The weather was beautiful in the past two days. It was even the record high in temperatures 2 days ago. It is surely nice to enjoy the 80 degree (25'C) sunny days in early April. Of course, it goes right back to 40 degrees (5'C) and rains whole day long.
The short warm weather does boost all the plants and flowers to grow. All trees have leaves and there are Daffodils, Hyacinthe, even Tulips blooming everywhere. The crocus have almost done with blooming. This also means that the allergy season has come back as well. It is no fun to sneeze and have itchy eyes all day long.
Got invited to Easter dinner tomorrow so I decided to try make 2 new kinds of desserts for it. Both are gluten free version so nobody is going to have problems to eat either.
The first one is the "coconut pecan oatmeal cake". The cake part contains both gluten-free flour mix and oatmeal with cinnamon and nutmeg. It has a nice spiced cake taste and very moisture. The topping is made of brown sugar, pecans, shredded coconut, milk, and butter. The topping is applied after the cake is done then the whole thing is put into broiler to caramelized the topping.
The second one is the "apple rum cake". This one is more like a loaf cake. It has chopped apples, raisins and rum in the cake mixture. It actually does not taste that much of rum in the bread since most of it has been absorbed in the raisins. And the chopped apples give it a better texture and fruity taste. However, personally, I prefer the coconut pecan oatmeal cake more since it has that feeling of "comfort food" for the holiday. Hope that everybody has a nice Easter day week and don't eat too much chocolate eggs or jelly beans!
It is Memorial Day holiday! So we need a cake! This is a very delicious moisture gluten free cake. It is yellow cake based with French vanilla pudding mix added to the cake batter. Then, lots of thin cut Fuji apple pieces were added. Once the cake was done and cooled, a caramel glaze was drizzled on the top of the cake. Can you say yummy caramel apple? :)
Of course, with the weather gets so hot, who would not want some homemade smooth sorbet? So I used up the fresh strawberry and mango in the refrigerator to make these nice sorbets! Cold, smooth, and full of fresh fruits taste. Once you have the homemade sorbets, you will never want to buy it from the stores! Hope that everybody has a nice weekend!
Hope that all the moms have a happy mother's day today! My mom lives far away on the other side of the earth so I cannot spend the day on celebrating this holiday with her. But I did try to send Mother's day cards and call her in advance to let her know that she's always on my mind. 
Where did the time go? Cannot believe that I have not post for almost a month. I had a good birthday party celebrated by my friends and family earlier in April. For once, I did not have to make the cake! LOL. Just kidding, I actually enjoy make different kinds of cakes. In addition, spring allergy hits me in full speed this month that I almost sneeze and have itchy eyes every day. But it is still nice to see flowers and green leaves everywhere. I also have been very busy on teaching CPR/AED pro as a volunteer instructor for Red Cross.
Spring is finally here! Today is just a beautiful sunny day with breeze and the temperature is around 60 degrees (15'C). Lots of flowers such as Crocus have started to bloom and the Daffodil and the Tulips have started to grow leaves and flower buds too. Today is also Palm Sunday and my best friend's mom got palm leaves from her church and asked me to help weave them based on an old instruction she got from a book. It took me about 40 minutes to learn and get it done! They turned out great and almost look like wheat! Hope that the nice weather stays since you never know in Wisconsin this time of the year.
It was St Patrick's Day here in US yesterday and it was green dress everywhere (including me!). The weather is incredibly nice, sunny and around 60'F (15'C). It is usually still around 32'F (0'C) this time of the year so we are lucky this year. So I made a gluten free version of spiced apple cake. It is more like a coffee cake. The cake base contains cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and chopped apple. The cake is topped with very thin sliced apple and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Once it is fully baked, it has a layer of nice cinnamon caramel with apple on the top. Yummy!
