Chocolate, Chicken and Cupcakes

The following are more chronicles of a martha 'wanna-be.'

Recent hostessing foodie goodness, household makeover accomplishments, and other adventures.

Enjoy.

First stop: chocolate cake.  Ummm.  I had made this cake once before and was craving it something fierce.  We were expecting company (and by company, I mean 2 other adults) and I figured that was enough to warrant this cake.  However, it was HUGE. We had oodles of cake left.

Which we ate.

Within 3 days.

How many calories was that?

Not too bad right?  The icing only has chocolate and cream-cheese, the cake has buttermilk....

It's called "Died and gone to heaven chocolate layer cake"

aptly named

(Recipe from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry cookbook)

Next up:  finishing previous pillow project.  Yup, that's right.  DONE.  All the pillows are covered, zippered, and in their new locations.  I had numerous fights with Bern, my reluctant old sewing machine...but we still conquered the pillows!

I followed an awesome 'hidden zipper' sewing tutorial online. 

Onwards to more cupcakes and some 'favors' that I made for a weekly women's group.  I hostess a table at our Church and brought some fall pumpkin cream-cheese cupcakes as well as some chocolate sash gifties.

Fun.

I've kind of decided that making wedding favors for a living would be a blast.

Any takers?

The recipe was from martha online- simple, fluffy, soft, lip smacking.

Cream cheese frosting from joy the baker, her cinnamon frosting from her red velvet cupcakes.

Gifties:

Not the best picture...

Final hostessing endeavour: enter J.O.  Jamie Oliver- new favourite cook book author.  (Thanks to the Searles) I've ordered every cookbook from the library.

Chicken.  Amazingness. 

However- handling dead, pale chicken, not so amazing.

Recipe: Sweet and Sour Pot Roasted Chicken

Coarsely chop 2 red peppers, 2 orange peppers, 4 red onions, 1 ripe pineapple

Place in bottom of roasting pan with a couple 'glugs' (as he calls them) of olive oil

Mix in salt and pepper, crushed fennel seed

Stuff chicken with chopped parsley and grated ginger (3 thumbs or so)

Season chicken inside and out with pepper and salt

Put chicken on veggies.  Pat with olive oil

Shove in oven- 375 for 1.5 hours

(served with rice)

BEST PART: after cooked, take half of veggies and put in blender with 6 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and 2 tbsp of salt.  Blend.

Chop up chicken- serve veggies and chicken over rice with veggie sauce.

SO good.

Oops- didn't take a picture of the end result.  But it was epic.

Couldn't find the recipe picture on his site- but there's other great recipes on it.

Next project:  It's a surprise.  However, some hints:

-crochet

-bright colours

-stuffing

-button eyes

-nieces and nephews...

Christmas projects have officially started!

p.s. Silas has a tooth that's just about up!

p.p.s for the interest of my readers: I'll be taking a photography course starting next week.  Hopefully that will make the blog pics better.