I want to say that this was really easy to put together, because it’s fundamentally not hard, but I just happen to hate cutting melons and pineapples.  I still don’t really understand why these cost upwards of $60 store-bought, but if you caught me covered in pineapple juice with my counters a mess, I might have paid you a pretty penny to finish the job.  If cutting up the fruit is the hardest task involved with this project though, it’s really not bad.  I found a cute tin basket at a craft store to use as the base because after stalking Edible Arrangement photos for awhile, I learned that I liked the lower and wider style of arrangements better.  I trimmed down a half-dome styrofoam to fit in the tin and a variety of wooden skewers and toothpicks to get everything at the right height.  It really was fun putting everything together and I loved filling in the holes and being OCD about making sure everything was even and balanced.  I think it’d be a great activity for kids to get involved in (once the fruit is cut up obviously) – and there’s nothing like free labor to help get the job done!

I wanted to include some step-by-step photos of the process just to help visualize what I did to get to the final product.  The half-dome shaped styrofoam was great because it gave the arrangement a natural curve to start with and some height as well.  All I had to do was trim the sides a bit to fit into my tin.  For the pineapple flowers, I cut the pineapple into slices and used a flower cookie cutter to get my shapes.  Cantaloupe balls were attached with toothpicks (I found this to be the easiest way, not sure how the pro’s do it though)  and the pretty flowers were complete.  I started with the pineapple stem in the middle and I loved that it gave me a starting point and some height from the beginning.  Then I added a few pineapple flowers, lined the edge with honey dew wedges/”leaves” and started adding skewers of grapes at random.  From there I just kept filling in, sometimes just adding a grape or 2 to cover a hole in the arrangement   I tried to load up on the chocolate covered strawberries as much as possible because we all know those are everyone’s favorites.  I hope this inspires you to try your own edible arrangement and avoid those pricey sellers!!

Here’s a photo from the weekend of the two ladies of honor – love you Mom!

For the sorbet I started with a pina colada base that included basically a whole pineapple and 3 forms of coconut – coconut water, coconut juice, and cream of coconut.  And of course rum. Before this recipe I wasn’t even aware that all of those different forms of coconut existed, but now that I do I’ll definitely be going back for more.  I altered my strawberry margarita sorbet recipe a bit by subbing the tequila for rum and used it as a swirl throughout the pina colada base.  I think the flavors work extremely well together, and the colors are really pretty too.   Overall it’s an incredibly refreshing dessert that with enough imagination will immediately transfer you to the beach.  Just put on your sunnies, slip on your flip flops, and grab a spoon!

My trip to Miami was for a long weekend with three of my closest friends from school.  I didn’t enter dental school thinking I’d make such good friends, but four years of sticking together through the ups and downs of the rigorous curriculum made us extremely close.  And I’m very proud to say come Monday we’ll all be doctors, so you can start calling me Dr. Erica Sweet Tooth soon enough!!  We took this trip as an early graduation celebration, and it was very well deserved if you ask me :)  Miami, specifically South Beach, is such a unique city with its art deco architecture and beach culture.  We had a blast and I highly recommend Miami as a girls weekend destination if you need a getaway like we did.  The party continues this week and weekend with more graduation festivities, and after that it’s full time wedding mode – t-minus 1 month today!!  So many great things happening, so many desserts to help celebrate!  (Lots of exclamation points in this post, you’ll have to excuse my excitement for the next few weeks haha)

Tres leches cake isn’t something I would normally order from a dessert menu, especially from our favorite Mexican restaurant that gives you free churros after dinner anyway.  But ever since we went there for Ryan’s birthday last year and the restaurant chose their citrus tres leches cake as his treat, I have become a convert.  Tres leches cake is in fact soggy and that always turned me off from trying it in general, but only now do I realize that the extremely moist texture is what makes it so delicious!  The cake itself is of a very light crumb and acts like a sponge for the large amount of milk/cream that is poured over it after it is baked.  Since I wanted to make this as a birthday cake, I decided to do a layer cake, but I must say this isn’t the easiest option.  Most tres leches cake are seen as single layer sheet cakes, and now I understand why – the cake is so delicate and soft that stacking them on top of each other isn’t easy.  Although I was able to get some great photos of the cake, it was rather lopsided and messy overall.  I still love a layer cake (especially 6″ ones!) but would probably recommend a single layer if you’re trying to win some beauty awards.  I could tell my parents and Ryan were a bit skeptical looking at my lopsided cake, but once we cut in and had a bite – they were sold!

