3-0

Holy crap. I'm thirty. I didn't complete my 30 by 30 list and I got a little sad about still not being a mom by 30. But I am happy to be this age and I'm looking forward to the next decade of my life.

My actual birthday was last Thursday and was pretty lackluster since it fell during a weird work day and on a Thursday. However, last weekend totally made up for it. Friday night I had a party with my some close friends at our house. The weather was perfect and we had piles of Gus's fried chicken, Muddy's cupcakes and other fixings thanks to kind friends. My friend Lynsey made lots of things including the triangle bunting and she and our friend Kenan made the tissue paper flowers since my attempt was a fantastic fail.

 

On Sunday my family came over for an early dinner and cake. Because I'm homemade cake kind of gal I made my own birthday cake and it was delicious if I do say so myself. I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and it turned out beautifully (although it rose more than I would have liked it to). Do keep an eye on the frosting though, I left mine in the fridge a little too long and had to heat it up in order to make it spreadable again.

The best part of Sunday was my much-loved grandmother, Nannie, who has had some scary health-issues this year, came. I was so glad to see her.

Shiny

Let's talk about this:

This is my new kick-ass, awesome range with a convection oven. Hell yes. After a lot of back and forth between myself, Maytag and the Home Depot, it arrived Saturday afternoon and was installed within minutes. It is glorious and beautiful. The matching range hood was out of stock but should be delivered this weekend and hopefully installed sometime next week. After I ooohed and awwed over it for awhile, I got to baking.

 

First I made Nutella sandwich cookies. The recipe is from the (newish) Barefoot Contessa "How Easy is That?". The cookies are super buttery shortbread with ground up hazelnuts in the dough. The dough is really sticky and I added flour to make it easier to work with. I could have made the dough thinner (I think the recipe says 1/4 of an inch). I liked these so much. I took some to my aunt and my grandmother and they both really liked them.

The jam muffins are a recipe from Serious Eats and I used a jar of Bonne Maman Four Fruits preserves. Very yummy, especially warm.

I think New Oven and I are going to be very happy together.