Our Favorite Chocolate Cake

Back in March I made this cake for our Relief Society Enrichment Birthday Celebration. We had people decorate cakes for the centerpieces. I decided to try making a ganache for the first time. I had always heard the term and thought it was something really fancy and hard to make, but not true. All it is is cream and chocolate.

The chocolate cake that I made is Quinn's very favorite chocolate cake. It's just a cake mix, but you add a bunch of stuff to it, and it makes it really moist and delicious. This cake has a semi-sweet ganache, but for Father's Day I made one with a milk chocolate ganache, which Quinn and I preferred. For Father's Day at church, all of the wives took desserts to treat the Dad's, there were a ton of desserts. Enough that I think everyone, including the women and kids, got to enjoy something. I have told a few people that I would post this recipe, so here it is. If you are a chocolate lover, I can pretty much gaurantee that you will LOVE this cake. We like to eat it cold, and if we have it, it's also very good with whipped cream or ice cream.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

1 pkg Devil's Food Cake Mix
1 small pkg instant chocolate pudding
4 eggs beaten
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup oil
1 cup chocolate chips

Mix together all ingredients except chocolate chips. Stir in chocolate chips, and pour in greased bundt pan, and bake at 350 degrees for 55-60 minutes.

Allow to cool.

Cover with chocolate ganache. I can't find my recipe right now, but I think this is it. So if you have your own recipe that you make, just use it.

Chocolate Ganache

1 pkg milk chocolate chips
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Put all in a microwave safe bowl and heat for 20 seconds at a time. Stirring well each time. Make sure you don't over cook it, it'll burn. Allow to cool, about 30 minutes or more, just watch it, until it's a good consistancy to pour over your cake. You don't want it way to runny, but you also don't want it too thick because then it will just glob on and not look nice and smooth.

Father's Day

We were excited to celebrate Father's Day to let Quinn know how much we love him and what a great dad he is. We made him breakfast and served it to him in bed, which Clarissa thought she should get breakfast in bed again since she just had it for her birthday. I hope I'm not sorry that we did it, but hopefully she'll learn that that happens only on really special occasions.


I hate to admit that Quinn's gift from the kid's was last minute, but it was. I didn't have time earlier in the week to do anything, and actually hadn't really thought about it. But Sunday morning I decided I should have a gift for the kids to give Quinn. So while Quinn slept in Clarissa helped me make this tie, (Clayton helped if you count trying to eat everything as helping!).

I was planning on Quinn just putting on the tie and wearing it for a few minutes around the house to make Clarissa happy. But he actually wore it to church, he is such a great dad. I think I was more embarassed to have him wear it than he was.

I thought I would also post this family picture, I don't think we have had a picture of all four of us together for quite a while.

Clarissa's 3rd Birthday

I think Clarissa had a very fun birthday, because as I am typing this, she keeps telling Quinn and I that she wants her birthday. It's going to be a long year for her!

We started off the morning by giving her breakfast in bed. We were hoping to get up before her and get it all ready, but unfortunately we were up until the wee hours of the morning working on her cake, so when she woke up at 6:45, we had to drag ourselves out of bed and make her stay in her room.



Luckily, we put this Elmo balloon in her room the night before, so that kept her entertained while we cooked breakfast and decorated. She LOVED eating breakfast in bed and getting special treatment. She then opened her gifts from us.


Clayton was even awake for all of the action, I still can't believe how big he is compared to her. I also can't believe his birthday is about 4 months away, my kids are growing up so fast.


My goal was to make cupcakes and decorate her Elmo cake, which she requested back in May, the night before. Unfortunately we had major problems with the frosting and everything, so the cupcakes and Elmo didn't get completed until the morning of her birthday. I was going to make the cupcakes a little different, using more cake decorating tips, but instead this is how they turned out since I was short on time. But at least the kids could tell that it was supposed to be Elmo. It turned out to be a lot of fun since Clarissa helped me make them. I think she really enjoyed helping.

This is the cupcake that Clarissa decorated. We took around cupcakes to some of her little friends that live around here. We had a lot of fun.



Quinn's mom came down for the day to celebrate and to also do some yard work. (We'll post pictures of that soon, she did an amazing job in our yard.) We opened a few presents that afternoon that people sent and one from Grandma. Clarissa sat down on the floor with her presents and just looked at us before opening them and said "sing to me?". So of course, we sang "Happy Birthday". It was really fun that she requested that, and finally understands birthdays a little more.



I didn't want to do a big party for Clarissa this year, so we just invited a couple of friends over to eat dinner with us and have birthday cake. Here is Quinn teaching them how to play a game, one that he calls "the paper bag" game. If you are curious, you can ask him to demonstrate for him sometime.


I thought the game would be too hard for the little kids, but they did really well at following directions. Quinn even convinced all of the adults to try.

