Avocado Deviled Eggs

I've been testing out my cake decorating skills over the past 2 weekends, which is why I haven't been updating much. I am nowhere near a professional cake decorator, but when someone challenges me in an area that I'm interested in... I'm ready to give it a shot. 

One cake was a Piñata Castle Cake that was from My Cupcake Addiction. Mine was all homemade cream cheese frosting, instead of a chocolate casing around the base and I didn't use a giant cupcake mold. I used what I had at home and used two 9-inch pans and one Pyrex bowl. This cake ended up coming out a lot bigger than I expected. 
The second cake was a Piñata Snowflake Cake that went with the theme of Disney's Frozen. It was two 9-inch rounds with white chocolate snowflakes. The cake inside was a swirl/marble cake of light blue and a kind of aqua blue

What do you think of my cakes?

As long as I can remember, I hated avocados! It wasn't until a year or so ago when I became obsessed with them. I don't know what happened, but I went from one day hating them to the next day in love. If you are obsessed with avocados then you have to make these avocado deviled eggs right now! They are super easy to make and great for sharing with your family and friends.

The one thing that I love about these avocado deviled eggs is that there is no mayo in them. The avocado makes it just as creamy, but with a healthy fat in them. The garlic and cilantro gives it the extra flavor and if you are looking for a little kick, I would suggest throwing in some finely diced serranos or jalapenos. Yum!

Hazelnut Brownies

I have had a big bag of hazelnuts staring at me for quite some time. I bought them on a whim thinking that I would use them immediately.... and of course I didn't. So instead of letting them continue to sit in my pantry and bother me every time I opened it, I decided to finally do something with them. The first thing that came to my mind were brownies. And definitely not the boxed kind. 

Instead of Baker's One Bowl Brownies, I decided to use Ina's Outrageous Brownie recipe. Ina's Brownies seemed like it would be more work than the One Bowl Brownies, 

but it wasn't so bad. After taking a bite into these rich chocolate brownies, I was glad I decided to go the extra few steps (and bowls) with Ina's recipe. These brownies are rich, and I mean very rich. But it isn't a bad thing. They're super moist and the extra chocolate chips that are in them with the combination of the hazelnuts, give these brownies a great texture and crunch. The main thing with these brownies is that you do not want to over bake them. Keep an eye on them when they're in the oven. 

Ina's reviews said that the brownies came out big, very big! So I decided to half the recipe. I also decided to half the recipe because I didn't have enough chocolate or butter than the original recipe calls for. Although I halved the recipe, I still got 20 brownies that were large enough for me. So keep reading, but beware these things are addictive!