Tag: dessert

Products, San Diego County, Mary, Normal Heights

viva pops / normal heights – san diego, ca

Hot summer days demand cool and refreshing treats. The frozen treats made at Viva Pops in Normal Heights is definitely a good option for any warm day with their mix of creative flavors. I don’t know of any other place that puts goat cheese into a frozen treat. That right there is reason enough to swing by and check this place out.

Here’s their menu from the day that we visited. The menu changes and rotates and frequently, considering everything is made fresh at the store and depends on local produce to create their frozen treats. Some of the flavors that really caught my eye were the Lavender Lemonade, the Tri-Color Melon (which is made with three different types of melon) and the Key Lime Pie bars.

I was also impressed to see that they make dog pops so your pup can also have a treat! The dog pops are sold by donations, which are donated to Second Chance Dog Rescue. Tugged at my heart strings a little to hear that. Sadly I didn’t have Maya with me that afternoon, otherwise she would gotten a dog viva pop!

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Recipes, Baking, Miscellaneous, Mary

snowcone cupcakes + lemon bars

The best thing about these cupcakes is that my co-workers all thought they were really snow cones.

How awesome is that?!

I saw the idea for this on justJENN’s blog and just tweaked it a little for my liking! I only used two colors and I didn’t add the straws – the spoons were good enough! The trickiest part of these cupcakes were trying to find the little styrofoam containers – I ended up getting them at Smart & Final for less than $2! You need the 4oz food container size – the cupcakes will fit in there perfectly after you bake them. The wooden spoons I just bought on Etsy from the Lemon Drop Shop.

Recipes I used: white chocolate strawberry mousse (skipping the last two steps) and these vanilla cupcakes.

Okay, onto decorating!

I used the same “cut a hole in it” technique that I used for the caramel cupcakes. Nothing fancy. Just use a knife to cut out a good sized hole.

Then stick the filling in! These were vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate strawberry mousse.

Yes. It is as delicious as it sounds.

Stuff the tops back on and then place the cupcakes in the styrofoam cups.

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Mary, Recipes, Baking

caramel cupcakes with honey sea salt

At the end of June, our friend Chris flew into town from Tampa to spend a couple of weeks with us. For some reason that I don’t remember, I promised him baked goods on his first night in town. I was going to make red velvet cupcakes since I had some leftover buttermilk but then I thought I should try something else. I stumbled upon this recipe for triple caramel cupcakes and was instantly smitten. Had to make them! Stat!

These. Are. The. Bestest. Cupcakes. Ever.

The cake base uses a ton of brown sugar in it to give the cake a sort of caramel flavor to it. Then it has caramel stuffed inside of it. Then there’s caramel frosting on top!#!@!

Swoon.

It’s dangerous to make these. But you can bet that I will be making them again soon.

Kind of looks like a little hat, doesn’t it?

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San Diego County, Mary, Mission Valley

dave and buster’s – mission valley / san diego, ca

I hadn’t been to a Dave & Buster’s in years, but I was recently invited to swing on by and to check it out again. I was looking forward to taking Jake, Chris and T for a night out to try out Dave & Buster’s newest menu items and to try out some of their fun, new games this summer!

Let’s get crackin’. There’s a lot of food to cover.

Looking at all of these photos makes me feel the fullness again. Oof.

We were greeted by some of the assistant managers who took very good care of us that evening. He had everything under control – ordering the food and drinks for us, asking if there was anything else we wanted and catering to our needs. I wish I could dine like this all of the time. Totally, totally spoiled. Oy.

[The Lawnmower Salad – layered using fresh romaine and green leaf lettuces, grilled chicken, diced garden vegetables, boiled eggs, bacon bits and bleu cheese crumbles]

We started the dinner off with a salad – a salad unlike any other I have seen before. They call it the “Lawnmower Salad” and it comes on a huge plate with all of the veggies and greens layered out in pretty little rows. The nice part about this is you get to kind of build the salad the way you want it – grabbing the veggies you like and scooping them onto your own plate. The lettuces are underneath all of the toppings, so as you grab some, you also get the lettuce underneath.

