Gluten-Free Scones

Scones are the most requested treat in our household and for gluten-free foodies this Everyday Food recipe is easily modified. Substitute general purpose gluten-free flour (we like GF King Arthur flour) for regular flour and I like to add a little bit of lemon zest. They bake up great and it's fun to try different flavors by mixing up the fruit (craisins are yummy, but fresh blueberry's tended to make things a bit mushy).

Happy 4th!

Have a wonderful 4th of July! I'm all set with my favorite fireworks - tanks, panda, pagoda, and tortoise one's that I've never seen before.

I made a gluten-free Blackberry Skillet Cake for today's festivities. It's a modified recipe from Everyday Food magazine. I just love the app Everyday Food has too! Check it out if your up to some new food inspirations.

Camping + Birthday Weekend

Last weekend Matt and I went off for our first camping adventure of the year to Indian Cave State Park near Brownville, Nebraska. Good times were had despite the abnormal amount of ticks and various bugs (seems like a mild winter = massive amount of creepy crawly's). Here is a photo montage of our little outing.

Toshi's all smiles in our yellow tent. He's the kind of dog that wants to watch a few ants, then catch some shut eye, and then go for a car ride in air conditioning.

Oh watermelon, you're my pal forever. 

Hmmm, Instagram photo of Poloroids, I'm in the camera matrix.

Memorial Day weekend is the big opening for the state parks, but the little gift shop/museum was open and I got to add to my patch collection. (I didn't know that some parks had these little patches and so I got a rather late state collecting them...someday I will have them all!)

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We celebrated Matt's birthday as well! Here is a cake I made for the occasion. I used gluten-free strawberry cake recipe with a few alterations (I didn't know what Earth Balance was so I just threw in a stick and half of butter and called it good). Also cream cheese frosting is a fav around here so I made that instead of the recipe's glaze.

Spring & Things

Lots of fun Springy things have been happening lately. I've been enjoying watching my flowers and herbs grow a little bit everyday. This Icelandic Poppy has been hanging out for about a week and finally opened up!

This is also my first year starting a herb garden. These little herb-babies started coming up and then I realized that I probably should not have dumped the whole packed of seeds in one pot. Oops...I'll thin these out as they come up.

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Our home opens up in back to a bike trail with park, and ducks really enjoy the little waterway. Matt took some really great photos with a telephoto-lens. Here's a few photos....baby ducks are so cute, I mean really, seriously, super-duper cute...

Half the time you can't even see their heads, they're too busy eating away!

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Then there's the baby squirrels that were investigating our porch, checking out the bird seed I spilled and just about everything else they can get into. 

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Matt also had his birthday last Friday so we had a grand time celebrating that!
Here is a lemon cake I made for the occasion.
 

Cookies!

I made some cookies this weekend. Since my recent experiments with a Red Velvet Cake tanked...I thought I would try Red Velvet Cookies instead. I got this recipe in the food network magazine. They were suppose to be a cookie sandwich with the filling inside, but mine puffed up pretty big so I just used the filling as frosting. Good with tea!

(Kit wanted to say hi!)

Hot Chocolate Cake

Most of my free time today was spent baking this cake. I saw this recipe in Fine Cooking Magazine and thought it would be fun to try for Thanksgiving!!! It only took 4 trips to the grocery store, googling what Lyle's Golden Syrup was, and a few minor obstacles. My only major error was not realizing that this was a THREE layer cake not TWO!!!

But all's good that tastes good! (See the white slab in the background...that's homemade marshmallows!!!)

Cake!

Matt's B-Day was last week and I baked an Amaretto Cake for him, complete with dinosaur decorations.

This was my first attempt at cake frosting (and baking for that matter!)

Cornbread?

So I've left things in the fridge to long and had them grow mold before but never like this. This was the result of accidental leaving cornbread wrapped up with tin foil on the counter for a couple weeks. I never knew that such gorgeous mold existed and so many kinds could develop on one piece of cornbread! If anyone knows what type of mold this is let me know...