mascarpone cheese Archives

Creating This Pumpkin Mousse Cups Recipe

Like my Smudge, my nephew doesn’t care for birthday cake. Like her, he’d rather have pie with candles than a three tier, frosting laden, light and crumby old cake.

If you have one of those kind in your home, you need to check out my hybrid Yellow Cake Pie with Chocolate Mousse that was a rip-roaring success for Smudge’s birthday celebration. In fact, it was so successful I’ve been commissioned by three of her 8-year old friends to make it for their 9-year-old birthdays.

My nephew’s 13th birthday inspired me to get into the birthday pie biz once again once the shock that my husband’s youngest brother has a teenager in the house and the realization that in just a few short years I will too. Oh great, hormones. Just what this house needs more of.

Usually my mother-in-law makes him a special pumpkin pie for his big day, but she wasn’t able to make the trip for the party this year. Knowing I could never substitute my mom-in-law’s perfect pie, I plotted to give him a surprise with a pumpkin cake. But then I started watching the Cooking Channel. And when I start watching the Cooking Channel I usually get sidetracked from craving a Pad Thai recipe to homemade Pot Roast.

This time was no exception. As I started watching an episode of Extra Virgin with Debi Mazar—who makes me miss Entourage so desperately that I just might be sleeping out to be in line for the movie—and her cute husband Gabriele, I made a quick left turn from my aspirations of creating my initial plan of pumpkin cake to instead adapting their recipe for mascarpone cups.

With all of the pumpkin recipes floating about, my craving for pumpkin recipes has been in overdrive. The amaretti cookies give a yummy crunch to the smooth pumpkin and mascarpone cheese creaminess. I’ve used amaretti cookies for a sweet almond flavoring in Butternut Squash Lasagna so I knew it was a great add-in for squash.

So what did my nephew think of the Pumpkin Cups? He never did have a taste. For the first time ever he bypassed pumpkin pie and shocked us all by choosing red velvet cake as his celebratory sweet of choice. Whaddya do? He’s a teenager now.continue to the recipe…

Soon I’ll be heading north. Not for the great white chill of Alaska, but to Northern Utah for Peach Days.

Peach season is right around the corner, and I can’t wait to hand-pick some big old juicers from the roadside fruit stand to take home and throw on the grill for my easy Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone. Dessert on the grill, can’t get easier than that.

Caramelized goodness with a touch of honey and rosemary. Mmmm hmm.

But until I load the car, gas it up and make the jaunt, I’ll share a few Friday Faves with ya’ll.

1. There were a few tips I learned of at the Evo Conference that didn’t make my recap post. One is this great app called CardMunch. Take a pic of a business card and all of the info is directly imported into your contacts or LinkedIn account.

The other is an iPhone photo editing app. Yes, yet another one to add to the arsenal. Snapseed is from one of my favorite image editing companies, Nik Software and got a lot of tongues wagging at Evo with all of us iPhone picture taking hounds comparing whose editing with what. It’s also available on the iPad.

2. I’m going to be flying my red, white and blue colors high at the Olympic Opening ceremony. I don’t know how they could top the Beijing opener, but I’m hoping London will pull out all their star power and wow the world. I’m looking at you Posh! I think this sweet USA red, white and blue treat is perfectly in order to enjoy as I sit on the couch and watch the athletes sweat it. Get the complete 2012 Summer Olympic schedule here.

3. Check out this Pinterest board featuring food bloggers tomato recipes in support of the movement to purchase for slave free tomatoes.

4. In an effort to keep up with my myriad of RSS feeds, I’m checking out Evernote Clearly to use with my favorite browser, Chrome, that promises to make blog posts and webpages easy to read with customized font selection and themes. Check it out and let me know what you think.

5. And finally, I’m thinking about making this for a blogger potluck, to quench the thirst of those talkie, eating food lovers.

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