Recipe Post - Bacon Wrapped Dates

This is one of the hors d'oeuvres I made for Fakesgiving. I found the recipe in November's Good Housekeeping and mostly followed it. I thought these were so tasty I made some more this morning with the leftover dates (I made a special morning grocery run to get more bacon) and wanted to share the recipe with you guys. The recipe is simple and I'm not including amounts because really it's one to one to one for everything.

Ingredients:

Pitted Medjool Dates
Pecan halves (cut in half, so really, pecan quarters)
Thick cut bacon (uncooked) slices cut in half so you have short slices
Fresh Rosemary
Toothpicks

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stuff each date with a quarter of a pecan. If you're using pitted dates it's easy to just pack it into the hole.
2. Wrap each stuffed date with one of the half slices of bacon and secure with a toothpick.
3. Bake on a cookie sheet lined with foil for easy cleanup (it will get very greasy!) for 25 minutes or until crisp. Turn once during baking.
4. Take the bacon wrapped dates out and let them cool on paper towels. Remove the toothpicks and shove little sprigs of rosemary into one hole where the toothpick was. Serve immediately.

These little bundles of tastiness are soo yummy and they make your kitchen smell wonderful too.

GF Blackberry Raspberry Chocolate Cake

Recently I bought a box with 3 pastry decorators and like 20 different tips at a thrift store for $1.50. I was very excited to try out my purchase so today I made a wheat/gluten free chocolate cake for my dad who has celiac disease.

I used a recipe I found at recipezaar and tweaked it a bit. I added 1/4 dutch process cocoa, a little extra xanthan gum, apple cider vinegar was the type of vinegar I used and I used buttermilk in place of water.

* 1 1/2 cups all purpose gf flour
* 1/2 cup regular cocoa
* 1/4 cup dutch process cocoa
* 1 cup sugar
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 2 tsp baking soda
* 1 tsp xanthan gum
* 5 tsp oil
* 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
* 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
* 1 egg
* 1 cup buttermilk

Mix dry ingredients. Add liquid ingredients. Mix well. Bake at 350. I used two 8" round pans and spread some blackberry/raspberry jam between the layers before frosting.

I made up some quick frosting using butter, cocoa, powdered sugar and milk and went to town decorating this cake:





It was actually pretty tasty though it did have that gf flour twang to it that I personally think is reminiscent of bananas. No one else agrees with me on this, but there's just something off about it. I think it's the brown rice flour in the all purpose GF flour mix that does it.

Oh, plus I'm a giant dork and I called the MAC counter in Olympia and put the "On the Prowl" nail polish and Too Dolly eyeshadow on hold and I'm picking it up tomorrow. I'll probably buy a bunch of other stuff too if not just to re-sell it on eBay.