I decided to infuse my tres leches cake with oranges because that is how the restaurant served it and I remember loving it so much.  I figured it’d be a great way to use up some oranges and clementines towards the end of their season and add some bright, vibrant flavors and colors to the cake.  For the decoration I actually made some candied clementine slices that I think add a touch of class to my otherwise unfinished cake.  I actually love the look of unfrosted cakes, I’ve even seen that done for wedding cakes, and it saves me the trouble of frosting the entire thing.  Probably would have hid some of the cake’s flaws, but I think that just adds character!

Now I’m pretty sure they didn’t lose all of that weight eating these truffles, but indulging in a few of these for a treat is much better than most of the other goodies I post here.  They are insanely easy to make, and by using fiber cereal you’re getting a lot of good carbs and the banana and some peanut butter don’t hurt either.  The chocolate coating obviously doesn’t scream health food, but I opted for a semisweet/bittersweet blend that is lower in sugar and might just have some health benefits.  I topped some with chocolate sprinkles and some with crumbled up PB banana mixture and I really like the overall look.  You can definitely fool someone into thinking they’re not as healthy as they actually are!  Like all things made with banana, they definitely have a banana flavor to them, but I think that goes wonderfully with peanut butter and chocolate so I loved them.  With a little over a month until the wedding, I’m trying to avoid sweets as much as I can resist, but with something like this I don’t have to feel badly!  Here we are below before heading out to a gym class together last week, seeing us all together (looking so good, if I may say) in workout clothes would have been unheard of a year ago and it makes me so happy to see now.

So if you’re looking to shed a few pounds for wedding season and/or bikini season, but can’t resist sweets every now and then like me, I definitely suggest these truffles to curb your sweet tooth.  And I’m not trying to trick you into thinking they’re delicious like my suspicions with recipes like black bean brownies or chickpea cookie dough balls .   I’m thinking the people who claim those types of recipe to be yummy really just haven’t had a real brownie or cookie in awhile.  So you can trust me, I’ve had plenty of brownies and cookies, and these are still pretty irresistible.  I’ve lost a few pounds myself but still have found plenty of room for a good dose of chocolate here and there.  It’s good for the soul!

Remember the Red Velvet Cheesecake Layer Cake I made a few years ago?  This is a similar take on a cake-cheesecake combination, but this carrot version is different because the cheesecake and carrot cake are baked simultaneously in the same pan, rather than just stacking together different layers.  Gotta love any recipe that saves you a few steps!  I’ve already professed my love for 6″ cakes, so again here I opted for a 6″ cake and then a handful of mini cheesecakes baked in this mini cheesecake pan.  When making these, I actually layered the carrot cake and cheesecake batter, hoping to get a striped look, but after I cut into it I realized all of the carrot cake wound up on the bottom.  I may have minored in chemistry, but I have no idea how this happened, haha!  Oh well, the end result was still very pretty and the mini ones kind of maintained their layers, so I got a little bit of what I was going for.  I was worried that baking the carrot cake batter as long as a cheesecake would dry out the cake, but it was SO moist and not dry at all.  Maybe it was all those delicious fats dripping down from the cheesecake into the carrot cake while the baking happened?  Again, no chemical explanation here, but really, really yummy results :)

I kept my carrot cake simple and traditional (my favorite) – very finely chopped carrots, no raisins or nuts, and lots of cinnamon.  The top is covered with plenty of cream cheese frosting to help cover up any flaws or cracks on the top of the cheesecake and helps adhere a healthy dose of toasted coconut on the top.  I just happen to love the look of toasted coconut on carrot cake, and the crunchiness is pretty great too, but feel free to leave it out if it’s not for you.  If your favorite part of a carrot cake is the cream cheese frosting (myself included), then you’re going to love this cake because we’ve added an entire layer of cream cheese flavor with the cheesecake and also loaded some more on top just for good measure.  The spicy carrot cake is perfect with tangy cheesecake and it makes for a beautiful dessert too!

