Pulled sugar

You can do so much beautiful work when you are pulling sugar, I personally haven't done it but I want to real bad. It looks so amazing and time consuming but well worth it. Here is a clip I found that was really interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO0K3e4HRE

Watermelon Face

Watermelon are what you think of for a summer time fruit. I remember eating watermelon in my backyard when I was young and we would take these huge triangular pieces about the size of our heads, seedless watermelon, and we would stand in the backyard with our swim suits on because we had a pool and stand in the grass and try to eat our piece as fast as we can, me and my brother would try to race and we would most likely have more watermelon in our face than in our mouth but it was so fun. After we ate your piece we would run and jump in the pool to get all cleaned off and them go at it again.

Birthday dinner

Yesterday was my boyfriends birthday, I said I will cook him anything he wants. I will go to the store and pick it up and cook it he just has to sit back and watch TV, our daughter spent the night at grandmas. So he had all day to think of something because he was off work, mind you he is the MOST pickiest I have ever met! He doesn't like any condiments, ketchup, mustard., mayo nothing! He kept saying I should just come up with something but pretty much everything I like he doesn't. So by the time I came home he came up with spam and egg sandwich. Are you kidding me out of everything I can create you give me SPAM ugh, its his birthday so I made it, gross! 

Frozen Grapes

So I work at the snack bar, pool side, at The Racquet Club Ladue. So pretty much its chicken fingers and French fries, but I have noticed that kids eat the crap out of frozen grapes, not fresh they must be frozen. When I was little I ate them at soccer games but these kids are like addicted to them its crazy. I guess its better than eating French fries every day, a little healthier for them.

Hamburger Cupcakes

So its barbeque season and for a family gathering I decided to make cupcakes that look like hamburgers.


1. First make yellow cake batter

2. Then put them evenly in a cupcake pan

3. Make Brownie batter, this will represent the meat

4. After baking the brownie in a thin sheet pan, cut out circles

5. After the cupcakes have cooled completely you cut them in half

6. Then place the brownie circle u have already made on top of the "bottom bun"

7. Then you take white icing and add food coloring to create you "ketchup, mustard and lettuce"

8. Then you pipe on your ketchup but leaving space for the mustard

9. Then fill the open spaces with your mustard, make sure you don't run off the brownie

10. Then you want to put your lettuce all over both the ketchup and mustard

11. Now put the top back on and you have a cupcake that looks like a hamburger!

Burger Competition

So my school had a burger competition and who ever won that gets to go to 5 star burger in Kirkwood Missouri and compete there to have the winner's burger be the July special burger. Anyways I won the competition at school and I get to go to 5 star burger I am super excited. Its on June 30th so if anyone wants to come down and try my burger come on down! Wish me Luck!!

The Shack

So for Memorial Day weekend me and my family went to Kansas for a family reunion, my whole family is from Topeka Kansas. Anyways my aunt has a huge house we always stay at and right down the road is a little hole in the wall food place, it's called The Shack. We been there a few times when we have visited in the past and they have the most amazing corn nuggets, I have never had the best corn nuggets in my life! The Shack pretty much serves fried food but the place is a really chill place to hang out after a long day. If you are around Topeka look this place up and try the corn nuggets!

Richard's Ribs

Okay barbecue rib loves I have found a rib joint hidden in the land of kirkwood! This small establishment could seat about 6 groups of four, nice little place but the ribs are to die for! This place is called Richard's Ribs, not a bad price and these are the most meaty ribs I have had in a long time and you can just taste the smokey flavor with every bit. Located right off  Lindbergh on Big Bend in kirkwood Missouri right be hind the Chinese restaurant on the corner. The sides you get just fill up the plate, I had fries that were perfectly crispy and potato salad that was so fresh it had to have been homemade. Then I got a side of the barbecue sauce, mmmm so delicious I had to dip my fries in it. That to was a in house recipe that was amazing and we bought extra just to take home. So if anyone is in the kirkwood area it is a must to stop off at Richard's Ribs, the address is 10727 Big Bend Rd, Kirkwood, MO. 

I miss you dad!

