Magnolias at Dusk

  A growing collection of new photographs available later this week in my Etsy shop as the warm weather continues. Check out the rest of the collection here on my Facebook page.

Some new art.

I finally got to use one of my Groupons to CanvasPop last week. I bought it about six months ago and really waited til the last minute to use it because I had a feeling I would want to use it on a picture from our cruise -- and I was right.

The picture looks so good hanging in our living room nook that Tim just shakes his head in disbelief and says, "If I didn't know you actually took that picture and I was there with you, I'd swear that was fake." 

Thanks, Tim. Music to my ears. :)

(If you are interested in purchasing a photographic print of this picture, it is listed here on my Etsy site.)

DIY: Authentic Homemade Rum Cake

Shortly after we returned from our cruise a few weeks ago, I got another craving for some rum cake (imagine that).  So one evening, Tim and I went searching on the internet for good, homemade rum cake. It took a little patience and persistence but it paid off, because eventually we stumbled upon this wonderful little food blog and this one post about making authentic rum cake! The only problem was that we had to do a little converting for the measurements but after that it was smooth sailing.

The taste-testing during the process was a lot of fun. ;)

About an hour later, this is what you end up with after the glaze is poured.

 

 

 

It took a while for the glaze to absorb but the best part is eating it while it's warm!

In case you are interested in making this delectable little delight, I will include some of the conversions that we did:

Cake:
8.5oz Milk
3.88oz Butter
11oz  Flour
1/4 c  Rum (we used Meyer's Dark Rum)

(I know that doesn't cover all of the conversions but they just happened to be the only ones that I wrote down at the time.) 

We realized about halfway through that we were out of vanilla extract so we substituted with 1tsp of mango-flavored liqueur instead. We also omitted the nuts at the end -- just a personal preference. Either way, as long as you stay pretty close to the recipe you will end up with an AMAZING cake that is just so indulgent you won't believe your tastebuds.  Trust me.