Peanut Butter Truffles

A couple of weeks ago I talked about how happy I was that I'd been able to get SMS completed and set up to post PRIOR to Sunday. Not this week! It's been a busy week! Yesterday was a beautiful Spring day and the opening of the Farmer's Market. After the long, cold winter we had, everyone seemed as thrilled as we were to enjoy the market. We picked up radishes, herb plants, tomato plants and asparagus. Last night for dinner, I tried a recipe for roasted radishes. Yum! I will share the recipe sometime in the near future.

Okay back to this week's SMS! One advantage to making the recipe on Sunday is you can read a few posts before making the recipe. I found a couple of great tips over at Karen's Cookies Cakes & More. She quartered the recipe which was my plan as well. Everyone had been commenting they thought the recipe needed more peanut butter. Karen used the amount of peanut butter for a full recipe. Also, she used her melon baller to scoop out the balls. Thanks, Karen!!!

I am trying to use ingredients I have on hand. I didn't have bittersweet chocolate but did have semi sweet. No peanuts either, so I rolled these in toffee bits.

The recipe is quick and easy to make! I had no issues putting it together or making the balls. These are delicious! I love chocolate and peanut butter together. I thought they had a nice peanut butter flavor. Maybe the semi sweet chocolate does not overpower the peanut butter as much as the bittersweet chocolate?

Thanks to Mara of Love Your Mother Earth for choosing this recipe. You can find the links to all of the other SMS gals here!

One Year Ago...Mrs. Flint's Banana Bread!

Happy Pink Saturday!

I love Pink Saturday. This is my sixth week participating. It's the most wonderful group of women. Everyone is fun and interesting. What a great way to begin the weekend! It doesn't get any better than pouring myself a cup of coffee and visiting with friends. I guess it's the cyber way of coffee with your friends. Thanks to Beverly of How Sweet The Sound for hosting this fabulous weekly event!!

This week I am sharing with you the cake I decorated for the final class in Wilton Course 1 of Cake Decorating. I really enjoyed these classes, so much so I signed up for Course 2 starting next Monday night. If I had a criticism of the classes it would be the amount of techniques they try to teach in a night. Last week after we finished learning the techniques, we had about 20 minutes to finish decorating our cakes. I really wanted to put roses on top of my cake. These roses are HARD! I think they'll get easier with practice but they're hard. I didn't have time to finish the cake in class. I ended up with two good or should I say acceptable roses. My plan was to make a few more at home. This has been a crazy, busy week. Finally a couple of nights ago, I tried to make a few more roses. I couldn't get the frosting the proper consistency. I had frosting everywhere. The kitchen was one big icing disaster. I made a couple of leaves and called it a cake!

I didn't like the way the cake looked. I thought if we ate a couple of pieces it would distract you from my not so beautiful decorating job. Did it work?

This week I'd like to introduce you to another one of my Pink Saturday friends, Debbie of Debbie Dabbles. Stop by her blog, you'll enjoy your time there!

Chocolate Mousse (CWF) - Foodie Friday

When Moogie sent me her choice for this month's Chocolate With Francois, she suggested everyone find a creative way to present their mousse. Sounds easy enough! I can do this! Or so I thought!

Earlier this week I read over the recipe to make sure I had all of the ingredients. I was thrilled to find that Payard had given the measurements for a half recipe. Since we have WAY too many sweets in the house, I usually cut the recipes in half. That can present some challenges, like how do you cut an egg in half? Perfect, the measurements for half a recipe are in the book, this is going to be so easy! Or so I thought!

Last weekend while we were in Kansas City, I stopped by one of my favorite stores, Crate & Barrel. Crate & Barrel has been one of my fav's for years. I used to travel to Chicago and always made a stop at their store on Michigan Avenue. This was before carryon's were limited, so I could easily bring those goodies home with me!! I found the cutest pink silicone flower shaped cupcake liners, butterfly and daisy cookie cutters. I suppose about now you're asking what that has to do with this Chocolate Mousse? My plan was to pipe the chocolate mousse into the pink cupcake liners. How cute and easy would that be? Or so I thought!

