Have some cake, it's Friday!

As promised, here is the orange poppy seed cake from always with butter mentioned on Tuesday. Even though this was a short work week, it sure didn't feel like it. At all. But thankfully, I have made it to yet another Friday. And on the bright side, it's no longer pitch black at six o'clock so I can actually see some light when I leave work. What a difference that makes!

This cake came out delicious. It's like a variation of a poppy seed muffin, but with the density of a bundt cake. The only issue I had was with the consistency frosting. I only made half a recipe for the cake but decided to go regular with the frosting. Yeah, that's right, double frosting. The first time I made it it was soupy, so I tossed it. Then I started with the powdered sugar and added the orange juice much slower and at a higher mixing speed, which yielded an actual frosting. This is the only advice I can give you, as I totally disregarded the recipe at that point. Hope you have a good Friday and fun weekend!

Mandeep and Michael

Hello! I have been on a bit of a blogging hiatus, but I couldn't be happier to kick things off with a photo shoot with one of my best friends, Mandeep, and her fiance Michael. I can't believe that February is almost over! This year has started off really fast for me with long, long days at work, night classes and working on building a website on the weekends. Yes, that is what has been hogging all my blog time, but it feels good to get back to writing and sharing. Speaking of sharing, I made an orange poppy seed cake from Always with Butter that I will have to share later this week because I just can't wait to share these! Mandeep and Michael, thank you so much for being good sports and off-trailing it and climbing trees, you were awesome! Without further adieu...

 

More from Michigan

Here are a couple more pictures from Michigan from the day before Christmas Eve. This was the most snow I encountered during my trip. Just a light dusting, really. We all took it easy at the house in the morning, except Daisy, who watched for and chased squirrels that tried to steal food from the bird feeders on the deck. Then we went into town for a little shopping. A couple scarves later, we stopped in at the new spice store in town. It smelled wonderful but all the choices were overwhelming. I ended up with two bags of fragrant loose tea which I'm hoping will last me a while. After, we stopped at the market to pick up ingredients to make this ribolita recipe from Heidi, which was absolutely delicious! It's my new favorite soup recipe. But don't try to make it on a week night, it takes some prep time. And it tastes even better the next day. I also made these after dinner, but they did not turn out very well. Can't win them all, right?

My grandma wearing my sister's ear muffs :)

This is about a quarter of the spices in the store. I loved the big jars and the rustic shelving. It's like a little spice cabin. They had a whole shelf of different salts from specialty sea salts to infused salts. And different kinds of chocolate to eat or to melt into warm milk. Bonus points for the big, super-sweet dog.

Life's a Beach

Hello! I'm don't know about you but I am very, very glad it is Friday. I know this was a short week, but it didn't feel that way to me. Here are some photos I took a couple weeks ago on my way home from getting my hair cut in Half Moon Bay. I decided to take the scenic route home and stop for pictures. It was less foggy than usual along the coast so it was very bright, but still kind of misty-looking. I have plenty of pictures to share from my Michigan trip so hopefully I'll have a chance to sit down and get through them this weekend. I'm hoping my weekend consists of: a latte or two, a chance to sleep in, editing photos, a new recipe cooked/made and possibly some de-cluttering, which actually makes me more excited than it really should.

By the way, I don't know these people but I couldn't resist taking a picture of them. They were pretty much asking for it. I like to take street photography to the beach, no big deal.

Happy New Year!

Hello and Happy New Year! I hope your holidays treated you well. I have a lot of pictures to share from my trip to Michigan. Though everyone told me I would suffer a terrible amount of snow and a bitter cold I had never experienced, I didn't. The snow arrived late, about two hours after I left. Good thing I forced my zombie self onto the 6:15 a.m. flight instead of the noon flight. As for the cold, without snow we didn't do much outside so my exposure to the bitter chill of air was limited to me walking (or trotting) from the car to a store, restaurant or other well-heated building.

Here are some pictures of my Christmas starting with cranberry sauce for our Christmas Eve dinner and some handmade ornaments and ending with a walk in the woods on Christmas Day. It was lightly snowing and I was able to get some pictures of the dusting of snow before it all melted away.

 

 

 

 

This is my sister and grandma "acting natural" after they discovered me taking their picture through a twiggy bush.

And some sort of berry, of which my grandma suggested I take a picture.