Lemonade Stand Award

Awww...this is sooo sweet! My very first award. Thank you Sandy from Sandy's Stamp N' Stuff for giving me the Lemonade Stand Award. I'm so touched. Thank you, thank you, thank you :-)

What I love about this award is that I get to nominate and give recognition to fellow bloggers who've inspired me with their great attitude and gratitude.

Here are rules to this this cool award and they're easy:

1. Comment on this blog.

2. Copy the award logo for your own blog.

3. Nominate 5-10 blogs you feel show great attitude and gratitude.

4. Link to your nominees within your blog post.

5. Comment on their blog to let them know they've received the award.

6. Lastly, link back to the person who gave you the award to show your appreciation.

And here are my nominees:

1. Kelly - for sharing her recipes and her story about raising a child with food allergies. Thank you for making me feel like I'm not alone in this day-to-day challenge. I've learned so much from reading your blog.
2. Libby - also for her recipes and her story about raising a food allergic child. Thank you for connecting all of us moms with food allergic kids and sharing helpful resources to us.
3. Helen - for her awesome Macarons 101 tutorial and inspiring me with her fabulous desserts. If only I could be as awesome as you. I can only dream. (sigh)
4. David - for his fantastic blog about his sweet life in Paris. Thank you for tempting me with all your French desserts and making me smile with your funny stories about living in Paris. You make me want to pack up my bags and move to Paris :-)
5. Deeba - for sharing her mouthwatering sweet and savory recipes. I'm getting hungry right now just thinking about your blog. lol
6. Melody - for her passion and enthusiasm for making desserts. Thank you for posting your incredible cake creations, gorgeous desserts and awesome tutorials.
7. Louise - for her incredible blog about cake decorating, recipes and sugarcraft. Her blog is very informative and I've learned so much about the art of cake decorating from her. Thank you Louise for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us :-)

Fudgy Egg-Free Brownies

I was searching online for an egg-free brownie recipe and the first one that came up was from allrecipes.com. There were a lot of positive reviews for it so I thought I'd give it a try. It's quite an interesting technique. The first step is to cook flour and water in a saucepan until thick. This was a little strange because, if I remember correctly, this is exactly how I made paste when I was a little kid. I even read the recipe twice to make sure I was following it correctly. Hmmm, let's see how this turns out...

Well, the resulting brownie was suprisingly good. It was light and cakey, which isn't exactly the way I like my brownies, but nonetheless I was impressed. I made some slight adjustments to this original recipe so I could turn it into a fudgy, chewy brownie.

Fudgy Egg-Free Brownies
Allergy note: contains wheat and dairy

1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon honey
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9x13 inch pan with aluminum foil. In a heavy saucepan combine the 1/3 cup of flour and water. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly until thick. Transfer to a mixing bowl and set aside to cool.

In a small saucepan, melt butter. When butter has melted, add the oil and cocoa powder; mix until smooth; set aside to cool. Beat the sugars, vanilla and honey into the cooled flour mixture. Stir in the cocoa mixture until well blended. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt, stir into the batter until just blended. Spread evenly in the prepared pan.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with some moist crumbs attached (it's okay if the toothpick looks moist but no wet batter should be clinging to it). Cool completely then flip the brownie over to a cutting board. Peel off the aluminum foil and cut the brownie into bars.

Lego Birthday Cake

Every year, I look forward to making my son's birthday cake. Just to see the huge smile on his face when he sees his cake for the first time....WOW! That does it for me. I've made some pretty awesome cakes, but nothing gives me more pride and joy than the ones I make for him. What can I say? It's a mommy thing :-)

My son LOVES legos, so this year I wanted to make him a cake that looked like a huge lego block. But since I'm pregnant and can't really stay on my feet for too long, I asked my husband to help me out. To make it easier and less stressful, I opted to do a rice krispie lego cake for display and red velvet cupcakes for serving. My husband made the rice krispie cake and I made the cupcakes and decorations. As always, I made some egg-free chocolate cupcakes for my son.

Hubby made two batches of rice krispie treats and firmly packed them into two greased 1/4 sheet cake pans. When the rice krispies treats were set, he unmolded them and pressed the two pieces together. He spread some buttercream frosting on the cake to smooth out any gaps and covered the entire block with red rolled fondant. Not bad for a rookie, eh?



I used a round cookie cutter and a red food coloring pen to make this lego logo. I waited for the rolled fondant to dry a little before I wrote on it.



I made these little lego decorations for the cupcakes. I cut out squares that were about 1 x 1 inch and used a round piping tip to make the tiny circles. I attached each circle with some lemon extract.



There were 3 dozen cupcakes in all. Half of them had a red lego and the other half had a blue lego. The kids (and quite a few adults) had fun eating the little legos on top of the cupcakes. At first, they weren't sure if they were edible, but as soon as I told them they were, they just gobbled them up.



By the end of the party, both the lego block cake and the cupcakes were practically gone. We decided to cut the lego block into large pieces and give them to our guests before they left.