Skinny Minnie

There's something about mini cupcakes... So precious.

MILK Treats

Look who's treat beat the heat :)

Becca _ Grasshopper


Patti _ Nutella Bar

Stephanie _ Red-Velvet Bar

Patti _ Coffee Toffee Sandwich [Mom, don't hate me for eating two... I promise all this packing has burned it off]

MILK

As the name implies, dairy dairy dairy is the way to go at Milk. Their ice-cream parlor is my favorite in all of Los Angeles, bringing out the inner child in me as I gawk at the likes of ice-cream sandwiches, sundaes, floats, malts, drumsticks, bars, etc. All the creations at Milk are crave-worthy and will keep you coming back for more... No need to wait for the ice-cream truck when school gets out at four!

GUESS WHAT KIND OF ICE-CREAM I GOT...

Momofuku Milk Bar

Directly after dinner at Noodle Bar, we bee lined it over to Milk Bar - the dessert arm of the Momofuku empire. They sell quirky and creative desserts that are shockingly delicious.

Marisa pointed me in the direction of choosing two signature items: Crack Pie and Compost Cookie. Man, the crack pie was so sweet my teeth were already shaking before I took a bite! Next time, I ought to choose more of a chocolate-based pie. The Compost cookie surprised me, I enjoyed it. All the crave-alicious notes [chocolate, sweet, salty] are in this one cookie. We also got soft serve ice-cream. The week before, Milk Bar introduced its newest flavor combo: Red Velvet and Cream Cheese Icing. I got really excited when I knew I'd be there to try it! To our disappointment, the cream cheese icing was outta juice :( We wanted to swirl both flavors for the "real" red velvet experience... However, I thought the red velvet was good alone; I could taste the light Southern chocolate cake in soft serve form. No matter how much we ate for dinner, we still saved room for dessert!

Red Velvet Soft Serve

Crack Pie - toasted oat crust, gooey butter filling

Compost Cookie - pretzels, potato chips, coffee, oats, butterscotch, chocolate chips

Magnolia Bakery

New York Ciiittaaayyyyy!! Over the weekend I finalized my NYC trip and now I just can't wait to be on the plane with J heading over to the big apple. I'm SUPER excited :) We are getting a list together of places to hit up, so if anyone has something they'd like to suggest, I'm all ears. Pizza spots, Italian places, local favs, cute bakeries... Anything and everything.

Photos below from Magnolia Bakery, Thanksgiving 2008. Even the cold didn't stop us from enjoying our cupcakes outside. It was worth it.

Sprinkles [Vegan, Gluten Free]

Vegan-ites and Gluten-ites can now come together and bond over Sprinkles Cupcakes' new additions to the red velvet fam! Click on the links below to see what I mean...

Read more about Vegan Red Velvet *here*

Read more about Gluten Free Red Velvet *here*

Lilac Flowers & Purple Icing

I love getting birthday hugs and birthday kisses. In all honestly, I only really got -semi- birthday kisses from mom and dad, no real ones. Cheeks are 'semi', and on the lips are 'real' :) My brother did give me a birthday hug... No other hugs nor kisses. Anyways, next on the list is birthday calls/texts and I guess now I have to say FaceBook posts and Twitter @'s. Thank you to everyone who greeted me today in some form or another. Friends and family truly matter the most to me.

I'm so lucky that my parents are here on my special day. It was a quiet birthday today. Waiting until next week to celebrate with the girls... Birthday presents aside, the best simple pleasures of the day were my red velvet cake and lilac roses. Xo

Edible Props

Today I got the opportunity to shoot with +Ja+! He takes great lifestyle photos and really captures people in their element - check out his website. We did a test shoot with the best props ever; cupcakes and ice-cream sandwiches! From Crumbs to Milk, we were able to get some sweet shots :) Not to mention our sweet fix for the day, too! You can't not eat the edible props...

Red Velvet

Holy Cow!

The secret to buying high quality steak is... Having a good supplier! Easy as that :P I guess the hard part is being able to seek out a good supplier. Well now that we have "the connect" it was beef beef and beef for dinner. Since men love their meat -I'm talking in the food sense here- Dad and Jon requested to be in charge of their respective dishes. Fine by me! Dad did a nice cut of Angus and Jon prepared generous slices of Kobe. Both steaks were done quite simply, letting the natural juices and succulent flavors take center stage. Let's take a look at the boys in the kitchen, shall we!

Jon slicing up the Kobe

Mom is also documenting

Time for the plate transfer

Dad getting his slice on

Angus steak served with fresh tomato slices {so tender and juicy, yummmm!}

Kobe beef marinated in garlic/soy sauce mixture {so smooth, melts in your mouth like butter!}

Still trying to finish off that mac 'n cheese - I swear it was good!

Red Velvet + Chocolate Decadence Mini Cakes - Splendid way to end dinner

Sitting on the Clouds

Jon's special request for his arrival was red-velvet cupcakes. Can you imagine my thoughts as I heard that? All I could think of was how much competition I had! Jon and I have tried some pretty darn amazing red-velvet cupcakes and now he wants me to make them... Ahhh!

I found a recipe on Wednesday, bought the ingredients on Thursday and set a mental "wake up to bake up!" message for Friday morning. That is exactly what I did. Along the way, I had fun taking pictures of the vivid red cakes. Finally, it was time to top them off with sweet cream cheese frosting. The frosting mounds reminded me of fluffy clouds... As I sit here now with Jon on my own little cloud :)