'Tis the new school season and I hope all you with wee ones have gotten everyone one back on the school year schedule. Here at my homestead my nephews began 2nd grade and my niece started middle school. Or at least I think it's middle school. Maybe it's junior high. I still don't fully understand the difference.

I came across a nifty thrifty craft online and decided to use it to show some love to my big sis's kids. I have all the supplies to make a few more for some other children call me Tia Gia but I've yet to complete them. Does anyone else suffer from such inertia? You spend all this time prepping and once you're all set things just slow down... I've got so many hours in a day and not enough time to do everything and keep my Hulu queue in order!

My momma taught me well so I also included a little note and personalized the wrappings. The great thing about craft projects is you often end up with remnants and can re-purpose stuff. These are the left over mini clips and treat bags from my grad party take-aways.

Also, I recently watched Duff Goldman's new show Sugar Rush on Food TV. Although I really wish his friend and cake constructor Geoff got a spin off I was still inspired by a segment of the 1st episode. I wanted to try and make a flat chocolate chip cookie. After some searching I came across Alexis Stewart's (Martha's daughter) recipe and it seemed simple enough. I looked around a couple days for those flat chocolate disks but couldn't find them even though I swear they used to sell them at Whole Foods. In the end I just used some Ghiradelli chocolate chips since they tend to be a bit bigger than Toll House's.








As one of my official taste testers said... they ain't too pretty but they sure do taste good!

My grandpa turned 88 this weekend. The family had a surprise and slightly impromptu birthday party for him. It was great to get multiple generations together. Looking through pictures of my Papa in his many different ages and stages also gave us a chance to do comparisons. A younger picture of my Papa looked a lot like a picture of my brother when he was a kid. Another pictured looked like my uncle and my nephew. The genes are strong in my family and a glance through a photo album is hard core proof.

As with any celebration there HAD to be cake.... The week before I began racking my brain trying to think of flavor a combination he might like. I originally settled on a pear cake with caramel glaze. However, my mom didn't think that combo sounded too tasty.* She attempted to get me to make a caramel cake but I vetoed that idea right away as my grandma was famous for her caramel cakes... I was not about to try and out do a culinary legend and legacy like hers. So after some additional searching I came across a recipe for a strawberry cake. A lot of the recipes I found initially were make with strawberry Jello. I know my Papa isn't into artificial flavors so I tracked down a vanilla cake w/ strawberry puree recipe over on Smitten Kitchen (I love that blog!). So I pulled out my biggest mixing bowl for this 3 layer cake recipe and crossed my fingers. I even bought a new 9" cake pan b/c I only had 2.

To have a good time! I know it's been a while and one would think that with my new unemployed/recently graduated status I'd be in the kitschen 24-7. However that is not 100% true. I have been busy... but I have been the best at documenting my culinary adventures. I bought an ice cream maker (electric!) with the cash I got back from selling some text books... I made a malted chocolate ice cream with Whoppers. I also made a lovely recipe of chocolate French toast for my niece/nephews/cousin while they were visiting. No pictures of either but I did learn kids only really enjoy milk/Hershey's chocolate. Don't try to get rich with malt powder and/or higher cacao contents. I also made a lovely dinner using the Barefoot Contessa's baked shrimp scampi recipe for me mah and I. I DID manage to snag a picture of that:


I also made some homemade gummies to give as a gift to my friend L.A. Maltz because she's awesome and loves gummie bears. They were peach flavored with a bit of heat added by the way of chopped adobe chilis. Good reviews from Ms. Maltz but no pictures... sorry. So. Yes, I have been doing things, making things, and more recently baking things. The most recent adventure? Pecan pie bars.... I made these because they seemed to be easily transportable. I've been looking for mailable dessert recipes.... Cupcakes get smooshed or fugged up. Chocolate can melt... I found this recipe in a post online about good picnic desserts. I think the crust is probably similar to a dessert tart crust but I don't know for sure b/c I've never made a tart before. All the crinkles in the pan scare me. I think I'd never get the tart to come out clean OR the pan would forever have old bits of crust b/c I couldn't clean it well enough. Shucks, I have a hard enough time cleaning my bundt pan. At first I assumed the topping would have corn syrup in it but I was pleasantly surprised to see it called for making caramel. So I got to experience something else new too!

Add pecans and pour it all into the pan. Bake again for 12-15 min.


Make it pretty with a small stamp and some ribbon. These bars are not ready to transport. I hope TSA doesn't confiscate them! If they do I'll be hungry and so will my friends.

Whose an awesome Tia? This griot is! Yes, that's a couple of non-English language words but I think you get the point. Post-graduation I've done the fiscally responsible thing and moved back to the homestead while I figure things out and try to find a job. It is hard to pay rent without a job sadly. While I'm not all about being part of that newish sub-group of adult aged people who haven't made it out of adolescence I am excited because this means I get to hang out with my fam. I recently had a day of adventure with my nephew while his mom went to work. She's a nurse so sometimes she goes in early... like be at work at 7am early. As a result it was up to me to make breakfast for young'un. I'd spied with my eyes a recipe for peanut butter pancakes. I don't know about you all but PB is one of my favorite flavors... maybe I've mentioned this before. My nephew also love to PB too so I figured he'd be a-ok with my morning experiment.

