Sorry! I accidentally spammed you guys

I CHALLENGE THEE to Bubble Galaxy With Buddies. http://scope.ly/2.UyvpC+4hacN. I'm "margiem2882".

What to do when you have too many cherries...

Sometimes I do things like go to the supermarket and "accidentally" buy six pounds of cherries. Then I'm left with the quandary of what to do with so many cherries. Yes, I could eat them all, but sadly with so many cherries, there's the risk of them rotting before I get to them. So, time to cook. I didn't want to make a pie (I leave that to M), nor did I want to actually go and buy milk to make a cherry clafouti, which I would usually otherwise do.... and then I stumbled upon the recipe for these cherry brown butter bars. The only deviation from the recipe is that I added a bit of almond extract to the filling, because almond and cherries always go nicely together. Mine are sadly not as pretty as Smitten Kitchen's (how is it that everything she makes always looks so picturesque?), but they were delicious, and received rave reviews from my tennis teammates when I brought them to our end-of-season party.

Summer = blueberries

I love all the fresh produce of summer, and usually eat it fresh (or smashed in drinks). But sometimes, you just want cake but without all the fuss. This recipe for a blueberry cake is ridiculously easy, and you probably have all of the ingredients already in your pantry. It's maybe not as fancy as M's double-layer strawberry chiffon cake, but it does hit the spot. I made it again using a mixture of sliced strawberries and raspberries in place of the blueberries, and it worked out just as well.

(Apparently I have a thing for simple fruit cakes - last summer I made a very similar strawberry cake. The advantage to the blueberry cake recipe is that it doesn't require milk, which I usually never have around.)

Birthday Trial Run

I have never been able to find something to make for T's birthday. Ever. He likes angel food cake on his birthday, and I can't deal with the reality of serving angel food cake as a birthday cake. It is NOT a birthday cake.

However, he is also obsessed with strawberry shortcake. Strawberry shortcake, at least in a cake form, is a little bit less offensive than angel food cake as a birthday cake.

On Saturday I'm throwing a little birthday party and since I've never made a sponge cake before I thought I'd give this a trial run. It turned out really well, but I think my cakes deflated a tiny bit. I will post again in more detail when the real cake is baked!

My second annual holiday party!

Since I had over thirty people who RSVPed for my party this year, I panicked and ended up making what I thought was too much food. I shouldn't have worried, all that was left was a couple slices of one of the pissalidières.

Savory items:

• Two tortilla españolas, one traditional and one with artichoke hearts
• Two pissalidières
• Deviled eggs, one traditional batch and one with tomato paste, smoked paprika, and harissa (both with homemade mayonnaise, naturally)
• More cheese straws than I care to even think about (what's pictured is about 1/8th of what I ended up making)
• Puff pastry pesto pinwheels

Sweet items:

• Turtle bark
• Mint chocolate chip bark
• Jam thumbprint cookies 
• Chocolate thumbprint cookies, but filled with leftover caramel from the turtle bark instead of nutella
• Brownies

And to wash it all down, pomegranate champagne punch! Please note the totally awesome ice balls I made studded with pomegranate seeds. It disappeared like water.

And it's over.

Thanksgiving was a hit, the food was great, and I'm the only person who broke a wine glass (and I did it today while cleaning).

I have some pictures, but I was so busy having fun and hanging out with all of my lovely guests that I failed a little bit on the picture taking. One of my friends took quite a few, so hopefully she will send them my way and I can post them a bit later.

For now, some photos of the pre-party table and the aftermath.