The last few days of 2011 (in pics!)

Polar Bear Plunge!

The frozen pool...duhn dun duuuun!

An early jump!

Our co-jump...I posed and Lee plugged his nose.

Post jump.  Very cold.

Video Games Live!

Video Games Live

Starting to get crazy!

I cheered for Gumba to win the costume contest!

Hanging out with all the others geeks at Abravanel Hall!

Fun stuff, fun stuff!  Hope you're enjoying the last bits of 2011!

Pastry Wednesday: Tullie's Chocolate Bouchon

Tullie Bakery seems to be the go-to place for Adnohr and Sugaraholic as of late. I still haven't set foot in the bakery, and I think I haven't yet because subconsciously I am trying to avoid the embarrasment of walking out with boxes and boxes of every single type of pastry there.  That's gotta be it. 

Yeah, that would be awkward.

Adnohr brought these in for her turn of Pastry Wednesday--they are called Chocolate Bouchon. 

Bouchon means cork in french--see the resemblance?

These bouchon are small, but rich cakes with a brownie-like consistency and chocolate chips throughout.    The top part is crustier, dusted with confectioner's sugar. 

In my family when we make a pan of brownies, we fight over who gets the the edges and corners--the crustier and chewier parts!  However, if you get each person their own bouchon, there is no fighting, because it's like a self-contained brownie--a crusty and chewy shell with a fudge-y center as a bonus--'tis heavenly!

Adnohr brought in two for each of us. We each ate one, then brought the second one home for a treat later. I gave it to Lee and he wolfed it down in 3 seconds flat.



Adnohr smiling about her tasty and clever purchase!


Each bouchon runs about $2.50 each and so worth it!  So save your pennies!

Tullie Bakery
863 East 700 South  
Salt Lake City, UT

The Redds' 3rd Annual Christmas Card

Merry Christmas, family and friends!

Here's our 3rd Annual Christmas Card.  Yay!

Yes, it's a little late...oh well!

Enjoy!

We love you and we think you're the best.  Really...the best!

Three Years!

Lee and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary this last weekend. Woot woot!

Lee got all excited about setting up our anniversary weekend--he wouldn't tell me anything we were doing. Late Friday, we headed up to Eden, Utah for a little getaway from the Inversion. (Yes, the thick, foggy air that settles in the Salt Lake valley during the winter warrants capitalization.)

The next morning, Lee cooked me an omelet breakfast.  Omelets and watching How I Met Your Mother--can't beat it. We just discovered HIMYM--hilarious!

Lee then planned for us to get pedis!  Yes, Lee is fond of them despite the goofy look on his face. Lee actually got his first pedi with me 3 years ago exactly, the day before our wedding. 

I love when he giggles like a little school girl when they loofah his feet--he is SO ticklish!

We then headed to dinner at Cafe Molise, which was just yum-O and romantic!

Lee then surprised me and told me that he had purchased tickets to Cirque de la Symphonie with the Utah Symphony. It's like mixing Cirque du Soleil and the symphony.  Oh man, it was amazing!  I couldn't take any pics there, but take a look see at the Youtube video below.  The strongmen, Jarek and Darek, blew our minds!  They were the muscular ones balancing on each other.

It was such a lovely evening.  Heck, it was a lovely day!

Lastly, as some of you know, we give each other a watch as our anniversary gifts. Why?  Well, we got married one week before Christmas and having to think of 2 major gifts in December was too much of a strain on our brains. We figured if we decided on a "what" to get, then we'd just need to choose "which one" every year!

Well, Lee got me a watch I've had my eye on for a while--a Swatch Iron Diaphane Chrono in Burgandy Red. I love it! It's a light watch, traditional looking so I can wear it to work, and it's red! Lee actually presented it to me "al a marriage proposal style"--that guy is super cute.



I love that burgandy red strap!



He requested a "funky" watch for this go-around, since last year, I got him a respectable watch--I think he needed something crazy.  I fretted over Lee's watch as I always do.   Usually, I am worried that he wont' like a certain aspect of a watch that I think is absolutely rad. I finally decided on the Kisai 3D watch from Tokyo Flash. I was worried though that the band would be too shiny.

Here's the watch.  The band is a little shiny, but look at this design!  Can you tell what time is it?

Here's a clue: Look at it as a 3D cube and the numbers are on the sides of the cube. 

Lee loves it.  I was happy that Lee was happy with it--phew!

Wow--three whole years! It has been a real kick and I'm sure grateful we found each other.  I'm even more grateful that we love AND we like each other.   Happy Anniversary to us!

One of our wedding invitation pictures that we sent to our non-respectable friends and family.

Double Pastry Wednesday: Tullie's Pumpkin Cake and Les Madeleines' Kouing Aman

Since I've fallen behind on reporting (but not eating, of course) on our Pastry Wednesdays, I've got two for you today!

