The Cake Parlour

4th of July Desserts

Like I said yesterday, this holiday pretty much revolved around desserts. I tell you what, when you are redesigning your website and revamping the cupcake delivery page, you have to bake lots of cupcakes (for photos of course). Meet the Henry cupcake: Old fashioned cocoa buttermilk frosted in rich chocolate ganache, topped with a white chocolate flower.

Alright, how many of you were also tempted to make this the other day? You know who you are! The ones who know exactly what this is and where it came from!

To bad my stars look busted.

This weekend

I definately consider my mother's birthday a holiday. Here is her cake, I didn't make it...we actually bought it from Bread and Company (quelle horreur!!!) but it was excellent. Orange pound cake filled with zesty bavarian cream and fresh rasberries. Gah, I can not get enough of the cake/pastry cream/fresh fruit combination. I'm so in love.

And, the only readers who will understand this next picture are the ones I grew up with, but...YES, STEPHANIE, the TV DOES work! We didn't think it would, but tried to plug it into cable for the heck of it, and check it out! But, the crazy part is, we turn it on, and look what was on....LAWRENCE WELK! I mean, it was beyond creepy....twilight zone-y....like, "you can take the TV out of that house, but..."

!!!!!!!!!!

Ham sauce.

I cannot even, nor will I even try to explain what went on at our house this Easter. All I know is that several of our lingering dinner guests stayed around for six hours replacing phrases from every song, movie, or famous person we could think of with either the word "ham" or the words "ham sauce". I mean, we had ham sauce sing-a-longs with a guitar (Lucy in the Sky with Ham Sauce), described the plots of our favorite movies in detail (A Ham Sauce Runs through It) and even did a little dancing (HAM! I wish I was your lover...). People kept asking me "what was IN that ham sauce anyway?" I'm trying to rack my brain, orange marmalade, dijon mustard, cloves, cider vinegar, um...

Anyway, we all felt pretty stupid by the end of the day and our faces hurt from laughing so hard. But I'd have to say our first Easter dinner away from our families (sniffle) was a definate success. Plus, I got an excuse to make the pastel-stripey-cake from the new Martha Stewart Weddings.

Saint Pattie's

I guess we didn't really celebrate it. We really have no reason to. But my parents were visiting from Birmingham, and we did have a perfect day, and this is how it went:

First of all, we got up and had breakfast at the Loveless Cafe. Are you in Nashville? Have you ever been? If not, GO. Right now, as a matter of fact. Buy jars of homemade peach and blackberry preserves while you are there.

After rambling down the Natchez Trace parkway for a while and circling the grounds of Iroquois Steeplechase a few times, we made our way downtown to SQFT gallery for a brunch opening of prints by Shawn Stucky. Yeah, and I finally got to meet (and sip mimosas with!) Kathleen of Cake+Pie Creative. What a sweetie. What a cutie.

After that we trekked over the hill of the capitol building to the Farmer's Market where we filled our basket with big, beefy tomatoes that.....well.....just didn't seem possible for this early in the season.

Another thing about Nashville...have you ever been to Yazoo's tasting room? I would tell you to go, now, too...but it's only open a few hours a week. It's tucked away in a little corner of the aging Marathon Village warehouse...a cool, family-friendly atmosphere where you can sample handcrafted beer and snack on farm-raised Tennessee cheeses, big loaves of bread with chutney, and spiced pecans. We love it.

So, believe it or not, we went home and cooked some MORE while the boys napped. We actually made an entire, 30 minute, Rachael Ray meal, a definate first for me. We made her Polenta egg cups with balsamic-roasted grapes and sausages. Forgive me for this, but...yum-o.

Anyway, after dinner we went to Green Hills and saw Amazing Grace and basically cried ourselves to sleep. Well, I did anyway.

We're not Irish at all.

Hearts and Snow

So when I was little I had this My Little Ponies picture book of all the seasons...months, actually, and what I remember most brilliantly was February. There was a schoolhouse, and a billion hearts, and ponies, and, most importantly....snow.

I think that picture has always been lodged in my subconscious, of hearts and snow, and I think I kind of decided that February was when it snowed, although I never got to see it because I grew up on the southern coast of Alabama. That picture is so vivid in my mind this morning.

Snow isn't a big deal to most people, some people probably hate it, but to me it is pure magic. Especially right before the sun rises. I knew our neighborhood would be the most beautiful covered with a blanket of snow...Manley and I got up and walked around in it at dawn and it was just, all....Christmas card-y.

And so quiet. And I don't think Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow here...which is just fine by me.

P.S. I like these guys. They were very, very cold and had to snuggle together.

The day after...

Everyone is gone now, I am home all alone with pictures. And just as I suspected, I am pretty sad. This weekend was more fun than we even expected. I have a long, work-free day ahead of me to clean and relax (those two are pretty darn interchangeable for me) so I will leave you with some highlights of the weekend:

As I promised earlier, the Frank Llyod Wright gingerbread house we've been working on. The kids I babysit build a gingerbread house every year, and when they found out my husband was an architect, they begged him to design one for us. It proved to be quite challenging but a heck of a lot of fun!

Sisters and brothers.

