12 Days Of Christmas Cookies 1 & 2 - Double Vanilla Delights & Chocolate Pecan Bars

Happy holidays! It has been cold and snow here in Wisconsin recently. The temperature has dipped down to 5'F (-15'C) and windchill -5'F (-26'C). Snow and ice everywhere so it definitely will be a white Christmas. Work has been very busy so I barely can find time to make the cookies and post here. Anyway, here are the first and second cookies for the 12 Days of Christmas cookies! Especially, all these cookies are gluten free! The first one is the "Double Vanilla Delights". It has the wonderful texture like Mexican wedding cookies with chopped pecans. The frosting is made with fresh cooked vanilla bean mixture. It is a vanilla heaven!

The second one is a new recipe that I want to try this year, "Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars". I always like pecan pie but it usually is too sweet to have more than one piece. This cookie bar version of the pecan pie keeps the same sweetness and texture of the pecan pie with the good sugar cookie base crust. In addition, it adds semi-sweet chocolate chips on the top. Yummy!

Deer Hunted

It is still the deer hunting season in Wisconsin and co-worker got a big doe. It still sits on his truck on the parking lot at work now. Hope that all my blog friends in USA had a good Thanksgiving. I made several desserts for the Thanksgiving and I will post them soon.

Pumpkin Streusel Cheesecake Bars

Time passes fast and it is almost the end of autumn. Most of the trees have completely lost all the leaves and the weather forecast predicts that it might snow a little this week. It should not be a surprise since it is almost the time of Thanksgiving here in USA.

Since it is the season of the fall and pumpkin is the main theme for the fall, I decided to make some desserts with pumpkin. The base of this pumpkin streusel cheesecake bars can be made with gingersnap cookie and oatmeal cookie mix. However, I decided to make it completely gluten free by using rice flour, tapioca flour, and corn meal mixed with chopped pecans, brown sugar and butter. The cheesecake filling has pumpkin puree, cream cheese, pumpkin pie spice, eggs, rice flour, and skim milk. I reserved part of the base to use as the toppings. It turns out great! The crunchy toppings and smooth cream cheese plus the graham crackers kind of the base make this to be one nice autumn dessert!

Halloween Cupcakes!

Happy Halloween! It has been a long time since I got time to post anything here. The work gets so busy that I barely have time to do anything else. The autumn actually is almost half way through and most of the trees have lost leaves.

Just made this cupcakes for my nieces and nephew for Halloween! German chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Decorated them like mummy, big eyes and nightmare ghost! :) Happy Halloween!

Back From The Trip Home

I cannot believe that it has been almost a month since I post last entry! This blog has become monthly event now! :) I have been very busy on traveling for both fun and work. I went back to Asia to visit my parents. It was great to spend some time with my family again. We even went to ride the Maokong Gondola. It was a long ride since the total length of the gondola line was 4.03 km (2.504 miles). The whole line had 4 stations and it was like a shape of number "7". So that means there were a spot that the gondola had to do a 90 degree sharp turn. It had been reported that the gondola system had some problems since its opening in 2007 but our ride went smoothly and was quite enjoyable. We enjoyed the view and the sunny weather.

It was also very nice to spend the Mid-autumn festival with them. It has been a long time since I went home during that time of the year. The weather was just too hot and humid for me. It was sunny and around 95'F degrees (35'C) and almost 90% humidity all the time. I could not stop sweating even just walked for 5 minutes outdoor. The good thing was that I got to eat lots of delicious moon cakes with all the nice interesting new flavors and I gained several pounds! :) Oh, and I saw these beanie babies machines all over main shopping centers back home. People were really into them and kept trying their luck but very few got anything. :) And it surely is a big weather change when I come back to Wisconsin, US since the temperature changes from 95 degree to 45 degree (35'C to 8'C). Fall is definitely here now. Yawn! And wish my jeg lag goes away soon!

Viva Las Vegas

Life has been so busy recently that I barely have time to update my blog! The summer is short on the north here in Wisconsin, USA so we have to make the best use of the warm weather while it still lasts. As a a matter of the fact, some plants/trees have started to lose leaves even though it is still around 80'F (25'C). That's most likely due to the gradually shorten daylight. We went to visit Las Vegas last week to get away from all the work stuff and run into the heat! LOL. We stayed at the brand new hotel/casino, "Aria" in city center at Las Vegas. It is a very modern design building. As you can see from the picture, the roof of the lobby almost looks like a UFO at night time. And we were so lucky to encounter one of the few rainy days when we got there. Talking about luck.

Besides the usual casino tour, we also went to visit the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay. It was the 10th anniversary of the place but everything inside was almost exactly as I visited it 10 years ago. Quite a waste of money to me since there is nothing new to see. At least, they still have those big jellyfish! If you have never been there, it is still a place worth visiting, especially, for kids. We also went to see the Circus de Soleil show, "Le Reve" at Wynn. It was very good and had some amazing stage designs. But overall, it was not as good as the other show, "O", since both were using water as the main components. Overall, it was a great vacation. Now, back to work! :)