Pumkin Whoopie Pies

Today at preschool we used paints, so of course, that means spreading newspapers down...EVERYWHERE! Ha! In the process I just happened to see this yummy recipe on one of the newspapers and had to cut it out and make it tonight! It is fall, it is pumpkin season! My daughter helped me make them. She thought they were pretty tasty.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

2 c. brown sugar
1 c. vegetable oil
1 1/2 c. fresh pumpkin
1 t. vanilla
2 eggs
3 c. flour
1 t. salt
1/2 t. ginger
1 t. baking soda
1 1/2 t. cloves
1 1/2 t. cinnamon
1 t. baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together brown sugar, oil, pumpkin, vanilla, and eggs. Then blend in four, salt, ginger, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon and baking powder. Stir all ingredients until batter is smooth. Drop by heaping teaspoons onto lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Spread icing between two cookies and press together like a sandwich.

Icing
2 t. vanilla
4 T. flour
2 egg whites, unbeaten
2 T. milk
1 1/2 c. shortening
4 c. (1 lb.) confectioner's sugar

Stir all ingredients together until smooth.

50th Wedding Anniverary

The thing that has been consuming my time is over. We celebrated my parent's 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday. Much time over the past few weeks was dedicated to cleaning and preparation. I decided I would take on the cake. I have really enjoyed making Peanut's past 2 birthday cakes so I thought I could handle it. I also did it out of honor to my mom who used to make cakes for many family celebrations. A week ago I made GOBS of drop flowers out of Royal Meringue Icing. This type of icing is best because as they dry, they become very hard and won't break. I chose to use yellow and pale blue for the colors. Yellow was our theme color for this golden anniversary and blue was the color my mom used for her maid of honor's dress.

Thursday night I spent the evening baking GOBS of cake. I made two huge sheet cakes and 2 heart cakes. I knew right away that I wanted to use the Lady Baltimore Cake recipe. A friend of mine made it for one of my baby showers and it was soooo yummy. It was almond flavoring in it and is so wonderful. I will add the recipe at the bottom. I also made Lemon Curd to use as a filling for the sheet cake and Buttercream Icing for the cakes.

On Friday we took our cakes to Gigi's and I worked all afternoon and evening decorating them. My beautiful 2 year old daugther only took one swipe out of one of them after I had finished icing it. Thankfully it was not after I had finished decorating it, so it was easy to fix.

I am happy with how they turned out. They were simple but nice. I do need to practice my writing skills with frosting. My hand gets so shaky. I had to scrape the letters off a few times.
The decorations all were perfect. I dug out my mother's wedding dress so we could put it out on display and all of their wedding cards. While digging I found a wedding book that my mom had written the name of their wedding songs in. My techie hubby scanned a GOB of pictures and found the songs to use as background music for a video. It was the hit of the party...even more than my cake! Ha! He did a great job. The songs he used were "Because", "I Love You Truly", and "The Lord's Prayer". We needed one more song, so we chose "Love Me Tender" by Elvis, one of my mom's favorite songs.

We also had awnings set up in the yard with tables and chairs underneath for people to enjoy the gorgeous weather. We used gold paper to wrap the tables and white lights. There were also a GOB of mums sitting all over. It was so pretty. My mother-in-law made a great quilt that guests signed for my parents.

We served yummy food that my aunts and cousins helped with. There was cheesy dip with nacho chips, broccoli salad, ham salad on homemade sourdough rolls, potato casserole, cake, homemade cream cheese mints, nuts, and punch. It was all really good and we had plenty!

I am so thankful that it all went so well. It was a small party with close friends and family due to my mother's battle with Alzheimer's. My dad seemed to get more excited as it drew closer and really enjoyed himself during it all. I am so happy for that.

Here are a couple of pics from my parent's wedding on September 20, 1958.


Lady Baltimore Cake
1 3/4 c. cake flour (or regular unbleached flour)
2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
8 T. butter, softened
1 1/4 c. sugar
1/2 t. almond extract
3/4 c. milk
3 egg whites (about 1/2 c.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 2-8 inch round cake pans. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together well. Beat butter and sugar together in another bowl until fluffy. Stir almond extract into milk in another bowl. Alternately add half milk mixture then half dry mixture to the butter/sugar mixture, then once again, beating well after each addition until batter is smooth.

In a separate mixing bowl, beat egg whites until they are stiff but moist. Gently stir about a third of them into the cake batter until blended. Add the rest of egg whites and carefully fold them in.

Divide between cake pans. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes in pans, then turn out onto racks to cool completely.


"I Love You Truly"

I love you truly, truly dear,
Life with its sorrow, life with its tear
Fades into dreams when I feel you are near
For I love you truly, truly dear.

Ah! Love, 'tis something to feel your kind hand
Ah! Yes, 'tis something by your side to stand;
Gone is the sorrow, gone doubt and fear,
For you love me truly, truly dear.

What a perfect song for then and especially now for my parents.

The Big Project

I think I have kept you in suspense long enough about what my newest "big" project is. I have been working away on it for about 10 weeks now. I wanted to keep it under wraps for a bit before I told you about it. Unfortunately it is not quite complete yet. It will most likely take me until spring to finish but it will be WELL worth the wait. Trust me. But even though it is not totally complete, I wanted to give you a little peak of what I am working on.















Surprise!!! We have known for like 8 weeks! Things are going really well. Looks like our big project will be completed around April 10, 2009.

I am Loved

I miss my blogging time. With work starting back it just seems life is busy. The extra time I had over the summer is now filled with lesson planning and preschool administering. I have things to tell you about though. Just be patient. They will come. My family blog takes priority when I do have time to blog, so I am getting some blogging done every few weeks. Ha!

I do have to tell you that there seems to be a new man in my life who loves me dearly. :) He is only 3 but he has great taste! Last Thursday, our 2nd day of class together, one of the little boys arrived and promptly said, "Mrs. ____ , I love you!" Then today his grandmother told me that over the weekend he was playing, stopped, looked at her and said, "Grandma, I love Mrs. _____." My teaching assistant thinks he is just trying to get some brownie points with his new teacher! Haha!

And I have one little girl in my class this year that really reminds me of my own beautiful little girl. On the first day of class I was watching and thinking about the similarities. Not 10 minutes later my assistant said, "So and so sure reminds me of your daughter!" Needless to say this little girl is beautiful but I think mine is the most beautiful one in the world!

This afternoon as I was preparing for a meeting at work, I thought how blessed I am to have this job. I love it. I feel more in tune with it this year. I love my new students so much already and have only had them for 3 class sessions. I only have one crier, but she only cries for a short time! It's going to be a good year!