Updated Website!

I'm starting to kinda get the hang of Blogger and decided to start working on the look of the blog. I have no clue how to write code to make my page look all pretty so when I first started this page, I looked around the internet and cut and paste the codes for things I liked. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure how to delete the things I didn't like. When designing a header/logo, it was difficult because I didn't have a photo editing program so I did everything on Word and Paint...sort of depressing. Now I love my page! It's more my style and as someone told me....it should be "Sunshiney."

The first thing I knew I wanted when I revised my page was a new logo. In high school, my very first friend that I made, Ashley Barnett, was the super smart, welcoming, and outgoing one in the group. Talk about well rounded: Ashley was an excellent student in all the smart kid classes, played some sports, was an arist for the school paper, editor on yearbook, and just for fun, she'd write these crazy stories & plays that made everyone laugh. I always thought Ashley would go into an occupation having to do with science and math or be a high powered professional in a sky-rise building so it surprised me when I found out that she had made a complete 180 and decided go to school to be an artist! Ashley is now a 3D artist for Sony Online Entertainment and has worked on several of their games. It got me thinking....how cool is it that I know someone who works on video games. Then I thought...how cool would it be if I knew someone who works on video games AND could make my logo! Ashley does freelance work on the side so I contacted her to see if she was willing to do it and I got a very excited yes. Now, just like baking, I strongly believe it's difficult to draw/design on command so I wanted to give her free reign. I listed 3 basic items that I wanted in my logo:

1) Cartoon version of me (I love avatars cause I hate pictures of myself..hehe) holding a baked item
2) Has to say Lil Ms Sueshine
3) Must have a sun somewhere within the design

And.......GO! A short time later, my logo was ready. You don't even know how excited and overjoyed I was to see the final product! She hit what I wanted right on and every time I look at it, I smile. Ashley's style is really fun and cute and it's everything I ever wanted. If you are interested in commissioning a design, look no further. Please contact me at LilMsSueshine@hotmail.com and I can forward your inquiries to Ms. Ashley! :)

Other updates on the page:

*Obviously the whole look of the page. It's playful, a little retro, and "Sunshiney." The blog posts are easier to read. The sidebar on only one side makes the page cleaner and easier to find links.

*Link/Feed to the SweetSueshine.com Facebook Page. I hated how the pictures of my projects appeared on my linked page so if you would like to see pictures of projects, please visit the page. Don't forget to "Like" the page because I occassionally will add things on there that I do not add on the blog.

I know there are more things to come. Any feedback or comments on the new page or what you would like to see in the future are always welcomed!

Just Peachy

Oh good Lord...it's been awhile since I blogged and I'm sorry it's taken so long. Believe me, I've been baking but I've also hit a few health speed bumps these past few weeks. I've had a few dizzy spells where my sugar was too low. It's not the best feeling to have low sugar. It actually feels worse than having it too high. I got shaky a few times especially this morning. I really do need to keep an emergency stash of sugar for these times but a large glass of milk at least got me to stop shaking. If you didn't know, diabetes can cause a lot of complications if not controlled and sometimes even when it's somewhat controlled. One thing diabetics are susceptible to is infections. Without going into details, I got an infection from on a spot I previously had surgery on 2 years ago and the infection popped up pretty fast. I got it on Saturday and by Tuesday night, it was full blown and I was in serious pain. I'm on lots of ibuprofen and antibiotics so I'm on my way to recovery and back to blogging!

So enough of the scary stuff and on to the happy stuff. My tag line is "Blogging and Baking Sweet Memories" so I wanted to start a series of blogs over the next few months about one of the most important things in my life....my family. Whether its something that a family member has made or a food/dessert that reminds me of certain people, I wanted to dedicate blogs to them. So the first blog in the series is dedicated to my Auntie Sherri who gave me the nickname Sueshine :)

There aren't too many years between my Auntie Sherri and I so when I was a little girl, we lived in my grandparent's house together. I remember sitting in the bathroom admiring her as she did her hair or feeling pretty cool cause she took me to her boyfriend's high school baseball game. Like myself, I think the cooking gene skipped right over her. But also like myself, I do remember watching her bake simple things like brownies and yellow cake with chocolate frosting (yum!). These are some of the earliest memories of watching a family member bake. The one baked item that stands out the most is when she would make peach cobbler because despite it being made with Bisquick and canned peaches, it was still made from scratch and really good. Every grocery store in town was advertising peaches so when I had my first bite into a delicious, juicy, ripe peach about a month ago, I knew exactly what I wanted to make. (Top left: two of my yellow peaches from Albertsons were the size of softballs!) I'm not sure if she still has the recipe or if she has made it any time in the last few years but I wanted to share my interpretation of an early memory.

Fresh Raspberry-Peach Cobbler

2 cups of fresh peaches, pitted and sliced

1 small package of fresh raspberries

1/2 cup granulated sugar substitute

1 tbsp cornstarch

2 cups Bisquick Heart Smart

1/2 low fat milk

3 tbsp margarine or butter (remember the Smart Balance butter blend from a previous blog!), melted

2 tbsp light brown sugar (or Splenda blend)

Heat oven to 375F. Lightly butter (or use spray) a 9x 1 1/2 inch deep dish. (Sueshine note: I made this recipe slightly smaller and it fit perfectly in a loaf pan).

Mix peaches, raspberries, sugar, and cornstarch in a large bowl. Sit for 10 minutes. Spoon into pan.

Stir Bisquick, milk, butter, and brown sugar in the same bowl until dough forms.

Drop dough by spoonfuls on top of fruit mixture.

 (Sueshine note: don't spread it over the fruit...drop randomly in clumps and leave a little space)

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until top is golden brown.

