Cake, cake, cake, cake

By the time you read this I will be hanging out with my bestie Alexis who is flying into spend Thanksgiving with us. The girls are super excited but not nearly as excited as I am. And seeing as how I will be spending all my time over the holidays enjoying her company and stuffing my face I thought I'd schedule a post for you.

I just finished reading Beautiful Redemption. It is always bitter sweet to end a series. Especially a series as amazing as this one. Check out my review on goodreads here. This completion brings me back on track with my Reading Goal for 2012:

After my burn out last year in October I decided to not push my luck and just got with an easy one book a week. I'm right on track. How are you all doing? Any favorites that I must read before the end of the year? These are the three books vying for my attention right now. I'm still unsure which one I will pick to read first.

And since it's almost thanksgiving and since that means pumpkin pie and since I despise pumpkin pie, I'm going to share with what I made for "pumpkin pie day" at work. Last year I made this delicious chocolate layered pumpkin torte:

That was fun, my first go around I forgot to add the flour. The year before that I made my absolute favorite go to when you want to impress people layered pumpkin cake. Sorry no picture but here's the link to the recipe. You use brown sugar to make the whipped cream frosting... Trust me it's amazing.

This year I wanted to be lazy and do something easy. And thanks to pinterest I had options. I saw a Better than Sex Pumpkin Cake pin floating around and was pretty set on trying that. Better than Sex Cake other wise known as Skor cake, is amazing. You use a whole can of sweetened condensed milk, how could it be anything but amazing? I started out with this recipe from Something Swanky. However as I assembled the cake I was immediately put off by the consistency of the batter. The pumpkin and the dry cake mix alone looked like some that would bake up to be dry and dense and completely unappealing. So I googled easy pumpkin cake and noted that several other recipes said to still use the eggs that the original boxed cake mixed called for. Then because I was feeling wild I threw in the spices that make up pumpkin pie spice. No measurements just shaking a little here and there. Like I said WILD.

The result was pretty darn good. For someone who doesn't like pumpkin this cake was great. It had a VERY light pumpkin flavor and despite the entire can of sweetened condensed milk and entire tub of cool whip it wasn't too sweet. 

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix

1 small can pumpkin puree (14.5 oz)

3 eggs beaten

1/2 t pumpkin pie spice

1 - 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk

1 - 8 oz. tub cool whip

1 -2 Heath bars crushed

Instructions:

Mix together the cake mix, the pumpkin puree, the eggs, and the spice.

Pour batter into a well greased 9x13 baking dish. Bake at 350º according to the directions for a 9x13 cake on the cake mix box.

Using a chopstick poke holes all over the top of the cake (The original recipe links to a post that has "great step by step photos for this part". Really? You're just stabbing the cake).

Pour the sweetened condensed milk over the cake, filling the holes. Refrigerate until ready to serve. It's best to let it sit over night to really soak up that sweetened condensed milk.

Before serving spread the cool whip over top of cake. Sprinkle on the heath bits. 

Enjoy and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

The end of a saga...

Sniff sniff sob... The last Twilight movie came out last week and true to my obsessive book nerd form I bought tickets for the movie when they went on sale way back on October 1st. We avoided the crazed screaming crying teenagers by going on a Sunday evening instead of braving the midnight showing (just a tip for you Utah people, Sunday evening is the BEST day to go to the movies).

I wouldn't be me if I didn't have some Twilight paraphernalia. So at our monthly craft day I made a Breaking Dawn shirt. 

"I came to witness. I stay to fight." It wasn't in the movie but it was one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite vampires in the book.

We had a great big group of 12 and my awesome sister made us swag. Blood bites, cake pops, and Breaking Dawn themed pins. My nerd posse if fierce. 

Yes, I did take Beautiful Redemption to the movie with me. I literally don't go any where without a book. And one of the highlights of the evening was when the trailers came on. The first one was for Beautiful Creatures. Here's one of my weird traits cute quirks, I don't watch trailers. At least not for movies I'm really excited about seeing. So I covered my ears, closed my eyes, and sang to myself. I really hope my coworker who came to the movies with us wasn't too freaked out by my bizarre behavior. Then when we thought the City of Bones trailer was about to start I was ASSAULTED from behind by my sister. She grabbed my face and tried to pin my head to the seat so I couldn't look away while yelling "watch it!". Luckily for me, unfortunately for her, they did not show the City of Bones trailer. 
  
A quick movie review. It was good, probably the best of the 5. You probably won't believe me but Kristen Stewart actually had various facial expressions and conveyed emotions. The CGI Renesmee was creepy as hell - as in super creepy, gross, not cute at all. I had to work hard not to laugh too loudly when they first showed her on screen. I don't want to give away any spoilers but at one point in the movie I nearly walked out. I was seething mad at the deviation from the book. I mean ridiculous, no way you could even pretend this happened, holy SHIT that did not just happen deviation. I think the people around me were scared because I was radiating rage. But in the end I stay and they did an excellent job of working the deviation into the story in a believable way. Pretty much everyone in the theater exploded into chatter when we figured out what was going one. My exact words were "well that was unacceptable." But over all I like it a lot. And I want to go back now that I know what's going to happen so I can actually pay attention and not be distracted by my book nerd indignation. 

So who else went and watched Breaking Dawn? Thoughts? 

Book Nerd Parenting

Today was a good day to be a book nerd. I'm reading the wonderful Beautiful Redemption, the fourth and the final book in the Caster Chronicles by Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia. It's really a wonderful series for YA paranormal fans.

 I'm also listening to The Eyre Affair which is a fun mystery crime novel for literature loves. Someone is stealing characters right out of Jane Eyre.

I picked up the LONG awaited spin off series of Fever, called Iced. I absolutely cannot wait to start reading this.

I also hosted a book club meeting: The Scarlet Letter held at Red Ginger. It was probably the best book club meeting I've been to in months. A good group, who talked, had read the book, and were fun to hang out with.  It helps that the food was delicious.

But the best part of today was that the naughties got to go to their first book signing. You really can't expect children with a mother like me, an aunt like my sister (who made the dress from the book Matched just for the release party), and a grandma like my mom to not be book nerds.  They have no choice but to become book nerds even if I have to beat them... with a copy of Wuthering Heights. The signing was held at the lovely Kings English bookstore. Rosemary Wells is the author of the Max and Ruby series and was there promoting her newest book, Max and Ruby's Treasure Hunt.

I unfortunately had to be at that silly place called work so I wasn't able to go. But my amazing mom got the answer to every parents burning question: Where are Max and Ruby's parents?! Mrs. Wells explained that the characters were based on her own kids, 5 and 1. And her five year old was always bossing the one year old around, telling him how to act and what to say and what to do. And she's be listening from another room, which is why you never see the parents in the story. The girls were super excited when they got home and told me all about how they met Max but Ruby couldn't come, and how they met Rosemary Wells who's the author of the Max and Ruby books, and how she read them a story and signed their new books. It was a proud moment for this nerd parent.