Happy Birthday and Happy Halloween

This was a two cake week for me. The first cake I made for a coworkers daughter's 2nd birthday. Her party had a jungle theme, so I made a color flow piece that matched the party plates. I have had mixed results with color flow because it is very fragile, but I was pleased with how it came out. The cake itself was a chocolate layer and a white chocolate layer with cheesecake pudding center and white chocolate frosting (rich but very YUMMY). 

The second cake was for an elementary school fundraiser. It had the same cake layers as the jungle cake but with peanut butter filling and vanilla icing. The spider and pumpkins were made with fondant. I am not generally a fan of spiders, but I kinda liked this little guy!

I love autumn!

I love the crisp morning air  and the leaves changing colors! I also love all of the comfort foods that I start cooking when the air turns cooler. Two of my favorite desserts are apple pie and cheesecake, so I was really excited when I saw this recipe that combined both. The apple pecan cheesecake bars recipe is from the Kraft Foods website. I made this recipe to take to the new youth directors house when they invited Dan and me for dinner. I was very pleased with how it turned out... and it is surprisingly easy! I hope you will follow the link above and try this recipe. I am sure you will enjoy it.

Fruit Crisps

Our extra nice neighbor brought us some peaches from his tree. My husband and I had a huge sweet tooth, so I used this neighborly gesture as an excuse to bake! I found a yummy crisp recipe that was really simple (butter, flour, sugar, and cinnamon). However, it made MUCH more topping than the amount of peaches that I had. So... luckily I had some frozen berries on hand to make a berry crisp. We were able to enjoy fruit crisps all week!