So yesterday May 12th marks two years from when my dad passed away, and my heart still hurts. But in remembrance me and my siblings always get together and go to one of his favorite restaurants, but this year I decided to make one of his favorite meals, he always loved to cook. Maybe that's where I get my skills from! Anyways I made what we call his sloppy tacos they are so good and I'm sure people make this too but I have only seen him make it and it is so good and super easy to make! To make if first you chop up a whole head of lettuce, dice an onion and maybe a tomato, we are not big with tomatoes so I didn't add it but my dad did we just ate around them, plus there are tomatoes in the sauce. Then you make rotel dip, which is 6 oz. velveeta cheese and I can of  rotel and melt in a sauce pan. Then you cook one pound of ground beef and put all of the ingredients in a bowl and serve in a taco or burrito or my sister would take tortilla chips and and put the mixture on top of them to make sloppy nachos!

Mother's Day dessert

So the barbecue we had to celebrate Mother's Day was a success! We made just the right amount of food,I'm bad about buying to much I just want to make sure everyone is full and happy when they leVe. I asked my mom what she wanted for dessert because my boyfriend was in charge of the grill and I was in charge of the dessert. She said anything with strawberries, ok that narrows it down! So I searched and came up with two different ones, a glass filled with strawberry jell-o and strawberry filled with cheesecake! They both we delicious and I was really excited how they turned out!

Wal-Mart chicken

So last night I really was not in the mood to cook at all! But I needed to fix something for my family so I went to wal-mart to see what I could find  and I walked over to the hot food area and saw a whole chicken that they sell every day. It was a rotisserie chicken all warm and juicy and I was like a heck yea! For 5 dollars I can get a whole chicken and I knew that I had some type of sides I could make at home. So I found some green beans and au gratin cheesy potatoes, what I meal it was so good and the chicken was really good! I was worried it was going to be dry from sitting under the heat lamp but it was nice and juicy, so if you want a good meal but don't feel like cooking a long time go to wal-mart and get a chicken!    

Smoked eel

So has anyone smoked eel before? I am making a dish that I am going to smoke eel and wondering if anyone has worked with it before to send me some tips.  Should I smoke the whole eel or cut it up because I am going to plate up with the filets but I didn't know to smoke whole or cut it up then smoke the pieces. When I come up with an idea I will let you know how it turns out!

Mother's Day

So Mother's Day is coming up and me and my boyfriend come up with an idea of grilling at our house and inviting the family over. We are going to grill hamburgers  and hotdogs and maybe some steaks, I'm also going to cook some fries and green beans, mainly wensday my daughter LOVES green beans. She eats so much she is going to turn into a green bean! Anyways I also want to mKe some type of dessert but I am not sure what I want to make, I probably will ask my mom what she wants and make that. I will most likely post what I make this weekend so look out for it!

L'Ecole restaurant

Last week me and my friends went to the restaurant at L'Ecole during luch break. We started with Mexican cheese with avacado salsa, I'm not big with cheese but it was really good and I love avacados so I hade a piece with every cheese bit and it was so good. Then we had out entrees brought out, I ordered a cheese burger. It was so juicy and delicious, just what I needed! They cooked it perfectly and they had two different sauces, one a cucumber kimchi and the other was a type  of barbecue sauce they made which was awesome! The plate also came with a side of fries and homemade ketchup which was reLly good too. I would recommend everyone to visit the L'Ecole restaurant it is defiantly worth it!

Ramen noodle competition

So the next competition is coming up next month and the theme is gourmet ramen noodles. There is so much you can do with noodle s and I'm excited to see what I come up with! I know I want some type of meat in it and some fresh greens or something like that, I will post later what I come up with but if anyone has ideas just let me know!

Baby shower cake

So in a month my brother will be having a baby shower for his baby girl that will soon be here and I have been asked to make a "show" cake  with out using pink on the cake. OMG no pink on a baby girl baby shower cake, ugh but there are other colors that I will go with maybe  purple and yellow with some black in there or something. If anyone has any ideas please let me know but I will be practicing soon so I will be showing my practices soon!