By the time you scoop what you want onto your own little plate, it manages to get all tossed and mixed up and ready for your waiting mouth… don’t read into that.

You get your choice of dressing on the side to pour over your own mini salad. Perfect for sharing with a crowd!

[The 5:15 – Comes with 5 Buffalo Wings with your choice of Ranch or Bleu Cheese dressing; 5 Chicken Quesadilla Wedges with salsa; 5  Pretzel Dogs; and 5 Crispy Fried Shrimp with spicy habanero sauce; complete with a stack of fresh BBQ potato chips]

Next we had the “5:15” appetizer platter brought out to us – this is geared towards the “after work” crowd who’s ready to get the evening started after a long day at work. It comes with a little mix of everything – wings, quesadilla wedges, pretzel dogs, fried shrimp and plenty of freshly made BBQ potato chips.

I got to eat all of the shrimp, because boys are weird.

Well, at least the ones I know are. Who cares though – more shrimp for ME!

The shrimp is a basic fried shrimp, but the spicy habanero sauce gives it a hefty kick to the seat of your pants, if you like that kind of thing. The pretzel dogs were my next favorite item – they were encased in a soft pretzel dough which paired nicely with the dogs. The boys were all seriously digging the potato chips which had Dave & Buster’s own BBQ seasoning dusted over all of the chips. They had a good crunch and flavor – though not my favorite, simply because I don’t dig BBQ chips all that much.

Maybe I’m just a weird girl.

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Mary, Travel, Las Vegas

sugar factory american brasserie – las vegas, nv

The Sugar Factory American Brasserie actually wasn’t on my “to-eat” list for Vegas. I had wanted to go to a burger place but I saw an ad and a coupon for the Sugar Factory and my interest instantly peaked at the words “Sugar” and “Factory”. I guess I really do have an insane sweet tooth.

There are multiple locations of the Sugar Factory shop on the Strip, but only one restaurant – which is open 24 hours a day and located inside of Paris Las Vegas.

After looking over the menu, I was convinced enough to convince everyone else that this was where we should go for breakfast the next day.

And we did the “share all of our food” thing again. It worked really well. I always want to get the sweet stuff for breakfast but I usually get quickly overwhelmed by the same sweet flavors. Jake and I usually share a savory dish and a sweet dish to balance out all of the flavors.

[Blueberry Pancakes – blueberry compote, powdered sugar, maple syrup and vanilla bean sauce – $12]

Laura choose the Blueberry Pancakes, covering us for the “sweet” part of our breakfast. These pancakes are HUGE and you get a stack of three of them. I found that I didn’t even need to add any maple syrup to these babies since they were sufficiently sweet with the rich blueberry compote. The pancakes were very fluffy and delicious.

I wonder how they get that pretty edge to them? Do they have a giant pancake mold?

The vanilla bean sauce that was on the side was also very good and gave another hint of flavor to the pancakes. These are definitely sharing-size pancakes.

[Ham & Cheese Croissant Sandwich – cheddar cheese, black forest ham with home fries – $14]

Chris ordered the ham and cheese croissant and split it into four neat little pieces for all of us. I mostly just ate the croissant because I’m a weird girl who doesn’t like ham that much. The croissant was buttery and flaky though, just the way a good croissant should be. Jake and Chris loved the sandwich, ham lovers that they are.

[Open Face Fried Egg Sandwich – two fried eggs, cheddar cheese, english muffin, canadian bacon, skinny fries and country gravy – $15]

I ordered this. Something about it just sounded terribly intriguing to me. It kind of reminds me of our carne asada fries, but this is like a breakfast version with country gravy instead. I loved it! It helped that I only ate a quarter of it so I didn’t sick of it, too. The Canadian bacon adds a nice bit of saltiness along with the crispy fries and the country gravy helps pull it all together. There could have been more gravy (Jake certainly thought so) but still a unique dish.

