Thursday, October 11, 2012

Missing smiles

For the past couple of days Baby Chuck has been pretty sick.  He's consistently had a fever and suffered from some tummy problems.  Our poor boy was fussy, tired, and warm as a toasty loaf of bread.  Hubby and I were really worried and we felt helpless.

Last night we finally got the fever down. 

Right now he's napping and I'm crossing my fingers that his temperature stays down this time...
Oh how I missed seeing his smile.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Bunny Halloween coloring page

A couple of nights ago a bunny appeared magically on my piece of paper. 
He had a question and asked if I could help.


He certainly asked the right person.  I love Halloween!  So we spent the next hour doodling away....
Coloring page- Halloween bunny costumes 

Monday, October 8, 2012

Pumpkin Mochi Cake

A couple months ago I visited my cousin Esther's place and had the most delicious green tea mochi cakes and red bean mochi cakes. I loved that they were slightly sweet, very chewy, and gluten free.  Score!  She referred me to this awesome recipe and I've been making green tea mochi cakes (substituting 4 teaspoons of green tea powder for red bean paste) almost every Saturday morning ever since.

Now that it's well and truly October, our nearest grocery store finally started stocking pumpkin puree. Filled with the Halloween/October spirit, I made some pumpkin mochi cakes.  I used the original recipe and made three minor tweaks.
  1. I substituted 1 C of pumpkin puree for the red bean paste.  
  2. I used 1 1/2 C of sugar.  Trust me, I needed it!  (I first made one batch using only 1 C of sugar and ended up with bland chewy bars.  Ick.)
  3. I greased my pan (I'm sure parchment paper would have worked too.)  You must do this.  If you don't, your mochi cake will stick to the pan and you will cry a whole lot. 

 Here's what my pumpkin mochi cake looked like once I sliced it up:
(I have no idea why I'm currently into wild west stuff.....)


The recipe makes a ton of mochi cake. Once your cake cools, just cut it up and store your tiny mochi bars in Tupperware. 

I love having my very own stash of little chewy bars to munch on throughout the day...erm... I mean throughout the week..... because I've got self-control like that.... yeah....