Mascarpone Chocolate Cake

This recipe seems kind of long, but really the assembly of it doesn't take much. It is a delicious cake and you will be very happy with it. I found this recipe on Food Network's website and just modified it a little according to my liking. To add more moisture to it you can add a butter cream frosting to the middle of it and frost the sides as well.



Cake Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup mascarpone ( this can be found at italian specialty shops, or if you live in Logan, Gossner's dairy has it, if you still can't find it, there are recipes on the internet on how to make it.)
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup baking cocoa
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk

Chocolate Ganache ( the chocolate drizzle on the cake):
2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips, or if you like milk chocolate, 2 cups of milk chocolate chips
1 cup heavy whipping cream.

Directions

For Mascarpone-Chocolate Cake: Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1at the time, beating well after each addition. Add mascarpone and vanilla; mix well. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; add to the creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating well after each addition. Pour batter into 2 well greased 8 or 9 inch round pans and bake for 45 minutes.

For the chocolate ganache:

Bring heavy cream to a boil and pour over the chocolate and stir until melted.

Let the cake cool in the pans for about an hour to an hour and a half after baking. Pour half of the ganache on one of the cakes and put the other cake on top. Use the other half of the ganache to pour over the top and let it run down the sides. I garnished my cake with hazel nuts just to give it a little somethin somethin.

Note: In Utah we live in a very high altitude, you may want to add about 3/4 cup extra flour to the cake mixture, there is a possibility that the cake can sink in if you don't.

Taco Soup

I love taco soup, this is such a hearty soup that really makes you feel good on a cold day. It's also really good for you; it has tons of vitamin C, protein and fiber, but it tastes so good you forget how healthy it is. It is a very simple meal to put together too, people will be very impressed, but you will know that you only had to do very little work.

Ingredients:
1lb ground beef
1 can red beans
1 can black beans
(optional: 1 can great northern beans)
2 small cans of tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes, I like to use the kind with sweet onions.
1 can of corn
1/2 package of taco seasoning, or more to your liking of spiciness.

Add all ingredients into a pot and simmer for about 10-15 minutes.
This soup is great with scones, or biscuits. I like to just use Bisquix because it's so dang easy and great with this. I hope someone tries it, it's very easy and really great!

Pineapple Steak Marinade

Today is Nate's birthday, yes, it is true, he is a quarter of a century old. Nate loves pineapple, so I found a recipe for a steak marinade that has pineapple in it. It smells really yummy, and when I cook the steak I'm sure it will taste yummy too.

Ingredients:
1/2 to 1 lb of steak
2/3 c. pineapple juice
3/4 c. Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp. packed brown sugar
1/3 c. oil
ground pepper to your liking
1 tbsp. garlic

I like to tenderize my meat before I marinade, it just makes it a lot better. Add the meat to the marinade and refrigerate for at least four hours. I cook my steak on a George Foreman grill, however, it is also good when broiled in the oven, cooked on an outside grill, or on the stove.

Enjoy!

Halloween Pictures!

A couple weekends ago while we were in Salt Lake we had my sister Krissy take some pictures of our family and of little Mattie in his costume. I'm really pleased how the pictures turned out, Krissy is a great photographer, we love having her do our pictures. It was hard having Matt in his costume for so long because it was actually a really warm day, so in the end we took a couple of pictures without it on. Here they are!

Slow Cooker Barbecue ribs

I just tried this recipe today and this has to be the best way to cook pork ribs:

Ingredients:
Pork ribs
1 onion
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup vinegar
1 Tbs honey
and 1/2 to 1 bottle of bbq sauce.

Cut the onion into big chunks, mix the rest of the ingredients and pour over the ribs in a crock pot. Cook on low for 4 to 6 hours.

A Recipe Blog...and some updating about our family...