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Mary, Recipes

frozen butterfinger pie

Need a quick and easy dessert for Fourth of July today? I got the hook up for you!

Last week I was planning on making dinner (macaroni and cheese — oh, I’ll have to post that one next week) and was asking Jake if he thought I should make dessert, too. He’s not a dessert person so he just kind of shrugged his shoulders at me. I decided it was better to ask Chris, our out of town friend, what he thought. He was much more receptive to the idea. Chris mentioned something about butterfingers and Jake then mentioned a pie, so butterfinger pie came up to the plate. See, I don’t even think of these things myself sometimes.

[The cast of characters]

This is a pretty simple no bake pie. You don’t have to freeze it – you can just leave it in the fridge – but freezing it gives it an almost ice cream like texture, perfect for a warm summer day. As you can see, you also don’t need a whole lot of ingredients to make this pie!

[Crush the vanilla wafers – bang, bang, bang!]

I decided I wanted to do this pie with vanilla wafers. You can also do an Oreo crust, graham cracker crust, or buy a premade shell. I put the wafers in a plastic bag and started to bang away on them until they were smooth crumbs.

[Melted butter and a tablespoon of sugar melds the vanilla wafers together to form a crust]

Add a tablespoon of sugar and six tablespoons of melted butter. Press it into a pie pan. I decided to bake mine for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees just to set it up a little, but you don’t really need to do that.

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Mary, Travel, Las Vegas

max brenner – las vegas, nv

I went on vacation last week! For the whole week! Man, it was awesome. Getting back to work and reality is kind of a bummer this week. But I get to relive it a little bit with my food recap posts. Score. For our Vegas trip we had four of us tagging along – myself, Jake, Chris and Laura.

I had read a few other blogger’s posts about visiting Max Brenner in Las Vegas – a restaurant that also has a chocolate shop within it and a separate “Chocolate Menu”. I couldn’t resist.

[Really Cheesy-Really Crunchy Mac & Cheese – 5 cheese blend with tomatoes and smoked applewood bacon – $15.25]

I got to pick a couple of dishes because my friends are cool like that and trust my judgement. I got consensus though. We shared all of our dishes so it was like we all shared a mini buffet together – but this way the food was fresh and a bit more interesting that the items you’d get at the buffet.

One of the dishes we started off with was this Mac & Cheese dish – it is true to its name in that it was pretty crunchy. It’s not really a very saucy or creamy mac and cheese but still quite good on it’s own. The top got very crisp and crunchy, lending a nice texture to the dish. I prefer a little creamier mac and cheese, but I still loved the crunch on this one and the blend of cheeses was quite nice.

[Asian Chicken and Soba Noodle Salad – veggies, wontons and sesame peanut dressing – $14.50]

I also picked a salad to lighten up the meal since mac & cheese can be heavy at times. This Asian Chicken and Soba Noodle Salad really hit the spot and surprised all of us at how good it was. It was a nice, light, refreshing salad that had a lot of textures and flavors going on – the mint gave it a good flavor, the soba noodles were delicious and the crunch from the veggies, peanuts and wonton noodles really made this salad come together. We cleaned up that dish pretty quickly and it ended up being one of our favorite items.

[Molly’s White Corn Croquettes – white corn & manchego cheese ball in panko bread crumbs – individual portion – $6.95]

I was intrigued by the description of these white corn croquettes and decided on getting the smaller sized portion. It turned out to be perfect since it came with four little croquettes – one for each of us! These croquettes are lightly fried with a creamy, cheesy inside. The white corn adds a bit of sweetness to the bite while the cheese oozes out. It’s a flavorful, crunchy little bite!

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San Diego County, Mary, Del Mar

san diego fair treats

I love the fair.

The start of the fair in June is the start of summer. It’s also the start of corn on the cob, fresh basil and tomatoes in the garden, and totally fried totally bad for you fair food. I love it!

