Hello, dear readers!  Dana here with some exciting news!  Do you like books and reading and going on adventures without leaving the comfort of your favorite chair?  Well, that's great because I have started an author blog that appeals to all those things.  You can find my website {HERE} or just plug www.wordsbydana.com into your address bar.  My blog is there, in which I discuss life as an independent author and review books I'm currently reading.  The site also shares news about upcoming books, like this one:

^^^ Shameless plug ^^^ Coming in October 2016!

Traditional madeleines.  Cute, aren't they?

Here they are!  Not the prettiest, little maddies, but lovely and soft!

I am an anglophile; I adore England.  Honestly, if I wasn't married, I'd probably be living there.  We don't have enough time to go into all the reasons, so I will sum up with this: the accents, my bestie, the beauty, and the food.

That last one may surprise some people because there's this crazy idea that British food is terrible.

Where does this come from?!  Jammie Dodgers, mince pies, fish and chips, meat pies, and Victoria sponge cake...what's not to love?!  This hideous stereotype is completely unfounded!  The stereotype about how much they drink tea, though?  100% true.  Seriously.

I actually didn't discover Victoria sponge cake until this last trip I took over there, last year.  It is such a simple yet delectable dessert.  Essentially, you've got two bits of sponge cake sandwiching strawberry jam and whipped cream, and you sprinkle powdered sugar on top.  That's it!  And now I can make it all on my own!

So I actually ended up making it twice using two different recipes because I wanted to do better after the first try.  Therefore, this is going to be a comparison-recipe-review mash-up.

Or Ilvermorny for that matter. ;p Bonus points if you've been keeping up with your HP lore and know what that is.  So what's one of the most famous edibles to come out of the Harry Potter universe?

 Anyone?

 Correct!  Butterbeer!

10 points to Hufflepuff!  Let's be honest; you know the Hufflepuffs are cooking for one another all day.

 And what is the latest Starbucks promotional drink?  Excellent!  15 points to Ravenclaw!

That would be the so-called smoked butterscotch latte and frappucino.

Final question...through what date was that promotion supposed to run?  That's right!  March 21st.  15 more points to Hufflepuff house!

According to the Internet, which never lies and is my font of fandom-y entertainment, the smoked butterscotch drink is supposed to be a real life version of butterbeer.  So exciting for an ardent fan like me!

Hello, my name is Dana, and I am a Disney kid.  I unabashedly love Disney, and I don't care who knows it!  One of my many favorites is The Princess and the Frog.  Besides all the great characters and highly quotable lines--I am Naveen, Prince of Maldonia, and she is Tiana, the waitress...do not kiss her!--I really love that Disney used this film to emphasize the need to work for your dream.  I just think that's such a great message.  What else can this fantastic film teach us?  That if you're on a hunt for a man, you need some man-catching beignets!!!

Happy hump-day folks!

It's me! Heather's charming and talented baby sister, Dana!

Cutting right to the chase, what I've got for y'all today is a recipe test with some helpful tips/random thoughts at the end.

This is not my recipe by any means, but rather from Whole Foods. In case you couldn't guess from the title (and if you did, points!), we're making a homemade version of Nutella today!  Or, as I like to call it, HC spread.

1 cup graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, lightly beaten
Assorted jams, warmed

In a small bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs and butter. Press gently onto the bottom of 12 paper-lined muffin cups. In another small bowl, beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Add egg; beat on low speed just until combined. Spoon over crusts.

So Dana asked me to post her blog post today because she couldn’t get it to work, so Dad emailed me her post. What’s a girl to do? It’s not like I can’t not mess with her and her post.

You know what’s awesome? (ME!)

Being on vacation. You know what’s…we’ll call it not as awesome? (Dana!)

Working in a kitchen that’s not your own.(Its true. I hate working in Dana’s kitchen) Don’t get me wrong, it’s a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, but there are always adjustments that need to be made when you’re not in your comfort zone. It all started when I asked my dad on the phone last week what he wanted me to make him while we were at the beach together this week. I thought he would choose something I’ve, you know, done before and was good at. Nope. My dad chooses black forest cake, which I have never made in my whole life. True, I did make the black forest cupcakes during my last trial in The Baker’s Quest. That’s not quite the same, though. With black forest cake you have tricky things like layers. Well, I do enjoy a good challenge, so I said yes.

Jenny’s Black Forest Cake
Courtesy allrecipes.com

• 1 cup milk
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1 ¾ cups AP flour
• 2 cups white sugar
• ¾ cups unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee, cold
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 (21 oz) can cherry pie filling
• ½ cup cherry liquor

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8-inch cake pans. Make sour milk by combining milk and vinegar. Set aside.
2. Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, coffee, and vanilla. Stir in the sour milk. Gradually beat in the flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated.
3. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow cake layers to cool completely before filling.
4. To make cherry filling: Combine the cherry pie filling and cherry liquor. Refrigerate cherry mixture until chilled, then fill cake.

