Trifle Time!

Thanksgiving is not complete without my traditional Thanksgiving trifle. I think Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because of the traditions. We have our annual nature center walk, my chocolate-ly layers of trifle-ness and the Black Friday craziness my mom and I endure each year. Plus, it’s the start of almost 6 full weeks of getting together with family and friends, sharing stories and of course, desserts!

I mentioned previously that my trifle obsession began with my favorite TV show, FRIENDS and the famous trifle episode. That entire episode is hilarious and if you’ve never seen it, you’re really missing out on hilarity.

Every year since Joey devoured Rachel’s mix of lady fingers, jam and beef sautéed with peas and onions, I’ve been making my own layered concoction – minus the beef. I always change up my flavors, but the dessert always contains a base, either brownies or cake, a cookie, either chocolate chip or Oreos, a pudding flavor and homemade whipped cream – because it’s quick and easy and nothing tastes like homemade whipped cream! This year I went for easy with brownies, two flavors – dark and fudge chunk, Oreos, Oreo flavored pudding and the cream. Trifle needs to be made an hour or two ahead and then you must have enough for leftovers. The melding of flavors for breakfast on Black Friday can’t be beat.

Check out this Sweet Talk web-i-sode, featuring both of my nieces, my sister laughing and my dad sneezing in the background. Hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving and I can’t wait to hear about your holiday plans and sweets coming up in the next month! Stay sweet!

Baby Apple Pies – Thanksgiving Part 1

I hope you’ve all recovered from a week full of delicious side dishes, succulent turkey, hearty helpings, lots of shopping and time spent with loved ones. I’ve had a busy Thanksgiving but it was all pretty great.

For dessert, I wanted to make two equally yummy but very different desserts. The first one I tackled was a bit foreign to me, pies. Now, you might think, Michelle, you are the epitome of Sweet Talk, how are you foreign to pies? And I would say, I think they’re slightly boring. Ok, I lied, they’re really intimidating. I think I’ve made less than 10 pies in my life and most are impromptu fillings to pre-made graham cracker or Oreo crusts. They’re yum-tastic, but not very difficult.

This time I wanted a challenge. I didn’t go completely from scratch though, I started my pies with a crust mix I’d received as a gift, I food processed that with some butter and ice water and ta-dah, had my crust. After that I made a filling, Paula Deen’s recipe, with apples, brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon and flour. I omitted nutmeg, cuz I hate it. And the rest was a completely cute, delicious success. Check it out!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Free baking = Best baking!

My mom and I got to baby-sit my two nieces the other night and I thought that was a PERFECT time to use my amazing coupons from FoodBuzz & Duncan Hines!

I am a FoodBuzz community blogger, as a tastemaster, I am privy to great information about food blogging and sometimes, great deals like this one from Duncan Hines. I received free coupons for free products for Duncan Hines mixes as well as a can of Comstock-Wilderness Fruit Fillings. So, you know me, I’m inventive, I don’t like to follow the baking rules, so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to use my baking imagination, and my favorite 4-year-old and see what we could create.

I picked up a box of the DH pineapple cake mix and a jar of the Wilderness red raspberry and got experimenting. I’d bore you with the details, but I think you might like watching it instead. Enjoy and thanks again FoodBuzz & Duncan Hines!

PS – the cake was amazing! 🙂

Personalizing a Classic

Every one loves a chocolate chip cookie. Whether you prefer crunchy or chewy, hearty or gooey, it brings a sense of warmth and safety to the chewer. Have you really ever been mad eating a home-baked chocolate chipper? I think that may be impossible.

Since moving to California, I seem to be revamping the chocolate chip cookie for my roomies. This might be out of the comfort that it brings, or maybe just because I don’t know their absolute favorite flavors yet, but I have made a version of the chipper three times in about a month. The first was the pancake cookie, followed but the salty sweet orange Halloween ones, and finally the triple chip, an intense chocolate experience with dark, milk and white chips  mixed into the batter. This was the result of a recent Sunday night when we were all in the holiday spirit. Linda was making crafts and Cynthia had the ABC Family channel on in the living room and, of course, the scene could only be completed by a cookie. Lucky us, chocolate chips were on sale at Ralph’s, so we decided to bulk up these bad boys with some triple chip action. Result, amazing dense cookies filled with complimentary flavors. Even for Linda and I, who would never really choose white chocolate chips, when mixed with the others it’s a fun flavor combo. Even Alex came out of his room for a few. The recipe was off of one of the bags, but the flavor combo was the key – what’s your favorite way to change up a traditional recipe?

One last trick or treat

 

Obviously we are all focused on the best holiday, Thanksgiving, but let’s revisit Halloween just one more time for me, k? Thanks! So you all read my post on the De-Lite peanut butter cups, which were devoured and enjoyed! I even had a high school friend tell me she watched my webisode and made them. Really that made me ridiculously happy. But I made another Halloween dessert also, so we can’t let time go by too fast before I share that.

These cookies came from my absolutely favorite, pretzel m&m cookie recipe, of all the cookies in existence, these really shine. Sweet, salty, crunchy, ahh, I’m salivating just remembering them. Well for the holiday I took a little twist on them. You see, I couldn’t find any Halloween M&M’s and I was pretty bummed about that, but what I could do, was dye the dough orange! And I did. Watch and learn people! And enjoy the festive cocktail, too!

 

Here are some close-ups, cuz I know my readers like the sweet details.

 

 

 

 

Countdown til Turkey – 9 days!

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because it revolves around my three favorite things, food, family and shopping! We all know that a moist, warm piece of turkey is the star of the event, but if you’re anything like my family, dessert is not a frozen pie from the freezer. I have made it a tradition to spend as much time enjoying each other’s company with festive sweets as we do over the turkey and carb-overload at dinner.

As an ENORMOUS fan of the TV show, FRIENDS, I began making a dessert trifle for Thanksgiving the year after Rachel make her meat, potatoes, jam and lady fingers dessert for the group. If you don’t know which episode I’m referring to, you are really missing out, google it! Since that time I make a different trifle each year, some years Oreos are the star and others pound cake. There is always pudding, whipped cream and something chocolate roaming the beautiful trifle bowl my mom bought me. This year will be no different, and I have 9 more days to pick my flavors!

I took to the Twitterverse today to see what other turkey day sweets are ending my followers meals. Here are some of my faves!

babypayge: @michellerose14 pumpkin pound cake with caramel glaze, pineapple upside down cake, sweet potato cobbler.

scuddlebuzz @michellerose14 we prefer any #Thanksgiving day dessert with honey! 😉

shelbyallen @michellerose14 My mouth is already watering for Apple Pie 🙂

What are you guys baking up? Or heating up? I’d love to hear your thoughts, my trifle always needs a fruity sidekick!

Sweet Changes

As you can see, Nilla Rose has been revamped and born again as Sweet Talk! There’s also going to be a lot more than just dessert pictures on here, I’ll be finding and spreading cheer throughout the holiday season with Twitter questions and new recipes, visits to some of my favorite kitchens and I’m also going share all the sugar news I read with you guys, sounds like I picked a really great week to change this up. Here’s my first Sweet discovery of the day.

One of my favorite Tweets to follow is @cupcakeblog. The site, Cupcakes Take the Cake, is constantly promoting delicious looking cupcakes from both fancy bakeries and homecooks like me! My favorite pick from today is this one from BAKE Cupcakery, based in Appleton, Wisconsin. Thanks for the fall flavored idea, definitely thanksgiving inspiration for me!