a collection of things i make with my hands
If you’ve hung out with me here long enough, you know that I LERVE throwing parties. One of the things I love about parenthood is that it gives me an excuse to throw themed birthday parties for my kids. But when Miss Bean told me this year, she wanted a Paw Patrol party, I was decidedly unexcited. After checking with her multiple times to make sure she really really wanted Paw Patrol this year, I decided that we’d do it my way, and I came up with this glam Paw Patrol party.
Last weekend was my birthday, so I made myself a cake. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might know that every year, I make this Marble Cheesecake. It’s delicious, but since it’s Filipino Food Month over here, I decided to make something different: Sans Rival.
I remembered this cake that my mom used to get now and again when I was little. I hadn’t had it in ages– my younger sister doesn’t remember ever having it at all– but I looked up some recipes and decided to give it a go.
Sans Rival is a Filipino dessert that is decidedly French in origin. Layers of daquoise (a meringue made with nuts) are sandwiched together with French buttercream. While French daquoise is traditionally made with almonds, this is made with cashews. Once all the layers are assembled, buttercream is used to frost the entire thing, and then it is adorned with more cashews. Since I had never made this before, I consulted a lot of recipes but followed this one by To Food With Love most closely.
So what’s a girl to do when after she’s made 4th of July whoopie pies and she’s left with a ton of red velvet scraps (not to mention some frosting that didn’t turn out quite right?) Why, make cake pops of course!
In case you’re not familiar with cake pops, they were created by a lovely blogger named Angie over at Bakerella. She’s totally awesome. Anyway. After she invented them, they started cropping up everywhere.
Anyway, I’d never tried making them before, but they’re a perfect way to use up cake scraps! (more…)
Do you like whoopie pies?
I have to admit, my experiences with whoopie pies are pretty limited. It’s not a treat that defined my childhood in any way. But people seem to love them, so I decided to figure out what the fuss was about.
Red velvet whoopie pies are nothing new– do a Google image search for them and you’ll get loads of these guys staring you in the face. And while they seem to have been tailored for Valentine’s Day, I thought they’d make for a great 4th of July dessert as well!
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