Many thanks to my friend Jenn for finding this recipe for me. I will say that you probably should leave the cherry liquor out to make this a kid-friendly recipe as well.(Speaking as a person with kids – leave it in. The ½ cup will not hurt and maybe they’ll go to bed sooner! Of course my kids are a little older. The younger ones should probably stay away. :) )

The first step in this challenge was to not spend a fortune on ingredients in Nags Head, most of which I already had at home, including instant coffee. I also measured all my dry ingredients that I would have to sift into a large, plastic container. This comes in handy later, as you will see.

Here’s my loot, all packed up together in a large paper bag with handles. Pretty clever, huh? The only things I didn’t include were the refrigerated items. (Doesn’t loot imply gold doubloons or something?)

Okay, maybe not so clever. Five minutes into the trip, we hit a bump and the bag split open. Everything arrived safely, though. (LOL! Ok so I’m mean for laughing, but had it happened to me…I’d have still laughed)

Okay, time to cook! You can’t really see it here, but this was the milk after I had added the vinegar. It was…chunky. Ew. Reminds me of those times we would misplace our milk glasses as kids and then find them days later. Kind of gross…(What a delicious thing to discuss while sharing a recipe! Speaking of which…..where’s this morning’s sippy cup)

Mmmmmm, coffee. I feel like any cake with this in it is bound to be good…(That is not enough coffee. You need at least twice that much…or maybe it’s me that needs twice that much)

To prepare my pans, I melted some butter and poured it into the pans. Then I used a paper towel to spread it all over the pans. Finally, I used about a spoonful of sifted cake mix in each pan to coat the sides in powdery goodness. Using the cake mix instead of flour keeps your chocolate cake from having white flour all over the edges.(Why is it that you’ve never made me a cake?)

When mixing the wet and the dry ingredients, I spooned about three of four heaping tablespoons at a time of the cake mix into the egg mixture and then used my hand mixer to mix it in until just combined.

Tadaa! Cake batter. This smelled amazing all on its own. It tasted really good when I got to lick the bowl too. J(You know better. Raw eggs are not good for you. Lets not get the chillins’ drunk off a ½ cup but lets dig into Salmonella! You know I love you. I’m just bitter that I was stuck in VA while you were in OBX)

Everybody into the pool! I really do say things like that when I cook. I think I get that from watching too many cooking shows. They all tend to do that too. Or maybe it just comes naturally when someone is really into cooking.(Or maybe you’re all just a little off?)

While that cake was baking, I mixed up the filling. Like I said, just take the liquor out and this will be just fine for kids. This was also just before disaster struck. (I don’t possibly see how anything disastrous could happen with you in the kitchen) J

I managed to knock the liquor bottle over into the stove when I was trying to put the cork back in. I don’t know if you can see it here, but the whole middle section of the recipe got soaked.(Shenanigans! You were hitting the sauce to hard!)

See how well my cake mix preparation worked? The cake is completely separate from the pan.

Just cover the cake pan with a plate, hold on tight, and flip. It comes out beautifully.

Okay, so the filling got a little out of hand. I poured it all on…and it spread. Oh well, I had my mum help me get the cake into my hands—she handled the flipping of the plate while I held onto the cake—and then gently placed it on top.

I drained some of the filling and then poured it on top of the cake. What can I say? Waste not want not.

Beautiful! I just wish I had had some maraschino cherries to put on top, but I didn’t and it was dinner time. Also, the whipped cream eventually fell off of the sides because it is a lazy slacker of an ingredient! Oh well again, it was still delicious. Next time I will only put whipped cream on the top. (Next time get whipped icing and in your middle layer make a ring just inside the edges then put your cherries in. Instant cherry dam! You could also do the same thing with regular whipped topping, but it will eventually melt)

Let me tell you why this recipe is awesome. Number one, it’s delicious. Duh. Number two, it has coffee in it, which Mike hates, but he ate this up like there was no tomorrow. Number three, my dad, who is a black forest cake connoisseur, gave this an A+. Trust me when I say that he wasn’t just being nice because I’m his daughter. My dad is totally the type of guy to give his honest option no matter who you are. I think you know what you need to do: Make this, eat it, love it. (Get your sister to make it for you, since she has never made you a cake!)

Dana and Heather!

One of these days I'm going to teach Dana about labels. :)

We've all seen the rainbow cakes or cupcakes, and I love them.

They're so fun and unexpected. :) Especially if you top them with plain white icing. :)

I decided to makes these cupcakes for our family reunion, which was over a month ago.

I know I'm a slacker for not posting this up earlier. :)

I followed these directions: A Law Student's Journey: Rainbow Cupcakes

I did not have gel food coloring, but I had neon 'regular' food coloring, which worked just fine. Unfortunately, I only have  pictures of the process - not the final product.




Well that would be the end of my pictures, but the cupcakes were good, and just so you know what they kind of looked like, I'm going to borrow a picture from my inspiration recipe.

{source}

Oh but I am going to leave you with a couple of cute pictures of the boys. Why? Cause I can :)

Steve was playing with his new camera.
 This guy was sleeping during the process, but he did enjoy some of the cupcakes the next day. :)

Devlin and our friend, Byrd, are goofing off while I make the cupcakes.

Hope you guys enjoyed!