Now it may seem a little bizarre that a girl in her twenties would choose Disney as a spring break destination for four consecutive years, but 1) I love the place (it’s truly magical), and 2) my brother is absolutely obsessed.  When my grandparents spent their winters in Florida, my family would visit them in Boca and then always made the trip to Orlando for a few days at the parks.  So after all those years, Scott grew accustomed to the annual trip to visit Mickey (I’m pretty sure I’ve been almost 25 times…).  For those of you who may be lucky enough to know my brother personally, he is a total doll and jokester with some intellectual disabilities.   He’s 20 but reads at about a 2nd grade level and can’t quite grasp things like money and time (yet).  He’s truly a kid at heart and Disney World is his absolute favorite place.  My Mom doesn’t share our fascination with this magical land however, so for the past few years we’ve let her stay at home with my Dad for a relaxing weekend while Ryan and I took Scott on vacation.  It’s definitely a win-win situation.  And when you add cupcakes to the mix, it becomes a win-win-win.

On a slightly unrelated note, a lot of people ask me when I knew Ryan was “the one”.  And as cheesy as it may seem, I actually have an answer.  When we took our first trip to Disney together with Scott, just the 3 of us, it really dawned on me what a great guy Ryan is.  Without my parents around, Ryan had to assume a quasi-authoritative role with Scott, rather than just playing out the part of fun older brother, and it definitely tugged at my heart strings.  My future will forever be intimately tied to my brother, and if Ryan was going to join that future, he had to love Scott almost as much as I do.  Seeing them together on these trips helped seal the deal for me, and I’m very confident there are many more to come.  Scott LOVES taking pictures with characters at Disney, and I desperately tried to get a good one with the princesses to go along with this recipe, but they didn’t come out very well and I much prefer this one of us all cleaned up before dinner at our hotel Coronado Springs.

As for the cupcakes, they were so much fun to make and really quite easy too.  I found some images of the princesses online (I chose the classics – Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White) and printed them on cardstock.  After cutting out the shapes (that part was kind of tedious) I taped a lollipop stick to the back and voila – princess toppers!  For the skirts of their dresses I replicated the technique I used for the anemone flower cupcakes, but just did 2 layers with the top one being slightly smaller.  I think it added the height I wanted without a giant mound of frosting and really looks like a princess dress!  You can’t really tell from these photos, but they’re also sprinkled with a TON of disco dust and this was really, really pretty in person.  If you’re making these for a party or something I highly recommend picking up some of this edible glitter because it truly makes them sparkle.  Just like one of the little girls coming out of the Bippity Boppity Boutique!  Of all the Disney princesses, my favorite has to be Belle.  She’s smart, witty, beautiful, brunette, and she loves yellow just like me :)  Who’s your favorite??

And you can stop crying, Mom, it’s just cupcakes :)

As I tend to do these days, I adapted the recipe for my 6″ springform pan.  I just love the look of the smaller cakes/tortes and since they’re taller than 9″ I think they look more proportional.  Plus, my family of five doesn’t really need a 9″ peanut butter mousse torte, although I’m sure we could finish one off if forced to.  And as you can see from the photos, I made my crust very thick again (like I did with my mini strawberry cheesecakes too) because I love, love me a good Oreo cookie crust.  But you can totally do it how you like!  I also really liked the chopped peanuts folded into the mousse – it added such a nice crunch and more of that true peanutty flavor.  And with the chopped peanuts on top, I think it makes the dessert seem more sophisticated than something slathered in peanut butter cups (as I did, and very much enjoyed, here).  But of course I also added some some chopped peanut butter cups to the mousse just because it’s hard for me to not incorporate them into something like this.  Oh, and then there’s the chocolate ganache topping.  Because what would a chocolate torte be without that silky smooth goodness??

For the 9″ recipe, please see the instructions on Annie’s Eats blog.  And one more glamour shot just because…

I’m pretty sure the reason I have a taste for robin eggs is that my Mom has always loved them, and so looked for an excuse to buy a bag every spring for our baskets.   Why not sneak a few between filling eggs for your kids?  Can’t blame a woman with a sweet tooth.  Ryan doesn’t care for them too much, and I bet his Mom doesn’t either!  As long as as I have a good serving of Reese’s eggs and Starburst jelly beans I’m not going to complain, and the robin eggs are there for an enjoying intermission.  Plus you gotta love the speckled design and vibrant colors!  The recipe for the cookies come from the baking queen Dorie Greenspan, so you know it’s good.  The malted milk powder adds a great ice cream parlour taste without overpowering the chocolate.  And the chopped robin eggs throughout the dough infuse the flavor while the whole egg sitting on top gives the cookie the intense crunch that is so classic to this Easter candy.  I decided to bake them in mini muffin tins for a different kind of look, and it ensures the insides are super soft and moist, kind of like a brownie consistency.  But I must admit they’re not the prettiest thing to come out of my oven, the dough is definitely meant to be more of a drop cookie, but despite their flaws, they’re still very tasty!

