Archive for October, 2009

Weekly Recipe Roundup

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Here are the past week’s worth of yummy recipes posted over on our recipe blog:

Banana Walnut Brittle

Candy Apples

Ginger-Molasses Sponge Toffee

Pistachio Brittle

Bananas Foster Pralines

Yum. Enjoy!

Bananas Foster Pralines

Friday, October 30th, 2009

This recipe combines 2 of New Orleans’ most popular desserts – The flavors of Bananas Foster, in the form of a praline! Highly addictive.

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Pistachio Brittle

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Another version of a more traditional standby! My husband ADORES pistachios – this brittle is a holiday favorite at our house! Makes a great gift, also.

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Ginger Molasses Sponge Toffee

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

This is a unique take on an earlier recipe I posted, Sponge Toffee. While traditional sponge toffee was always a favorite as a kid, I developed this recipe to satisfy my more mature tastes as an adult.

This sponge toffee was inspired by one of my favorite goodies, my grandmother’s ginger-molasses cookies. (Recipe coming in December!)

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AWESOME news!!!

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

We’ve had an exciting thing going on here for the past few weeks, and I’ve been dying to spill the news. Well, everything is all in place, so here goes!

THINKGEEK.COM IS NOW CARRYING OUR JACKED UP JAVA BROWNIE MIXES!!!111!!!!1!!ONE!

YES! Hubby and I have always been big fans of Think Geek, so this has been an extra-difficult secret to keep. We are feeling so l337, it hurts!

Thinkgeek has always been my one-stop shop when it comes to gifts for my geek of a husband, and we both love perusing their print catalog *as soon as it arrives* at our house, scanning their website for cool new items, and figuring out cool uses for some of their unique offerings.

In fact, ThinkGeek was exactly what I had in mind as I developed my Jacked Up Java mixes! I’d already created one cake mix – and several cookie mixes. That was well enough on it’s own I guess, but we got into some evil megalomaniac brainstorming. “What can we create… that we could potentially get sold on ThinkGeek?”. THAT was the genesis of the Jacked up Java line, and it thrills me to no end that it was ThinkGeek themselves who eventually became our first wholesale client for the Jacked up Java line!

It’s been an interesting, surreal handful of weeks since I first heard back from their Caffeine Guru. (and I quote: “I need to buy mix right away. BECAUSE IT’S AWESOME. I am so wired from one of your “magic” brownies.”) Since that email, we’ve:

- Made an epic grocery run, picking up more than 900 lbs in dry goods. Definitely a record for us – I usually buy my ingredients on an as-needed basis, weekly!

- Individually labelled 400 pouches, by hand, front and back. My fingernails hate me – that was a lot of sticker-peeling!

- Processed that 900 lbs of dry goods into 400 mixes. In ~40 lb batches.

- Inhaled unhealthy amounts of cocoa and caffeine during the process.

- Bagged, sealed, crated, and hauled 920lbs worth of freight.

- Yes, FREIGHT! Had to take the lot of it to Blaine to ship as freight, something we’ve never had to do before. SO exciting! The 16 boxes were put onto a pallet and wrapped, while we took photos and giggled like schoolgirls as they drove it off on a forklift. See below!:



I cannot tell you what a huge relief it was to be done all that mixing, bagging, packing, and hauling.. and to see it be taken away! We shipped it as we were on our way to our a couple weeks ago, so the time off was doubly welcome. Especially the jacuzzi – hauling that much mix really does a number on the back!

On that note, I really should give a big affectionate shout out to my husband, who has been AMAZING throughout this whole process. From hauling the goods to the kitchen to spending LATE hours there with me, doing all of the weighing and bagging.. to hauling boxes, providing shoulder rubs when I need it, and more.. he’s just been wonderful. I married well!

So, that’s about it. They’re starting off with the brownie mix, but may end up picking up the cookie mix later. FYI ThinkGeek: our Jacked up Java cookies have a famous handful of fans : the Aces of Cakes themselves, the freaks over at Charm City Cakes in Baltimore. You know, just to name drop a little :) I had sent a couple batches of the buzzworthy cookies to Mary Alice, as a thank you for a recent referral.. and got the coolest email comment ever:

“Oh my GOD. Everyone LOVED them. They made us go coocoo – in a good way. Those things are LOADED! We loved them thank you thank you thank you! You’re the sweetest! – Mary Alice Y.”

Just sayin, that’s all. :)

Anyway, I think I’ll cut this short before I go into full out ThinkGeek fangirling… :)

Check out our Jacked up Java Brownie Mix on the ThinkGeek site here: ThinkGeek.com – Jacked Up Java Brownie Mixes @ ThinkGeek.

Check out the rest of our mixes (including the Jacked up Java cookie & Brownie mixes!) Here.

No matter which site you buy them from, enjoy responsibly! They make awesome gifts, too!

Candy Apples

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Candy Apples are a fun activity for the family, are cheap and easy to make, inspire nostalgia, and are a tasty way to use some of the bountiful apples this season. What’s not to love?

