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The Novice Gardener

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The Novice Gardener

Category Archives: Family

Happy Happy!

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Cooking, Family, Food Photography & Styling

≈ 49 Comments

Tags

bleck-eyed peas, Donuts, greens, lucky foods, New Year, pork

Year 2016. Does it feel any different? Hmm…

I hope it will go a lot slower. I have a lot to start and finish.

I hope it will bring happiness to you and yours. And me and mine.

I hope it will bring us all health and wealth. And spread less misery.

I hope there will be more peace and freedom. And there will be less injustice and inequality.

I hope a lot more LOVE will happen. Amor Vincit Omnia. Love Conquers All.

Now, excuse me while I consume this.

New Year Donuts

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Chicken Cordon Bleu Wontons

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Cooking, Family, Recipe

≈ 101 Comments

Tags

appetizer, Baked wontons, cheese wontons, chicken, chicken cordon bleu, ham, March Madness, snack, Wontons

chicken cordon bleu fried wontons

chicken cordon bleu wontons

My apologies, you awesome dudes & dudettes! This entry has been moved to my other site –>FiestaFriday.net. Please follow the link to get the recipe. I promise, it’s a good one!

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The Saved PecChoc Cake

05 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Baking, Family, Fiesta Friday

≈ 87 Comments

Tags

chocolate cake with fruits, dessert, failure, pecan pie, pecchoc cake, pie in cake, PumPecApple, white chocolate frosting

chocolate cake with fruits

chocolate cake topped with berries

I missed my own party, oy!

I missed my own deadline, that’s what I meant. Still…oy!

I was supposed to bring you a dessert. A special dessert. Only it didn’t go as planned.

First off, I had such a dilemma about what to bring to Fiesta Friday Anniversary Part 2. I knew I wanted to bring a dessert. And to me, pies reign supreme as far as desserts are concerned.

But then, this was a special occasion. A special occasion calls for a cake. A serious cake. Layered and tiered. Or at least frosted and decorated.

So I thought about combining the two, a pie and a cake. I thought it was going to be so creative. I would bake a pie in the shape of a cake. And then stack another cake-shaped pie on top of it. Then pile a cloud of whipped cream on the whole thing and stick decorations or candles. And then it was going to be called a pie cake.

pecan pie baked in chocolate cakeTrust me, this wasn’t the pie cake I had in mind.

I was set to make that pie cake. But first I had to google to see if someone had done such a thing before. I googled “pie cake”.

Do you know what you get when you google “pie cake”?

Topping the search engine result is this video from Food Network showing you how to make this cake.

What the heck?! Did you see that?

Apparently, there’s a bakery in Texas that makes this crazy concoction of a cake. 3 pies baked into three layers of cakes, stacked and iced. They call it PumPecApple.

Okay, who would have thought of such a thing? Only these 3 brothers from Texas, I guess.

I showed the video to my husband and kids. My daughter made a face, the same one I did when I first saw it (gross, right?). The boys, on the other hand, got extremely excited. Typical.

I wasn’t sure I would like the taste of such a cake. The whole thing just seemed too crazy; I do have my limits. But I knew if I made it, my Fiesta Friday friends would appreciate my effort.

My plan was to make only the layer that appealed to me, the pecan pie in chocolate cake layer, twice, and stack them to make a tall cake.

I did make them…but…they didn’t make it. The cakes. They didn’t make it. They didn’t turn out as I hoped.

Let’s see what went wrong.

The night before, I made the pecan pies. So far, so good.

mini pecan pie

The next day, I made the chocolate cake batter. Still okay up ’til now. The batter tasted great and everything. I poured it into my cake pans.

Then I ran into trouble when I placed the pies in. The pies were too high. Too deep for the cake pan.

At first I placed one pie face up, hoping the batter would rise up and engulf it as it baked.

pecan pie in chocolate cake

It didn’t. Instead I got this.

pecan pie in chocolate cake

So for the other one, I placed the pie face down, just like what the Food Network video showed. The batter didn’t exactly cover the pie, so I smeared more.

baking a pie into a cake

I was dubious this was going to work and my suspicion was confirmed. Basically, I got the reverse of the last cake. This time I got a cake with the bottom of a pie in its center sort of suspended in a little crater.

At this point, I started cursing the 3 brothers like they were my brothers.

So now I was left with these 2 pseudo cake/pie things I had no clue what to do with.

It took me another day to appreciate the failures. We’re humans. We make mistakes. And I hate to waste perfectly good food. I served the one pie cake as is. It actually started to grow on me after a while. I decided it wasn’t ugly and proudly presented it to my family. They didn’t even blink an eye. They took to it like ducks to water. It was GOOD! Like serious GOOD!

pecchoc cake

The other one, the one with the crater, I saved. And gave it the white-chocolate-mousse-frosting treatment (which by the way was also another saved failure), and piled fruits in the indentation. It was asking for it! Now, doesn’t it look pretty enough to serve at Fiesta Friday Anniversary?

chocolate cake with white chocolate mousse and fruits

chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting

I think so! But of course, I’m too late. All the guests have gone home…..

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Lucky Foods for the New Year

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by Angie | Fiesta Friday in Cooking, Family, Food Photography & Styling

≈ 68 Comments

Tags

black-eyed pea soup, corn bread, food, lucky foods, New Year's Day, pork tenderloin

lucky foods for the new year

So, I want to make sure I’ll be really lucky this year. You do, too? Well, lucky for you, I did a lot of research. By that I mean I just did some googling, but hey, it’s already your lucky day, so let’s not complain about my method of research, okay?

To ensure that we’ll be swimming in luck, we are to eat certain foods on New Year’s Day. There are many different beliefs and traditions out there, but I can pretty much summarize many of them this way:

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Fiesta Friday #363

Fiesta Friday #363

While shocking images coming out of DC were being broadcast all over cable networks, I was quietly busy in the kitchen trying out recipes from our Fiesta Friday friends. And for that, I was immensely thankful. Nothing eases my mind quite like baking. The Sweet Potato Scones above were inspired by Jess’s Sweet Potato Biscuits. […]

Fiesta Friday #362

Fiesta Friday #362

I’m getting ready to make a leftover-steak salad. The inspiration came from Petra’s Steak Salad, featured down below in the Features section. To go with the salad, I’m thinking of making the Persimmon Vinaigrette, also featured below. Then… and it’s a promise, I will go to the store and get sweet potatoes. To make Jess’s […]

Fiesta Friday #361

Fiesta Friday #361

Happy New Year, guys! Don’t forget to eat your donuts. For good luck! Or black-eyed peas. Or collard greens. Or pomegranate. Or pork. Or whatever your family tradition is. It’s all cool. Over the years, my family has adopted several of these fun traditions, so I figure we’ll do …uh… everything! We’ll eat a little […]

Fiesta Friday #360

Fiesta Friday #360

Hello, Fiesta Friends! Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones! May your socially-distanced holidays be filled with joy and hope. And may you and your family continue to be safe and healthy. Also, world peace! I just want to say that 😄 Last year around this time I was at Disneyland, enjoying Pineapple Dole […]

Fiesta Friday #359

Fiesta Friday #359

A Nor’easter brought the first snow of the season. How quickly things changed! Last weekend I was getting quite the workout (read: I was sweating) raking leaves in the garden with temperatures downright warm at 60 degrees. I’m glad I had the opportunity to clean up out there before the storm came. I expect my […]

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