This is my first time participating in French Fridays with Dorie. I am usually trying a few new recipes each week anyways and so I thought it would be fun to join a cooking group. This week's recipe was Mustard Batons. These are a cinch to make! Basically puff pastry, good quality mustard and there you have it, a fantastic appetizer or accompaniment to dinner. You can even make these up ahead and keep in the freezer for future use. They turned out beautiful and they were gobbled up quick!
This morning's lunch is shrimp sushi using soy wrappers instead of nori seaweed wrappers, jello with peaches, some veggies and fruit and a little bit of bunny crackers. Happy Monday!
Usually in our house Monday lunches are the hardest because Monday is my grocery shopping day meaning we usually piece together a lunch of odds and ends. Today wasn't too bad. We had yogurt, blueberries, cheese, bunny crackers and baby carrots. These things should always be on hand for these Monday type mornings!
The first cake is a batman/spider man themed cake that required frosting a large box to give the illusion of a tall building. I used chocolate cookie crumbs for dirt and Hershey bars for the windows along with making a birthday sign to look like a billboard.
The second cake is one of two dog parties we've had. This made a gigantic cake! Four round cakes and a 13X9 cake were needed for this giant dog bone.
The next dog themed cake was super easy. I baked a cake in a large bowl and then turned it out into a real dog food bowl. The final touch was frosting with chocolate frosting and sprinkling with cocoa puffs. 
The final touch was frosting with chocolate frosting and sprinkling with cocoa puffs. This last cake is probably my favorite. We had a Super Mario Bros. party. I made marshmallow fondant for the first time and used that to make the green hills, clouds and suns. I also used the fondant to sculpt little shells and mushrooms! It is always fun to look back and remember these special birthdays! If you need inspiration for your next party cake head over to
Today's lunch was holiday pasta salad with tiny holiday cheese shapes, gingerbread, a sandwich wrapped up like a tiny present and some candy cane inspired apples.
Finally a Christmas lunch! I started by making spinach tortilla tree sandwiches, candy cane apples some cheese cut up and a couple of maraschino cherry sticks for fun. The little green container is holding some peanuts. Feel free to check out many more creative lunch ideas at
I haven't taken very many pics of lunch lately due to a broken camera. We now have a new camera and I'm getting back in the old habit but until the next lunch I thought I would post a pic of my son's birthday cake. He had a dog party so we made this chocolate cake covered in cocoa puffs. It was a big hit and actually the cocoa puffs were a nice addition-very yummy!
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Today the boys are having oatmeal orange scones, apple with "teeth", meat & cheese fingers and little chocolate tortilla ghosts. Happy (almost) Halloween!
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So looking back at this attempt at creating a jack-o-lantern sandwich, it probably could have done without the cheese hair. I don't know why I did that because it sort of turned my Jack into a Jill O' Lantern, less is truly more sometimes. I added some grape eyes, orange pepper picks and of a piece of Halloween candy. Tomorrow is the biggest and best of my Halloween lunches!
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A friend brought us dinner the other night and brought these awesome little cars! They are made by hollowing out a hot dog bun and filling it with sloppy joe filling, a pretzel steering wheel, cucumber carrot wheels and olive headlights. My kids have never really been huge fans of sloppy joe's but sloppy cars were a different story-they loved these!
