GLEE-day

My sister Em and I are both gleeks, and since the return of Glee coincided with her birthday, we decided to have a little themed getogether to celebrate both occasions. 

First off, serving slushies is a must. I made the slushies at home so they wouldn't melt before the party, and bought some paper slushie cups at the corner store:

Glee themed food was a little tougher to tackle, and since no one was interested in eating those messy red cupcakes the glee club sold at the bakesale, I settled on cafeteria food. I bought some trays at IKEA and slopped gooey mac and cheese onto them. The meal was served in assembly line fashion, where guests could grab some veggies and juiceboxes for their tray. 

 I made a glee cake for dessert, decorated with the classic loser hand made of fondant. It was my first time working with fondant, but it turned out pretty nicely 

Party favours included little plastic footballs, miniature hand sanitizers, boxes of nerds and ipod erasers all wrapped up in little containers decorated with character headshots.

Even though the episode didn't live up to my expectations, the party more than made up for it! Happy birthday Em!

Easter in the Country

This Easter weekend was spent up north with the fam. We were lucky enough to be invited to check out our neighbours baby lambs, and man were they adorable. They had about 80 ewes in total in addition to all of the babies. Obviously I did my fair share of cuddling. The rest of the weekend was spent cooking, relaxing, and of course eating. Ironically, we had lamb for dinner on Sunday night. Tasty AND cute.

We decorated the dinner table with eggs we had dyed the weekend before, and some chocolate suckers I made as table favours.

I was in charge of making dessert, and I chose a pretty ambitious recipe : Martha Stewart's Meyer Lemon Crepe Cake. It alternates between meyer lemon curd mousse and thin crepes for a total of 15 layers. In the end it was well worth the time and labour intensive process. Check out the recipe here, it's from the April issue of Martha Stewart magazine. The instructions for making the curd are a little sparse if you've never made it before, but I got by. I would suggest doubling up the recipe for even more height; it will serve 8 but the cake looks pretty small when it's done.

 15 layers of lemony deliciousness.

chocolate buttons: so in right now

So my love of all things Bakerella inspired me to recreate the chocolate buttons made by her friend Julie that she posted a while back. I wanted to make little gifties for some of my fellow contributors to the Vogue Charity Fashion Show , and they were just the perfect thing. The buttons in Bakerella's original post use a specific mold and instructions that you can find here at  Bake It Pretty. I didn't have the time to wait for shipping, so I improvised, and they turned out pretty well if I do say so myself.

You'll need:

Moulding wafers in a variety of colours (bulkbarn has a great selection)
One or more plastic moulds in disc shapes
One ziploc freezer bag for each colour of wafer
A sharp metal implement rougly as thick as a skewer
Plastic candy bags
Cardstock and ink (optional)

Start off by placing your coloured wafers into a ziploc and microwaving it, unsealed, for 30 second intervals. Between each interval, massage the wafers and only repeat until the chocolate has all melted but is still thick (about 1 1/2 mins).

Push the air out of the bag and seal it. Cut a 1/2 cm tip off off of the bag and pipe the chocolate into your clean mould. Fill each pocket completely, being careful not to overfill, and lick up any mishaps. Tap the mould on the counter a few times to settle the chocolate and then place it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes.

Once the chocolate has hardened, punch each disk out onto the counter and let them sit for a few minutes to come to room temperature. If you try to skewer them now they are even more likely to crack. You can use this time to rinse your mould and make another batch to go in the freezer. Here are some buttons waiting to be skewered.

Now comes the tricky part. Find a tool that has a tapered, but slightly rounded point for making your button holes. I used a candy thermometer, but you can improvise. Gently, but firmly press the tip into your buttons and twist a few times until the indent is obvious. If you're ambitious, you can skewer all the way through and make your buttons threadable. I did this with some of mine, and while super cool, it is risky. Brush any shavings of chocolate off the top of your buttons and congratulate yourself on a job well done. This is definitely the hardest part; prepare for some casualties.

Once you've made lots of buttons in lots of colours, you're ready to package. Bake It Pretty gives you some cute pastel labels to use, but feel free to make your own. I just used a large business card template in my office program and folded it in half. Now all you have to do is plop a few buttons into a clear plastic baggie, staple on your lovely labels and graciously deflect oohs and ahhs from your recipients.

Last but not least, a photo of the casualties. Arguably less attractive, but equally delicious. These little buddies can be remelted and used again, or simply enjoyed as progress snacks.

Vogue Charity Fashion Show

Here's a sneak peek at my creative process and some of my designs that will be featured this weekend in the upcoming Vogue Charity Fashion Show put on by Queen's University. To see more of my stuff as well as amazing looks by seven other independent designers, click on the link and get your tickets! If last night's run-through was any indication, it's gonna be a kick-ass show. SO MUCH TALENT!

must have teacup pig

Teacup pigs featured on HIMYM!! finally these little piglets get their 15 mins. Hopefully this means that by the time I can afford one they will much more accessible than they are now. soooooo cute.

CANADA GOES FOR GOLD

I'm sending some good vibes westward for the Canada-USA gold medal game with this olympic appy I made for a pre-game potluck.

OLYMPIC RING PRETZELS AND DIPPING SAUCES:

cooking spray
2 pkgs pre-made pizza dough
1 egg white
1/2 cup finishing salt

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees (or as directed by the instructions on your dough) and begin stretching out your dough to about 1/2 inch in thickness. Using scissors, cut stretched dough into 9 x 1/2 inch strips and create rings by pressing the loose ends together. Lay rings on a greased baking sheet spread at least 1 inch apart, and bake for about 10 minutes until dough is light golden brown. Remove rings from the oven and brush them lightly with egg white using a pastry brush. Working a few at a time, sprinkle the brushed rings with finishing salt before the egg white dries. Return the rings to the oven for another minute, and voila: beautiful olympic rings.

For the sauces, you can get creative. I used:

Blue: spinach dip with a hint of blue food colouring. Unfortunately, blue foods are pretty limited so I had no choice but to stick with the toxic goo effect. Other options include blueberries, blue corn chips, blue potatoes... Apparently blue foods aren't all that naturally appetizing, check this out: http://www.colormatters.com/appmatters.html

Black: Olive tapenade with a hint of concentrated black food colouring

Red: Sundried tomato tapenade with a spoonful of plain yogurt to lighten the colour a little

Yellow: good old dijon mustard

Green: mmmm pesto

All of the sauces that I used were store bought with a few minor tweaks, but if you're feeling super creative go for it and make your own. To finish things off, arrange the sauces in ramekins in the shape of the olympic rings, and surround them with your lovely pretzel rings. Ta-da, a relatively easy and wonderfully festive treat!