RecipeMuncher

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Last Friday night I taught a class at Prep Kitchen Essentials and we had a great time.  The class was on Fresh & Easy Dinners and it turned out to be a fabulous night!  But before I share all the delicious details from the class with you I wanted that thank you all for you for your great inspirational ideas. I loved reading each and every one and couldn’t pick a favorite, so instead I let the random number generator choose the winner (I know…I’m pathetic)!  Anyways, the winner is BRANDI!!! Congratulations Brandi and I hope you enjoy this book as much as I do!  

Well, onto the menu…

Caribbean Shrimp Salad with Lime Vinaigrette

Panzanella 

Rigatoni with Grilled Summer Vegetables & Feta Cheese

Bake Pork Chops with Radicchio Slaw

Creme Fraiche & Lemon Sorbet

Here are some photos from the class&#8…

Hello everyone!  Hope everyone’s week is going great!  I have finished two more cake designs and I thought I’d share them with you.  These cakes are a hexagon shape as you can see in the photos…I think this is a fun shape to play around with and it produces a “different” looking cake that might just be the look a bride wants. The first cake it a fun and funky design that is easy to execute.  Simply cut out fondant dots with a circle cookie cutter and glue them onto your fondant cake with a little water.  As you can see in the photos I used a stamp impression to create a flower design on the yellow dots to give them a different kind of look. You can see this process in a previous post.  I feel like this would be a good cake for a beginner to try out since the look cake be easily duplicated and come out crisp and clean looking.  

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It’s time for another round of the Cookbook Review II! It’s an event dedicated to exploring recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The event by initiated by Mike of Mel’s Diner, joined by Ruth of Once Upon A Feast, Sara of I Like to Cook, Breadchick Marye, Deborah of What’s in My Kitchen?, Mary of Cooking for Five, Elle of New England Kitchen, Shaun of Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow - and, of course, me!

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If I could only choose one food to grow myself, it would without a doubt be tomatoes. If you have never had a home-grown tomato, you really don’t know what you are missing out on. Growing up, my dad always had a decent sized garden. There were 5 of us kids, and each of us would be assigned our rows in the garden that we had to keep weed free. I hated that. We would get up and out in the garden early on Saturdays, hoping to finish our weeds before the heat started to hit. Sometimes we were lazy, waiting until further into the day, but that is when we really hated that garden - having to sit and pull weeds in the heat of the sun. But when my mom would make a “garden dinner”, all ill thoughts of having to weed the garden were gone. These were my favorite nights - chile rellenos, yellow squash mashed with milk and butter, and slices of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. My mouth starts watering just thinking of these meals.

Summer and fall was …

So sorry it has taken me so long to announce the winner…life is busy as normal. But before I congratulate the winner I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the contest. I was absolutely blown away with how many people left comments. Not only did I get a lot of comments, I got really nice comments…THANKS!!! I was so happy with this last cookbook giveaway that next week I will be doing another one so make sure and check back with me. Well, I have delayed enough…the winner from the random drawing is MANDY SESSLER!!! Congratulations Mandy! Please email me your address and I will send the book off to you so you can start the baking!

Today my friend from pastry school is having her 40th birthday party and she asked me to help out. For the dessert she wanted cupcakes of course. She said she wanted to keep it simple so we went with vanilla …