Let's Talk About Pie....

After all of my holiday related blog posts I thought it was time to move onto something new so this blog post is going to be all about pies. I know, kind of random, but I figured what the heck pie is always delicious and relevant. 

Last week I was all about pies. I had a potluck holiday lunch at work so I decided to bring a  chocolate chip pecan pie. I used the Karo syrup pecan pie recipe, which can be found here.  I altered the recipe slightly by adding a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. I'm a big fan of short cuts so I love pre-made frozen pie crusts. All you have to do is prepare your filling ingredients, pour into the pre-made pie crust, bake and voilà you have a beautiful pie. Since the frozen pie crusts come in packages of two and I still had leftover karo syrup I decided to try another pie recipe from the karo syrup website. I made the brownie pecan pie for my cookie decorating and hot chocolate bar party.   See, I told you I would discuss that pie in a future blog post! Both pies turned out great and received rave reviews. 

Pecan pie with chocolate chips

Brownie Pecan pie 

I thought I would also share some pie recipes using keebler's graham cracker crusts, which are another great easy pie crust option.

Easy Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Recipe

Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Ice Cream Pie

Five Minute White Chocolate Hazelnut Pie

Another way to  incorporate pies when entertaining is to serve mini pies and create a "pie bar". Below I have included pictures of some examples. Trader Joe's sells a mini pie medley which is a great option if you want to have a "pie bar" at your next party. 

Photo Courtesy of: Weddingomania

Photo Courtesy of: myinspiredwedding

Holiday Party Decor Ideas

Yesterday I posted some menu ideas for upcoming holiday parties so today I thought I would share some more holiday party decor ideas.

I love the winter greenery against the brown wood table. I also like the idea of putting candles in empty wine bottles, which is a nice way to use items you already own as part of the party decor.  

Black and gold is one of my favorite  color combinations so I am big fan of this table setting. I also love how the gold ornaments were incorporated into the table setting. I also really like how the sprig of rosemary pops against the black ribbon on the white napkin. 

Photo Courtesy of: Elements of Style 

I love the gold confetti placemats and the gold candles look really nice against the winter greenery. I also really like the gold sparkle place cards.

Photo Courtesy of: Hostess With The Mostess

Nice rustic table table setting.  I love color combination of brown from the wood, white and the pop of green from the winter greenery. 

Photo Courtesy of: Jenny Collier

I really like the mini rosemary wreaths on the napkins. I also like the use of a simple white table cloth and gold sparkle runner. I always am a fan of using a white tablecloth and then having a dramatic table runner. 

Photo courtesy of: Celebrations

Pretty dessert table, which goes nicely with some of the more rustic and earthy table settings I showcased above

Photo Courtesy of: The cake blog

 Beautiful dessert table. I love the backdrop. I also really like the touches of red sparkle. If you look back to my first blog post you will see I tried to copy to the red glitter christmas tree idea and I have always loved the peppermint topiaries, they add a nice touch to your party and are not a difficult craft project. 

Photo courtesy of: Pizzazerie

Another example of mini wreaths, but this time they are on glass milk jars. I'm completely obsessed with this idea!!

Photo courtesy of: Swanky-chic-fete

Where to buy some of the items:

Gold polka dot place cards: Elements of Style

Black & White striped coasters: Zazzle

Gold confetti polka dot placements: carolandcompany.com

Glass milk bottles: Michaels    

Holiday Cocktail Party Menu Ideas

I hope everyone is getting into the holiday spirt and enjoying some quality time with family and friends. I can't believe christmas is a week away! I thought for today's blog post I would give some cocktail and appetizer ideas for anyone who is hosting a party over the upcoming weekend. All my menu suggestions are relatively simple and will be nice and festive additions to your party. Hope you enjoy!

Cocktail ideas:

Pomegranate and Rosemary White Sangria, courtesy of bakeaholicmama.com. I love sangria and the rosemary and cranberries are so festive for the holiday season so this is a win-win in my book!

White chocolate Peppermint Bark Martini, courtesy of willcookforfriends.com

Yum! peppermint bark is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season!

Reindeer Bubbles- recipe & picture courtesy of: HGTV.com. I love the green sugar rimmed champagne flutes. The pomegranate seeds are also a nice addition to the cocktail. 

Peppermint white Russian's,  recipe courtesy of A Beautiful Mess, I took the picture :)

I made these for my roommate and I. We both liked them and super easy to make since you only need three ingredients (baileys, peppermint schnapps and half & half).  The recipe suggests adding a little peppermint extract to give the drink a more minty taste, I definitely will try that next time. 

Appetizer ideas:

Caprese Skewers with Balsamic Drizzle. Recipe courtesy of iowagirleats.com. Sounds fancy and looks pretty, but super simple and only requires four ingredients. 

Baked Spinach Dip Mini Bread Bowls. Recipe & picture courtesy of: picky-palate.com.  Very cute and guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser. 

Cranberry, brie crostini, recipe courtesy of: neighborfoodblog.com Cranberries and cheese on bread, what could be better! looks very pretty and nice, unstated way to incorporate red and green into your party menu. 

Cookie Decorating & hot chocolate bar holiday party

Yesterday night I had my friend Anna over for cookie decorating and spiked hot chocolate.  I looked on pinterest for different cookie decorating and hot chocolate bar ideas. Below is the inspiration I based my party off of.

Luckily enough both of the parties I liked the best had free party printables attached to the blog posts so I was able to get all of the labels and signage for my party for free. You can find the hot chocolate bar "baby it's cold outside" signage here  and the labels here.  I loved the chalkboard look of the printables and the black labels looked great with the red bakers twine.  I also used the Hot Cocoa Bar add your fixings signage, which is part of the Cookies and Cocoa printable package that I link to below.

