Martha's Peppermint Chocolate Cake

Several weeks ago, I mentioned incorporating Martha's peppermint chocolate cake into my Christmas menu.  Here's how her cake looks: 

I was able to make it for Christmas.  The Little Guy helped.  We made it the day before serving.

I poured the peppermint chocolate frosting on the day of.

I used crushed peppermint candies for garnish. 

Overall, I thought the cake was a bit dry.  Everyone seemed to like it though, and it was a great pairing for peppermint ice cream. 

The icing is out of this world though, and would be delicious poured over ice cream or used for hot chocolate or coffee.  I'm not giving up on this recipe, though, and I may give it another try around Valentine's Day. 

If you give this a try, please let me know how it goes!

Martha Monday--Valentine's Day Signup

Need inspiration for Valentine's Day?  Like Thanksgiving and Christmas, Martha has a set of emails filled with ideas and recipes to make this Valentine's Day a special one.  You can sign up for the enewsletter here. 

For this year, I'm lowering my standards considerably.  Since I'll be within 2 weeks of my due date at Valentine's Day, I'll consider the celebration a success if I manage to say something sweet to The Big Guy before I start snoring on the couch...maybe I'll just make a nice card that says it for me, just in case. :)

Martha Monday--Cleaning supplies

Martha has come out with a whole line of eco-friendly cleaning supplies called Martha Stewart Clean.   She featured the products on her blog just before Christmas, and now they are available for order through her website. 

The Martha Stewart Clean line contains fabric detergent, fabric softener, dishwasher detergent, toilet cleaner, bathroom cleaner, all-purpose cleaner and more.  It's my understanding that Home Depot will carry this line, but I have yet to see it on their website or in the store. 

So until then, I'm relying on the Little Guy to keep the house clean.

We got him a child-size Dyson for Christmas.  I think it's best to teach kids housekeeping skills nice and early, don't you?  That has got to be a good thing!

On my tree

I am fortunate to have many special ornaments on my tree. The ones featured are all from My Big Martha, Mom2 and Grandma O. Enjoy!

Happy holidays, everyone!

Baking blitz

And the girl in the back said "Everyone attack!" and it turned into a baking blitz...baking blitz...

Okay, that's not exactly how the song goes, but that's what I was singing this past weekend.  The Big Guy and I made hundreds of cookies--it really was a baking blitz!

We made cookies for the Big Guy's coworkers:

We made cookies for the neighbors:

We made a cookie platter for the lovely ladies at the Little Guy's daycare:

And I made cranberry-white chocolate-almond cookies for my work's cookie exchange: 

It was electric, so frightfully hectic...at TMI we had a baking blitz!  Baking blitz!