A Mish Mosh
 It's summer now and I have yet to go on a scooter ride with my hubby. I hope I get to soon. :)

My hubby is so good to me though! He pushes me on the swings at the park, brings me flowers, and lovely organic spotted eggs.

OH, I got my hair cut like Amelie a couple weeks ago for summer and somehow have no pics of how cute it was. Oh well, it's still kinda' cute but grows too fast.
 I am stalking the following blogs right now...You should check them out.
 Amelie's House
Vixen Vintage
Retro Ways
Spicy Ice Cream

So....uhhhmm.... how does this....
 brilliantly colored beet cake batter...
 swirled around in this cake pan...
 Turn into THIS when baked????!
 With my Beet Froyo in mind, I tried making a beet cake but, after it baked, it was not so PRITTY. The color did not keep at all. When I cut the cake open it was all grey inside. :(

Oh well, at least Buddy loves me.
Well, In July I am coming up on my 3rd Blogoversary and will be celebrating with some fun things including a give-away. So.....check back in a few days for my post on that


Until Then....Have Fun this weekend!
Delicious and Refreshing
Lemon and Fruit Sorbet
One morning I noticed that I had some peaches and kiwis, that if not used soon, would not be eaten due to unappealing over-ripeness. So I decided to make a simple sorbet. I wanted it to be about the fruit since I had just read an article from David Lebovits' blog about some sorbet in Italy where they just pureed the fresh white peaches and then put them straight into the freezer to serve as is when frozen, it looked beyond yummy. I also have been inspired by Gillian who strives to have a processed-sugarless diet and has been making things such a chocolate with agave nectar instead of sugar.
*By the way I am trying to convince her to be a guest blogger and share some of the innovative things she's been up to lately*
Yeah, so, I only added a little bit of honey for sweentner BUT, aparently I did not add enough, the sorbet was a bit too *Smacky* so in the recipe below I wrote in to add more honey.I hope you try it and enjoy it! :)

Original Recipe: Lemon and Fruit Sorbet
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/3 cup honey
2 small ripe peaches with skin on
1 cup pitted and de-stemmed rainier cherries
2 peeled kiwis
1 tbs vanilla
3-4 tbs whipping cream

-Dissolve honey in lemon juice
-Cut the kiwis and peaches into chunks
-Puree all fruit and lemon juice in a food processor
-Then add vanilla and whipping cream
-Chill in fridge over night or in freezer for and hour or so.
-Churn chilled fruit mix in ice cream maker and let set in freezer for an hour or so before serving.
THE END!
LAVENDER Lemon S'MORES!

BUT FIRST...
I really want you to meet our new puppy, Buddy...
 
Isn't he just so cute! He's a big love-bug and we adore him. Although, he has chewed up two pair of my flips flops, one pair of my sisters, a lens cap, and some other things, hopefully the list won't get too long. He's a good boy though. :)
Anyway, back to the s'mores...:)
It's been fun to have a friend that lives close by and loves lavender because I have had a chance to experiment and make lavender goodies for her to come over and try. The next thing I want to try is a lavender grill-rub and then maybe I'll give it a rest for a while.

Besides, my lavender buddy, Amy, is moving away! I know! Sad! To New York city, ya, she's moving to New York city! :( !
This past weekend we had a going away bonfire party at the beach for her and I wanted to make her lavender s'mores. So I made lavender lemon marshmallows and graham crackers and had another friend, Gillian, make homemade vegan dark chocolate. She made a pomegranate flavor and a blueberry flavor and they were really super amazing! But, if you're not a dark chocolate person, they may have been a bit too bitter for you. I think it was like 90% cocoa, so, strong, but very good and it balanced out the s'more beautifully. *In my pictures I used a store-bought chocolate with raspberry bits and it was good in the s'more as well.

So, for the marshmallows and crackers I basically just modified the graham cracker and marshmallow recipes I found from Smitten Kitchen - A blog you must check out if you haven't already. It's super profesh with gorgeous pictures. Oh and she's in NY city, that's funny.

For the Marshmallows, I blended about 2 teaspoons lavender and 2 tablespoons lemon zest with the 2 cups granulated sugar and then cooked the sugar as directed etc.. etc...I also added a little Wilton's violet gel food coloring to give them a hint of lavender color (I should have added a little more though) oh well.
The marshmallows took about an hour to whip up and then you have to let them set in the fridge for at least 4 hours but, I let mine chill overnight. At first I was quite worried the sugary goop would not gel, but it did and they were a lot of fun to play with. I am definitely going to try making a few different flavors in the future. One thing I found was that after I cut them, tossed them in powdered sugar, and stored them at room temp (which the recipes says to do), there was a bit of condensation and they lost their powdery-ness the next day. Luckily it only happened to the left over ones I didn't take to the bonfire.

Then, for the Graham Crackers I did pretty much the same thing but blended zest of a whole large lemon and 2 teaspoons lavender with the dark brown sugar needed in the recipe. And I omitted cinnamon from the original recipe.
For the sugar sprinkles I blended 1 tsp lavender and a 1/2 cup natural cane sugar to coat the top of the cookies before baking. I used the skinny round end of a chopstick to mark the dots on the cookies before baking which adds such a cute touch.
I found that using a cookie cutter is much easier too rather than trying to cut straight/pretty/uniform cookies with a knife. I also found that even though the graham crackers were really good, I probably won't make them again. Cut-out style cookies are a little bit of a pain so it just wouldn't be worth it again.
Anyway, the beach-fire party was fun and the s'mores were deeee-licious!
 THE END!
Smores Bars on FoodistaSmores Bars