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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Thank you Southern Living!!!

This is by far one of the best desserts we have EVER had! I was a little nervous about making it... afraid it would look nothing like the picture... but it was amazing and looked just like the picture! :) It's definitely worth trying... at least once. Thad has requested it for his birthday cake for the rest of his life! Hahaha!
I'd love to hear if you make it and how you liked it!


Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans, divided
  • 1 (8-oz.) container sour cream
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups finely chopped, peeled Granny Smith apples (about 3/4 lb.)
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Bake 1/2 cup pecans in a single layer in a shallow pan 6 to 8 minutes or until toasted and fragrant, stirring after 4 minutes.

2. Beat sour cream and next 3 ingredients at low speed with an electric mixer 2 minutes or until blended.

3. Stir together flour and next 3 ingredients. Add to sour cream mixture, beating just until blended. Stir in apples and 1/2 cup toasted pecans. Spoon batter into a greased and floured 9- x 5-inch loaf pan. Sprinkle with remaining 1 cup chopped pecans; lightly press pecans into batter.

4. Bake at 350° for 1 hour to 1 hour and 5 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, shielding with aluminum foil after 50 minutes to prevent excessive browning. Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 minutes; remove from pan to wire rack.

5. Bring butter and brown sugar to a boil in a 1-qt. heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly; boil 1 minute. Remove from heat, and spoon over top of bread; let cool completely (about 1 hour).


Monday, August 17, 2009

Update on Pictures. :)










Here are some pictures from the past month. Some are from our visit to Raleigh and some are just from around here.

Thad found this baby rabbit in our yard when he was cutting the grass! He was so cute and tiny!!

Monday, July 27, 2009

'O How He Loves Us'







Sorry it's been so long since my last post... We've been on the go all summer long! Last week we went to Daytona Beach for a youth camp called BIGSTUF. We had such a good time and were truly blessed by the speakers!
We were able to get in some beach time which the girls loved!
Ellie would've played in the sand and water all day if we let her! Ava liked it for about 30 minutes and that's when she started getting sand in her bathing suit... As soon as she felt the sand she would start stripping down!

All in all we had a great time but are happy to be back home. :)

Monday, June 22, 2009

These little cuties


...were hatched sometime over the weekend. I was a little scared that the mama would see me and attack so the picture isn't the greatest. Hopefully I will be able to get some more pictures as they grow. :)

As soon as I moved the branches back their mouths popped wide open! They looked so cute it almost made me want to find some worms to give them.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Looks can be deceiving.


I came across these sometime last week and thought I'd share a picture. For a few days I had been seeing a bird fly in and out of one of the bushes in our front flower bed. I finally decided to look in and I saw this little nest. They look very similar to Robins eggs but they're Mockingbird eggs!
We're keeping an eye out for them to see when they hatch.

Can't believe it's already June!


For weeks we have been talking about taking the girls up the road to go feed the geese. There is a pond about 2 miles away that always has lots of geese hanging around. We finally went yesterday and didn't even feed the geese. As we were walking up there were a couple of ducks that greeted us so they were the ones we fed. Not to mention they're much nicer than geese. :) We had 2 bags of bread and saw that there were about 50 geese and knew that it would pretty dangerous to try and feed all of them with only 2 bags of bread.

Ava was a little weary of the ducks but she would throw some bread and then point to it and tell the ducks to go get it. However, Ellie was trying to feed them from her hand!

After the geese realized what was going on they started coming across the pond to try and get in on the fun... Needless to say we started running back to the car. :) Hopefully we'll make it out there again b/c the girls had a blast!

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Raleigh Times


As always we had a great time visiting with my family! This trip wasn't as long as others but still good. The girls had such a good time and are still asking to see everyone. :) We're hoping to get back up there sometime this summer for a longer visit.
Here are just a few pictures from our time. Enjoy!