Well, I've decided that blogging is definitely not one of my fortes. I hardly update this enough for others to want to visit, though, I have discovered that I would much rather share recipes than write diary type entries. You will still see updates about our family just as often as I do them now, however, now when you visit our blog you will see some great recipes, since cooking and baking are my passions. Today's recipe is.....drum roll... My favorite brownies! I'm often asked to give this recipe out since it makes delicious brownies and you can add all of the extra stuff like caramel (which I did this week and it was amazing!), Andes mints, etc.
Ingredients:
1 c. butter
2 c. sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 c. cocoa
2 c. flour

Cream butter and sugar together; add eggs and vanilla and mix. Next, add the cocoa and flour; I recommend doing this slowly since the powder and flour will likely going everywhere. This mixture will be thick! Don't worry, do the best you can to spread it evenly about the 9x13 inch pre-greased pan. Set the oven to 350 degrees and bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. After the brownies have cooled slightly, I like to sprinkle powdered sugar on top, it just adds a little somethin' somethin' to it :)

I hope you enjoy this one. As I do more and more recipes I will try to add photos so that you will salivate over your computer and decide to put the recipes into action!

School starting and new fish!

Last week was the first day of school for Nate and me, and it was the start of what's going to be a busy semester. Nate is going to school on campus and working full time, which is amazing! He is working so hard and doing such a great job. I thought it would be difficult with him doing both, though we seem to be fitting a lot of quality time in as a couple and as a family. I am doing online classes through USU, which is harder than I expected it to be. The hardest thing is to squeeze my studying in the time when Matt takes his naps, which is less than usual. Naps are a struggle for the both of us, it seems like a constant battle because I know Matt is tired, he knows he's tired, he just wants to play. He is such a mover these days; climbing on everything and crawling all over the place! It's nice to see that I have a healthy, active boy, but Mommy needs a little time to herself! We just had a little scare with Matt recently: he caught a stomach bug and it worried us enough to take him into the emergency room. He had a lot of diarrhea and vomiting and we were worried that it was a new food that he tried. All is well now, he got some yummy pedialyte and some medicine for the nausea, and has seemed to have been doing better. Now we just have to deal with a cranky teething baby! He has one tooth now and is working on another that is trying to brake through the surface.
On to the next part of the title of this blog: we got new fish! Now we are a family of 3, plus 3 fish, a frog, a snail and soon to be 3 more fish that we are getting this week! We can finally call ourselves fish-keepers again! They provide a ton of entertainment for Matt, especially since we keep them in his room, more so as a nightlight for him and since he just plain loves them. It is a big distraction, however, and that is part of the reason why he doesn't want to fall asleep...oh, well...I think the fish will be good to have in the house, they are really pretty and really low maintenance which I really like. I will try to post pictures soon of the new additions to our family and if you have any suggestions for names, we are open to them!

Camp-out!

We just got back from a family camp-out with the Kressers on Nate's side; we stayed in Lake Palisades down in Sanpete Utah. It was a lot of fun and even though it was Matt's first time camping, he did so well. Nate's mom came up and got Matt and me on Wednesday and we left on Thursday down south. It was great to be with family, especially to see Nana and Papa Kresser and see all of the cousins that we haven't seen since Christmas. Matt was very happy despite his aching gums from teething and loved playing with everyone; he even got to play in a kiddy pool for his first time. It was a pretty relaxed trip, a lot of sitting and talking and playing bingo with Nana and the grandkids. Nate came down on Saturday because he had to work during the week, and it was so nice to see him. We had a great time; we didn't take a lot of pictures so I don't have much to show everyone. We are looking forward to our other summer plans before school starts, and excited to see more family!

Homemade Jam!

I recently made homemade jam for my very first time today! Nate and I went on a drive to Richmond, and on the way back we saw a stand where they were selling raspberries. To my surprise, Nate stopped and we bought a ton! Nate is really not a big fan of fruit, and especially not raspberries, so I was really excited. I found a recipe to make the jam, and I had always thought that jam was a really hard and long process, however it is really quite simple and doesn't take much more than 10 minutes.
These are the ingredients: equal parts sugar to fruit- I did 3 cups of raspberries and 3 cups of sugar- and about a quarter of a cup of lemon juice.
Add the ingredients together in a pot and let the mixture boil for 3 minutes: really let it get bubbly, stirring occasionally. Then stir consistently for 6 minutes. I just poured my jam into a plastic container with a lid and put it in the fridge. We let it set up for a little while and put it on bread and it was delicious! I think I am going to get some more fruit on the fruit highway and try some other types of jams, but I will bottle them next time. Try the recipe! It's simple and yummy!

