REAL Carmel Corn

SORRY for the long awaited post ladies and gents... Life has been insanely busy! Although I did find time to make some AMAZING Carmel Corn with my Mom. I have always loved my moms recipe and this year I decided I wanted to give it a whack. I came to her house after getting my hair chopped so I was super duper happy! I had enough to donate so I was one excited gal. 

First things first you want to gather everything you'll need. Baking soda, corn syrup, brown sugar, butter,  pecans and your choice of popcorn. We chose smart pop to try and cut a FEW calories ;) 

Ingredients

• Pecans
• 1 cup butter or margarine
• 5 quarts popped popcorn (important, do NOT burn!!)
• 2 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda

After you gather all your ingredients you are ready to begin... Make sure to follow the directions. 

 Directions

Before we start anything we brown our pecans in the oven at 350 degrees till they are dark. Oven roasted pecans just taste so much better! Spread freshly popped corn in a large shallow sheet pan (similar to one you use to bake a turkey). Preheat oven to 350 degrees if not still hot from browning the pecans. Then spread the pecans all over the popcorn. Combine butter, brown sugar, corn syrup and salt in a heavy saucepan (at least 2 quarts size). Place over medium heat stirring until sugar dissolves. Boil until the mixture reaches firm ball stage (248 degrees on a candy thermometer). This will take approx 5 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in baking soda. Mix in well. This will cause the mixture to become foamy. 

Poor foamy mix over the popcorn evenly then stir it. Place it into the oven for 17 minutes ( I know it's an odd number but it works for us!) then take it out and stir thoroughly. Do that two more times for a total of 51 minutes. After its is done poor out on foil for it to cool then it's ready to serve! Make sure to keep all your carmel corn in an air tight container so it doesn't get stale. Enjoy... I know we sure did :)

Bible Study on Disciples-Disciplined... Do you truly know what it is to be a disciple?

WOW, this weeks message at our church was awesome! Pastor Paul, who is an amazing man of the Lord, was out last Sunday so we got to hear a message from our Associate Pastor, Mike Sanders.  Pastor Mike is a man whose love for the Lord is so contagious your fire for the Lord will grow by just being near him. Mike spoke about what it means to be a disciple. He talked about listening and really hearing from the Lord. One particular scripture stuck out to me. It came from the book of Luke, I LOVE the book of Luke!  Well all four Gospels are just amazing, but I really enjoy Luke.  I hope you enjoy it too...the scripture was Luke 6:46-49  

 "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete."

This is talking about two builders, two homes and two outcomes. People, he is talking about the difference of hearing from the Lord and actually being disciplined and listening to the Lord! If we listen and wait on God we will make it through these storms of life. That message just rocked me. How many times have I thought to myself, "Do I hear the Lord and still go and do things my way due to my lack of discipline?" Tonight at our Small Group we will be meeting and discussing this in so much more depth. I can hardly wait. I don't know about you, but talkin' Jesus gets me hungry!!!

I thought I'd bake up a little red velvet cake ( I just went with a boxed mix due to lack of time) and dyed some frosting purple to layer it on top. Make sure your cake is completely cooled before you start applying your icing.

I then used my Fondant to make the stars. I put a bit of yellow icing gel in. I would drop just a bit at a time, then knead it in the fondant to mix thoroughly to see what color I was actually getting. It's better to have too little color than too much color. You can't take color out!

 

 So having some time after hearing the message from Mike and some quiet time while baking I had time to reflect on what I'm TRULY disciplined to. My marriage? God? Baking? School? I found that I could be a lot more disciplined in all aspects of my life.  So... great message, great cake God is good!

Brody's Toy Story palooza!

Last Saturday was Brody, my nephew's 2nd birthday party. I was in charge of the cake, of course... As I was dreaming up what ideas I should take from where ;) I had one thing in mind... A ROCKET SHIP! So I posted on Facebook a little blurb about me being in charge of the cake and I got some great ideas thrown my way. One grabbed my attention immediately. The Green Alien Cupcakes on the Disney Family website. I just loved them! They called for Mentos for the eyes but after talking to my mom we decided that those might be a bit of a choking hazard so I decided to use a decorating bag full of white frosting to swirl in some eyes, it worked just fine. What I would recommend is putting the black gel on the day of serving your cupcakes. I found it to be a little runny the next day. Also when cutting the ears out of the sour belts I advise some kind of protection for your hands. LOL! I had to use a brand new pair of gardening gloves, I found the metal leaf shape was leaving leaf shapes on my poor hands! All in all they were great and fun to make! Brody loved them and he kept saying, "GREEN ALIEN CUPCAKE!!!" Made my heart smile :)

Gardening glove helped so much!!!

 The finished Alien

My next task was the rocket ship. I started by looking up rocket ships and then asked my husband to assist in shaping the cake. I decided to use mainly a white batter but then add in the left over chocolate batter to make a swirl cake for the rocket.

After we found our outline for the rocket Jeremy a.k.a. "The hubs" outlined the cake with tooth picks and began cutting (cut after the cake after it has had time to cool). After I made my second batch of frosting I stared dying some of the frosting with some of my Wilton colors in four different bowls so I could fill my individual icing bags. After the frosting had time to set up again I began icing.
 My hand was making the icing so hot I kept having to put my decorating bags back into the fridge for a bit. After the cake was finished I wrote a little Happy Birthday message on there for Brody and it was FINISHED! Brody and all the guest loved the cake from outer space...

Cupcake Bites

Well Friday was mine and J's, my hubs a.k.a. Jeremy, BIG present opening day. We got married a few weeks ago in Corona Del Mar on 09/11/10. It was the most AWESOME day!! God was so present and everything went off without a hitch. Our theme was 1 John 4:18 "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear...".  The day was full of love, good friends, and great cake!

Anyhow we left that night for our honeymoon for a cruise around the Caribbean. Lots of eating and sun and well... married people stuff ;) We both couldn't wait to get back to see our family and share in opening our gifts. Of course Jeremy and I are probably the people who are most stoked. So my job for this "present party" is to obviously bring the dessert. I had so many ideas on what to make then as I was searching on one of my favorite sites I stumbled upon "Cupcake Pops". I thought that would be a hit for sure but I decided to take the "pop" out of it. I also used white cake instead of chocolate. This was right up my alley. I love cake and I love chocolate and most of all I love EVERYTHING cupcake.

So they were a BIG hit!!! They were SO yummy but boy were they rich. I would definitely recommend them for people with a sweet tooth. I ran out of molding chocolate when I was 3/4 the way through so I had to melt chocolate chips for some of the bottoms for the remaining cake balls. That was the only time I really ran into "trouble". It was so "melty" t to work with. But they still tasted great so you can't ask for much more. 

The night was great and the present opening was a blast. All in all it was a FANTASTIC night of presents, family and of course... cupcake bites.