2014 - Book 22

"Shattered Souls" - Texas

This was a really interesting book, and I liked it quite a bit. It seemed kind of weird at first, but I was quickly sucked in. It's a story about a girl who is hearing voices and thinks she's going crazy. It all starts to make sense when she meets a boy who tells her that she is a "Speaker", a reincarnated soul who can speak to the "Hindered", souls whose bodies have died but have some unfinished task preventing them from going to heaven or hell. This boy, Alden, is her "Protector", and they supposedly work for a secret organization in charge of helping the Hindered, eliminating the "Malevolent" (evil souls), and keeping all of this secret from humans. There are a lot more details to it, but it is an interesting look at how she deals with discovering all of this and what path she will choose to spend the rest of her life on. To top all this off, she also can't remember any of the past lives that she's spent with Alden, so that complicates everything. At any rate, I rather liked this story, and I was sad when it was over. Hopefully I'll have lots more books like that in the near future :)

The recipes I have to share today are watermelon cake, grilled cranberry chicken, and Snickers peanut butter brownie ice cream cake (yes, all of those wonderful things were combined into one dessert).

The watermelon cake was the surprise cake I made for my husband's birthday. He loves fruit . . . I mean really loves fruit, way more than cake, so this was right up his alley. The whipped coconut milk was a bit messy to work with, but the real mistake was following the directions and slicing the cake before frosting. I didn't do the best job of making it a perfect cylinder, so the pieces kept falling over. Combine that with frosting that doesn't stick too well and you have one big mess on your hands. I managed to make it look okay for the presentation, but it was definitely not my best work. Next time (and I think there will be a next time, because he loved it so much he requested it for his birthday cake every year) I will not slice the cake beforehand, and I'll try to do a better job of making the sides flat. I might try cool whip or a different type of frosting too. I did read one review who left it in the fridge over night on a piece of paper towel to let it dry out a bit so the frosting would stay on better . . . that might be another tip to try. All in all though, he loved it and it tasted good, so it was a success :)

The grilled cranberry chicken was also fantastic, but I forgot to take pictures of it. I don't like jellied cranberry sauce, so I just made fresh cranberry sauce using the very simple directions on the cranberry bag. I doubled the recipe and didn't bother reboiling it before serving (the sauce wasn't applied to the chicken until it was safely cooked, so there was no fear of contamination). It's just a really good combination of sweet and savory and spicy . . .  yum. We've made this recipe multiple times now, and it's been tasty every time, give it a try.

I don't think a dessert can look too much more appetizing than this crazy pile of sweetness. It was indeed just as good as the name implied it would be, and it was pretty easy to make too. However, I've been trying to wean myself off of liking the taste of overly processed foods and candy, so all of the candy, syrup, cool whip, and boxed brownie mix wasn't quite to my liking. It was pretty impressive though, it tasted good, and everyone liked it, so I'd say it was a winner, even though I probably won't be making it again.

Now that I've been posting multiple recipes every week, has anyone actually tried any of them? I know one of my awesome aunts tried the steel cut oats and loved them, so if you do try one of the recipes I've posted, leave me a comment and let me know how you liked it :)

That's all for this week . . . talk to you again soon.