Oh Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

Brrrrr, my feet are cold! We were greeted this morning with ice in the feed buckets! Which was only made more curious, because the National Weather Map (courtesy of Yahoo) showed our temperature at a whooping 70 degrees! I’m not kidding! My feet told me, it was a lot closer to 32 than 70. Wonder what South Pacific island the weather dude was dreaming about?

We made it through Thanksgiving *correction* we grazed our way through Thanksgiving! On Saturday prior to turkey day, I taught a cooking class at the local college and we made a complete Thanksgiving dinner. Then I cooked Wednesday and Thursday for family members. Come Saturday after Thanksgiving, grown daughter #1 and her family came down, so we did what any red blooded American family would do, we grilled! And it was goooood! Since Thanksgiving we have pizza’d, taco’d. and had hamburgers! But now I am completely out of cranberry salad and I am going to be forced to make some more. I miss it. Dh misses it.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and your dinner was delicious!

DD#1 brought down a “new” cake and the recipe is so simple. If you have a thing for “salty~sweet” stuff, you’ll love it. I’ll post it at the bottom. If you are trying to lose weight before Christmas, you might want to just pretend you didn’t see it.

Today I started on some of the gifts that have to be mailed. Without giving out too much information *no pictures* we got out the sack of pine cones that have been piled in the corner of the kitchen for the last month, for the boys to do a project with. At the time, I was pouring candles, so I had this wild idea ~ and why not?

So I took a pine cone and dipped it in the soy wax, which was still fairly warm. After allowing the wax to drip for a minute or so, I sprinkled gold glitter all over the wet wax. Let me tell you, it came out so nice and it smells so good, I did 16 more! Dh was even impressed! I think these will look great set about in groups of three or four with a little greenery placed around them. And I figure the cost was mere pennies per pine cone!

Here’s this marvelous cake recipe…supper easy too!

Salty Caramel Chocolate Cake

Bake a Chocolate fudge cake according to the package directions. And let cool.

Icing

1 8 oz pkg. of cream cheese - softened
1 stick of butter - softened

Beat together, and add

1 small jar caramel (ice cream) topping

Continue beating and add enough powdered sugar to make it the right consistency to spread.

Then add 1 tsp. coarse ground sea salt.

Beat until well blended and spread on cake.

This makes more than enough icing for one cake, so bake two and share with someone. The sweet, salty taste is awesome.