Gingerbread Cheesecake

This extraordinary holiday dessert has a gingersnap bottom, a creamy gingerbread and molasses cheesecake base, and is topped with a light and fluffy rum topping.

I'm not sure why, but I've found that lately I've been making cheesecake for holiday desserts. Typically, I am the one who brings dessert for any family function and I just keep latching onto cheesecake for some unknown reason. Last Christmas (yes...2016), I whipped up this gingerbread cheesecake and it was unbelievably amazing. The molasses in it was perfection and I loved the lightly rum flavored whipped topping. Plus the gingersnap bottom  - to die for! It turned out so beautifully and I was so happy with it. It was hard for me to not make it again this year, but alas, too many recipes hoarded to have repeats. But I'm very tempted to make it again and throw all caution to the wind :)

Peach Blackberry Sangria #FantasticalFoodFight

Welcome to another Food Fight! Fantastical Food Fight is a group of food bloggers who will get a theme or ingredient each month and make some sort of variation for it. It could be traditional or nontraditional and can be found in a cookbook, on a blog, or be a blogger's own creation! For more details, check out this page.

It's time again for another Food Fight and this month's theme is RUM! Today is National Rum Day and that is how the theme was chosen. The Food Fighters were not given any particular type of dish so long as it contains rum or rum flavoring. I have to admit that I struggled a little with what I wanted to make because I don't have a lot of recipes saved with rum in them and I don't make a lot of food with rum. I did have a page from the September 2016 Food Network Magazine that was for a Mix and Match Sangria recipe. So the amounts of different ingredients are from that, but the choices were mine alone.

I have had sangria once and it was many years ago, right before I got pregnant with Mason. I had a peach sangria at TGIFriday's. It was so delicious and I hands-down knew I wanted peaches in this sangria paired with white wine and white rum. Nick wanted to do all berries, so I compromised with blackberries going into the mix as well. The recipe called for superfine sugar or light brown sugar and I used vanilla sugar that I had purchased for Kasekuchen. This is a pretty strong sangria and I personally would love to try it with a sweeter wine because I am not a dry wine aficionado. Maybe a tad less rum, although everyone else loved it. The peach and blackberry with lemon was delicious though!

The cups before the Sprite was added...

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Rum Frosting

These delicious spiced cupcakes flavored with real pumpkin are topped with a decadent maple rum buttercream frosting!

When my husband was tasked to bring dessert in for a company holiday lunch last year, I immediately took to the kitchen to make a pumpkin recipe of some sort. I am bad for hoarding dessert recipes, but even worse with pumpkin recipes and I know they are more welcome in the fall than any other time of the year. I personally like them any day of the year, but some people look at you like you're crazy to give them a pumpkin cupcake in July. Same with if you offered someone a peppermint treat in April...even though peppermint is also good any time of the year.

I chose to make these cupcakes because of the maple rum frosting. That's not necessarily my go-to thought when I think of what to pair with pumpkin. I knew that Nick would love it and thought it would make for a great recipe for him because he loves maple anything and rum is his favorite liquor. While I was not necessarily the biggest fan of the frosting, I loved the spices in the cupcake. Nick loved the maple rum frosting. It was really fluffy and he said the maple and rum complimented each other perfectly. They were a huge hit at the office too!

Tasty Thursday #77: Pumpkin Pudding Cinnamon Rolls with Rum Cream Cheese Frosting

Welcome back to Tasty Thursday!!

I had some pumpkin pie pudding that was about to expire, well..not really expire, but "best by" date was swiftly coming.

I had a tempting look recipe in my arsenal and decided what the heck - I will just mix it up a bit. About halfway through the recipe, I decided to mix it up even more and make rum cream cheese frosting. The only thing that we thought it could use was pecans - and it's a shame I didn't have any on hand. This is perfect for fall - and it's pretty much here. Not officially, but it's mid-September. At the time I made these it was mid-August...but that's okay. Pumpkin is good any time of the year!

The dough was really easy to roll out - and they got pretty big. It was probably the easiest dough I've ever dealt with.

Butterbeer

One day last month, I got a curious stack of papers in the mail...

That's right...my acceptance letter to Hogwarts! And a supplies list...and then one letter from Percy Weasley that stated "Dear Mrs. Ellis, Due to Muggles having become recently aware of the wizarding community, the Ministry of Magic has determined that all Hogwarts letters must be sent by Muggle post until further notice. Our regrets that your letter was not delivered by traditional owl post."

My husband is a giant dork and I love him for it. So to celebrate, I made butterbeer :) It is so delicious!

Double Rum Cake

A little while ago, I posted a picture on Facebook...it looked a little something like this:

I said "Guess what I'm making?" :)
I was really hungry and had ran out of Girl Scout cookies, so I made a Double Rum cake..it was really delicious. Of course, it was a Paula Deen recipe, so it was bound to be incredible!