Sweets on as tick

Yesterday school had a competition, it was sweets on a stick. So I made baked alaska on a stick and I got FIRST! I was so excited but it was pretty hard to figure out how to keep them up and I wanted to set some part of it on fire, so I tried to set the pops on fire but unless I soaked them with 151 rum they wouldn't stay lit for more than a second and I wanted the judges to see the flame so I piped the meringue in the middle and placed a small egg shell on top and filled that with 151 and lit that on fire and it was really cool. The pops were made out of strawberry ice cream in the middle with chocolate sponge wrapped around that and Italian meringue covering the whole thing, I then torched the pops and the center and I added the fanned strawberries to bring some color to the plate and tie it in with the strawberry ice cream.

ACF competition

On Friday the 25th of April we had the student ACF, American Culinary Federation, competition. My team and I have  practice for months for this competition and we felt like we were all ready, which we were! We were a team of four, one person for the appetizer, one for the salad, one for the entree and one for the dessert, which was me. We had only thirty minuets to execute our dish and we all rocked it out in our time. For the dessert the rules said we had to utilize strawberries, cream and white chocolate. So I made a white chocolate cake with a strawberry compote on top, a strawberry coulis, white chocolate ice cream on top of caramelized hazelnuts mixed with strawberry dust. I was vary proud of my finished dish and my team was awarded with a bronze medal!

Taco Bell

Today I stopped at Taco Bell for breakfast because I was hearing everywhere about their breakfast menu, I'm not a fan of Taco Bell I need to be in the mood for it, which isn't often. I got the AM crunch wrap with steak, eggs, cheese and hash browns all in a wrap. Being from Taco Bell it still had that Mexican flavoring, a little spice kick which wasn't to bad. I actually enjoyed it, surprisingly! There was a perfect amount of everything so in every bit I could taste all the components which was nice. I haven't tried all of the breakfast menu but I would recommend for people to try it out!

Molecular Gastronomy

So we have a term paper in class coming up and the topic that I have chosen is molecular gastronomy, which is the blend of physics and chemistry to transform the taste and textures of food. I have heard the term from many different chefs and wanted to know more, the pictures that I have looked at are so interesting and I think it would b something nice to have under my belt. Not saying by the end of this paper I will be able to master the art but have some type of insight would be cool to have. Once I start learning more I will be posting for all of my followers to learn and enjoy!

Grilled Chicken Salad

Last night after class I was sitting in front of my fridge look at all the food I didn't have and slowly came to the conclusion that I need to go shopping! But I was hungry at that point and did not want to go out so I found that I had some spinach and frozen grilled chicken strips so you know what that means, a salad! Since I was so hungry I made almost the whole bag of chicken so the meal turned into a bowl of chicken and a pinch of spinach but it was so delicious I wouldn't have wanted it any other way! I cooked the chicken on a skillet to crisp up the outside because that is the best way, I was going for a chicken Caesar salad but found I only had ranch, but that was ok because ranch and chicken go together like burgers and cheese, it just makes sense.

Green Power Juice

So me and my friend are on a diet together and her mother makes us these amazing green power juice. They have kale, celery, apples and cucumbers, she uses a bullet to perfectly blend all of the ingredients together and it helps so much through the day! I hope to stay on this trend so I can lose some of this weight by summer. Wish me luck!!!

Competition Team

Being on the competition team at school I have been practicing almost every day. The competition is this Friday, April 25, 2014 and I am doing the dessert portion for the team. I am making a white chocolate cake with a strawberry compote, strawberry sauce. Along with white chocolate ice cream on top of caramelized hazelnuts mixed with strawberry dust. The terms of the dessert portion is you have to utilize strawberries, cream and white chocolate. I think I have encompassed all the aspect as best I can on the plate and I hope the judges think the same! I am nervous because this is the first time I have been in a competition like this but I am also excited because I love the adrenaline I get from cooking under pressure, as long as I had plenty of practice.

Easter cake 2

Since the first bunny butt cake I made I have had some orders to make for other parties so I stayed with the same concept just changed a few things to make it more personal to my customers. I never used the "grass tip" before and was excited to work with it. I did find that if your icing starts to heat up then you don't have the individuals pieces of icing you end with all of them melting into each other, so it took me a little long than I was expecting but I think the end product was exactly how I imagined it. For the color free I got I used neon food coloring so it wasn't to green it played into the colors of Easter the more lighter spring color scheme, which I thougt was better than a bold grassy green.

