Color!

Spring color!

My front yard all in bloom!

Easter Eggs!

I neglected to blog about Easter, other than some cool videos about The Ten Commandments. The daughter took me to task, so here is my Easter blog post!

Do you like the eggs she decorated? I blew them out for our Easter meal, and she decorated them all by herself.

The whole family got together and had a nice mid-afternoon br-lunner. I had it in my head that we'd have brunch, but somebody's odd work schedule prohibited an earlier meal, so there we were. Breakfast foods in the afternoon!

We had scrambled Easter Egg guts, home-baked coffee cake (a specialty of mine), turkey bacon, asparagus, home-baked toasted English muffin bread, fresh strawberries, and mimosas made with freshly squeezed orange juice made from oranges off our little tree and Chuckie and Jerry's hand-me-down Jack LaLanne juicer. YUM!

You will like this recipe for an easy coffee cake:

Quick Coffee Cake (Kuchen) from Joy of Cooking

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan.

Sift together:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Beat until creamy in a large bowl with a wooden spoon: (I use a mixer)

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened

Gradually add and beat until light and fluffy

1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar

Beat in:

1 large egg

2/3 cup milk (Shoe's note: have it at room temperature so that it doesn't congeal the butter)

Beat in the dry ingredients. Add

1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Shoe's note: I add some cinnamon; I've never measured it but it is probably 1-2 teaspoons)

Stir until smooth. Spread the batter in the greased pan.

Cover with Streusel (below). Can also cover with 1 1/2 cups blueberries or cherries tossed with 1/2 cup sugar.

Bake about 35 minutes if covered with streusel, 25-30 minutes if covered with fruit. Cool on a rack.

Streusel:

(Shoe's note: This is doubled from the original recipe--always double cinnamon and sugar!)

Combine 2/3 cup sugar, 4 Tablespoons all-purpose flour, 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter. Blend these ingredients until crumbly. Add 1 tsp cinnamon. Sprinkle the over the dough and bake as directed.

Don't wait until next Easter to bake it!

Happy Halloween!

Looked out my kitchen window the other day and saw this. Happy Halloween from the Autumn Spiders!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!

01/01/11

Happy New Year! 

I am looking forward to a great year!  As I mentioned in my Christmas letter, the year 2011 will be a year full of milestones!

Kevin will leave his teens behind and become a 20-year-old man this month!  During the year, he'll be making decisions next year as to his next school.  An exciting chapter to look forward to reading!

Erin will graduate from high school in June, and will reach her majority during the summer.  An 18-year-old woman blooms in August!  Her plans, also undecided, will be firming up in 2011! 

And, hard to believe, we will be celebrating our silver anniversary this year!  Twenty-five years!  Hard to believe it will be *gulp* a quarter-century of wedded bliss!  I want to celebrate, and since December is such a silly time to get married, I will plan a party for January, 2012.  I'll keep you posted on details!

In honor of the new year, I am changing the name of my blog.  I'm re-naming it Shoe's Net.  I'll be changing the url to www.shoes-net.blogspot.com.

My wish to all:  happiness, health, and peace every day in 2011.

************

"New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights."  ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

Valentine's Day Goodies

OK, so I was able to avoid a computer crash and too many do-overs and was able to extract my photos from my camera!  Yay!  I'll be doing a few catch-up posts, so keep watch here on Izzy's Net.

Note:  click on each picture for a bigger version, and click on it again for a full-screen version.

On Valentine's Day, I made King Arthur Flour's Cinnamon Rolls for my family. MMMmmmm... cinnamon rolls!

I made the dough and assembled the rolls the night before. I used twice as much cinnamon filling as the recipe called for.  I placed them in this cute pan and put them in the fridge overnight.  I woke up early on Valentine's Day and took them out of the fridge for their final rise.  I went back to bed, and when I got up again they were just about ready to bake!

Here they are before I put them in the oven:

and here is our breakfast table.  Cinnamon rolls, fruit, and Valentine candy!  Yippee!

Valentine's Day Cupcakes

My third use of my new Kitchenaide was making Valentine's Day cupcakes. I used the White Cake recipe from the Kitchenaide recipe booklet. It was fast n' easy! The hardest part was separating the eggs, but Erin did that part!

All I had was bread flour. I had grabbed bread flour instead of all-purpose flour the other day. So they probably aren't the best they could've been.

Here they are:

There is one missing because some little Elf came home in the wee hours of the morning and sampled them. By "little Elf" I mean "Little Mikey," my Valentine!

I am going shopping with E. today to Bed Bath 'n' Beyond to get some new baking pans for my invigorated baking career!