A brief kitchen dump: things I've made while using food as a love language

Chocolate confetti cake bites.
Prepare a boxed cake as directed. When cool, mix it up with half a can of frosting. Roll into balls, freeze, then dip in melted chocolate and top with sprinkles.

Caramel macadamia nut clusters

Peanut butter chocolate cake with ganache on top (from my mom's birthday last year)

S'mores cupcakes (Graham cracker cake with marshmallow icing and chocolate chips)

Just a fun decoration on my own birthday cake from a couple years ago. Woke up and choose chaos.

Chicken and dumpling soup with gnocchi as the dumplings. Tip: use heavy cream for a rich, dense flavor.

Fresh caramel sauce for my sister's turtle cake (not shown, this was before I started collecting pictures of my kitchen experiments).

Veggie pizza, a holiday tradition in my family. Crescent roll dough, ranch cream cheese spread, whatever veggies you want chopped up (I like carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower), then a metric ton of shredded cheddar.

White chocolate raspberry cake with two kinds of buttercream for mother's day. She liked it so much I made it again this year.

French silk pie from scratch for my sister's birthday. Took a while but omg so worth it. After this, I abandoned store bought whipped cream in favor of making my own every time.

The above French silk pie now sliced. Yes it's an oreo cookie crust.

They gave me free reign at Christmas after the French silk pie. This one was a chocolate chip cookie crust with peanut butter vanilla cream filling and mini chocolate chips, topped in homemade whipped cream and swirls of hot fudge.

My brother took the picture of the pie while I served. I should've specified that I wanted a side view of the layers, lol.

Traditional English crumpets. Even better than English muffins, and copious amounts are butter on top is best. Honey and jam are great too.

Bread pudding for Easter dessert, because my dad doesn't really like desserts but he does love bread pudding.

This was supposed to be a strawberry cake with chocolate ganache but it turned out like a giant donut so we ran with it.

Mom requested the white chocolate raspberry cake again :)

A student gifted me a baking book after graduation this year, and it included these: cappuccino flats. Big hit at work, half a batch of four dozen was gone in a day.

My latest experiment was a fresh creamy cheese sauce, inspired by my dad's tendency to hide one single potato in people's bags when they visit. I set out to prove I could do something fancy with one potato and this was the result. I made the sauce for him this week and he loved it so much he bragged to my sister about me cooking gourmet food for him. Made me feel great!

Another Easter treat: Hungarian egg cheese. Not so much a cheese as a sliceable custard. Can't share the recipe with this one because family secret, but it involves a crapton of eggs and milk.

Cat tax: Wilson having fun in the big metal box, not realizing that it's a dog bed and his arch nemesis will be staying with us all weekend.

Dog tax: the arch nemesis in question, Hayley. She's a good dog, but Wilson is scared of her size. This is just how she sits in my house. Nobody knows why.