I'm not saying I'm doing two different Pastry Wednesdays today in this post--I'm saying that two of us (Adnohr and I) actually thought it was our turn, so we both brought something.

And sadly, Sugaraholic was home sick!  What terrible luck, because these were both home runs!

We did invite a couple of other people to join in--we had way too much for two people to consume!

I went to Les Madeleines because the last time I went, they were closed for remodeling.  That was a sad day. But this day was a lovely day because there were plenty of kouing aman available. They are so popular that there is a limit on how many you can purchase.  It's their way of spreading the love.

Les Madelines' kouing aman--divine!

I don't know if you can see it in this picture, that this lovely pastry is composed of layers of dough, butter, and sugar that has come together so well--crunchy, flaky goodness on the outside, and soft, gooey amazingness on the inside.  It's practically perfect in every way!

Lee actually ran to get the kouing amans for me and picked up these babies also:

Square macaroons!

We had no idea what they were.  They looked like croutons dipped in chocolate and thought that was a little weird.  When we finally cut into them, we discovered it was a super modern-looking macaroon.  The coconut was shredded so finely and the flavor so subtle that it took us a minute to realize what it was. What beautiful design!

Adnohr decided to go to Tullie again, and she told us she went in with intentions for one thing, but walked away with this medium-sized Pumpkin Cake with cream cheese frosting instead.  Apparently, she loves everything pumpkin!

The Pumpkin Cake

It was like a dense pumpkin loaf, but in cake form. It wasn't overly sugary, so the pumpkin flavor was able to shine. Then there was the cream cheese frosting--to die for!  Once again, not overly sugary and super creamy--did they change the cream cheese to confectioner's sugar ratio in favor of the cream cheese?  If so, awesome!

Look at that nice layer of cream cheese frosting!

All three of these pastries were successes in my book--now go to and test these out yourself!

Tullie Bakery
863 East 700 South
Salt Lake City, Utah
801.883.9741


Les Madeleines
216 East 500 South
Salt Lake City, Utah
801.355.2294

Working fondant cream centers

As mentioned in my last post and in a previous post, we make our own cream fondant centers for homemade chocolates.  When Lee and I were first dating, he brought me a plate of homemade, hand-dipped chocolates for Christmas and casually mentioned it was a family tradition to make these homemade chocolates.  I had no clue the extent of this family tradition.

We got the 411 on how this tradition got started from Lee's grandmother.

As told by Grandma Malad:

My mother, Flora, and her brother, Walt, started this candy making tradition years ago. Walt got the skinny on how to make chocolates because he was friends with one of the Cummings brothers who started Cummings Chocolates in Salt Lake.  Walt thought it might be a good thing to learn to make their own chocolates because they spent too much money buying chocolates.

We're part of the 4th generation to continue this awesome and most tasty tradition!

The first thing that Lee's mom, Mom K, taught us was how to make the fondant cream centers.  We started with the basic Big Batch of Fondant recipe--a mixture of cream, sugar, karo syrup, and salt.   When cooking the fondant on the stove, the mixture is white to pale-yellow in color.

The fondant mixture cooking

The fondant is then poured onto a cold, cold marble slab--we usually borrow Mom K's and stick it outside on the porch and wipe it down when we're ready to use it.  The cold slab cools the hot liquid.

Then you start "working" it. We purchased at the Home Depot a couple of putty knives--these are the perfect tools for the task.  

Putty knives used only for candy making--no putty allowed!

Lee demonstrates how to "work" the fondant.  As you can see in the video, there is a lot scrapping and flipping and folding of the fondant.  He's definitely developed his own style!

The fondant is rather glossy looking when you start out, but as you work it, the glossiness disappears and the fondant starts looking creamy and hopefully, tasting creamy too!

Glossy, pale yellow colored fondant at the beginning of the "working"

As you can see, the fondant is starting to look more opaque and white

We learned a trick from Mom K, that if the fondant starts getting to sugary (aka a super saturated solution), that you can ditch one of the putty knives and start working the fondant with your hand and the other putty knife. The heat from your hand will warm it up and you can sometimes bring it back from a grainy, sugary texture to creamy.

This is Lee's main job during the entire chocolate-making process--he is always burning up and his hands work wonders on any grainy fondant!

Hand + Putt Knife Combo works wonders!

After it's properly worked and is creamy, you flavor your center. There are the traditional flavors and recipes for the cream fondant centers that we've done--orange, mint, french vanilla, cherry nut, bavarian mint, raspberry, lemon.  We love those flavors!

But, we like to make "weird" flavors each year too. We made a Spice Cake center (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger) and Spumoni center (strawberry + pistachio).  I guess they're not as weird as last year's (Bacon Truffle and Chile Truffle), but they turned out beautifully.