Well.. aside from sugar burns, anyway. While this is an easy recipe, I recommend keeping little hands away from the cooking sugar, and ideally away from the dipping process as well. Kids can have just as much fin picking out the apples, the flavors, etc… without the risk!

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Banana Walnut Brittle

Monday, October 26th, 2009

While Peanut Brittle is always nice, I do like to get crazy with things every once in awhile. This is one of my favorite variations on an old standard! This is also particularly nice for gift giving at the holidays!

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Decorated Sugar Cookies

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Well, Halloween is just around the corner, so now’s a great time to post our recipe for decorated sugar cookies!

These are great to serve guests at your halloween party, or as a weekend activity for kids, or even to hand out to your favorite Treat or Treaters. Very easy to make, and can be a lot of fun!

Cookie Ingredients

2 cups butter, softened
2 1/3 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs
4 egg yolks – Reserve egg whites for icing!
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract*
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
7 cups all purpose flour

Icing Ingredients

4 egg whites
1 Tbsp lemon juice
4-6 cups powdered/confectioner’s sugar

In a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until smooth and fluffy. Add in eggs and egg whites, a little at a time, beating well between each addition. Add vanilla extract, and mix until well incorporated and smooth.

Mix remaining 3 ingredients together, carefully stir into wet ingredients until fully incorporated.

Wrap dough in plastic film, chill for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, grease cookie sheets.

On a floured counter, roll cookie dough out to about 1/4″ thick (can be up to 1/2″ thick if you prefer a thicker cookie). Use cookie cutters to cut out whatever shapes you’d like, place cookies 2″ apart on greased cookie sheets.

Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes, or until bottoms look lightly golden. Allow cookies to cool on cookie sheets for at least 5 minutes before moving. Cookies need to cool completely before decorating.

In clean stand mixer, whip egg whites until foamy. Add lemon juice, whip for another minute. Slowly add powdered sugar until cookie icing reaches desired consistency. You will want a thicker frosting for piping details and borders. If you’re wanting to “flow” the icing within piped borders, icing can be thinned with a little lemon juice or water.

* 2 tsp Anise extract can be substituted for a fun variation. I especially like using anise (black licorice flavor) for doing cookies that will be shaped/decorated like black cats or bats.

Weekly Recipe Roundup

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Here are the past week’s worth of yummy recipes posted over on our recipe blog:

Decorated Sugar Cookies

Sponge Toffee

Lynchburg Lemonade Cupcakes

Grilled Mediterranean Chicken Pouches

Chicken, Shrimp, & Sausage Jambalaya

Yum. Enjoy!

Vendor Spotlight – Violet’s Flowers

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

You know, I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to have a vendor spotlight on my blog. There are just SO many vendors out there, it’s impossible to meet them all.. and some vendors are just so awesome, they deserve a spotlight!

This vendor spotlight is going to be a bit difficult to write without sounding like a total dork. Ideally, I’d like to give completely unbiased reviews on excellent vendors – but this spotlight is not only on a great vendor, it’s about one of my favorite people in the world.

Ladies and Gentleman, it’s my honor to introduce you to the work of Jean Cowles, from Violet’s Flowers!

Violet’s tagline is “Sassy Flowers for Weddings and Events”, which fails to mention the sassy chick who does the flowers! LOVE her!

Jean is a special event floral designer. She has a sassy little studio where she works on her art, prefering to focus on the aspects of event design that she loves, rather than running a full scale florist shop. It was in this studio that we recently worked on our 8 page article in Flowers & Magazine(!!!!). We had such a blast, it almost feels like the old “What happens in Vegas..” rule should apply. Well, “What happens in Prior Lake..”, anyway. :)

Check out these two photos from a recent wedding she designed:

(Those beautiful photos are from Kelly Brown Weddings.. very talented photographer.)

I think that Jean’s portfolio of work – on her website, above, and from the Flowers & article really speaks for itself, so I’d like to address something that is – in my books – is as important as talent – personality. Jean is a very talented floral artist, with a great sense of style and eye for design.. but she is also just a really amazing person.

Jean seems to be completely immune from bad moods! She’s perpetually happy and perky, but manages to be that way without making you want to slap her. Just a genuinely nice, funny, and sweet person. A 5 minute chat with Jean could brighten anyone’s day, and I should know – she’s personally pulled me out of the “wedding industry blues” on more than one occasion.

As a fellow vendor, I can tell you that Jean is super easy to work with – an absolute joy. She’s one of those vendors that us other vendors do a little happy dance over, when told who we’ll be working with.

So, if you’re involved with the wedding of a ridiculously fun couple (and you must be, you’re on my site after all!), you should definitely arrange a meeting with Jean. Quick and easy way to guarantee that at least the florals part of planning your wedding will not only be stress free, but be a lot of fun!

Violet’s Flowers
Web: Violet’s Flowers
Phone: 651 307 7882