Cherry pie for the Fourth of July

the Fourth of July-

Independence, fireworks, cold beer, burgers, hot dogs,  PIE.

For our nation's 234th birthday, I decided to wax patriotic and bake something as American as apple pie. Cherry pie. I was a few blueberries short of a full red, white & blue dessert, but maybe I'll try that next time.

The week before the holiday, I passed a farmer's market and saw the bushels of fresh cherries... I knew what I had to do for my country.

Roshni's Birthday Cake: A pair of Louboutins

 Sin dessert shop, Providence, RI

March is the month for birthdays. For her birthday on Tuesday, my friend Roshni, the classiest Brit I know, was surprised with Louboutin shoes-- but not ones to wear on her feet. These red-soled bad boys are made entirely of sugar and fondant. The shoebox, a vanilla butter cake, was covered in golden fondant and the sugar "tissue paper" was painted silver.

I'd always wanted to see a cake like this up close after seeing shows like Ace of Cakes and Food Network Challenge, so many thanks to Roshni's sister (who orchestrated the whole affair from overseas) and Sin, a dessert shop here in Providence, Rhode Island for making sure Rosh had an awesome birthday cake. And a big apology to Rosh and sister... I may have spoiled the surprise just a little bit.

Lemon Bars

Lemon bars - the staple of bake sales, church functions and cookie exchanges... unless you're me. Gasp! I know. Several of my friends looked at me with wide eyes when I said I'd never, ever had a lemon bar before making these. Somehow these sweet and tangy treats managed to elude me for 20 years. Luckily, my friend Trent (I swear, I have other friends too.) asked if I could whip some up, thereby ending the two decade drought of lemony goodness.

So I turned to Tastespotting, and again was brought to the perfect recipe by the perfect picture. Smitten Kitchen's reworking of Ina Garten's lemon bars looked and sounded amazing. You should take a look- her pics blow mine out of the water. Granted, I didn't have any powdered sugar on hand to prettify the bars... but her photo skills are still light-years ahead of mine. And beyond all that, she even came up with an option for increasing the "lemoniness" of the bars. Great success. I needed to recreate these to fix this gaping hole in my life.

Doug's Birthday Cake

I always (: for the past few years) bake a cake for my younger brother's birthday. This year, I thought I would take advantage of  a long weekend to go home and bake one-- two months late. For some reason, (uh, re-entry shock?...) I never got around to making one during my time at home  after getting back from Barcelona, so a week after this country celebrated our first president's birthday, I needed to make amends .

Naturally, I called Doug (my bro) before I even got home so I could start planning. He was gracious enough (: I begged him)to request a flavor for the cake, which made my life so much easier. Always a man of style, he chose a classic: yellow butter cake with chocolate frosting. A classic... which I had no go-to recipe for, sadly. So I started searching and eventually found a butter cake and a milk chocolate buttercream frosting that both looked crazydelicious.