Our Baby Maria Turns Four

Baby Maria who is no longer a baby turned four! Her nickname at home is still nenem (baby), and sis or sissy because we just love having her as our daughter and sister. And even though she carries out her roles very well she is also very much her own person, independent of the rest of us. I look at pictures of her from when she was one, two, three, and some of the expressions are the same. That determined, knows what she wants, very present expression has been a part of Maria ever since the day she started crawling around and growing into herself.


Maria loves people. She likes meeting new people and connecting with people she already knows. She will get on Skype and talk to my mom and grandma for as long as I let her. She loves her friends and wants to do nice things for them all the time. She adores her brother Enzo, she has really found a best friend in him. Aside from when he's in school they are basically together all the time. They share everything, including a bed. She is protective of Eliza and likes to feed and dress her. She loves animals so much sometimes I feel guilty we don't have a pet just because I know how connected she feels to animals. She notices everything especially people's feelings. She has ideas, lots of her own ideas. She'll listen to your ideas but rarely will want to go with your ideas.

She is learning how to read and can already sound out some words, only she'll never tell you she's the one learning since she decided that her stuffed animals were the ones who were going to learn. So when I sit down and do reading lessons with her I have to direct her stuffed unicorn or stuffed frog the whole time and pretend like she's not even there. She'll respond in a silly voice as if she's speaking for the animals. She's just like that, super creative and a performer. She makes up jokes, lots of jokes, and because they're so wild we always end up cracking up.

After a week of the stomach flu and then a birthday adventure to a pony farm that flopped because of the rain, we finally got to celebrate her birthday this past Saturday. It was a small party and it was really fun. We ate Brazilian hot dogs (hot dogs with mashed potato, vinaigrette, corn, shoe string potatoes, and other fun toppings) and had ice cream and brownies for dessert.

Enzo, who has developed a whole repertoire of acrobatics on the hammock did tricks during the whole party while the little girls danced around in costumes. It was the perfect way to celebrate Maria and I'm glad we got to do it.

Birthday Breakfast | Rainbow Heart Banana Pancakes

Yesterday was Maria's birthday. We celebrated her birthday on Saturday. She got a party with friends and a special breakfast with her bestie, Enzo. I think she had a really special day, at least she mentioned it on Sunday when she was peeing in the church bathroom. She sat there in the big toilet with a smile on her face and proclaimed "my party was beautiful and ugly." I asked her to elaborate. Apparently the the bee trap that was attached to one of the trees was ugly but the balloons made everything else beautiful.

This morning I watched the short videos I took of her opening her presents while Christian took her to her first day of preschool (my baby in preschool. Whaaaat?!). The videos are cute, it shows her and Enzo and their special relationship. For example, she wanted Enzo to open all of her presents for her. I tried to get her to open them but she wanted Enzo to do it and of course Enzo was thrilled to do it. I have to remind myself constantly to give them space. They obviously have a good thing going and it's even better when I don't interfere.

Enzo opened her presents and they enjoyed them together. Her aunt Sienna made her a cool Hello Kitty crayon case which she was thrilled about and sent her a Hello Kitty coloring book which she had Enzo color in for her because she doesn't like coloring outside of the lines. On Wednesday night I took Enzo to our local book store. He had been wanting to buy her 3 new books because she was turning 3. He picked her current favorite, The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog, and a Dr. Seuss pop- up-book, and a board book about mice. Her auntie Karen gave her an Angelina Ballerina stuffed mouse a couple months ago and she loves it so much, Enzo knew she would like a book with cute mice. He was right. When I was in NYC last month I went to Muji and picked up a sticker book and London in a Box for her. Her dad made her a play kitchen which she has been enjoying for over a week now. For her party I told guests that gifts were optional but that if they decided to bring something a book would be best. We don't have much space in our 2 bedroom apartment for new toys, but we always make room for books.

I think her presents were perfect and she definitely seemed to think so too.

For her special birthday breakfast I wanted to make heart-shaped something. She is really into hearts and also the colors pink and purple. Is this a surprise for you? It kind of is to me since we never encouraged pink and purple or hearts or princesses or any of those stereotypical girlie things. But we never encouraged Enzo to like trains and he did and he's fine. We figured she'll be fine is she likes hearts. Heck, I {heart} hearts! I thought rainbow hearts would be ideal and Enzo sure loved them, but she was only willing to eat the pink-redish heart and the purple one. She doesn't eat much anyway so I wasn't offended. As for the bacon I think it could have been dyed yellow and she still would of ate it. My baby does not discriminate against bacon.

