Wild wed

What a great baking day!!  We got so much done for market tomorrow I am very pleased and tired....LOL
so a couple of newbies to the baking family
One being a 6inch cheesecake that is topped with some homemade apricot preserves and fresh blueberries

I am so tempted to cut into one tonight but I will be good!  LOL  the crust on it is crushed toasted almonds and pate' brisee.  Basically a nice and light and flaky buttery crust with almonds.

Lemon buttermilk cakes with blueberries and a nice lemon glaze

More hamb/sandwich buns

My choc dipped coconut macaroons, so yummy! 

Another newbie: I decided to some mini pies since I didnt have alot of pie dough left, diced up peaches and a bit of an oatmeal crisp topping and these little gems are good to go.  And yummy! I had one stick in the pan and didnt look very pretty after gettin it out so had to welllllllllllll sample it!! Quality assurance at it's best here!!

Banana bread, banana strawberry bread and also my zucchini pineapple breads done

Another new flavor of shortbread:  chocolate chip orange with at touch of grand marnier in it!  Note to self: next time add 3 tbsp grand marnier

Plenty of muffins

These were the almond crusts for the cheesecakes

So along with all that we got some of my peanut butter cookie pies done, cookies and some baguette bread too.

Tomorrow is Allegan Market so hope to see ya there.

Have a super night!!

HUGS

Darlene

~~LIVE LIFE JOYFULLY~~and SIMPLY~~

Spring banner

HAPPY WED YALL!!

Well it was raining when I let the boys outside and an hour later now it is realllllyyyy snowin!! the ground is all white again!!    I think I heard we may see just a couple of inches today.??  that is ok!!  we had so much rain and melting snow lately we dont need any more rain!!  In fact I will post pics of our road a couple of miles north of us, the southbound lane is completely gone!  there is a creek that runs under it and goes out to the lake well over the years the erosion has been so bad we been wondering when this might hapen and it did now.  I am glad noone got hurt the last time a couple of years ago we had some really bad storms and heavy heavy downpours that the whole road was gone in the middle of the night! 2 people lost their lives while  delivering the morning paper and didnt see or realyze the road was gone.  That was really horrific we felt so bad fo those people and their families.  Very tragic and so sad.   I am thankful this is just one lane and like I said noone was injured!!

I started out cutting out the circles from an old hymnal book and then distressed the edges and also inked the edges with some Tim Holtz's distressing ink in green.

The letters are cut with my cricut from some My Minds Eye green paper, they needed something a bit more so with Tim's green ink I stamped a flowery image over the letter.  It gives nice dimension to it. 

Then made little rosettes for the bottom of each one, added a flower and gem and some fibers.    I did distress each of the banner pieces with antiquing medium and also used a mini flourish stamp on the left corner of each one too.  

This was made for a friend and is on it's way to her now!

And here is our road situation.

I never tire of looking at this beautiful lake.  Each and every day it changes so much and the colors are so vivd around it.  Not too many icebergs left now so we are nearing spring!!  YEAH!! 

So hope yall have a wondeful wed and be safe!! 

I did want to take a minute to mention the FENNVILLE BLACKHAWKS boys basketball team and how incredibly proud we are of each and everyone of you guys!  GREAT JOB LAST NIGHT again another win!! WOO HOO!!  Great bunch of guys we have in our town!

GOOD LUCK on friday at another game!!

SATURDAY GLENN MARKET 9-2

at the Glenn Community Center  114th Ave

HUGS

Darlene

~~LIVE LIFE JOYFULLY~~and SIMPLY~~

Friday

Gosh it is a hot friday out there!!  We have yet MORE thunderstorms comin in tonight again!! URRGGGG gettin sick of all this rain,but it is better than the drought we had a few springs ago.  Today Elijah came in and we made some ooey gooey chocolatey rich and yummy brownies, some shortbread cookies, some orange chocolate chip cookies, lemon glazed tea cakes, lemon muffins with a butter crumb topping, some rustic herbed cheddar bread in round pans, more of my loaded carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting, some banana bread with and without nuts and some babka cakes.   I think that was about it.  Oh and some great cucumber salsa.  Which is good on pork, with chips or even on a brat or hotdog.   

I sure can tell my boys are missing their mommy being home so much as they go nuts when I walk in the door and play and run around.  LOL I sure miss them, wish I had a kitchen right on the property here so I wouldnt have to leave so much.    One day maybe!!    Well bettter get out and do some work in the gardens the weeds are takin over!!  

Hope yall have a super weekend!!  Talk to ya soon!