ChaCha Guide!

Have you ever had an obscure question that needed answering? Well, Nate is the one that could probably find the answer for you. He is now a ChaCha guide; If you are unfamiliar with what this is: ChaCha is an address that you can text on your phone to get an answer to pretty much everything. Nate and I use it quite often, especially when we need directions to somewhere. Since we use it so much, Nate checked up on their website and found that he could become a guide, or someone who answers the questions that are text. He earns up to 13 cents a question, which can add up pretty fast. Most of the questions that he answers are about sports, science, the lds religion, and pretty much a wide variety of subjects. Some of the questions he gets are really strange, but it's a lot of fun for him anyway. We have decided to put the earnings from the site to our vacation fund. We are hoping to take a fun vacation next summer so this will really help us to be able to provide for it financially. The next time you need an answer to something, text it to ChaCha and maybe Nate will be the one that answers it for you!

I recently took a cake decorating class which was a lot of fun. It was nice to get out of the house by myself at least once a week and be with some other ladies. I have never been good at decorating cakes but I learned a lot in the class and I found that I really enjoy doing it. This is my "graduation" cake that I did for the class and I'm pretty proud of it. I hope I can continue taking classes to make even better cakes.

We are really bad bloggers!

Well, I'm sure by now, most people have stopped checking out our blog because the last time we posted was Christmas, and we have just celebrated Independence day! We are terrible bloggers. However, we have attributed our bad blogging habits to not having a reliable computer to upload pictures. Things are going to change; we have recently bought a new laptop and we will make an honest effort to be better about updating everyone about our lives, though boring they may be, every now and again we have something semi-interesting to share.
Since the last time we blogged we had a baby! We love being parents, and we feel that our marriage is much more complete with our little Matthew. He is definitely a happy baby and has a lot of energy that may be a challenge when he is a walking toddler. He fills his days with lots of sleep, rolling over from tummy to back and back to tummy, trying new solid foods and giving "soft" loves, which really is just sucking on our faces and pulling hair. He turned 6 months old this last Monday and with that was able to start veggies! We tried peas yesterday and Matt absolutely loved them! I am excited to give him more and start him on some new foods. He has a very happy personality and loves new things which is a lot of fun and keeps us smiling.
Since the last time we blogged, my mom, Mom Palmer moved to Coronado Island to be with my dad and we are excited to visit both of them in August. We miss them, but we are excited that we get to visit them, especially since they live in such a beautiful place. This summer has been really nice and will continue to be so, with the Kresser family camp out, a trip to Disneyland and Coronado, it is sure to be lots of fun!
Before we know it school will be creeping up on us and what spare time we have will be gone. Nate is going to continue working full time for CVTD driving bus and going to school which will be a challenge, but he is such a hard worker, I know he will do great! I am also going back to school, but I will be doing online classes rather than attending them on campus. It will be nice going back to school, but I think we are both dreading it a little. If all goes well though, we will both only have 3 more semesters and then Nate will be applying for optometry school. There are not very many schools, so we will be happy to go wherever we are accepted.
Nate and I have been setting different goals in our lives and one that we are very excited to start working on is the RAGNAR, which is a relay race that goes from Logan to Park City, Utah. It consists of up to 12 runners on a team and each runner will switch off running during the course of the race. The minimum a runner will run is 13 miles, which will be a challenge but a challenge that we are excited to attempt. We are going to have to start training this summer in order to be able to complete the race next June. We are still looking for runners as well as volunteers to help us, so if anyone would like to be a part of this we will gladly have you!
Hopefully this blog will help catch everyone up to speed about us; we aren't very interesting and we rarely have drama or a lot of excitement, so this probably encompasses the last 6 months pretty well.