I love Maria so much. I love that she is mine. She is such a great snuggler, always kissing and hugging us, and I love that she makes us feel so lucky to have her as ours. I love that she is smart and loves to learn. That she is fierce and has opinions. I love that every 5 minutes she changes her mind about what animal she is but always checks in to make sure I am o.k with her animal choices because she only wanst to be that animal if I am willing to be the mama version of that animal. Just today we were horses, bears, koalas, and unicorns. Maria loves people. She loves having friends, real and imaginary. She really loves ice-cream. She loves books and I love reading to her. She adores her papai and her big brother and spends a long time on the phone, every weekend, talking to my mom and her cousin Bruno in Brazil.

The day she was born was one of the happiest days of my life. I just felt so happy, so complete. I remember feeling like I was swimming in an ocean of bliss. It felt so right to have her in our family. I am so glad she's in our family. I'm so glad I get to be her mama and she my Baby Maria

Rainbow Heart Banana Pancakes
printable version

(makes 12 small 3-inch hearts + 12 medium 5-inch pancakes)

2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups buttermilk
3 mashed ripe bananas
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
food coloring

1. In a medium bowl beat the eggs until fluffy. You can use an electric mixer or a wooden spoons. Mix in the remaining ingredients, except the food coloring, until smooth.
2. Heat skillet over medium-low heat and grease with oil or butter if necessary.
3. Measure 3/4 cup of batter into a cup and mix with red food coloring. Place your metal heart shaped cookie cutter on the skillet and pour a couple tablespoons of red batter inside the heart. Cook pancake until puffed and dry around the edges. Carefully remove the metal cookie cutter and turn and cook other side until golden brown on top. 
4. Repeat with the different colors. Depending on what kind of food coloring you're using and also what brand you're using you need to play around with it to get the color you want. Usually in the back of the food coloring box it will tell you how many drops of dye you need to make a certain color. I omitted violet because it looked so much like purple.  

Sugar Cookie Birthday Pops | Easy Party Favors

We were so excited to celebrate Maria's birthday today! Christian and I enjoy throwing parties. We like cooking for a crowd and we definitely enjoy our friends. Parties can be a lot of work, but honestly they don't have to be.

When planning a party there are things I don't prioritize, like piñatas (even though they are awesome) and paid entertainment (also awesome, most of the time). However, I am a huge fan of serving good food and making meaningful party favors. I try to get the kids involved in doing both. As far as food goes they can help plan a menu and even help us cook. As for party favors I try to make something with them that is meaningful to them.

When a guest leaves I like for them to leave with a little something. I have my kids stop what they're doing and hand the party favor to the guest as the guest is leaving and thank them for coming and for their gift. I remind my kids that  the only reason why it's so special to have a birthday party is because our friends took the time to come and help us celebrate. Having the kids thank them for coming and giving them a little treat is a small gesture but a good reminder that even though they are at the center of attention they still need to show gratitude.

For Maria's party she and I made sugar cookie birthday pops. Maria loves sugar cookies and she certainly loves lollipops, so I knew that sugar cookie birthday pops would be a meaningful treat she could give her special guests.

I too love sugar cookies and I am all about glorifying them. I've made them from scratch and turned them into lollipops for a graduation party and I've also made them into stained glass and put them in a snow globe for a Christmas party. As part of the DailyBuzz Food Tastemaker program with Nestlé® Toll House® I was given the opportunity to sample the new Nestlé® Toll House® Birthday Sugar Cookies. There are 24 cookies in a pack with 12 different designs. Maria was so excited about the designs. She carefully chose which cookie went on which lollipop stick and then which ribbon to tie each baggie with.

Sugar Cookies Birthday Pops

1 pack  Nestlé® Toll House® Birthday Sugar Cookies (makes 24)
4-Inch lollipop sticks 
3-Inch-by-4-3/4-Inch Clear Treat Bags
Ribbon for tying

Pre-heat oven to 350*F. Remove the sugar cookies one at a time. Carefully insert a lollipop stick in the middle and place on a cookie sheet. Repeat with each cookie. Separate them out so that there is enough room for the cookies to bake and expand. We baked 10 cookies at a time instead of 12 just to make sure the cookies didn't stick together. Bake for 9-10 minutes until golden brown around the edges. Cool on a wire rack. When the cookie pops are completely cooled you can place them in a treat bag and tie a ribbon around it to make individual cookie pops. Serve them at your next birthday party!