HUGS

Darlene

~~LIVE LIFE JOYFULLY~~and SIMPLY~~

A Joyous Easter Weekend!~

I had 2 markets this week and made some extra new things for at the shop.  First I made some bluebery buckle cakes filled with our farm's blueberries from last season.  The butter crumb topping is so rich and yummy!!  This was a good seller at market.

Next was something new for me BABKA!! oh my goodness this is gonna be a keeper for markets this summer!!  It is a jewish cake/bread, the ones I made were filled and topped with some brown sugar and walnut struesel.  They are a bit time consuming as the starter for this bread needs to sit overnight in the fridge but well worth all the work for sure!! my personal favo right now!!  I can see making some filled with fresh chopped apple chunks or even some pumpkin puree!!

Then there were some sponge cake rolls filled wtih vanilla buttercream and homemade strawberry jelly (my homemade of cource) topped with a bit of lemon flavored glaze and a touch of "farmgirl bling" powdered sugar.

And i had an order for a personal size carrot cake so instead of the traditional round that I make i did them in loaf pans and cut lenghtwise.  They have a cream cheese frosting filling and topping and I love the little carrot topper I made for them.  They all sold!! yeah

And the most joyous sat gift was some of my hyacinths in bloom!!! one of my favo colors too!! purple!!

and you walk by and what a lovely smell!!

I hope you and your families have a blessed easter weekend!!

~~HUGS~~

Darlene

~~LIVE LIFE JOYFULLY~~and SIMPLY~~

***Snowy Weekend**

HEY EVERYONE~~I tried a new cake recipe and it actually was good and went great at markets this week.  A super moist butter walnut cake roll that was filled with a cream cheese filling and then I added a layer of some of my homemade jams.  The walnut cakes had my strawberry apricot jam and then I made a lemon cake roll with cream cheese filling and added my red raspberry jam.  I had to keep a couple of slices for quality assurance!! and they were good!!

These logs are the cakes cooling.

A finished roll sliced.  I do have to mabye adjust this recipe a bit as the cake was really too moist.

these cookie are my loaded oatmeal NO FLOUR cookies, they had chopped walnuts, peanut butter, organic oats, choc chunks and for fun some pastel m & m candies!! perfect for spring!! which by the way this being the official first day of spring and to NO surprise to us michiganders IT IS SNOWING!! the trees are so danged pretty all white but it is suppossed to get up in the 40s tomorrow and it will be gone quick!!

These are a new coffee cake.  I dug thru some of my grandmothers old cookbooks that I have and found Aunt Lil's struesel filled coffee cake recipe.  This is a really moist and buttery cake, filled with chopped walnuts and brown sugar and cinnamon.  YOU all know I had to add my "farmgirl bling" to them.  A cinnamon glaze tops them off.   I will be anxious to hear the responses from market as they all sold yesterday.  Love trying out new recipes, making up new recipes and then doing the tried and true old recipes from our grandparents.

I am off to maybe work on some new scrappy things and finish up a couple of challenge pieces I am working on.  Hope yall enjoy your day!!!  HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND~!~

~HUGS~

Darlene

~~LIVE LIFE JOYFULLY~~and SIMPLY~

Trialing tues....

Hey yall!!   Trialing new recipes,   This am was about testing a new scone recipe.  I added some shredded cheddar and colby cheese to these.  I always have troubles when cutting my scones evenly and I really like the look of the traditional triangular shape.  Round ones just dont do it for me.  SOOOOOOOOOO I tried something new, I patted my dough into a shallow 9 in round coated pan.  Then tipped it out onto a sheet and VOILA!! oh how exciting this was!! LOL perfectly round!! used my pizza cutter wheel and these are great!!
As u can see nice uniform triangles and easy peasy to do!!

Each one got brushed with more heavy cream and topped with a sprinkling of sea salt.  Cant wait for them to come out of oven they smell really great! 

and look great too!!

I am also trialing some cookie recipes I found one is for a similar to the girl scout samoa cookie (btw is one of my altime favo cookie but havin them in the house is dangerous to me!! i will be way too tempted to devour them all) and also a different flavor of my homemade carmels.  Espresso Carmel sounds so dang yummy so that is a must try!!
So as soon as I finish this stuff  I am gonna work in my studio making some mothers day cards.  Oh here is a quick birthday card I made at 4am to go out with a birthday order I got.

I like to include a little card for the recipeint to get with their order.

Ok so have a blessed tuesday and I will be back with more pics tomorrow!!

~~HUGS~~

Darlene

 ~~LIVE LIFE JOYFULLY~~and SIMPLY~~