I found an incredibly easy lollipop recipe. It worked great for me. I used the bottom of a small cup to make the molds. You can buy lollipop sticks at Party City or Michaels. I just used a teaspoon of orange extract, and it turned out really well. You can add more if you want it more "orangey". I decided to put gummy butterflies in the molds and then pour the candy of them, and they turned out really cute. Just rinse off the sugar when your done and place the lollipops on a greased sheet of foil. I'm planning on making them again in a week or two so I'll post pictures of them then. Here's the link: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2011/08/02/lorann-flavors-lolly-lolly-lolly-get-your-flavors-here/

I am very excited to announce that I actually got an honorable mention in the bread contest I entered! There was one winner and three honorable mentions so I'm really pleased. Here's a picture of my winning recipe.

Sorry that it has been a while (again). Here are the pictures of my Easter meal I made.

Bunny Dinner Rolls

Aren't they cute!

Spinach and Artichoke Quiche

Delicious! It had a few pine nuts in it which was very good.

Fennel, Orange, and Arugula Salad

It took my mom a long time to find fennel, but this salad was perfect for spring.

Vegetable Pasta Salad.

Yum!

 

 

 

 

I have recently found this fabulous cooking blog called the Italian Dish. I tried her very simple pasta recipe -it was delicious. I can't wait to make it again. I rolled out by hand and used no special pasta making things. I mixed the dough with a handheld mixer. I still have to work on finding a good shape idea. I was thinking about trying to shape it with some very small cookie cutters that I have next time. Here's the pictures. Check out the blog for yourself at http://theitaliandishblog.com/ .

 

 

 

 

I also made some Cherry Chocolate Chunk (I think that's the right name) cookies from Small Batch Baking for the Chocolate Lover. They were pretty good but not fabulous. They were a little too oily, but I liked the flavor combination of the tart dried cherries and sweet chocolate.

 

I found this amazing, really easy cake recipe a couple of weeks ago. I'm actually not a huge cake fan; but it was much lighter than cake usually is, and I really like it. I used yellow cake mix and tangerine lime soda.

SUPER EASY CAKE RECIPE!

Ingredients:

1 package any cake mix

1 1/2 cups any flavor of soda

Directions:

1. Grease and flour the baking pans/pan that you want to use (look on package for options)

2. Mix together cake mix and soda. Quickly pour into pans/pan.

3. Cook according to package directions!

4. ENJOY!

 

Sorry that the print turned out so weird - I couldn't fix it :p !

I'm am really sorry it's been so long - but now I'm on Spring Break! Yay! Anyway, I'm going to be cooking Easter dinner on Sunday! I'm planning on making a pasta salad, some adorable bunny-shaped dinner rolls, a simple salad, and a spinach and artichoke quiche. I will let you know how that goes.

The food of the week is ...
Rice Cakes!
These delicious cakes are wonderful with just a little peanut butter spread on them as a quick  and healthy snack. Rice cakes are actually only 35 calories each - yum!

Tuesday Tip!
Cook rice in the microwave if you are trying to prepare other parts of a meal or just don't feel like dealing with checking the rice constantly because it's boiling over. This my most recent trick that I've discovered. In fact, I made enough rice in the microwave today so that I can make fried rice in the next couple of days.