Thanksgiving desserts & Pumpkin Pie recipe

For Thanksgiving this year I made pumpkin rolls, no-bake cheesecakes, and a lot of pumpkin pies! 

My family is HUGE so I had to make enough to feed an army! 

Thanksgiving was so great! And I'm so very thankful for the family I was blessed to be born into. Couldn't have asked for a better day. 

(*Scroll down for my awesome pumpkin pie recipe)

Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp of ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 2 large eggs
• 15oz. fresh or canned pumpkin
• 1 can (12 fl. oz.) evaporated milk
• 1 deep dish pie shell (frozen, unbaked)

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 425degrees F.

Mix together the sugar cinnamon, salt, ginger and cloves in a bowl. Beat the eggs in another bowl. Stir in spices, pumpkin and evaporated milk to the egg mixture. Whisk together until all of the ingredients are evenly distributed.

Pour into pie crusts.

Bake in pre-heated 425 degree oven for 15min. Lower temperature to 350 degrees after the 15minuets are over and bake for 40-50min. Cool on wire rack for 2hours. Refrigerate after it cools or enjoy immediately.

Enjoy!

Army Cake for Veteran's Day

To help celebrate my sister Veronica being a veteran I made an Army symbol cake for her. It's a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting colored yellow and black. I used fondant to make the letters and star. I normally would've layered the entire cake with fondant, but she likes buttercream more than fondant so I decided to put as much frosting as I could. I tried to smooth out the frosting enough to make it look like it's fondant. 

Happy Veteran's Day, Sistah! We love you!

Happy Veterans Day, Sister! HOOAH!

While I was going into kindergarten my second oldest sister Veronica was going into the military. She joined the U.S Army in 1999 after she graduated high school. Thank God she was kept safe and well during her time serving & now she is a kindergarten teacher. This post is a thank you to her and to all those who've served, are currently serving our country, and their families. I'm so proud of her & i'm proud to call myself her little sister.

(Bottom left picture; Left to Right: My brother Joe, Michael, ME, Jonathan,& Priscilla)

These are some picture of my dad and me with my sister Veronica (mom was the one taking the pictures) when we went to go pick her up back in 2000 from Washington to come visit us for a weekend from the Army.  I remember being so excited to see her and getting to take pictures outside next to the White House's christmas tree.

Happy Birthday Big Brother, Michael!

October 31st was my third oldest brother's birthday. He is in love with his dogs so I made him a dog themed cake. The cake flavor is vanilla with vanilla frosting. It is decorated and layered with fondant. I decorated it to look like a dog's food bowl with a leash at the bottom and footprints all around. 

Eyeball (halloween) & Pumpkin Cake Pops

I made some eyeball cake pops yesterday for a customer. The cake is vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. The pop is covered and decorated in candy melts. 

 I also made pumpkin cake pops for my family. The cake is vanilla and vanilla frosting. The cake pop is covered and decorated with candy melts...I  used brown pearl dust (yes, edible btw) to make the shading where the pumpkin grooves are so that it's more noticeable. 

Operation Christmas Child! - Samaritan's Purse

Since 1993, more than 100 million boys and girls in over 130 countries have experienced God’s love through the power of simple shoebox gifts from Operation Christmas Child. Samaritan’s Purse works with local churches and ministry partners to deliver the gifts and share the life-changing Good News of Jesus Christ.

http://www.samaritanspurse.org/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/

For the Waco area you can pick up shoe boxes from The Family Christian Store (next to Wing Stop). Box drop off location Nov. 18-25: 

Highland Baptist Church- 3014 Maple Avenue Waco, Tx 76707

Here is a quick video featuring Bob & Larry from VeggieTales about Operation Christmas Child:

With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. (Ephesians 6:18, NASB)

Gift-filled shoeboxes are a powerful way to introduce children to God’s greatest gift, salvation through Jesus Christ. Your prayers are essential to the work of Operation Christmas Child, so please join us during National Collection Week Nov. 18-25. Our goal this year is to collect 9.8 million shoebox gifts from the United States and nine other countries. During the week, we will pray for the people packing the boxes, the volunteers who will be collecting, processing, and delivering the gifts, and for the children receiving them.

How to pack the box:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx2BS3IL9kA

“Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet
but yours.Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the
world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about
doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”
~Saint Teresa of Avila 

Batman Minion Cake

This past weekend I made a Batman minion cake. The cake is chocolate fudge with vanilla buttercream frosting. It is five eight inch round cakes stacked on top of each other and I cut the top a bit to make the edges rounded out. I used fondant to cover the cake and decorated it to look like the minion is in a Batman costume.