Pop-Mania Part 1: Piña Colada Pudding Pops

It's been warming up here in Oregon. I'm a classic Pacific Northwest girl: I start to melt once it gets above 85. So in preparation of our heat wave (stop laughing...I realize that's about 20 degrees shy of what constitutes a heat wave where some of you are from) I've been experimenting in the kitchen to develop some tasty frozen concoctions to help us make it through some hot days without air conditioning.

Tasty Pop Flavor #1: Piña Colada Pudding pops

Piña Colada Pop Recipe:

• 1 box vanilla pudding mix
• 2 1/4 cups of milk
• 1 can of pineapple chunks
• 1/2 cup Cream of Coconut

Recipe Review: Mango Sticky Rice

A few weeks ago, a crafter I follow on twitter, Reese Dixon (whose name is actually Tresa), tweeted about this Mango Sticky Rice recipe that she absolutely adores.  Normally I am not a coconut mango sticky rice kind of gal (for starters, I'm not a huge coconut fan) but I had a thai food night coming up with hubster so decided to try it.  At the very least, I know that hubster likes coconut.

It was A. Mazing.

I didn't make the sauce to pour on top because I felt the rice was already a bit on the saucy side after pouring the coconut milk mixture over the top.

This rice, though, is the stuff. The recipe is super easy to make and it can kind of do it its thing in the background while you work on the rest of dinner.

Check out the recipe on the Reese Dixon blog  here.

Cupycakes!

I spent this evening baking and doing laundry. Not a big fan of coconut myself, I decided that if I were to make cupcakes with coconut in them I would be less likely to eat them and more likely to do a better job pretending I'm still on Weight Watchers. That and my husband loves coconut so all the better for him.

I got the recipe from cupcake maven, Babette on BakeSpace. While I'm sure Babette's frosting is amazing, I had some in the cupboard (I know, I know....bad cupcaker!) and it was getting late. Half are frosted with Duncan Hines cream cheese frosting and the other half are frosted with Duncan Hines classic vanilla frosting which I stirred almond extract into. All were topped with toasted coconut.

So Joe got to have fun eating them and I got to have fun decorating them and having a cupcake porn photoshoot. Ooh la la!