Something Sweet & Surprising

Rum Cake with Rum & Tamarind Buttercream Frosting

I was craving something naughty & out of the ordinary. This combination was out of the ordinary for sure and surprisingly good. I used a yellow cake mix & added a tsp of Rum extract. I added a tsp of Rum flavoring, tsp of tamarind paste and red food coloring to a basic butter cream recipe. Don't you ♥ the bohemian cupcake papers I found at Michael's?

Magazine Mania...

Nothing personal Dan Patrick! I had lots of fun altering his photo from Sports Illustrated! I remember when I was little my mother oil painted a black & white photo of my sister. Something about Dan's photo made me want to paint it! and paint it some more! These are mounted on ACEO acrylic paper. Sorry the photos are any better. I have downloaded a few royalty free vintage photos that I am doing. Once they are finished I will share them with you. I hope you think twice about your magazines before you throw them away. Give it a try! It may get your creative juices flowing!

A Tasty Sweet Surprise

I made Rhubarb jam for one of my dearest friends whom has been near death this past month or so. By the Grace of God he is on the mend and back at home. His doctor is saying his survival is somewhat of a miracle. He has lost a lot of weight and I am sending a care package to fatten him & his wife up. He loves jelly and eats a lot of it, yet remains thin-no fair. We both share the love of orange marmalade which I made for him last time. He mentioned once that another of his favorites is rhubarb. I had never tasted rhubarb jam. Just the name, "rhubarb" makes it sound unappetizing, kind of like "turnip", which is unappetizing to me. Well to my surprise it's delicious! Now it's one of my favorites too and I will definitely make it again. I was going to surprise him but when I talked to him on the phone, that hot stickysweet delicious jam was burning a hole in my pocket. I'm glad I let it out of the bag. It cheered him up and he has something to look forward to in the mail for the next day or so. It was simple too. Here's how I made it... oops I can't give you the exact amount of rhubarb I used but I would guess that it was about 3 - 3 1/2 cups chopped up, maybe 10 good size stalks. I just grabbed a big handful. It looks like red celery. I chopped it fairly fine but wasn't worrying about keeping it the same size, making sure to get all the juice from the cutting board I put all into a large pot, then covered it with 3 cups of sugar and let it sit for a few hours. I brought to boil on medium heat then added a pinch of ginger & 4 frozen chopped strawberries and boiled hard for 10 minutes, then placed in small mason jars fresh out of the dishwasher. I don't care for syrup, I rarely eat it, so this jam was a freshing change from the ordinary jam we buy and on this Eggo Strawberry Waffle it was so tasty!

A Big Shout Out & Thank you goes to KandiceInWonderland, FaeryMoonGoddess, Brixiana, LoopLoft, RobinMariaPedrero, and SwirlingThoughts for including my art in their wonderful Etsy Treasuries!

Is it just me or is anyone else finding that you have to retype things because you are speaking as though you are Tweeting, breaking your sentences down as though you were talking shorthand? hahaha