Mother Nature at It's Finest...

or not so much. I came home the other night to find 20+ slimy creepy crawly slugs on our sidewalk. They ranged in size from one inch to 5 inches long. They were everywhere! It was dark out and once my headlights beamed upon them, they scattered before I could get my camera. So, I took a pic of one that was left near the doorway.

Then, yesterday, Jason noticed a rather large bird in the backyard. When I went to look, I couldn't believe how big it was. It was a couple hundred feet away, and I couldn't tell what it was. I decided to venture outside, with my camera in tow of course, and got close enough to get a decent shot. Once I was closer I figured out that it was a vulture. I guess I scared it and it took off in flight then began to circle around above me. I'll admit, I thought it was going to dive down at me any moment. So I came inside and showed the pictures to Jason. He thought it was a turkey buzzard. I googled it and indeed it was...we were both correct. It was a turkey vulture, often incorrectly called a turkey buzzard. Buzzards are part of the hawk family though. Come to find out, the turkey vulture is a gentle creature that can soar for up to 6 miles without flapping it's wings even once. It can have a wingspan of 6 feet! It feeds on carcasses, insects, and some plants and foilage. It can dive down upon prey at speeds of 60 mph...thank goodness it didn't see me as it's next meal. haha I doubt that would have happened anyway-they don't feed on live animals. Jason saw six of them at one point and there were still a couple lingering this morning. I wonder if something died near the bike path and why there were so many out there.

It may be hard to see, but it was in flight-it's just below the power lines. Look at it's wingspan in comparison to the van driving by.

Cupcake Bites

Here is yet another recipe from Bakerella.com. I have been wanting to try these for a long time now. There was no special occasion. I'm thinking about making some for Halloween, only on lollipop sticks and decorating them like black cats, pumpkins and eyeballs. I love Halloween and am very anxious for it to get here. So I've been thinking about making the cakepops, and decided on a whim to make the cupcake bites for practice. It was a very long process! The concept is you make a cake, crumble it in a bowl and stir in the icing. You roll this into one inch balls and freeze them for a few minutes. You melt chocolate candy melts and fill a mold with it and then stick your cake ball in the mold. Then you stick it in the freezer for the chocolate to set. Remove and dip the cake ball into a colorful melted chocolate and decorate. Sounds easy, but it takes forever and is very messy! But the finished product looks awesome!

And tastes verrrry good!

Oreo Dirt Cake

I decided to make this dessert for our developments 4th of July pool party. This is the first time I've ever made it, and it was a lot of fun. It is one of the cutest things ever!



First you need one package of Oreo cookies (not double-stuffed).

Chop up the Oreo's in a food processor until they are fine crumbs. Set aside.

In another bowl, mix 8 oz. of cream cheese, 1/2 stick of butter, and 1 cup of powdered sugar.

Beat with electric mixer on the highest speed until mixture is smooth. Set aside.

Next, in yet another bowl, mix two packages of chocolate jell-o instant pudding with 3 1/2 cups of milk.

Place in refridgerator for 5 minutes for pudding to set.

You will need two 8 oz tubs of Cool Whip.

Fold Cool Whip into pudding mixture.

Then fold cream cheese mixture into pudding mixture.

Next, you will need either a beach pail or a flower pot. Depending on what time of year you make this, you can use a beach pail as I did for a summer event or a flower pot in the spring time. Take your beach pail or flower pot and wash it out thoroughly. Let it dry. Then layer the cookies & pudding mixture as follows: 1/3 cookies, 1/2 pudding, 1/3 cookies, 1/2 pudding, 1/3 cookies.

I used 3 packages of gummi worms as decoration. I used 1 package per cookie layer. Just place the worms on top of the first 2 layers. If you are making this in the Spring, you can use artificial flowers for decoration.

With the top layer, I pushed some of the gummi worms into the cookies making it look like they were crawling through it.

I added some blue star decoration to the pail handle.

Use the pail's shovel to serve.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Baking Brookies With Bakerella

I found this amazing blog called Bakerella on blogger. It's a woman who lives in Georgia and she loves to bake, hince the name of the blog. I wouldn't say she's a "professional", as she does not have her own bakery shop or anything; however, her work is incredible! My favorite idea of hers are the cake pops and cupcake bites. I'm going to make them both sometime and plan on making the Hello Kitty cake pops to take to Abby at Hot Topic (she looooves Hello Kitty) when we visit in August. Bakerella's blog has inspired me to attempt to bake and decorate a "professional" looking 2 or 3 tier cake as well. Really, you should visit her blog sometime: www.bakerella.blogspot.com I found the following recipe on her website, and they looked so scrumptious I had to make them. She found the recipe on Betty Crocker's website. It was simple to make, and such a genius idea. I will warn you though, that they are very rich-make sure you have a tall glass of milk nearby!



First, you will need to make a trip to the grocery store and pick up a few things. Betty Crocker has made it oh so easy on us. You will need one brownie mix and one chocolate chip cookie mix. (Don't forget to check the packages to see what other ingredients you'll need-eggs & oil.) Here's what the packages look like:



Next, make the brownie mix as directed and pour into a greased 13x9 pan. Make the cookie mix as directed on the pouch and drop by rounded tablespoons into the brownie batter. You'll want to press the dough down lightly.



Bake for 35-40 minutes in a 350 degree preheated oven. When they're done, take them out and let them cool completely. For about an hour.






After they've completely cooled, you can then frost them with either store bought chocolate frosting, or do what Bakerella and I did....use ganache (it's much tastier, trust me!).


To make the ganache you will need a 12 oz. bag of semi-sweet chocolate chip morsels. Set them aside in a medium sized bowl. (I added a few butterscoth morsels in my mixture only because I didn't have enough chocolate.)



You will also need 6 tbsp butter and 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream (which you can usually find next to the regular whipped cream at your grocery store-heavy whipping cream normally comes in "milk carton" and is liquid form-not to be confused with thick white whipped cream used for topping pies.) In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter over medium heat, stirring continuously, until it just starts to boil, then remove from heat.



Pour over the chocolate morsels. Let stand about 20 seconds, then stir until smooth, using a wire whisk. It will take quite a while to mix together....keep stirring. Do not use a mixer!



Pour over brownies and spread out mixture....you can just jiggle the pan back and forth to help spread it.



Now, here's the hard part. You have to wait for the ganache to set. This can take a VERY long time. This was the first time that I had ever made ganache. I had no idea how long it would take, so I let it sit for an hour and it still wasn't set. So, I ran to Google to find out what to do. If you want to speed up the process, you can put the pan, uncovered, in your refrigerator for 30 min. Then check and see if it's set. Keep in mind that your brownies are now going to be cold. Jason was in SUCH a hurry to try these and it was very late at night-I told him to wait until the morning, but he couldn't. So we dug into them after removing them from the fridge. They were very yummy, but if you let the pan sit on your counter for a while for everything to reach room temperature, then it tastes better.

After the ganache is finally set, cut your brookies (brownie/cookies) into small squares and enjoy! Don't you just want to pluck one right off the screen and devour it?!?