Modern House Minimalist Design

  About a month or so ago Lillie and Lola had their first whoopie pie. I will eat one if it's offered to me but I am not an enormous fan of them so I was surprised at how much they LOVED them! The ones they first had were from Fresh Market so I thought it would be fun to make some homemade ones with them later that week. Over the last few weeks we have tried a few different recipes and here is what they've liked best (it's a mix of two different recipes with some minor alterations to each). For the cookie part we used a recipe from Cookies and Cups and very slightly altered it. She has a recipe for cake batter filling and cookie dough filling both of which I cannot wait to try! 1 2/3 cup all purpose flour 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 tsp salt 5 Tbsp butter – room temp 3 Tbsp vegetable shortening 1 1/4 cup light brown sugar 1 egg 2 tsp vanilla 1 cup buttermilk For directions on mixing them up and baking them up you can click here . ...

Lillie, Lola and I had some fun making some mini valentine's cakes last week. They make a fun little dessert so I thought I would share how we did it in case anyone wanted to make some. I had seen several ombre cakes on pinterest and thought it would be fun to try! I had planned on making this a four layer cake so we made four different shades of pink but I didn't make them thin enough so we ended up just doing two layers on each cake and ended up making eight two-layer cakes instead of four four-layer cakes. Here's what they looked like when you cut into them: So, the first thing we did was make the cakes. I love homemade frosting but have to admit I find cake mixes to be better than homemade cake! For this we just used a Betty Crocker yellow cake mix and we added graduation amounts of pink food coloring. We used two cakes mixes so we could make four 9" round cakes, but if I were to do it again I would definitely just use one cake mix and make the layers thinner and ...

I had seen this rosette style cake on Pinterest a while back and finally gave it a try! I wanted to make it using chocolate icing though and a yellow cake. Seeing how it was my first time ever using any actual cake decorating tools I didn't really know what I was doing, but I have to say it turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. Mine looks a little messier than I would like and I definitely need to practice more doing the filler swirls between the rosettes but all in all for a first try I was quite happy with it and it really was so easy! I didn't take step by step photos but I can pretty easily explain the steps. First I just used a Betty Crocker Super Moist cake yellow cake mix and filled two circular 9" cake pans. Here is the recipe for the frosting: 3 sticks butter 2 cups Hershey's Cocoa  9 cups powdered sugar 1/3 milk 1 tablespoon vanilla Melt the butter. Stir in cocoa. Alternately add powdered sugar and milk and beat on medium speed. Add more milk if n...

It has been quite a while since we've had a babysitter come over during the day so that I could get some work done. Well, it's been over three weeks since I have been to bed before 3 AM (and most days lately it's been right around 4) so last week we had a sweet girl named Sarah came over two afternoons. We had met Sarah before, but got to really know her at Quinn and Lindsey's wedding where she was a junior bridesmaid. She attempted to help Lillie get over her pre-game jitters over walking down the isle although I have to say that was not much of a success, seeing how Lillie ended up being carried down the isle on another bridesmaid's hip! I don't think Lillie will be getting any more invitations to be a flower girl any time soon - haha! Anyway, as soon as Sarah arrived last week she and Lillie quickly bonded over their love of baking (or maybe more their love of "sneaking" licks from the bowl, which Lillie inherited from me, of course). I don't kn...