...an' the livin' is easy...

Finally, summer. Now I have time to actually post.

I have been doing quite a bit of baking and selling! I have now sold 3 cakes, and I have orders for two more. For my friend's son's birthday party I am making a dinosaur cake, and I am making a Georgia Tech football groom's cake (gross, I know!) for a wedding I'm in this summer.

In other news, I have found the perfect chocolate cake recipe. It's from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible. All of her recipes are fantastic, but this one is over the top. It is a very dense cake with an excellent texture and a wonderful, rich taste. I paired it with a brown sugar/peanut butter filling and caramel frosting and it was divine.

I never heard anything from the Chocolate Perks people, so I guess that is just not happening. But that's fine. Who wants to make the same cupcakes week after week anyway?

So what am I up to now? Not much, really. Sam and I just went on a cruise, which was wonderful. And I'm sorry Carnival, but your desserts are awful. Your apple pie was decent, but everything else? Sub-par. I'm disappointed in you.

I do have some recipes I want to try this summer.

The first is something Sam and I ate while we were in Charleston, SC. We ate at The Hominy Grill and it was absolutely fantastic. We went for dinner one night and then breakfast the next morning, it was so good. They have a famous dessert: chocolate pudding. I know what you're thinking. "Chocolate pudding? I can make that in 15 minutes with a 50 cent box of mix! I don't even LIKE chocolate pudding!" But you're wrong. This isn't really like pudding. It's like a chocolate mousse, ice cream, chocolate pudding combination. It's divine. I could have eaten two. We tried it because we'd heard it was Alton Brown's pick on the show "The Best Thing I Ever Ate". We love AB, so we knew we had to try it. I'm so glad we did. Here's the recipe. If you ever go there, you should get coffee, sweet tea, and the chocolate pudding. I'll let you pick your entree ;). Another thing I loved about this place is they give you a postcard with their graphic (a really neat one) on it with your bill. I asked for an extra I loved it so much. We will DEFINITELY be eating there again.

The second recipe I want to try is Terrapin Oatmeal Raisin Stout Cookies. Terrapin is a local brewery here in Athens, and I'm told they make an Oatmeal Stout. So I searched for a recipe for oatmeal stout cookies and found one here.

Another "baking with beer" suggestion I got from a friend is Beer bread. She said it was delicious, so I looked up a recipe on FoodNetwork.com and found that Alton Brown himself has one! So I will be trying this one out for sure soon too.

I also have never made apple pie. So I am going to make apple pie and Sam is going to make some homemade vanilla ice cream. Get pumped. It's going to be awesome. He just made some basil ice cream that turned out pretty good. He put basil and lemongrass in there, but unfortunately the basil was way too strong and the lemongrass didn't come through at all. It's still good, but maybe he'll have better luck next time with the lemongrass.

Unfortunately, I am completely broke right now so all of these wonderful recipes will have to wait. Maybe I can at least get some chocolate pudding made before I have oral surgery this Friday so I will have something delicious that I am able to eat. :)

Thanks to all of you who have been following my fan page! Hopefully I will be updating more often now that summer has started!

'Till next time,
The Flower-Haired Girl