Potato Soup... Mmmm... Perfect for Winter

My husband and I get fruit and vegetables from a coop called Bountiful Baskets.  The fun thing about it is that every week (that you choose to order) you get a basket of fruit and a basket of vegetables and you have no idea what will be in those baskets.  Some weeks you get kiwis.  Some weeks you get potatoes.  Some weeks you get spinach.  Some weeks pineapple.  You have no idea and the challenge is to try to use as much of the stuff that you get as possible.  For a couple of weeks we kept getting potatoes and I scoured the internet for the perfect potato soup recipe.  I used a Paula Dean recipe at this link:  http://www.smithfield.com/recipes/recipe/baked-potato-soup


Changes:  Instead of baking the potatoes, I boiled them.  For me that is just easier.  Also, instead of making my own bacon, I used bacon bits.  Way easier :-)

Dad's Birthday Cake

In September, my sister and I decided that we wanted to put my newly found passion for baking to practice by making a cake for our father's birthday.  We decided to try a cake mix that we hadn't tried before and were able to get at our local Michael's.  It was the red velvet cake by the Ace of Cakes and we really liked the flavor of that cake.  Anyhow, this cake was made by stacking two different sized square cakes on top of each other and tinting a cream cheese icing blue.  We then made shapes out of fondant using my new Cricut cake machine.  I have to admit, that was not an easy process and one that I need to know a lot more about fondant about before I ever try to do it again.  Anyhow... you can see our end product below.