This post is brought to you by Nestle Toll House Birthday Sugar Cookies. Bake some birthday love.

Birthday Heart Cake | A guest post with the Mr.

This is the heart cake I made for Damaris' early Birthday. This is also a long post but making the cake took the better part of my Sunday so I guess it makes sense. On Sunday we celebrated Damaris' birthday early to include her mom, sister, and nephew who were visiting. A week earlier Damaris sent me the link to the Heart Cake from I am Baker  with instructions on how to make it and said that this cake was all that she wanted for her birthday, no presents, nothing else. It sounded like a good deal. Our relationship works like this, if Damaris tells me exactly what she wants I will almost always get it for her. Sometimes I might even surprise her by acting like I forgot what she told me she wanted. If she makes me guess what she wants then I will mostly get it wrong.

The first step here in Itacare was finding a round cake pan. The two round pans we have are small pizza size and not cake size. This was the hardest step and I had to check every supermarket in the city to find one kind of large 24cm (9.4inches).  This seemed just a little bit bigger that an 8 inch pan but that is misleading. (The math goes like this. pi(3.14) times the radius of the circle squared = area of a circle, thus 8 in= 50.25 sq inches and 9.4 in= 70.24). This means I would have had to make one and half recipes but I ended up making two because I just did the math now.

I made one recipe and baked two layers and then decided to make another recipe and bake another two layers. I have all the recipes written out for you at the bottom of the post. If you have more than one cake pan this process is made a lot easier because you can bake more than one at a time. But surprisingly the cheapest and only aluminum pan in the city worked like a miracle and with a little butter and flour the cakes just popped right out without even waiting for them to cool.

Before you decide to make it realize that this is a lot of cake. Three full sized cake recipes in order to make one mega-cake. After I baked all of the cakes I took a nice long walk to let them all cool down. This makes them easier to work with. You can also freeze them if you have a freezer that works.

So you stick together two cakes to make the bottom and the other two to make the top. You might want to level the cakes to do this although I didn't because I put the curved part of the cake onto our curved plate and the other curve was cut off when I hollowed out the middle. Another curved part was the top of the cake and the fourth layer wasn't that curved to begin with. Make two halves of the cake by frosting and making two two layer cakes.

On the bottom cake you carve the bottom part of the heart which is basically a cone carved out. I measured around the edge (4 cm from the edge) and the center of the cake with a ruler to make sure that the cone is centered which is essential for the design to look good when you put the cake together.

I also measured the top part (4 cm from the edge) to make sure that the two sides would meet up. To carve out the top part of the heart you start in the center to make a cone and then carve out the sides to make the top part of the heart until it looks like the picture below. Use a spoon to scoop out some of the insides.

 Next you get a red velvet cake that you made and mix it up with a cup of cream and sweetened condensed milk. Then you mix it with a fork and pack it in the top of and bottom of the cakes in the spaces that you carved out. Pack it down good so there is no empty spaces, especially because this is going to be the main structural part of the cake.

The next step is to put the top and bottom of the cake together. Do this carefully. And in the end you should have something that looks like this with the red velvet cake in the middle. 

Next you should frost the whole thing. There are probably some good tutorials somewhere on the web to do this nicely. This is perhaps the best looking cake I've ever frosted so most of you probably know how to do this better than me. 

The long cake frosting spatula helps a lot. 

Then lo and behold, you cut it open and get this amazing heart shape in the middle of your cake. 

Here are the recipes for you.

White Cake
(printable version)
(although it turned out yellowish because I used egg yolks. The original post used a box white cake but then posted a recipe with eggs in it which means you will end up with an off-white cake. If you want it white you might want to stick with a box recipe or use another recipe without egg yolks. But this is the recipe I used)

Makes 4 eight inch round cakes. Double the recipe for 4 slightly larger 9.24 inch round cakes.

1 cup butter (softened)2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

The original recipe had a bunch of different steps and order you do things in but I don't really believe in all of that. So here's what I did which is easier.

1. Cream the butter, sugar, eggs, and milk together. Add the dry ingredients together and mix so that there are no obvious lumps.
2. Prepare pans with by greasing the inside of the pan with a thin coat of butter or margarine (not oil) and then lightly flour (1 tsp of flour) them.  This is essential to get the cakes to come out easily and is probably one of the most important steps. If you haven't made layer cakes before find a video that shows you how to do this right.
3. Fill up four pans, or one pan four times and bake each for 20-25 minutes until you have four delicious round cakes. They are ready when you insert a toothpick or knife and it comes out clean (without batter on it).

