Smith Family Weblog

Ava and I made these barbecue cupcakes for Bryan’s company party this weekend. I used the Martha Stewart one-bowl chocolate cupcake recipe (which is so easy Ava can literally do the whole thing herself). You can find information on the rest of the idea here–hurry, though, summer’s about over!

I couldn’t find orange sanding sugar, but a drop of gel food coloring turned my yellow sprinkles into fire-like crystals. I suppose this is a well-known trick, but I was really excited to find this worked.

Liv, our resident taste-tester, approved.

…then stuffed them with ground beef, tomatoes and garlic…

…and stuck them in the freezer.

We haven’t had a real abundance of anything from the garden this year, so no canned tomatoes or the like, but at least we have a few dishes of stuffed peppers to look forward to in the coming weeks!

Last weekend, I was searching for an appetizer that would showcase garden cherry tomatoes. I found this recipe for Ricotta with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes on Crostini on Martha Stewart.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I didn’t have smoked ricotta on hand, nor did I have the time to wait for it to arrive from the recommended online gourmet grocer, but a splash of liquid smoke seemed to the do the job. This dish is simple but inspired, and I think this might be one of my new favorite recipes.

When you find a perfectly-scored recipe on Epicurious, it’s rarely a disappointment. I agree wholeheartedly with the glowing reviews for this salted caramel ice cream. We made it for company last night, and it was fantastic. Plus, it made that sixth day of 100+ degree temperatures a bit easier to manage.

We’ve received about 849 potatoes through our crop share this year, and I’m trying to find interesting ways to serve them. I love this recipe for grilled smashed potatoes, which despite a two-part cooking process, is relatively easy. Plus, smashing the cooked potatoes is quite satisfying…

This summer has been crazy hot. As such, we’re spending quite a lot of time inside. It’s not easy to entertain a two kids under six when you can’t just say, “Please go be outside for bit so Mommy doesn’t have a breakdown.”

So, we’re employing some rather creative measures. There’s a tent—a real, live, actual camping tent—pitched in our dining room. Also, limits on TV? Gone.

Perhaps the best coping technique, though, is the simplest: popsicles.

My Mom gave Ava and Olivia this fabulous frozen box that makes homemade popsicles in under seven minutes. (That’s just enough time to say, “Are they done yet?” 112 times. I want to respond with, “When I was your age, we had to wait FIVE HOURS for popsicles.”)

In any event, seven minutes is super fast, especially when you consider all of the fun things you can do with this contraption. You can let the outer shell freeze, then pour out the liquid and replace it with juice of another color. Voila! Filled popsicles. You can make layered popsicles: also popular with the under six set. And, you can use vegetable juice and no one will be the wiser.

Lately, we’ve been making strawberry-lemonade popsicles. Despite warnings about low-sugar juices not freezing well, light lemonade works perfectly.

I’m expecting my royalty check to arrive any moment from Williams Sonoma. I’m going to use it buy more juice. And maybe some lawn chairs for our indoor campsite.

What do you get when you combine a cake mix with tequila and lime juice? Margarita cupcakes! No rocks or salt required.

I think it’s official—whoopie pies are the new cupcakes. They’re everywhere! Bakerella featured them last week, there’s a new cookbook devoted to entirely whoopie pie recipes, and a quick Google search yielded more than 172,000 results. I used a couple of those to create Banana Whoopie Pies with Nutella Cream Cheese Filling for Tom’s birthday.

For the cake portion, I used a Martha Stewart recipe. This made bite-sized pies—I piped the mixture into 1.5 inch circles marked on parchment. I added a smidge more flour than the recipe called for to ensure they stood nice and tall.

The filling is a Nutella and cream cheese mixture, courtesy of Une-Deux Senses.

We invited friends over for dinner on Sunday night, and I dusted off the set of American Idyll recipes from last summer. The last time I made this menu, I decided on the Honey Caramel Peach Pie for dessert, but this year, I went the Plum-Blackberry Streusel route. I was not disappointed…

We are really enjoying the crop share this spring. By far, the best item in the haul has been baby red and white potatoes. They were smaller than golf balls–very tender and sweet. We tossed them with a bit of olive oil, salt and rosemary and roasted them for about 40 minutes.