Last year when I threw my sisters baby shower( you can view the awesome-ness here ), I didn’t want to give away a favor that was a cheap-y piece of plastic or something that someone was just going to throw away. I was going to make homemade jam to send home with the guests, but I just didn’t feel like all of that work, so I decided on Vanilla Sugar.
Vanilla Sugar is something I ALWAYS have on hand. I have a continual container of sugar that I just throw my used vanilla beans in, so I always have vanilla sugar to use in my baked goods, coffee, oatmeal…etc.
Vanilla Beans can be SUPER CRAZY expensive if you buy them at the store. I purchase mine in bulk on ebay for a considerably lower price.
I also gave homemade sugar to my kids teachers at the beginning of the year. Homemade gifts are always the best.

I made this batch pretty big because I had to make like 50 Mason pint jars of it, but the ratio of sugar to vanilla bean I used was
2 cups sugar to 1 vanilla bean.

* You can keep vanilla sugar on hand indefinitely. Anytime you use a vanilla bean, just toss it into your sealed sugar container and give it a shake.

*If you are making vanilla sugar for the first time and plan to keep it on hand, allow the vanilla bean to do its magic for about 2 weeks in a sealed container w/ the sugar. Give it a shake every so often.

Get you some beautiful PLUMP and MOIST vanilla Beans

Cut the bean in half

Slice it down the middle…..

But leave one end intact

See the shiny black inside..Those are the vanilla Seeds

With your finger or with the back of a knife, scrape out the seeds

Plop the seeds in your bowl with the sugar.

Heres the fun part, take your fingers and distribute the vanilla seeds into the sugar.

Keep mixing…it takes a bit. And soon you will have vanilla sugar.

To package it all nice and pretty, see below….

Get some pint mason jars, fabric and ribbon.

Put one vanilla bean in the mason jar.

Pour the vanilla sugar into the mason jar.

Pop the lid thing-y on it.

Cut a circle out of fabric, slightly larger than the jar top.

Place the fabric circle on top of the lid.

Screw the ring do-hicky over the fabric.

Finish off with a simple ribbon and a tag if you wish.

New Years Eve was great. My husband decided he wanted to have a party last minute. And by last minute, I mean the day before. Gotta love em’.
If you read this post, you know that none of my clothes fit me, so I began stressing out on what I was going to wear for the party. I mean, people usually get all fancied up for New Years.
So I decided to make our New Years party a PAJAMA  party! Everyone had to come in the P.J’s. Sure, I still put on some make up, but let me tell you how comfy I was!!!!
I had too much to drink…doesn’t happen often, but when it does….good lord.  Diet Coke and Cherry Flavored Vodka is VERY easy to chug down.
I was dancing all night long. One low point was, dancing to Beastie Boys- Brass Monkey with my dog under one arm and a wooden spoon in the other hand as a microphone.
I had fun

I am wishing each and everyone of you a Happy 2012.
I can’t thank you all enough for continually stopping by my blog and reading what I have to say. You all are very much appreciated. You make doing what I do worth every calorie!!!!

So onto my top 10 recipe/posts of 2011 (according to Google Analytics)

#10 Rustic Love Bird Wedding Cake

For the more photos of this beautiful wedding cake I made..click over to this post.

#9 Filet Mignon

For tips on how to cook the perfect Filet Mignon click here

#8 Sugar Cookie Tips and Icing Tips

For my Sugar Cookie and Icing tips head on over to here.

#7 Rice Pudding from Left Over Rice
This has been in the top 10 every year. This post was when my blog was only 3 months old!

Click here for the Rice Pudding Recipe

#6 Lemon Bars

Click here for the Lemon Bar Recipe

#5 Pretzel Rolo Turtles

For the recipe for the Pretzel Rolo Turtles click here.

#4 Ice Cream Bread

Ice Cream Bread Recipe is here

#3 Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal

The ever popular Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal recipe is here

#2 Antipasto Kabobs

Antipasto Kabobs are here

#1 Nutella Hot Chocolate- Sooooooooo Addictive and delicious. My Nutella Hot Chocolate was ALLLL over the web!