I’ve said it many times before, Easter candy is the absolute best and I’m happy to add this recipe to my yearly celebration of all sweets egg-shaped.  I’ve done Reese’s Eggs Whoopie Pies, Cadbury Creme Cupcakes, and even made my own candy with these Cookie Dough Eggs.  It’s about time robin eggs joined the party here on the blog, and I think these cookies are the perfect way to induct them.  Next year I’ll have to tackle something with Starburst Jelly Beans, but in the meantime I think I’ll just scarf them down by the handful…

I actually made this cake for my birthday a few weeks ago.  And yes, I know it’s ridiculous to go through the trouble of baking a cake for your own birthday, but when you enjoy these types of things as much as I do, it’s definitely more of a treat than a chore.  I was still looking for a go-to vanilla cake recipe when I set out to make this cake, and now I am proud to say I’ve found my cake!  I’ve always been a vanilla-vanilla girl, so I was so happy to find a homemade version that delivered so well.  There are a lot of recipes out there that claim to be the “best” white cake, and I can’t say I’ve tried a gazillion recipes, but this one was really, really good.  The method of making the batter was a little foreign to me, but I’m pretty sure whatever made it so different had to do with the excellent results.  A nice delicate crumb, soft texture, and a beautiful white color.  I paired the white cake with a blackberry-marscapone filling to tie in the blackberry flowers and I thought it all worked beautifully together.  Normally my instinct is to lean towards a cream cheese-based filling, but it was my birthday so I was feeling glamorous and splurged with the mascarpone.  The outer frosting is just simple buttercream dyed yellow because, well, I love yellow!

The cake recipe is for an 8″ cake, but I decided to make a 6″ one instead and bake the rest of the batter as cupcakes.  I’m glad I did because I think the anemones as cupcakes are absolutely adorable.  I could totally see these taking center stage at a party, shower, or even wedding!  The great thing is that they’re really SO easy to make.  You do need a special petal frosting tip (I used this #127 from Wilton), but once you have that it’s really pretty straightforward.  Watch this video tutorial by Savory Sweet Life for a visual reference on piping petals.  Then I sprinkled some black sanding sugar in the centers and set half a blackberry on top of each one, cut side up.  I have no idea how many petals anemones are supposed to have, and I know they’re generally more mutli-layered and textured, but these look pretty darn close and I hope no one’s counting!

I’ve actually never made puppy chow (or muddy buddies, whatever name you prefer) before.  Shocking, I know.  But when I’m looking to bake something for an event or a party, usually I try to make something a little different, and puppy chow can be overdone sometimes.  No complaints, the stuff is amazing, but it’s just not something I’ve been drawn to make before.  So when I saw this Thin Mint spin on Your Cup of Cake, I finally got my motivation to delve into puppy chow/muddy buddies territory.  And now I totally understand why puppy chow is such a popular treat – soooo easy to make!  For this recipe, instead of the classic peanut butter and chocolate combo, here we have a mixture of Thin Mint crumbs, white chocolate, semisweet chocolate, and some peppermint extract.  Although it adds some extra steps, I love the combination of the two colors, and with St. Patty’s coming up it’s a perfect treat for any celebrations this weekend!

I chose to package up a few in treat bags for a cute presentation, or you can also do single servings by putting small batches in sturdy muffin or cupcake liners.  Anything to help with portion control because if you let anyone hang around the big bowl too long, they’ll be gone before you know it!  So whether you call them muddy buddies, puppy chow, or Thin Mint crack – I highly recommend throwing together a batch if you have far too many Girl Scout cookies around.  It’s a great way to use up a sleeve or two and bring their deliciousness to a whole different level :)  I hope you enjoy!!