Another Gallery Opening

Nancy featured another artist and today was the opening.  

As Valentine's Day is around the corner, I felt it only appropriate to make mini red velvet cupcakes.  Plus, these are Nancy's favorites and since it was her "party" it just made sense.

Modified this recipe from several different recipes. The frosting is my cousin Lorrie's cream cheese frosting.  All the cast of characters; cream cheese, milk, vanilla and powdered sugar

I love this shortbread recipe.  I like to make the dough a day or two ahead and then put it in the fridge.  Thirty minutes before starting to assemble, I put the dough in the freezer.  The dough gets grated, as if it were cheese!  It is so easy to work with.  Today I used a fig jam for the center layer, but in the past I have used aprioct jam or a rasberry jam.

Hungarian Shortbread

Baking with Julia

Never made these before, but they were YUMMY!  This is Alexis' Carmel Cashew  Bars.  The bottom layer is a brown sugar shortbread.  Then I toasted some unsalted cashews and layered over the crust after it cooled a bit.  Then I made a homemade caramel.  Topped them with white chocolate!

Brownies with the volume turned way up!  A really fudgy brownie base (with pecans).  Made a layer of mint flavored frosting (powdered sugar, butter, mint flavoring, milk).  Let it set and then covered top with a thin layer of bittersweet chocolate glaze.  Rich but really good.

The final product