Keeping Up With the Holidays

Ho, boy! It has been a pretty crazy month. I recently entered an entrepreneur challenge with my husband and my brother. We are working on building a statistics calculator for non-math and non-computer-science researchers (so basically everyone else who finds stats and coding stats hella difficult). It was a great competition, with some good competition.

Luckily, we got first place! My brother and I were super surprised when they announced our team. Actually we sat there in disbelief for a while until my husband said "That's us!" We were really stoked accept our $500! It was awesome!

Here we all are looking like some thugs! Personally, I feel I just look pissed off and not so much tough. There is another one of us just looking super excited and cheesed out, but my sister has that one for safe keeping. Proof that I'm not a hardass in real life. I just act like one *wink*

That competition fell right around the same time as Thanksgiving. So it was a pretty busy month. This Thanksgiving I decided to try out a dessert along with a savory cheese roll. I'd have to say, things turned out pretty dang awesome even in the kitchen. I'm super excited about these tasty cheese rolls. They were a huge hit with my family and I had requests for seconds (even thirds). The cool part is for those of you who are gluten-free, these guys are right up your alley. One thing that really threw me off about the recipe is how runny the batter is. Don't let that fool you. These poof right up in just a few minutes in the oven. I think it is the air that gets in the batter from using  my hand mixer that makes a huge difference. I tried it once with the standing mixer and didn't get the same poofy results. Here is the link to these tasty guys. You can totally follow her recipe and get the same results every single time. You can have these guys alone, with blended refried beans, or with Thanksgiving dinner. These rolls go with just about anything and everything. They are also super addicting, so beware!

Now we go on to some tasty desserts. I made these NILLA banana truffles. I adapted the recipe from Krafts Food. I personally enjoyed my version, but I'll need to go back and try the original. I made them dipped in semi-sweet chocolate and white chocolate; and sprinkled crushed peanuts and pecans on top. The white chocolate coated truffles had a nice rich sweetness, with the nuts providing a great crunchy contrast. The semi-sweet chocolate coated truffles reminded me of chocolate dipped bananas. I could imagine coupling those with some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.  

NILLA Banana Truffles (yields 36)

Ingredients 

2 small ripe banans
1 box of NILLA wafers
1 pkg (8 oz) Philadelphia cream cheese
6 oz white chocolate
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate
1/3 cup finely chopped peanuts and pecans

 Directions

1. Crush all the NILLA wafers in a food processor or by hand
2. Mix the wafers, cream cheese and bananas in a large bowl until well blended 
3. Shape mix into 1-inch balls and place on a cookie sheet
4. Place cookie sheet with truffles in refrigerator for 15 minutes to let firm up (they are easier to dip if they are cold)
5. In the mean time, place your white chocolate in top portion of a double boiler to melt
6. Remove the truffles from the refrigerator 
7. Once the chocolate has melted, begin dipping the truffles one at a time into the chocolate and placing back on the cookie sheet
8. Once you're halfway through the truffles, sprinkle peanut and pecans onto the top
9. Replace the truffles back in the refrigerator to allow the chocolate to firm up and the undipped truffles to firm up again. 
10. Repeat the same dipping process with the remaining truffles and the semi-sweet chocolate
11. For the last refrigeration, keep in the refrigerator for 1 hour or until firm. 

Store these guys in an airtight container in the refrigerator. I let them rest at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. 

Wedding Thank You Cards

After a fun laid back wedding and reception, I finally completed some lovely thank you cards for all the well wishers and guest! With how simple the design for both were, I'm surprised it took me well over a month to get these all done. I suppose it has something to do with having to adjust to things. I mean, I did get married and a couple months later it still feels surreal! Me? Married?!? Nope, that was not on my life agenda and you can ask anyone in my family or any of my close friends (including my husband). But I got pretty damn lucky and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone better!

So, for well wishers that we unable to attend the wedding or reception, I bought a love note heart template from Homemade Gifts Made Easy. Both the heart template and the envelope were less than $10! I originally had the idea to make these the wedding invitations. Since my husband (still weird!) and I thought a full on traditional wedding wasn't really our style, I just converted the heart template to a cute thank you note.  

These were super fun to make. It gave me the perfect excuse to practice my origami skills.The template allowed the message, font and color scheme to be customized. I left it at the default red so it would pop from the white paper.

I did update the message. I don't know, something told me saying super mushy to some co-workers would lead to confusion and possibly a talk with HR. I went so far as to personalize each envelope and put a heart felt (hee hee!) thank you message on the front and inside of the heart. The hearts and envelopes came with complete cut guidelines. If you cut everything right, you can get the message to line up and everything comes together really nice. Oh, and thank goodness there was a tutorial. They used their own template in their step-by-step video to fold the perfectly heart every time! That baby got watched over a billion times while I was working on these with plenty of pausing to catch up on steps. Thank Bob for YouTube!

I had lots of fun designing the cards for those who could attend the wedding reception. I was really trying to go for a low-key elegance -- which means keep it simple. I'm not sure if I captured it, but I really liked how the embossed card stock gave the card some texture and the shimmery card stock added a splash of color. Maybe it is just me, but the embossed background with the shimmery paper reminds me of The Great Gatsby, making it classy and fun. It feels like you were just invited to a New Year's Eve party and are going to meet up with Leo DiCaprio for drinks on the balcony during the fireworks, don't you think? *cough* Maybe that's just my fantasy.  

I still sit back and go "Aww" when I open the card to those wedding birds kissing. They are just super cute. I wanted to put them on the front of the card, but I figured a nice thank you to be more appropriate. Now to find other cards to put those love birds on. Anyone else having a wedding?

I really feel so lucky and appreciative of everyone's support in this new part of my life and I hope it reflects in my thank you cards. I also had a lot of fun with this project. It has given me lots of ideas for for the future. I'm so looking forward to getting started on something new!