mirlicious!: A Domestic Goddess in the Urban Jungle

Moving downtown wasn't totally my idea, but I went with it and I'm loving it. My Saturday morning routine is hitting the St. Lawrence farmer's market to buy fresh eggs, veggies, and bread. If I don't feel inspired to cook dinner, I have a plethora of restaurants to choose from: Thai, Italian, bar, upscale pub, Japanese ... but that dilemma happens only about once a week.

I can't help but to think about food almost all the time. I have Food Network to blame for that. There aren't many FN shows that I don't like - maybe Restaurant Makeover (it's on ALL THE TIME) and Eat, Shrink, and Be Merry. I have to work out at least twice a week or else buy new clothes!!

This past weekend was a long weekend, so I was in the kitchen prepping to go to a couple of dinner parties. I wanted to share my summer trifle with everyone. I used Jell-O instant vanilla pudding a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I would try to make it scratch. I dusted off a pastry cream recipe from the baking course I took last fall. The directions weren't very clear, so I followed the directions from a Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream recipe from foodnetwork.com but used the proportions from the original recipe. The result was very thick and not too sweet. It reminded me of the tapioca pudding from dim sum. Anyways, here is a picture of the result:

My Summer Trifle

I used store-bought pound cake, drizzled it with vanilla almond milk, then added a layer of the vanilla pudding (if you look closely, you'll see vanilla beans in the pudding), then spread mixed fruit (raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, and peaches) on top of the pudding. I repeated the layers and then finished with real whipped cream sweetened with vanilla sugar (of course I re-used the vanilla pods!). I have to admit, it was pretty dee-lish, but who doesn't like trifle?

I've got a lot of baking to do this week. Boss' birthday is at the end of this week and she loves lemon desserts. So I'm going to attempt Lemon Meringue cupcakes. (At work, I'm known as the Cupcake Queen.) The company BBQ is on Saturday with the spouses and the kiddies. I'd like to make my Green Tea Cupcakes for the grown-ups, but what shall I make for the kiddies?

Gumdrop Cupcakes (a la Martha Stewart)?