This year I got to enjoy the fair with Jake, our friend from Tampa, Chris, and Jake’s son, T. We visited the fair last week to catch one of our favorite comedians, Gabriel Iglesias, on stage. He was hilarious and well worth the price of admission. And of course, I can’t go to the fair without trying out and eating a bunch of crazy fair foods. Here’s my recap for this year!

[Deep Fried Snickers / Deep Fried Reese’s]

Christopher (I like to call him by his full name since it amuses me) wanted to try out some deep fried candy bars since he’d never had one before. We got a deep fried snickers and a deep fried reese’s.

This is the innards of a deep fried Reese’s. I preferred this one, just because I like peanut butter that much more than Snickers. Both are coated in a sweet batter. It kinda looks like this Reese’s was undercooked from that goo there, but I didn’t notice it at all. The candy just melts and gets all gooey inside. It’s pretty darn good.

[Orange Julius]

Jake and Chris both got Orange Julius.

I might be one of the only people who doesn’t really like Orange Julius.

I don’t know why. I don’t really care for any orange flavored drink – except for orange juice. No pulp, please.

[Chocolate Covered Bacon]
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San Diego County, Mary, La Jolla

la jolla brew house / la jolla – san diego, ca

I don’t usually document negative experiences but:

A) I’m tired
B) I decided I don’t care
C) I’m doing a service for you guys, right?
D) I’m too tired to think of a D.

Anyway. Bear (bare? no, definitely bear. I’m definitely tired if I’m leaving these inane comments in) with me for a few minutes.

I had a Groupon for the La Jolla Brew House and I dragged Jake along with me since the coupon was about to expire. It seemed like a really good deal – two burgers, plus desserts and two beers or sodas for $18.

There was a little bit of a wait so I put my name down on the list and we wandered over to a couch to sit for awhile. It was a nice evening and we were out on a patio. The garage doors were up and people were enjoying the evening. I got a kick out of seeing puppies on the patio. Dog friendly! I love it. We kind of bugged out for awhile waiting for our table. We were told the wait would be about 20-30 minutes. No problem.

[playing the waiting game on the patio]

I kept peeking over to the hostess stand and noticed there were less and less people over there, but still, we were never called. It was over 30 minutes later when I poked Jake and asked him to go check. A few minutes later he came back and sat down.

“She said we’re next. She skipped us.”
“What?”
“When I asked, she said my name was already called. Then I told her the name put down was Mary and she kind of freaked out a little.”
“She got caught lying, that’s why!”
“Yeah, that was obvious. She just skipped us.”
“Lame.”

Not an impressive start if you ask me.

[page two of stapled together menus]

We were given these stapled together menu’s to look over though since I had the Groupon, there wasn’t much choice. We could have a classic cheeseburger, a mushroom swiss burger or a BH burger. Both came with either fries or sweet potato fries and either 2 pints of beer or 2 16-ounce sodas (+ dessert).

[sunset trivia]

They were doing trivia that night, hosted by Sunset Trivia. The guy came over and quickly explained the rules to us. They were over halfway through the trivia, but we did it anyway. It was totally fun! They have three different categories each round and you put down the amount of points you want to bet for each round. You write your answer down plus the points you’re betting. The guy calling out the questions also keeps score for you.

I didn’t even have to suggest a something for our team name. I just looked at Jake and he wrote down the above. Jake knows me so well!

[mushroom swiss burger / regular fries]

I got the mushroom swiss burger. You can see that my cheese is just slightly melted on my burger. The burger was only warm to the touch. It tasted okay, nothing special really. Standard button mushrooms that were slightly sauteed, mild seasoning on the burger. It was cooked to medium rare per my specifications. The burger was just really lacking… something. Flavor. Oomph. Heat. Something! The fries were not very hot, not very crisp and not very good. The best I can say about my meal was that it was “meh”.
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Miscellaneous, Mary, Baking

baby shower!

I’ve been having some very busy days lately and last weekend was no exception! So short post today mostly recapping Alyssa’s baby shower!

