Autumn day in Vegas

The short break from the heat in Las Vegas was very nice. We went there for a couple of days and the weather was great. There was lots of places decorated in a wonderful Fall style.

I always stop at the Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Garden while there. I love this huge hall with tall ceilings and arches covered in pretty plants and decorated for the occasion.

Right now, there is the Artistry of Autumn exhibit there. 

There are lots of pumpkins everywhere (one of them weights 96 lbs!) and beautiful live mums. I love the falling leaves, the acorns in the air and huge watermill. A wonderful country autumn scene!

 

If you'd like a cup of coffee and sweet treat, stop by Jean Philippe pâtisserie. It is just around the corner, and every little pastry is a piece of art there! You will see the world's largest chocolate fountain and right now, lots of gorgeous Halloween themed treats. I love the haunted house cake and huge skeleton sculpture made of chocolate. It took 2 people and 70 hours to make this. Lot's of work but a beautiful result!

 

I love to see human hand creations, these kind of things make me happy. Our vacation was great and I feel refreshed. I can finally feel the fall in the air and it is time to prepare our garden for the coming chilly weather and the house for the holidays. Love Fall, love October!

Sweet holidays

These last several days in between the holidays are so delicious. They are full of sweet desserts and you don't care any more about your diet. Even thought you promised yourself to start a healthier lifestyle tomorrow. Well, 2013 is almost here so why not start that diet & exercise program on January 2nd?

 I am still planning to make that delicious holiday cake fromAleksa's blog for New Year eve celebration and for the smooth transaction to a new year the thai sweet rice and mango dessert from Marina's blog, and I am done with sweets. At least, until the other good reason to try a new recipe will come alone :) 

Best-ever banana bread

There is a grocery store near by which has huge amount of bananas. The regular price is not very cheap but from time to time the store is overwhelmed with bananas so they are boxing the ones which are pretty ripe and selling them at discounted rate of $2 a box. When we purchased a box full of bananas for the first time we just had a monkey week. No one wanted bananas for a long time after that.

I was looking for baking ideas and tried many good recipes of banana breads and muffins. So the irony was that the best one was printed on the bag of Gold Medal flour I used to bake these.

It's called The Best-Ever Banana Bread and it truly is. I am baking mini breads and freezing them so it's ready when I need it.

I am using mini loaf pans I purchased at Walmart and it works the best for me. There are 4 pans in that set which is perfect to use for the amount of batter you are getting.

Here is how to bake it.

You will need:

1 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter at room temperature

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

4 over ripe mashed bananas

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup walnuts

cooking spray, 4 mini loafs pans, electric mixer

Preheat oven to 350'F and spray mini pans with cooking spray.

Mix sugar and butter in a large bowl. Add liquids (vanilla, eggs, buttermilk) and mashed bananas, beat with the mixer until smooth. Stir in salt, soda and flour and beat with mixer until the batter is smooth. Stir in nuts and pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake at 350'F for 1 hour or until ready. Cool in pans and turn this over. The breads should fall right out!

Homemade Valentine candy, day 2

Day 2 of making Valentines candies - they  will look like this in the end:

I took my mixture out of refrigerator and it looked like this:

 Gorgeous. As chocolate can be.

So, what you need now -

small size pretty baking paper cups

1/2 cup cacao for dusting

wax paper

cookie tray

 Line your cookie tray with the wax paper. With a tablespoon, make equal sized mounts of chocolate mixture and place them on your cookie tray leaving about 1" of space between them. This is your future candies, so count how many you will get.

Place the same amount of the baking cups on a tray or a flat plate. Pour your cacao on a separate plate. Now - this is messy. 

Dust your hands with cocoa and roll each portion of your mixture to form a ball. Carefully place it in a baking cup. Continue until all the rolls are dusted, perfect in shape and asking to be eaten :)

Refrigerate them to harden. I have to say, mine are little too soft and I am thinking about freezing them. So it might be because I used a fat free whipping cream instead of heavy whipping cream. Well, at least I will know.

Nevertheless, they taste very good to us chocolate and coffee lovers :)