Nutella Hot Chocolate recipe lives HERE

Cookie sheets get lined with parchment paper, brownie pans get lines with parchment paper and certainly cake pans.
I DARE not bake a cake without it being lined with the magic paper. No more cakes sticking to the bottom of the cake pan. It is glorious stuff I tell you.  Oh, you know what? It makes for easy clean up, since my husbands cleans the dishes, he loves to see the parchment paper out.

I am going to show you a faster and easier way to line your cake pans with parchment paper. I might save you 30 seconds or so. Instead of tracing out your cake pan and then cutting out an entire circle, try it this way……..

You need- your pan, parchment paper, a pencil and scissors

Tear out enough parchment paper to cover the bottom of the pan

Trace the pan onto the paper with a pencil

Perfect Circle

Line up the pencil marks by holding the paper up to the light

Fold the paper in half

Fold the paper in half again, again by lining up the pencil marks

Cut the paper about 1/8-1/4" from the pencil mark

Done

Unfold

Place the parchment paper in the pan

To wash or not to wash?-That is the question.

Some people brush them off with a paper towel. Some people rinse them in water.

How do YOU clean your mushrooms?

Here are some ADORABLE Flower Pot Lollipop Cupcakes that I created for Pillsbury.
Are they not the cutest things you have ever seen?

Here is a video tutorial on how to make them.

FLOWER POT LOLLIPOP CUPCAKES
Makes 24 cupcakes

1 box Pillsbury Funfetti Cake mix
3 eggs
1 cup water
1/3 cup oil
24 cupcake wrappers
24 Lollipops
48 mint leaves
1 can Pillsbury Easy Frost No Fuss Frosting in Vanilla Dream

Preheat the oven to 350.
In a medium bowl, mix the cake mix, oil, water and eggs together. Beat for 2 minutes until smooth.
Line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners. Fill each cupcake cavity up two thirds of the way.
Bake for 18-22 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to completely cool.
Swirl the top of the cupcake with the Pillsbury Easy Frost No Fuss Frosting.
Place one lollipop in the middle of the frosted cupcake.
Place 2 mint leaves at on the cupcake as the “leaves”.

Building flavors makes all the difference in the world. You can take your normal dinner that you throw everything in your pan at the same time that tastes kinda boring to a whole new level.
So how do you “build flavors”? Lemme splain.

SEAR..Sear your meat. To do this, start off with a piece of meat that you have dried off with a paper towel. Season it to your liking. In a pan(preferably a stainless steal pan) add a TINY bit of oil over medium high heat. Add your meat to the hot pan and let it be. Do not touch it. Let it sear for about 3-4 minutes before you flip or stir it. It should have a nice brown crust on it.
Now the meat has most likely released some of it juices and started to form some brown bits in the pan. This is good! Now onto the next step.

DEGLAZING THE PAN.. So you think those brown bits from the searing look nasty in your pan? Nope they are not, promise. They are little bits of concentrated flavor from the juices of whatever you just seared. Brown bits=good bits. To deglaze your pan, you need a liquid. I prefer wine(red or white), but you can use stock or even water. Pour the liquid of your choice into the hot pan and use a wooden spoon to scrape up all that yummy brown gunk from the pan.

REDUCING YOUR LIQUID.. You just deglazed your pan with a bit of liquid, now you want to make a simple pan sauce. Easy. Add  more liquid to the pan. Season and let the liquid simmer until half of it has evaporated. Letting the liquid reduce by half concentrates the flavor.

OTHER TIPS..
If you are cooking with onions, you either want to put a little sear on those or camralize them before adding them to the dish. If you add them to your dish raw, you will not get that sweet and delicious flavor from the precooked version. I usually add my onions right after I sear my meat.

Spices.. I have seen chefs on the food network toast their spices and they say this also builds flavors. But honestly, I am not a chef and I don’t have the time to get that fancy. So I just use the highest quality herbs and spices I can get and generally use fresh instead of dried.

