum paste flowers

 Jason's zombie cake (Had a little too much fun with the red food coloring haha)

Juniper's 2nd birthday cupcakes

So without further hesitation, here is my hideously girly, super runny, see-how-many-icing-tips-I-can-use-from-my-new-set birthday cake. Lessons learned - 1. Next time use better icing... 2. I need some more food coloring options!

And of course it wouldn't be a cake decorating night without my traditional leftovers cupcakes! Since the cake is so tiny, I use the leftover cake batter to make a small batch of cupcakes and use them to squirt all of the leftover icing from my piping bag. (I hate to waste something so yummy!) Is it sad that I almost like these more than the cake itself?

Just wait, by the end of the year I'm going to be a world-famous cake decorator.

Culinary Adventures - Peanut Butter Cups!

Today I was inspired by this post over at The Dainty Squid and this post on The Hungry Mouse, and I decided to make homemade peanut butter cups! Definitely a fun (and messy) way to spend an hour or so! Next time we are going to experiment with fillings. The smores ones look AMAZING.

A few of these will be making their way to a certain someone in Utah as soon as I get my butt to the post office, and the rest will most likely be consumed by a ravenous husband who LOVES chocolate and peanut butter, or a crazy toddler who loves... anything sweet!

Juniper approves ♥

Wedding Crazyness

My past week has been filled with all sorts of wedding preparations. I altered a wedding dress (turned it into a corset back), made a pretty veil, took in a bride's maid dress, made a flower girl dress for my little cutie, sewed matching shoes and made necklaces for the two flower girls, AND baked a pretty awesome wedding cake! *PHEW!* The wedding was this past Saturday. Congratulations Steve and Iris!!