We had yet again another successful family dinner.  We were a little distracted because we were also watching the Giant's beat the Tigers and carving pumpkins.  Still everything threw together a yummy fall dish.  We were able to experience everyone's recipes! 
   This is a picture of Whitney's very scary pumpkin from the Nightmare before Christmas (I think). Mine will not be included...I was not feeling the carving and mine ended up looking messy, terrible, and not very creative!
   I am not posting anyone's recipes except the one I made.  However, if you want them, write a comment and I will get the recipe and add it for you. 

We brought a pumpkin shaped cheese ball for an appetizer.  I was kind of grossed out while we were making it because all the flavors smelled sooo strong.  However, everything came together nicely and it was a hit at the party. This is a good simple recipe that you can make ahead of time.  You can really form the cheese into any shape, so it would work for a lot of special occasions.  Here is the link to the recipe with some pictures of the steps.  

    Dana Started us off with some creepy deviled eggs with adorable labels. They were three color and flavor combos; mustard and yellow bell peppers, sraracha and red beats, and avocado and dill.   She also made some black berry cocktails, but they were not pregnancy proof so I didn't have one.  

Philip and Whitney hosted the event.  They treated us to three different kinds of chili with freshly baked cornbread.  They had spicy chili, pumpkin chili, and veggie chili.  Thanks guys!

Kim made maggots and worms! Yes, it sounded pretty gross, but it was good.  This consisted of some wild rice and grilled hot dogs.  Very creative!

Lastly, for dessert, Sarah and Nick brought us hand dipped caramel apples! They were delicious! Thanks everyone for all the yummy food...until November!

     I though this would be as good a time as any to tell you why I have been lazy, not writing, and not inventing cool recipes.  I am pregnant! I am so excited to be expecting our first baby!
     However the pregnancy has been horrible for Robin's Urban Farm House.  For the last three months I have wanted very little to do with food, have had no energy for gardening, and have not felt inspired to write.  Now that I am emerging from the haziness of the first trimester I am coming back to life.  
    I have to admit that I didn't have it all that bad. I only got sick here and there. It is crazy to me how tired I was! You read about all these things, but I just felt like my body was being taken over! Luckily my husband took over grocery shopping and cooking.  Anytime I went near the butcher shop I thought I was going to lose my lunch right there in the grocery. He put up with me having random mood swings and being too tired to function after work.  (I say this is the past tense hoping that these things may be behind me.)
     I have been feeling great the last few weeks and am getting my energy back.  My belly has started to pop out and this week for the first time someone knew I was pregnant ( and not just fat). This picture of from last month's ultrasound.  I will have some new ones next week.  
   The baby is due in April so I won't have to go through a Sacramento summer preggers! Anyways, we are excited, thought it would be fun to tell you all!
Round Robin

   This weekend we celebrated my grandmother's 87th birthday! Additionally my husband was in Vegas on a guy's weekend.  So I had the whole weekend to make a mess of my kitchen and create  an artful cupcake for my grandma. 
   I have an absurd amount of weeds in my garden right now! Some of those pesky weeds are mint, so I decided to make chocolate mint cupcakes.   I wanted something that was more elegant and had flavors an adult would enjoy. 

Frosting
     For the frosting I made Martha's mint butter cream.  I am not putting up the recipe because it was the most time consuming, mess making, hardest frosting I have even made.  You had to make a custard, cook mint leaves, straining them, bla bla bla, it was ridiculous. In the end I did my own thing with it and was frustrated that I had spent so much time following the specifications of the frosting recipe. 
    Here is what I basically did (or would recommend to you).  Make a basic butter cream frosting, or any yummy white frosting.  Cut 9 Andes Mints in half diagonally to have for extra garnish on the cupcakes that need a little more. Do this first in case some don't cut well.  Then chop up about 10 or 12 other Andes mints and mix them in to the frosting. Pipe on the frosting with a wide round tip.  I just put a flat bit of frosting in the middle leaving the shiny edge of the cupcake exposed. 

Chocolate Leaves
Okay, let's be honest, those directions for the leaves sound simple, but this was hard.  It was impressive, so I encourage you to try it, but I made enough leaves for 3 per cupcake and I ended up with 1 successful leave per cupcake with a very few that scored a second leaf.  Don't worry, I have some pointers for you that were learned through the trial and error method.  They will save you some effort! 



Tools and Materials

• Small paintbrush
• Fresh mint leaves
• Bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
• Skewers
• Kitchen tweezers

Chocolate-Mint Leaves How-To1. Using paintbrush, coat underside of 1 leaf with a thick layer of chocolate. Drape leaf, chocolate side up, over a skewer set on a parchment-lined baking sheet, top. Repeat. Refrigerate until set, about 10 minutes.Gently grasp each leaf with tweezers, and peel from chocolate. Frost tops of cupcakes with buttercream. Decorate with chocolate leaves.

My Tips
1. Wash the mint leaves and choose the ones you want.  Make sure to either dry them each or let them dry for a long time before you get started.  The ones that had water still on them make the chocolate all chunky and then would not peel off when the chocolate was cooled.

2. Chop the chocolate very finely.  In my book it talked about using certain brands of very high quality chocolate, tempering it, and having it at 185 degrees.  I don't have a candy thermometer, so I just used normal bakers chocolate and "guessed" how to temper the chocolate, but it worked!

3. Melt the chocolate over, but not touching, boiling water.  Stir as it is melting. When it looked shiny and yummy I started painting!

3. I turned the heat down as low as it would go on the stove and took a spoonful of chocolate at a time.  Otherwise it cools too fast and becomes difficult to use. 
*** Put something under the parchment paper that fits in your fridge.  I didn't do this and had to painstakingly move each leave to a small cookie sheet***  
 Paint each of the front side of the leaves.  It is gets on the back try and get it off with your finger or it makes them very hard to peal off. Lay the leaves over a spoon if you want them to be three dimensional.  

4. Cool them for about 10 minutes in the fridge. 

5. Use tweezers to peel the real leaf off.  Don't touch them with your hands because they will melt in front of your eyes.  I found it was helpful to have a second tweezer to push on the chocolate gently on each side of where I was holding the leaf.  This spread the pressure out as I was peeling the leaf off and avoided cracking the chocolate.  After peeling a few the chocolate will start to get soft and you will need to put it back in the fridge. Repeat until done!

6. Place the leaves on the cupcake. The texture really looked beautiful! Add Andes mints where it looks nice and chill in the fridge.  Bring everything to room temperature before serving.  You will only need one per person because they are rich, but delicious!