Salt..Salt can be your friend. I ONLY use Coarse Kosher salt when I cook. I keep it in a container with a lid by my stove so I can take pinches of it for my food. If you feel that your dish is flat or your just can’t put your finger on what you need. Try adding a pinch of salt.

Still flat in the flavor department? You might need a little bit of acid. no, not salicylic acid, we are not making zip cream here people..I mean a food acid. An acid like lemon, lime, vinegar or soy sauce. They can brighten up any meal.

Sugar.. you made spaghetti sauce and it is just too acidic…try adding a table spoon of sugar to cut down on the acidity.

Anyone else have any good flavor building tips? Please do share.

I went lazy simple this year. 2 colors of icing to mix. Some white Non-Pareils. That’s it. I mean, not as simple as running out to the store to buy your kids classes some cookies..cause that is what most normal people would do. However, I never claimed to be normal.

Oh, and don’t forget to enter my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker Giveaway. All the cool kids are doing it! Click HERE to enter.

CLICK HEREfor the cookie and icing recipe and wonderful tips on how to decorate sugar cookies.

All wrapped up and ready to go

Don’t forget to enter my giveaway!
K..I am not really sure what the highlight of this post is…how freakin pretty this cake is or how devilishly delicious the frosting is.
Cake first.
The ruffle cake. Isn’t it so pretty? Like really, really pretty? Feminine wedding cake pretty? It wasn’t a wedding cake though, I made it for my husbands birthday. No, my husband is not a girly boy..in-fact he is the opposite, well except for the fact that he is a shoe and clothes whore..but we won’t go there. I love you babe. He was VERY picky on what kind of cake he wanted. He wanted a yellow cake with 1/2 nutella filling and 1/2 strawberry filling . No people, not 1 layer filled with nutella and they second layer filled with strawberries. He wanted the cake filled half and half with the fillings side by side in the layers. FREAK.
Did I say I love you babe? But he didn’t specify how he wanted it frosted. HA! I remember seeing the “ruffle cake” in a magazine somewhere, maybe in the Doctors office. I am pretty sure it was Martha Stewart. I googled “ruffle” cake and her site pops up so I assuming that is where I saw it.
Anyways, I loved it when I saw it and I was just waiting for the opportunity to make it.
So I thought I would use my husbands birthday cake as the guinea pig cake.
I think it is stunning. And it is soooo easy to do.
Put a thin crumb coat of icing on you cake, preferably swiss meringue buttercream(recipe below).
Fit your piping bag with a  medium sized petal tip (I’m pretty sure its a tip size #103). Fill the bag with icing.
Starting at the bottom of the cake while holding your piping bag vertically against the cake with the skinny part of the tip facing out, zig zag back and forth up the cake until you reach the top. Go all the way around the cake. EASY and FOOLPROOF, I promise!

Start out with your baked, cooled sugar cookie.

Make a nice swirl around the cookie with your color of choice. Work quickly throughout the whole process or your icing will dry.

Make another swirl with another color.

And yet another swirl.

Swirl swirl swirl. Don’t worry if it looks messy.

Add some white for a nice contrast of colors.

Now take a toothpick, and drag it thought the icing. Start in the middle of the cookie and work your way out.

Continue dragging your toothpick until you have gone around the whole cookie.

After you have achieved your desired effect, with your cookie still on the table, shake it back and forth to level the icing out. If you have any gaps in the icing, use your toothpick to fill them in.

Emms’s cake. Sloppy and messy. I blame it on the bad batch of fondant. She told me exactly how she wanted it to look. Actually she drew me a picture of how she wanted it to look.

“Tie Dye” inside! You should have heard the squeals from all the kids when I cut into the cake. You would have thought Justin Bieber was jumping out of it. They thought it was the coolest cake ever.

“Tie Dye” cupcakes. I used a 1M tip and stripped my icing bag to get this effect.