Substance or Style

At the beginning of February we were on a cruise.   The food on this trip was amazing and very plentiful.   On one night of the cruise there was a chocolate buffet at 10 pm.    We were lucky enough to get to go check out the chocolate, the sculptures and all of the gluttonous display before they actually opened it for all of the passengers.   Caleb probably took 50 pictures of the chocolate sculptures, the ice sculptures, and all of the food.   It was beautiful and appetizing!

While the display was breathtaking, the food was less than spectacular .... which was unusual for the food on this trip.    It made me start thinking a lot about what is more important and how to find a balance in the food that I made in substance over style.  

I would love to have my food and my displays and my pictures to be as beautiful as what they displayed for our chocolate buffet on the cruise, but I don't ever want the highlight of what I make to be looking at it instead of eating it.   

I was also thinking of this as Caleb informed me that Tuesday was Dr. Suess's birthday and we should have a birthday cake for him.   So on Tuesday I made a white cake and split the batter into four bowls and colored each bowl with a different color and swirled it together.   Rather than regular frosting on the cake I wanted to just have cool whip and strawberries on top of it.   I knew that we would like it more if the berries were chopped and mixed into the cool whip, however doing this made the frosting not very smooth and pretty, but it tasted delicious (unfortunately I forgot to take a picture so that I could show the rough looking icing on this cake).

This weekend I made cookies and bread to take to our new neighbors (that's right, I'm trying to win over new friends with food!) and here are a couple of pictures.   I'm hoping that I've made some progress in my stubstance vs. style battle.

Cranberry Swirl Bread

Lemon Gems