What "weird" flavors would you want to try?  We'd love to hear your suggestions for next year!

Our Weekend

A crazy wind storm blew through our county on Thursday, December 1.  Here's the series of events that was our weekend.

1.  Because of the crazy storm that blew through our county, we had a whole lot of this and no power in our neighborhood on Thursday:

One of the big trees in front of the apartment complex went down in the storm.

2.  Because we didn't have power on Thursday, the night we originally planned to do our fondant centers for our hand-dipped chocolates, we did this on Friday night from 9 pm till 2 am:

Measuring stuff out for a batch of fondant centers

Lee is working the fondant center on a cold marble slab and trowels

3.  We did Item #2 so that we would be ready to do this the following morning at 7 am:

I learned to dip chocolates for the first time from Ruth, the amazing chocolate dipper!

Lee was the runner and boxer of chocolates

4. And because we couldn't go to the Festival of Trees on Friday night like we hoped, because we had to do our fondant centers instead, because we didn't have power on Thursday when we were originally planning on doing our centers, because of that wind storm that blew through our town Thursday, we did this on Saturday night from 10 pm to 12:30 am so we could hang out with our awesome friend, Dr. Runner, who invites us to go to the Festival every year:

Wrapping Christmas trees for delivery

5. And because of that storm that blew through on Thursday, most of church was canceled so we could clean up the neighborhood before the next wind storm, which was supposed to happen last night.  We got to do a lot of this:

Lee is up the tree, tying a rope to it before cutting it down

Lee's chainsawing skills put to the test on the tree he just fell.

The Car Guy (our bro-in-law) and Lee, cutting up the last bit of stump

Needless to say, we were exhausted when we got up today.  It was a full and wonderful weekend, but I could use another one!

Our Thanksgiving-Christmas Wreath and a Wreath-Hanging Tip

Lee and I had a grand Thanksgiving weekend--did you?  We hope so.

Ours was filled with Lee's sister opening her mission call (Uruguay--woot!), the Muppet's movie (loved loved it!), pre-Thanksgiving Zumba class (gotta burn off the calories), making potstickers (it's one of my family traditions), eating a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, playing games, looking at Black Friday ads, sleeping in on Black Friday, cleaning out the gutters at the apartments, going shopping when it wasn't busy, and just hanging out and doing very little.  It was seriously an awesome weekend.

During one of our outings this last weekend shopping was this wreath that Lee spotted at the World Market.  I had been wanting to make a new wreath for this Christmas season, but Lee kept frowning at me when I'd point one out that I wanted to buy and spruce up.

Apparently he had a different idea in his head.  This wreath is plain Jane, has some nice "movement" to it, and exactly what Lee had in mind.

Plain, but exactly what Lee wanted!

It was a sweet find, because it was in the clearance section--half off!  But what made it even better was that Lee asked the manager if he could have it for a "buck or two" less from the clearance price since it was missing an owl that was supposed to be sitting on the wooden dowel in the middle section.


No owl on the dowel = Discount!


She ended up giving us an additional half off the already half-off price!  Woot!  Thank you, Dave Ramsey!

Then, I found these cute felt snowflake coasters for a couple bucks and the vision of our Christmas wreath became clear!

We arranged the snowflakes how we wanted them and glued them together using a hot glue gun. We then trimmed down a kabob bamboo skewer. We chose a wooden skewer because it hides well in the grass!

Then, we then positioned the snowflakes where we wanted and glued the skewer to the glued-together snowflakes like so:

We glued it in such a way that when we stuck the skewer in, you couldn't see it and the snowflakes looked nice.

Oh, look--no skewer in sight!  Plus, we can change out the decoration since it's not glued onto the wreath!

Anyway, here's our finished project:

Cute, huh?  And Christmas-y!  A Christmas-y wreath made during Thanksgiving!

We, of course, had to pose with our creation.  Yes, Lee is wielding a staple gun in his picture.

Helpful Wreath-Hanging Tip:  One tip that I learned from Mom K was the ribbon trick. She uses a ribbon to hang her wreaths, instead of one of those wire hook thingees that can scrape up your door.

All you do is hook or loop the ribbon somewhere on the wreath (we used the peg that the missing owl was supposed to be perched on), then either staple gun or thumb-tack the ribbon to the top (that flat, narrow, horizontal strip) of the door at the height you want the wreath.

We don't have flat thumb tacks, so we opted for the trusty staple gun.  No marks and it looks nice!  Plus, you get to choose a festive ribbon for each season.

Isn't Mom K a smart cookie?

She sure is!

"I am sharing my holiday home decor and cleaning tips for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls and Great Cleaners."