Here is our attempt at making an Elmo cake. It's not a perfect likeness of Elmo, but Clarissa could at least tell who it was. She was very excited when I brought it out because she didn't knwo that I made a BIG Elmo cake.
The kids had a lot of fun eating Elmo, I should have taken a picture of all of their red faces.
It is fun that Clarissa is still talking about her birthday. Even though everything didn't turn out the exact way I had planned, she had a very fun day, I'm glad that we were able to make it a special day for her.

Clarissa is 3

Clarissa just had a birthday on Wednesday. I can't believe she is 3 already. I think she had a really fun birthday, I will post some pictures of that as soon as I can find some time to work on Quinn's computer. I was hoping to put these baby pictures up on Wednesday, but the day was pretty busy. Here are a few pictures of when she was first born and just a few months old. I can't believe how big she is now.

This is a picture that my friend Ellen took of Clarissa when she was just a couple of weeks old, it is one of my favorites.

We are so happy that Clarissa is a part of our family. She has been such a joy since the day she was born. She surprised us by being 3 weeks early, but we have been so happy that she was anxious to join our family.

Happy Birthday Sweetheart!!!

I hereby pick up the Gauntlet

Our friends recently issued a pumpkin growing challenge. Although we are probably weeks behind the other contestants, this is my official entry into the challenge.

The contest ends on October 1st and the person with the heaviest pumpkin wins.

I grew pumpkins last year and didn't ever get any larger than 1 inch in diameter. We have a major infestation of squash bugs in our garden that makes growing pumpkins quite challenging. With that disclaimer, I'm hoping to make some improvement over last years attempt. If anyone has had good sucess getting controlling squash bugs, please share.


Clarissa helped me get our garden ready. I like having a little buddy in the garden. She loves her caterpillar gardening gloves and using them.

We had a lot of weeds to pull, but our garden is looking pretty good now. I planted my pumpkin seeds on June 9th. More pictures of our weed-free garden to come when I post updates on our pumpkin growing adventure.

Another Birthday

At the beginning of May we celebrated my birthday, complete with party hats, thanks Gigi.

Quinn and Clarissa went out on a little errand when Quinn got home from work and brought me dinner, flowers, a balloon, and a birthday cake. We had a wonderful evening.

It was fun to see how excited Clarissa was to celebrate my birthday. Ever since Quinn's birthday in March, and everybody's birthday in between, Clarissa has been very excited for her birthday.

If you ask her when her birthday is, she will say "the 17th of June". I'm not sure why she started saying it that way, because with everybody elses birthday, she says the month first. It's really sweet to see all of the excitement in her when she talks about her birthday, I sure hope we make it a special day for her that she will love.

Carousel

Normally I don't do two posts in a day, but because of my computer situation, I'm going to. Also, these are the last pictures I wanted to share from Bethany's visit. We sure had a fun visit with them and are very glad they came. We can't wait until we can see them again.


Riding the carousel at the mall was one of Gigi's and Clarissa's favorite things to do together before Gigi moved. So, naturally, we had to take them while they were here. They had such a fun time.

While they were visiting, Clayton and Madeline even got aquainted. Here is Clayton trying to hold her hand.

Isn't she a cutie???

Birthday

I’m a bit behind on blogging a bunch of things that have happened this past month. My computer hasn’t been working great when I try to download my pictures. So I have to use Quinn’s computer when I get a chance. So, sorry that I will be posting about older things, but I wanted to document them, since someday I am hoping to put this all in a book.



Here are some more pictures from Gigi’s visit. We were lucky enough to celebrate her birthday with her while they were in town. We had such a fun time having the party at our house with all of her cousins. Bethany planned the perfect "pink" birthday party for Gigi.

The kids had a great time eating breakfast, painting picture frames, getting prizes from a fish pond, and eating cake.

Clarissa gave her a toy telephone which she picked out all by herself. It ended up being perfect because it was pink, and now they can “talk” to each other while they are so far away. Clarissa misses Gigi so much and talks about her all of the time.

I Beg to Differ!!!

This morning I was talking to Clarissa about how her Daddy goes to school/work. He was busy last night and this morning doing a lot of preparation for a couple of meetings. I don't know what a little kid understands about where there daddy is all day long. So I was explaining to her that Quinn goes to work everyday and he works really hard to earn money so that we have a house to live in, food to eat, and clothes to wear.

After that conversation this morning, she has told me and Quinn several times today that "Daddy goes to work and he works really hard." We dropped Quinn off at work this morning. After he got out of the car, she continued to talk about how hard daddy works. She contemplated for a minute and then said "Mommy's DON'T work really hard".

I guess in her little mind she figured out that since I stay at home and don't go into work like Quinn, I must not work really hard. I quickly corrected that statement and told her that "yes, Mommy's work very hard taking care of their kids". Then she told me "Clarissa and Clayton don't work really hard." I guess there has to be someone that doesn't work really hard!

A Special Visitor

Clarissa's friend Gigi came to visit us a couple of weeks ago. They used to live here, but moved last fall.

These two girls had so much fun together. It was so fun to watch them play, they picked up right where they left off, even though they hadn't seen each other for over 8 months.