Red Velvet Cake
(printable version)
Makes one large cake (9" by 13" rectangle pan more or less but the pan size doesn't matter). I don't really like red velvet cake but I was just following instructions. If you don't care about the color then make a dense chocolate cake which will probably taste better. But here is the recipe I used

3/4 cup butter3 large eggs
2 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
6 tablespoons red food coloring
3 tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cup buttermilk

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. Cream the butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and red food coloring together.(The original recipe called for 6 tablespoons red food coloring which I didn't have. I used a whole bottle of red and then threw in the bottle of pink for extra measure but it still basically looked like a chocolate cake. It probably didn't help that I used brown sugar instead of white sugar because we ran out and some extra cocoa for good measure. That's probably why it ended up brown. If you have more ingredients and are better at following directions you will probably get a nice red cake for the heart.)
2. Add the cocoa, salt, flour, and buttermilk together.
3. Mix the cider vinger and baking soda together in a separate cup and then add the mixture to the cake batter. Mix it all up until the big lumps are gone and put it in a greased and floured pan.
4. Bake for 30-40 minutes but keep an eye at it because every oven is different.Its ready when a knife or tooth pick comes out clean.

Buttercream Frosting
(printable version)
Makes enough to frost a huge cake and then some left over.

1 cup butter or margarine, softened
6-8 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla

1. Mix the butter with four cups of the sugar until creamy. Add the milk and mix well. Sift the sugar if it is lumpy because you live somewhere with lots of humidity.
2. The original recipe called for colorless vanilla to keep the frosting white. I left it out because I can only get the colored stuff here. Either way.
3. Gradually add the rest of the sugar until it is thick enough that is won't run and still thin enough to spread well.

Birthday Platters

Baby Maria's birthday was great. I made a bolo gelado which translates to cold cake. I've never seen cold cake in the US before so maybe you're not familiar with it. When I was little bolo gelado was the trend for birthday parties. I have to say I felt kind of old making it for my daughter but I enjoyed eating it just as much as when I was 5 years old. Basically, it's a great cake to serve at parties because it minimizes messes. It's a very moist cake that you drench in milk and coconut milk and then you cut it into squares and wrap it in tin foil. When it's time to eat you just unwrap the foil and use the foil to hold your piece of cake, basically mess free.

The whole time I was making the cake I was wishing I had a pretty platter to serve the wrapped slices on. Particularly I wish I had these pretty platters from the cute esty shop Ampersand. How cute is that bunting platter?

Ampersand is a two women shop based out of Kansas. Carrie and Morgan are graphic designers and good friends, what a great combo. I not only love their platters I also love their prints. Their shop is filled with nostalgia and color and the best part is that they have a killer blog.

What would you serve on top of that bike platter? I'm thinking mini sandwiches, what about you?

Birthday Boy

I have always wanted to be a mother. I'm not sure why. No one really glorified the task for me, so really I have no one to blame for immersing myself into motherhood at the ripe age of 23 (I guess I can also blame a certain Christian Palmer for having something to do with it).

When I was 13 I had my first ultrasound because of an ovarian cist. It wasn't a big deal but I was terrified that the ultrasound would revel some terrible truth -- a horrible medical condition that made me infertile. My 13 year old fears were unfounded because 10 years later I became a mother. And it only took me 45 hours of labor and 4 hours of pushing to make it happen. But it happened. I gave birth to a 9 lbs baby boy. Before I had Enzo I had set schedules and color coded calendars, I was seriously the perfect mother. My imaginary kids were always clean and nicely groomed, and never misbehaved.

Did I tell you that last week when I went to Target to buy the rest of Enzo's party decorations Baby Maria managed to pee on the floor and then proceeded to try and splash in the pee puddle? Enzo was encouraging his little sister like crazy -- to act crazy. And I, in full parent mode, almost peed my pants laughing at her.

Yeah, that perfect mother of my dreams died the minute this little dude was born.

This weekend we celebrated Enzo in full pirate party extravaganza. Remember how I told you I wasn't going to blog last week because I would be busy preparing for Enzo's party? Well... the preparation really took full steam the day before the party. Sometimes I pretend that I have more time than I actually do and before I know it I'm disoriented trying to figure out where the time went because I swear I was just giving birth to Enzo yesterday and today he's giving opinions on how to decorate his birthday cake.