Schnucks

During school we get an hour lunch break, we mainly go right up the road to Schnucks because they have a variety of hot and cold items to choose from and they are only two minuets up the road. When you walk in you have so much to choose from, a salad bar, a hot line, a whole section dedicated to wings, and a place they heat of the sandwiches they made that day for you just to name a few. I like to go get a hot sandwich and a small salad. The prices are not that bad to for the food you receive, who ever came up with that idea to put something like that in a grocery store was a real good thinker! How many times do you go to the store and realize you are so hungry you are about to buy out the whole store, so why not stop over and grab a bit to eat, GENIUS, if you ask me!

Sweets on a stick

At school we have competitions almost every month, the chefs come up with something and we have about a week or so to do some research and find some ideas to do. This month is sweets on a stick like cake pops or dipped marshmallows with nuts or candies on a stick. I was just told about this yesterday and I been doing a lot of research but it seems like most stuff I have came across just seems to simple. I want the judges to look at my work and be like wow how did she do that or this food combination is awesome. I have a few ideas one being honeyed fig pie pops which sound pretty good to me or strawberry cheesecake stuffed amaretto cake pops. Cake pops are so original but then again simplicity can go a long way. Does anyone have any ideas or have came across an idea on a stick that they thought were amazing, but it has to be sweets?!

Easter cake

Last night my sister came to me and said I need to make an Easter cake for her class Easter party, she is in high school......umm okay?! Anyways like a lot of high schoolers she wait till the last minute to say she wants an awesome cake and of course I had to say yes, it's family. So we looked for the cake design she wanted and went to the store pick up product I didn't have, by this time it's about 9 ugh! I worked on it all night as she is laying on my kitchen floor saying she is tired, yea I'm just a ray of sunshine right now! With my need to have the cake to look "perfect" in my eyes I was up till about 2 in the morning, not to mention she also wanted cake pops and cupcakes. Anyways I used fondant for the first time and just played around till I understood how to work with it, it was fun and I will be using that more frequently on my desserts from now on, just so many possabilities with that stuff and baby showers and birthdays are coming up so everyone watch out!

Canyon Cafe

The other day I went out to lunch at Canyon Cafe located at Plaza Frontenac, it's a high end Mexican restaurant. I had the spinach and portobello mushroom quesadilla that came with avocado salsa and chipotle mayonnaise, not liking any type of hot food I stayed clear away from that dip. It was filled with just the right amount of mushrooms and spinach with not an over barring amount of cheese. The bad thing was the sauces were placed right on the plate not in a separate container to dip In so the quesadillas that were next to that mayonnaise were not eaten, we'll I tore the parts off that we're sitting in the sauce because I wasn't going to waste the top of, are you crazy that stuff was good. Anyways I ran out of the avocado salsa that was on the plate which sucks because it was vary tasty. Overall the experience was nice and the staff knew what they were doing, but you have to expect that coming from Frontenac, right?! They also brought out a white chocolate with almonds dessert, it was wrapped in a corn husk and you unwrap it and it looked like a stick of white chocolate with almonds but tasted amazing, I'm not a big white chocolate fan but this was amazing, and free...did I not mention that, yea it was complements of the chef, some how I had a feeling it was because I had my chef jacket on but free is free right! 😃

Chinese food

Doesn't it seem like every time you order Chinese food your eyes are always bigger than your stomach, you end up getting way more than you really should have ordered! Then you eat about a forth of  what you got and about 20 minuets and one bathroom break later you are ready to eat again, it's a vicious cycle that is so delicious you always go back to it knowing what is about to happen. I love me some Chinese food and Panda down the street from my house in kirkwood is awesome! It's not like you can order just chicken then you need a side of rice, then an egg roll, oh and you can not forget the crab Rangoon and after it's all said and done you have a meal to feed a family of 5 and it's just you, but hey Chinese food is not to bad warmed up the next day!😜




P.S Ja Bowl in Waterloo, IL has some AWESOME Chinese food! go check it out!!!!