Botanical Gardens (part 3)

I just can't get enough of how beautiful it is this time of year. Hope you don't mind one last set of Red Butte pictures!

Scary spider! At least it's not a rattler.

I love all of the next three - which do you like best?

Daring Bakers: Macarons

After all this time, the DBers is finally doing macarons! And after all those times I've made them before, I still managed to mess up three batches before getting these right. Sorry, you don't get to see the insides (they never really cooked up right, I blame the oven temperature, I think it was off. It certainly couldn't be something I did...)

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.
More fun texturizing in PS


Cafe Mocha

Pumpkin Cream

Saffron with Pomegranate Jelly

Yes, I'm pretending I'm as fancy as Pierre Herme.

Botanical Gardens (part 2)

These are from Red Butte Botanical Gardens. It's incredibly beautiful up there this time of year, on the benches of the Rockies. I didn't used to think Salt Lake was beautiful, just a bunch of grass and trees that didn't belong. But Red Butte exposes and accentuates the natural beauty of the local horticulture.

Oh yeah, and I did some baking sometime in the past couple weeks!

Chocolate spice souffles with Lena. Congrats on being done with chemo!

Original above, some crazy PS-ing below!

Herb garden.

Botanical Gardens (part 1)

A wide aperture lens and some hints from PW have distracted me from my baking...

The original above, photoshopped below, which do you prefer?

The magic of texturizing (original above, PS-ed below)
I like the details in the PS-ed (above), but the soft texture
and muted colors are so comfortable in the original (below).
Happy Fall!

Life Crisis

Yes, I'm being indecisive about my blog background. Me and my big life crisis. I promise a not so stupid post soon...