Dessert for family meal

On Saturdays at work, we have Family Meal, or staff meal. Sometimes I make dessert for us. This week, I made a vanilla pound cake, and served it with strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream. It was a big hit.

The pound cake:

Help yourself!

The aftermath:

Marine Corps birthday cake

Wow, I am waaaaay behind on blogging! Back in November, I made a birthday cake for the Marine Corps for a local Marine veteran's group. The cake is a basic genoise, brushed with a citrus syrup, filled with raspberry buttercream, and frosted with a French buttercream.

I made the Marine Corps seal using a frozen buttercream transfer technique. Basically, the buttercream is piped onto glass with the pattern underneath. Then you freeze the buttercream until it is firm enough to flip it onto the cake. You can get some pretty good details this way.

This is the biggest cake I have ever made. I'm really proud of it.


Here is the whole cake:

And a detail of the seal:

Christmas candy

I can't believe I forgot to take pictures of the mountains of Christmas candy Barry & I made! We spent an entire Saturday making truffles, chocolate-covered caramel corn, marshmallows, and all sorts of yummy treats. It was an enormous Christmasy funfunfun day! But you will just have to imagine the peanut butter truffles rolled in chopped peanuts, the gingerbread truffles with a dark ginger ganache filling and spicy Rice Krispy coating, the strawberry marshmallows...actually, I think I got pix of the marshmallows.

I spent most of the day Christmas Eve making more candy, and I did get pictures this time. Here's a big plate of candy I took to my brother's house. It has (clockwise from top left): divinity, regular marshmallows and strawberry marshmallows, Earl Grey tea chocolates, chocolate-covered peanut butter crunch, white chocolate latte truffles, and chocolate-covered candied orange peel in the center.