Alyssa used to write for this blog, back when she had time to do so. I miss having her posts on here! Now that she’ll be a mom in a few short months, I think it’s safe to say she’s not coming back (though I’ve known that for a long, long time). We celebrated the future birth of her baby boy with a little baby shower, hosted by her old friend Christina. All I did was set up and do desserts, so most of this is Christina’s lovely handiwork.

The spread, from the view of my desserts! I finally bought myself a Dessert Tower. I’ve been wanting one forever but didn’t really feel that I needed it. But I’m over that now. I need it. I want it. It makes cupcakes look so pretty.

A bit of a close up – red velvet cupcakes on the first three levels and lemon ricotta cookies on the bottom. The overflow of cookies is on the cake stand to the left, with some vanilla meringues from Trader Joe’s. The little sugar animals are from Do it With Icing in Clairemont (I love that place).

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Mary, Recipes

berry crumb pie aka i think i love pie

I have been on some kind of pie making kick lately. In the last few months I’ve made a blueberry pie, 2 strawberry pies, this berry crumb pie and last weekend I made an apple strawberry pie.

Compare this to last year, where I made approximately zero pies.

I think I might love pie after all.

I really want to make mini pies now. I must experiment!

This pie makes use of the bounty of the season with fresh strawberries and blueberries. It’s summer! You should bask in the glory of summer berries!

These are some of the ingredients you need. Flour and sugar were too shy for the line up. Also: that Speculoos filled chocolate bar doesn’t go into the pie. It’s just for eating while you make the pie.

It’s there for support.

I like making the crumb topping first. Flour, sugar, cinnamon, soft butter. If you’re feeling giddy, add in some oatmeal.

You can stir this if you want, but I chose to just squish it that day. Squissssssssh.

It ends up looking a little coarse and crumbly, like this. You can also just melt the butter and stir, but what’s the fun in that?
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Hillcrest, San Diego County, Mary

urban eats / hillcrest – san diego, ca

Urban Eats is a new little restaurant in Hillcrest that’s been open for about three months now under the helm of Chef Christopher B. Sayre. The spot started out earlier this year as Taco Banh before Sayre decided to switch gears and instead open up Urban Eats, a locally sourced restaurant serving up a mix of American dishes. My cohorts and I had noticed on the bottom of our bill it has said “Taco Banh” and curiosity got me to Google searching. It seems Taco Banh didn’t quite work out and Urban Eats was able to rise up out of that. Jake and I are certainly glad that it came to this as we dined here twice within one week – once as a guest and another time on our own with our friend, Laura.

The space is small, but cozy. The bar is the first thing to catch your eye with its colorful Asian lanterns. The simple seats are all set up with place settings and menus and your greeted in a most friendly manner to “sit anywhere you’d like!”

Kyle, our host, server, and waiter extraordinaire, was there to take care of us on both visits. His warm and friendly personalities just exudes charm. I loved him immediately, especially when he recognized us on our second visit and already knew we were going to order the macaroni and cheese again.

More on that later.

At Urban Eats you get cucumber water, which I love. Jake puts his cucumbers into my glass because he’s weird and doesn’t like cucumbers.

*eye roll*

[cheesy baguette slices with honey butter]

All customers get this complimentary appetizer to start. It’s a little more doled up than just “bread and butter” so I call it an appetizer. Baguette slices with cheese and a little cup of honey butter greet you shortly after you take a seat, luring you in. The butter has drizzles of honey on it, so the honey is still distinct as you slather it onto a slice and devour it. It’s a yummy way to start any meal.

[mini grilled cheese – swiss + cheddar + brie + tomato bisque – $6]

On our first visit, I decided I had to try the Mini Grilled Cheese. The grooves on this appetizer are serious. Super panini pressing was going on to create this sandwich. The size reminded me of those weird French Toast sticks. I could tell it was basically a sandwich cut into fours, but I didn’t really care. Oozing cheese on grilled bread makes me happy and these were pretty tasty dunked in the cup of tomato bisque that accompanied them. My only complaint would be that I thought it was cooked a little too long and I tasted more bread than cheese.

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