I did the mis en place thing and arranged all of my ingredients. Or so I thought! I used the 1/4 cup water from the FULL recipe instead of the 2 tablespoons from the half recipe. The mousse was too thin to pipe into the cute cupcake liners.

So sorry Moggie, no creative presentation for me! This mousse reminded me a lot of the Chocolate Mousse we made a few weeks ago for Sweet Melissa Sunday's. Just like the the SMS mousse, I ended up with little chocolate pieces in the mousse. This recipe is easy to put together and has a wonderful chocolate flavor!






Stop by Chocolate With Francois to find the links to all of the creative CWF members!!

I am linking this to Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum.

In My Garden

When your daffodils and tulips are done blooming, you know how you're not supposed to cut them off until they have turned brown? This puts more nutrients back into the soil. I don't know about you but I really don't like how unsightly they look while waiting and waiting for them to turn brown. When visiting Lauritzen Gardens, Omaha's beautiful botanical garden, a couple of years ago I noticed how their gardeners took the daffodil and tulip leaves and bent them over and put a rubber band around them. Great idea and so much nicer looking!!!

This week's In My Garden is my lilac bush. Lilacs remind me of my grandma. She had beautiful lilac bushes in her yard. I think maybe she even wore lilac scented perfume. Or maybe it was called toilet water? I love the scent of lilacs...in flowers, not perfume.

Big News in the Big O!!

Since moving to Omaha from Kansas City 4 years ago, I've watched my favorite stores close their Omaha locations. First Stein Mart and then World Market. Omaha had three World Market locations, I still can't believe they didn't leave one location open.

While I don't expect Omaha to have the same retail landscape as much larger Kansas City, I keep hoping for some bright spots in that landscape. Today my wish was granted!! Later this year, Trader Joe's is opening a 13,000 square foot store in Omaha. No longer will I have to be envious of those of you who blog about this item or that item from Trader Joe's.

Besides the famous Two Buck Chuck wines, I am looking forward to trying some of the other, often publicized, Trader Joe's items!

Maybe not big news by news standards but big news in my world!

Picnic Cole Slaw

Last week I posted my recipe for Baby Back Ribs. It's one of my go to recipes when I am entertaining a large group for dinner. One of my favorite sides for a large group is this what I call my Picnic Cole Slaw. This is one of those recipes that I am not even sure where it came from. It's on a piece of paper showing the stains from years of preparation. What are your tried and true recipes? You know the ones that will turn out perfectly and everyone will enjoy?

Picnic Cole Slaw

1 bag of slaw mix
2 packages of Chicken flavored Ramen Soup
10 Green Onions, finely chopped

Dressing
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 sugar
2 chicken flavor packets from soup

Mix together slaw and green onions. Crush noodles and add to slaw mixture. Whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over slaw. Mix well. Refrigerate for a minimum of 6 hours. Add sunflower seeds just before serving.

I am linking this recipe to Tuesday's at the Table at All The Small Stuff and Tempt My Tummy Tuesday's at Blessed With Grace.

One Year Ago Dr. Pepper Flank Steak.

Happy Monday - Cake Decorating

Happy Monday!! Knowing we would return from KC late yesterday, I decided to take today off. I have a list of things I would like to accomplish. The list is longer than the hours in the day, go through Spring clothes in the closet, split my seedlings, sort recipes for meals and blog posts, bake a cake and maybe just maybe take a short nap. Sounds like a busy day but when you normally work Monday through Friday, it's a great day!!

The cake I am baking is for tonight's final class in my Wilton Cake Decorating Course #1. We need to make a rose to "pass" this class. EEEKKKKKKK! So far in class, we've only made the first two parts of the rose and it's hard. I am sure it gets much easier with practice. Note to self, add to today's list...practice the rose!

Here's my cake from last week's class. I love making these flowers. They're so easy!