Adapted from BettyCrocker.com

Final result

Warm raspberry-peach cobbler is so good with plain vanilla ice cream. I didn't have any on hand but I did have some sugar free Clemmy's butter pecan ice cream that just set it over the edge. For the diabetics in the crowd, I substituted some of the ingredients but be careful of all the natural sugars in the peaches. Too much of a good thing can be bad for you. Although you might be tempted to eat the whole pan of cobbler, don't do it. Even if you aren't diabetic, it probably isn't a good idea to eat the whole pan either :) A co-worker of mine told me she isn't a big fan of peaches and if another fruit could be substituted. I'm sure it can....maybe blueberries or apples would be good. I'm all about experimenting so add whatever you like best. This recipe turned out to be one of the easiest and tastiest desserts I've made so far so please make it. Make my aunt proud!

Red, White, Blue, and Cake

I hope everyone is having (had) a great 4th of July. I should have planned this better to have this post up before the 4th of July but I think I got distracted with the fact that I actually had a 4 day weekend from work! And for once, this workaholic actually relaxed a bit. I hadn't planned to bake this weekend but if you know me, I can't sit still for long. I wanted to make something other than the go to flag pound cake or a parfait. On Sunday, I decided I wanted to try out a recipe that I found a few months ago that got me curious. I thought Independence Day would be a fun way to try this one out....a poke cake.

So what is poke cake? Poke cake is a simple way to dress up your cake without decorating and change the flavor without making your own cake from scratch (although you can make your own cake for this if you really wanted to). I just wanted to share something that was fairly quick and easy that any casual baker can make. Poke cake can be made with box cake mix and a large box of flavored gelatin. Here's how:

Patriotic Poke Cake

1 pkg. (2-layer size) white cake mix (plus ingredients listed on box)

2 cups  boiling water

1 pkg. (large) Jell-o Berry Blue Flavor Gelatin

1 tub (8 oz.) COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, thawed

1 package fresh strawberries, sliced

Follow directions for box cake.

Place 2 baked 9-inch round cake layers, top side up, each in clean 9-inch round cake pan. Pierce cakes with large fork at 1/2-inch intervals.

Stir boiling water into JELL-O Gelatin in medium bowl at least 2 min. until completely dissolved. Carefully pour gelatin evenly over cake layers. Refrigerate 3 hours.

Dip one of the cake pans in warm water 10 sec.; unmold onto serving plate. Spread with about 1 cup of the whipped topping and add sliced strawberries. Unmold second cake layer; carefully place on first cake layer. Frost top and side of cake with remaining whipped topping. Top with additional strawberries. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or until ready to serve. 

Source: adapted from Kraftrecipes.com

Final result

Sueshine Notes about Poke Cake:

1) Have fun with the Jello flavors and toppings. I picked Berry Blue, white cake, and strawberries because I wanted a red, white, blue theme. You can even do one layer one flavor and the second layer a different color.

2) Don't be afraid to pour in all the Jello. I was a little wary of pouring in all the liquid because it's a lot of liquid and I thought it would make my cake soggy. Do it. My cake did not have that many blue streaks throughout the cake because I only used half.

3) This can be made to be diabetic friendly. This is one of the first recipes that you can find most of the ingredients in sugar free or reduced sugar ready-made. Pillsbury is currently the only mainstream company that makes a sugar free boxed cake available in your local grocery story. Their yellow cake can be used for this recipe. Jell-O makes several of their flavors in sugar free form and it does not taste any different. Cool Whip comes in regular, sugar free, lite, and fat free so you have a few options there.

My first poke cake was pretty fun to make and it's so easy that I whipped it up in a few hours. I've also seen different versions of poke cake made with pudding so this cake is something I want to revisit in the future with a diabetic friendly version. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. I'm off to enjoy my last few hours of relaxation and watch some fireworks with my hubby :)

San Diego County Fair

When I was still living at home with my parents, I use to go on a brisk morning walking with my mom and my grandma Thelma. "Exercise so you can eat the things you enjoy" was a slight motivation to get my butt going during the several laps around the park. I think I tried to use this idea for my annual trip to the San Diego County Fair.

After several false starts on trying to plan our trip to the Fair, my friend Allison and I had the day off from work and finally made it on Friday. Armed with lots of sunblock and a roll of Tums, we were excited to check out all the crazy infomercial products, the classic cars, near impossible carnival games, and the winning baked items/cakes. But let's be honest, it was all about the food. Although we were really hungry when we arrived, the food at the Fair is always very overwhelming. Where do you start with so many choices? Mind you, neither of us are the greatest at making decisions but we finally settled on starting with "real" food by getting a classic hot dog and Orange Julius because we could carry it around while we figured out what was next. As we walked down the main drag, I think we subconsciously started walking in the direction of one of our favorites from last year, deep fried mac & cheese. We had been talking about the mac and cheese since the Fair started and to our disappointment, the place that had them last year did not have them! We seriously stood there for a few minutes kinda lost and not knowing what to do. We wandered around a bit and decided that we needed to pay a visit to another staple food booth, Chicken Charlies. If you don't know what Chicken Charlie's is, it's one of the biggest food booths at the Fair and they are known to deep fry everything. Deep fried highlights this year included deep fried Kool-Aid (told by a co-worker that it tastes like a donut), deep friend Klondike bars, deep fried avocado, and deep fried Girl Scout Cookies. Regular items on their menu: chicken kabobs, chicken and waffles, frog legs, zucchini curls, deep fried Twinkies, and the topper....a chicken fillet sandwich with Krispy Kreme donuts as the buns! Something deep down in me told me not to do it cause I didn't buy anything from Chicken Charlie's this year. It's still fun to see what new deep fried noms they come up with each year (http://www.chickencharlies.com/).