Springtime!

In my last post I told you  about how I made goodies for the guys at the pawn shop as a thank you, and how they said they would love to sample any of my baking experiments whenever I wanted to try a new recipe. My Mom gave me a recipe out of the newspaper around Valentine's day and last weekend I finally had time to make it. It was a Chocolate Fudge No Bake Cake. Man, was it yummy!  I stopped at the pawn shop on Saturday morning and just ran the stuff in and said "I made something new for you to try. I hope you like it" and ran back to my car. As I was pulling out of the parking lot I saw 2 men running after me - I thought maybe I had dropped something in the store. They came to tell me how wonderful the cake was and to come back any time with more!  I'm so glad they like it. They are such nice people. Here are a few pictures.

You melt together dark chocolate bars, brown sugar, butter and coffee, then you add crushed nuts and graham crackers and pour that into a cake pan. Then you top it with melted chocolate and chopped nuts. Next time I may add melted Kraft caramels.
It was super easy to make and well worth the time.  I originally cut it into 12 pieces but after tasting it, I cut it into 24 - it was that rich.  MMMMM...

Flowers:  As you all know, I just love flowers. My front yard is starting to look like "flower throw-up" to quote my boss. We had iris blooming about 2 weeks early, probably because it never really got cold here this winter. We usually have some below 30 degrees (F) nights during January and February in AZ which sort of gets the bulb flowers all set for the year.  This year I think I only had to cover plants one or two nights all winter so things are blooming earlier.  Here are a few pictures of what is blooming now and a few that bloomed in February.

We decided that these daffodils look like the servants from Downton Abbey all lined up to tell me goodbye as I leave the estate to go to work. Ha!

 I have 4 different colors of freesia. I can't decide which I like better.

 These purple iris are huge and very showy.  I think they look elegant. I'll post pictures of other varieties when they start showing off their beauty. So far I only this color blooming but I have some other great colors and shapes. I'm hoping the little yellow ones my sister sent from Montana will bloom this year. They are coming up but are far behind the others. I'm sure the climate change makes them freak out.

The hyacinth are a beautiful color pink.

 I like to add in some bright orange and yellow flowers to add a pop to the "throw up". These are really pretty and reseed them self each year. They even last through our blistering AZ summers.

I have these in both orange and yellow. They open up during the day and close up in the evening. 

Another freesia.

Stay tuned for more flour and flowers.