The recipe is pretty simple and it can be made vegan! Instead of eggs you use baking powder to make your flap jacks fluffy. Like most pancake recipes it calls for mixing dry and wet separate only to add them right before dolling out portions onto a griddle. The recipe is from the book Color Me Vegan and it was so simple I highly recommend it!

Most people like to have people plan parties on their behalf. I like to plan parties for myself. I love all the work that goes into it... picking a menu, deciding on a color theme, creating invitations, etc. It all makes me feel really "grown-up" since parties for me now tend to be more than chips and dip with a game of musical chairs. However, my abode during grad school has been small and not conducive to multiple people hanging out. My good friends Shanwich (holla!) recently allowed me to use their house and backyard as the location of my graduation picnic. Here is an overview of the menu:

Greek Burgers (a specialty of my friend and house owner so I don't have the secret recipe)
Grilled Corn w/ compound butter
Gazpacho Shooters
Couscous Salad
Pasta Salad
Chips and Dip (it's a classic!)
Mojito Cupcakes
PB & J Cupcakes
Glittery Lemon Cookies

Also using the ONE concept I think Sandra Lee gets right we had a signature cocktail- the Laura Palmer. The Laura Palmer is like an Arnold Palmer but there's booze in it. Now, I know a lot of people are all about the sweet tea flavored vodka but I don't drink vodka. This drink allowed me to have that same concept with an alcohol that doesn't bring back bad memories of "jungle juice." To make this tasty beverage you steep 4 bags of black tea in a fifth of gin (your brand of choice) for 3 days. Then you mix the tea flavored gin 1 to 1 with lemonade. I made the lemonade from scratch b/c I love my friends that much but you can also use lemon juice reconstituted.

Lastly, there were also goodie bags b/c I like to be that involved in party planing. Using a tutorial I picked up online I was able to transform these things:

Into these:


Here are some other pictures from said picnic!






There are other pictures from the festivities but as I did not ask people to sign a waiver upon entering I feel it is unlawful to use them without a legal contract saying it's okay to show their faces. Until next time folks!

Hola! This griot is officially done with her graduate program. I am so excited... and so scared! (#Savedbythebellmemories) I just made up that hash tag I think. But as that line is from the BEST SBTB episode ever (EVER!) it was totally worth it. How did I commemorate my accomplishment? I baked of course! A few weekends ago I spent some time out to hang with the family. Before leaving I made a coffee cake with chocolate struesel to share with my peeps. I also bought some challah (holla!) to make awesome French toast (which my grandpa referred to as "Freedom Toast" ha!) for breakfast. But, I am not a morning person and thus not with it enough to take pics in the AM so alls you gets is a foto-montage of the cake making process. You can't always get what you want... but sometimes you get what you get.






Chocolate filling mix (bittersweet chocolate, pecans, brown sugar and sugar) about to get chopped!










Struesel ingredients (pecans not shown)


















Struesel all mixed up.














Ingredient of the moment: I bought this butter-vanilla emulsion at the store. I wanted this cake to have extra buttery flavor.


















Pre-layering of awesome ingredients.
















Coffee cake with chocolate struesel!







We had enough "left over" that people were able to take some home for dessert after dinner on Sunday!

Hey ya'll. So it seems as if I haven't lived up to my resolution to bake one thing each week. But. I have done some baking recently and I've got two kitschen experiments for you. A few weeks ago a friend came to visit and Devin (my friend from Real Good Food) and I both got to get busy in the kitchen. Devin is a savory kind of guy so he made dinner. Since no dinner is complete without dessert I brought cake! There was a multi-layer cake recipe I'd been wanting to try but didn't have anyone to share it with so this visit and friendly dinner was prime opportunity. Full disclosure... the cake is supposed to be 8 layers but my free hand layer cutting wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped so in the end mine had only 7 layers. It was still HUGE though! Also I'd like to say a many thanks for my buddy Mosaic Geek for letting me borrow her cake pans. I literally couldn't have done it without you!

What's the other story morning glory? Well it's the end of term and I've got presentations to do for final projects. I hate PowerPoint slideshows- I feel like they have become the basic minimum for any academic presentation but in reality they just invite people to tune out. Thus, I like to give my classmates a little edible incentive to make sure they're energized and paying attention. So, I made some cupcakes! I pulled out an old recipe I have for Mexican chocolate cupcakes because it's a small batch recipe. Believe it or not but sometimes you can't even GIVE homemade cupcakes away and I cannot eat them all! So I used this butter based recipe instead of my usual vegan chocolate cake batter. And because it was Mexican chocolate flavor I decided to use a mini-churro as garnish.