(A country Christmas. You know.)

Christmas dinner this year, for some reason, became a traditional British feast: Beef Wellington, Yorkshire pudding, peas and carrots, plum pudding, and cauliflower gratin. It was lovely and interesting. And hearty. And I'll leave it at that.

Also, there was a lot of Guitar Hero. And real guitar. But mostly, Guitar Hero.

Christmas morning was all about roasting chestnuts in our fireplace (Stephanie, it couldn't have been more perfect!) and Pannetone French toast. Have you ever? If not, you simply must. It is the most decadent thing...

I miss ya'll!

Le petit déjeuner

I had a long breakfast this morning. Sourdough pullman french toast and sparkling pear juice (Knudsen's, of course) and I find myself wondering why every breakfast can't be this lengthy and decadent, and then I remember that my husband has to leave for work every morning at seven, and we would have to get up at five. And it makes me sad, because I wish we could spend hours eating breakfast every day, even on the weekdays. So, basically, does anybody want to come eat breakfast with me for a few hours, Monday through Friday?

I can't really post what I've been working on this morning because it's a Christmas gift and...well, you know. But here is a little hint. We are getting ready for what might perhaps be one of the nicest weekends of our entire lives this weekend. Have I told you? Manley's family and my family are coming to Nashville to spend Christmas with us, and I feel like I'm about to go to Disney World or something. People are like: "Are you crazy? Aren't you so stressed out and nervous about it?" And I'm like: "What?"

Cupcakes for everyone

Happy Birthday Mary! Mary is one of my dearest dearest friends and her birthday happened to coincide with our open house this Sunday. This is her little birthday cake. White chocolate with strawberry buttercream and white chocolate poinsetta petals (or, as every person under the age of 10 at my house Sunday pointed out, pink chocolate actually.) Man, having parties makes you really busy. And crazy. But I love them and I always insist on having them. I just love to throw parties. So, there you go. I had two million cupcakes and they got all gobbled up.
This post is really scattered. I am really scattered. Everything is really coming at us this year, huh? Is it like this every year?

Packages!

The mail has been so generous to me lately, and I have been so stingy with all of it. I got four more gorgeous swap ornaments last week.
This little thing is SO CUTE, from Emerald Mosley in London (does anybody have her website?) It is hand-stitched and scented for goodness sakes, it smells like cloves and pine! I couldn't get my face out of it.

This one came from Anjie at StudioWellSpring in San Fransisco. She is so cute and I really enjoyed looking at her blog this morning. Manley and I were both really excited when we saw this was a San Fran street scene...it's a pretty dear city to us. We spent our honeymoon there last January!

So how gorgeous is this? It's a fused glass snowflake from Robyn at 3 Hip Sisters. You should check out the jewelry on their site.

And finally....does anybody else in my group have this girl's name? Like a total idiot, I lost the envelope and the note she included that was so sweet. She joined the swap because it reminded her of something her Norwegian grandmother would enjoy, and this is a traditional Norwegian Christmas ornament. It was so touching and precious to me...it made me miss my Swedish grandmother very, very much. If anybody has her information would you email it to me so I can give her proper credit?

Okay, this one isn't a swap ornament, it came from my mother, but it's so cute I couldn't help but post it! I wish the picture did it more justice. All the little cupcakes and pastries on the second tier are just ridiculously cute. Thanks mom!
Well, perhaps the nicest suprise of all came from my cousins Stephanie and Dave in Lexington, Kentucky. A box of fresh chestnuts from Allen Creek Farm in Ridgefield, Washington! I was absolutely ecstatic when I opened the box! I have also been informed that an old-fashioned chestnut roaster is to follow, so Manley and I can roast them over our fireplace. Stephanie, you are just too cool. I wish you could be here to eat them with me!

Manley and I are having a Christmas open house this coming Sunday, and my week will be spent preparing for that I am sure. If you are in the Nashville area, please stop by! We would love to have you. Email me for more information. Later!

It's COLD!

It's cold, and I love it. I think it was like 19 degrees this morning? For Nashville, that is cold! I used to hate cold weather but now I welcome it because it gives me an excuse to just hibernate...that's all I want to do is hibernate in my house with slippers and coffee and work on making Christmas presents. Oh, and I think I discovered the secret of getting into the Christmas spirit if you're having a difficult time: walk into Starbucks. It is Christmas in there. (Man, that may be one of the saddest things I've ever said.)
We got our first Christmas tree last night. Here we are, with our rudolph noses and Manley's Harry Potter scarf. We ditched the grandiose ideas of chopping down our own for making a trip to the local Boy Scout's tree post, where they put it on the stand for you and tie it to your car.

So it's going to be all about homemade peppermint bark, Buttermint candles from Pier 1, mulled apple cider, Frank Lloyd Wright gingerbread houses (you'll see), handmade things-which-I-can't-yet-reveal, lemon drop champagne punch, Handel's Messiah,walk-through Bethlehem's, Opryland, Yukon Cornelius, old Christmas vinyl, best friends, family...I have a feeling that the next couple of weeks are going to go by in a bundled-up, mitten-clad blur and I couldn't be happier about it!