Sliding Doors

In my alternate reality where I had an open field, lots of money and all the time in the world...

I would wear this coat, this dress and these boots...

during this afternoon picnic with my favorite people.

.

Project 365: Milestone Day 162!

One hundred and sixty-two days of adventures.
It's kinda hard to believe that I started Project 365 so long ago! 

Honestly, it only feels like a week... well, maybe a month. Surely not 162! Wow.
And, a lot of you have been along for the ride too. Thanks for an awesome 162 days everyone.

You can catch up on my daily pictures here.
.

Project Bake: Cherpumple Disaster

A week ago, I would have considered myself a pretty adept baker. 'Give me a recipe and I can make it,' I used to say. Suffice to say, I have been thoroughly humbled. I have been knocked down a few rungs by a recipe that is entirely from a box. Yes. I have failed a boxed recipe. Granted it's a very ambitious, creative, utterly rad box recipe {and I encourage all of you out there to attempt it}. I could go through all the different things we did wrong, but that would just take too long. But, I can tell you that if it ends up looking like a big pile of you-know-what, it'll still taste pretty darn good. 

{drum roll}

I give you.... 

THE CHERPUMPLE. 

{applause} 

The baking equivalent to the Turduken.

The Cherpumple Challenge was suggested to me by my brother, who wanted to make it for an early Thanksgiving dinner hosted by his friends. He wanted to make something utterly ridiculously awesome. So, I said, lets give it a try.

The Anatomy of a Cherpumple 

A three-layer confection consisting of:

Bottom layer: A pumpkin pie inside a spice cake

Middle layer: an apple pie inside a yellow cake

Top layer: a cherry pie inside a white cake

All smothered in cream cheese frosting

Note: the Heineken were strictly for baker hydration purposes. 

We should have noticed things were turning south when the first layer decided to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius.

Our masterpiece SHOULD have ended up like this:

INSTEAD, we got this:

See? FAIL on an EPIC scale. 

Luckily, everyone was laughing so hysterically, no one really seemed to care. 

And, yes, it tasted pretty awesome.  

Find out how to make your very own Cherpumple here

.

Afternoon on the Moon

Today is one of those days out of the year when we get crazy winds that last all day. They create clouds of sand and dust that float over PCH. They erase footprints & smooth out the sand into perfect ribbon patterns. Feels like you're on the moon... a sand-colored moon... or, maybe the Arabian Desert. Anyway. It's cool.

.

Project Bake: Pumpkin Seeds

After Halloween had come and gone, I had a whole load of uncarved pumpkins on my hands. When my brother asked "So, are we gonna smash some pumpkins?"... my first thought was - Yeah! But I haven't toasted any pumpkin seeds yet! How silly is that? 

So, I figured, yes it is November, but it's never too late for pumpkin seeds! So, out comes the knife and on goes the oven. 

Now, if any of you have cooked or baked with my Mother, you know that she is not the best when it comes to toasting seeds. Inevitably, she burns the first batch and has to toast a brand new batch. Apparently, on this occasion, I followed in Mom's footsteps. I burned the sh** out of them.

Yes, I could grab another one of the pumpkins and do all of this over again... naaaaaaah. I'll just munch on the crispy buggers and it'll be just fine.

.

Scenes from the Weekend

I had a great Halloween weekend. Thanks to everyone who came out to our little shindig - I hope you all had a blast!

Seriously, tho' - if and when I decide to host another party, I probably need an over-achiever monitor on my shoulder to keep me from going overboard. 

Either that or I need to have more parties so I don't try to cram all my ideas into one event.

Two things I really wanted to try were Old Lady Fingers and Boo! Cake Pops. Another thing I found later was the cute Ghostly Pretzels. Since I already had the white chocolate, I figured why not?

I definitely need to fine tune the technique {the chocolate wouldn't melt thin enough} and rethink my tool usage {I was late in purchasing the edible markers}.

But, overall, they were fun to try out.