I was very happy with how my hot chocolate bar turned out. I decided to set up my hot chocolate bar in my kitchen because we had to microwave the hot chocolate. For my hot chocolate bar I tied the cup of cheer labels with red bakers twine around my white coffee mugs. I bought green and red straws from michaels, which I put in the mugs as well. I put the instant hot chocolate, white chocolate chips, crushed peppermint and mini marshmallows in mason jars, which I also tied with the labels. I also had carmel sauce, which I tied the label directly to the jar.  I wanted to have the option of spiking the hot chocolate so I bought peppermint schnapps and baileys irish cream. 

Above are pictures of the cookie decorating table from the party. The cookies and cocoa printables can be found here. For the cookie decorating table I had green, red and white icing, white chocolate chips, a little crushed peppermint and green and red M&M's.  I bought gingerbread molasses cookie dough from trader joe's and rolled the dough out and cut with cookie cutters. Using store bought cookie dough is a great time saver when making holiday cookies. I also had Trader Joe's peppermint JoJo's on my table and a brownie pecan pie, which I will discuss in a future blog post.  Stay tuned for more holiday party ideas coming up this week!  What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

DIY Holiday Gifts

This past Thursday was my office holiday party. I had a conundrum i'm sure many of you have also faced, what to give your work colleagues. I wanted something homemade and simple so I decided to make peppermint white chocolate chip cookies. I used this recipe from closet cooking blog. The cookies turned out great, but I had quite the experience baking the cookies. Before I started baking I didn't really process how many cookies I would have to make in order to have enough  for the 13 people in my office. I had to go to the grocery store four times in order to have enough ingredients to quadruple the recipe.  I also didn't have big enough bowls so it was extremely difficult to mix the ingredients. Despite all the set backs I was determined to make the cookies and eventually I succeeded in making 60 cookies. I decided to package the cookies in clear treat bags with these labels and red bakers twine.

 If you still are looking for the perfect DIY gift to give your work colleagues, friends or family I have included some ideas below.

1) My favorite DIY gift is baked goods in a mason jar. Here are some recipes for cookies, toffee blondie bars, santa's cookies in a jar, pumpkin cranberry bread and chocolate chip banana bread. I love that you can have fun and make some pretty labels for the jars. This is the perfect gift for the person who enjoys baking.

2) Another nice DIY gift option is hot chocolate in a jar. Here is a recipe from Love Grows Wild blog.  I'm a huge hot chocolate fan so to me this is the perfect gift. You can also add a mini bottle of baileys to give someone a spiked hot chocolate gift pack. 

3) A third DIY gift option is peppermint pampering gifts in a jar. I found this idea on thegunnysack.com. Another super cute idea with pretty labels, I'm a sucker for good packaging. 

What are some of your go-to DIY holiday gifts? share with me in the comments. 

Cake Pops- The good, bad and ugly...

This blog post is all about cake pops! I was in the process of planning a baby shower for my work colleague, the theme we were using for the baby shower was grey chevron and yellow so I found on pinterest a picture of cake pops I wanted to try to replicate (see picture below)

my work colleague ended up having the baby early, but I had already bought candy melts and grey stripped straws from NY Cake & Baking Company, anyone in the NYC area should definitely go check out that store since its baking heaven. Since I already had the supplies I decided to make the cake pops anyways. This time to make the cake pop making process faster I wanted to try using munchkins as the base for the cake pops. I did some research on tips for making cake pops and found this blog post, which mentioned putting 1/2 teaspoon of shorting into the candy melts in order to get a smooth chocolate coating on the cake pops, which was an issue for me in the past (you can see the photo evidence below).

I got the munchkins from Dunkin Donuts and started making the cake pops by first adding shorting to each color candy melt 

                                           

Once I melted the white chocolate I dipped the grey stripped sticks into the white chocolate and then into the munchkins

Then I put the cake pops into the refrigerator to give the white chocolate a chance to harden. While the cake pops were in the refrigerator I melted the rest of the candy melts, the yellow candy melts burned a little bit.  I'm not sure why that happened to only the yellow candy melts and not the green or white candy melts. I kept adding shorting to the candy melts in order to get them to the perfect dipping consistency.   Then  I set up my decorating station with the melted candy melts, little candies and the melted white chocolate in a squeeze bottle so I could try to drizzle chocolate like the cake pops in the picture on the top of the page. 

After I took the munchkins out of the refrigerator I got to decorating the cake pops and it definitely did not go as planned. Some of the cake pops started falling off the sticks and I had a lot of trouble getting the melted chocolate to cover the entire munchkin. I also wasn't able to get the white chocolate drizzle to look pretty. You can see a picture of the final product below. 

This experience taught me I'm definitely not skilled in the field of pastry arts and cake decorating, but its always fun to try different baking projects. Stay tuned for my future cooking and baking adventures :)

New Blog Title & Focus

Hi again! I know over the summer I said I was going to blog regularly and then was good for about a month then I disappeared again, well now I'm back! As you may have noticed I changed the blog title and tagline to incorporate food. Anyone that knows me knows I'm obsessed with anything relating to food: researching restaurant menus, cooking, cooking shows, etc. I feel this blog needs to incorporate food in order to truly represent me. Therefore, from now on this blog will not only include event inspiration ( I have a ton of holiday party ideas coming your way) but will also include some sporadic restaurant reviews and recipes. Since the last time I blogged I moved to NYC so I'm looking forward to exploring and sharing my dining experiences with you. I will also be blogging about my latest cooking endeavors.  I don't have much cooking experience so I guarantee some of the results will be disastrous and comical. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and have better results. Any chefs out there reading this please feel free to provide me with any tips or suggestions, I'm always looking to improve. I hope you enjoy this new blogging journey with me! Always feel free to leave comments or email me at: megan.wormser@gmail.com