Banana Pie Pops

First off, my "pops" lost their sticks. Technicality.

I've been obsessing over this blog post from Luxarie: http://luxirare.com/float/

OBSESSING I tell you. How neat are those?

Mike closed one night over the weekend so I found myself home on a rainy night without much to do so I tried to recreate the banana pie pops.

I think I was mildly successful. Overripe banana, mashed, with cinnamon and brown sugar. I cheated with a ready made pie shell that I rolled flat. My sticks didn't stick so we basically have little mini-pies. (I also added some turbinado sugar to the tops so they look pretty.)

I'll put up a real recipe once I get the process down. I'm also taking pie-filling suggestions. (Beware if you come to our house or invite us for dinner... you'll probably get pie pops!)

Fancy Grill Dinner

Mike and I recently got a grill. Yay! Hopefully this means I'll come home to some home-cooked meals!

Mike insisted we grill steaks for our first grill dinner. Here's our first grill dinner, fancy style!

grilled steak with oven roasted potato wedges and salad

someone insisted he needed ketchup for his potatoes...
does this take our "fancy" dinner down a notch or just enhance our fanciness?

Blackberry Champagne Cupcakes

For a second treat to take to Nibbe's cupcake party, enter the blackberry champagne cupcake from Darjeerling Dreams.

I tweaked the recipe just a bit... instead of cutting part of the cupcake out and filling the middle with blackberry jam, I just swirled it into the cake batter to get dark colored streaks through the cupcakes (plus I thought this would be much simpler). I also left the icing ingredients off my shopping list so I substituted with fluffy vanilla icing from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes. (And topped with sugar I dyed purple!)

I also won the door prize at Rachel's! Banana cupcake mix. Yum!