Big Island Candies excess

My sisters have come and gone, and we had a fabulous time celebrating my 50th birthday for a week. Needless to say, all that site-seeing and chatting seriously interrupted any potential blogging time. Birthday cake recipe and tourist-activity photos will follow as time allows this week (have some serious catching up to do on the business and novel fronts). In the meantime, here's a quickie update on one successful stop appropriate to this blog:

We made not one but two visits to the Big Island Candies showroom (convenient location spells dietary disaster for those of us who live in Hilo, but they do a booming internet and mail order business, too, so go ahead and check out their site!).

I'd successfully resisted popping in to see what the fuss is about until hungry visitors with sweet teeth arrived. We sampled everything and consumed a horryfying quantity of cookies and other sweet treats. These are my favorites:

Mika Mints, oooh, so luscious and smooth and minty and chocolatey!

White chocolate dipped lemon shortbread cookies, for when you want something with crunch. OMG. You're truly better off never tasting these. Once sampled, you will want more. Daily.

Also good, the chocolate covered coffee beans (widely available, but these are better than most) and coffee-flavored shortbread cookies, both dark and white chocolate dipped.

I managed to avoid sampling their brownies, but am sure to do so eventually.

The good news is we did enough walking around at botanical gardens, waterfalls, the volcano, and beaches (to be blogged in days to come) to burn off a few cookie calories. The total damage on the scale, while not pretty, was much less severe than I'd feared. I only need to lose 5.5 pounds in 9.5 weeks to meet my year-end goal. Should be doable, if I stay focused on it, but business catch up and major novel goal (blogged here) have been major dietary derailers in the past. Not as bad as house guests, but progress impeding nonetheless. Wish me luck.

Yogurt-Apple Cake

It's not that I haven't been blogging lately, it's just been going on over here (sewing) and here (novelling). Not a whole lot of cooking or baking going on, just enough throw-it-together and big-pot (chili, mung bean stew) meals to keep hubbie fed. I'm easy, I can live on toast and the occasional bowl of fruit and yogurt for... days, at least.

I did make another quickie cake this weekend. Normally such things are enjoyed once or twice, then the rest goes in the freezer until the next Cake Night(s). But last week's impromptu delight stayed in the fridge. Which means I ate it for breakfast all week until it was gone. Ooops. Shouldn't do that too often! It never got frosted, though, so the ongoing indulgence could have been worse.

Saturday I whipped up a yogurt apple cake from odds and ends of this and that I collected from the fridge. I even made a frosting: a somewhat soft one, with honey and cream cheese. It reminds me of the very runny, not entirely satisfying "healthy" honey-cream cheese frostings my mom used to make when I was a kid, but lump-free and much tastier.

I measured and wrote down what I did this time, so as soon as I get a chance to write up a recipe I'll add it to this post. There's a picture, too, but it's still in my camera. Thought I'd use the few minutes I have right now to at least get a new post up here!

... details to come, just as soon as I pull ahead of the novel and quilt deadlines far enough to type up my notes.

Also in the pending-posts pile, some boasting about the excellent whole grain bread and pizza doughs I've been baking lately, and thoughts about what kind of cake we'll be having for the big birthday coming up...