SMiLes by Meg

Mocha Truffle Cookies

Christmas with the Muncey’s was a marathon this year. I got home from skiing in Utah on Tuesday, and then had a party every day through yesterday. That’s four separate Christmas parties. A night-before-the-night-before party, a Christmas eve party, Christmas, and Pickett Christmas. Like I said, a marathon.

Lithuanian Coffee Cake

Full disclosure: this is the earliest I’ve started celebrating Christmas in recent memory. Most years, I have a strict no-Christmas-until-after-Thanksgiving rule, but desperate times and whatnot.

Tourian Tiramisu

Before getting into this week’s post, I of course have to say Happy Father’s Day to the best Daddy-O a girl could ask for! Love you! I’m sad I don’t get to spend the day with him, but in five days I’ll finally be moving back to Massachusetts and will be able to see him all the time! Also, in light of that, my dad recommended a theme for this week: my Parting Post from Passaic.

Mud Pie

Last week was my birthday, which is the best day of my birthday week, which is the best week of my birthday month. I’m not sure when exactly I decided my birthday was in fact a month-long event, but it was definitely a decision that I stand by. In fact, I was still celebrating my birthday week this weekend at Taste of Country Music Festival, which is why this post is a day late.

Brown Sugar Glazed Coffee Cake

This weekend, I had the pleasure of hosting the lovely Molly Hayes for plenty of beach time and country music.  And since we went to college together, we decided to recreate a treat from a favorite bakery in New Haven: Claire’s.  Thanks to Marj, I have the Claire’s cookbook, and the cookbook has my absolute favorite cake from the store: Lithuanian Coffee Cake.

Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

This weekend, I was fortunate enough to be able to go back home to Massachusetts to celebrate my grandmother’s eightieth birthday party with a large group of our family.  I was even more fortunate to be asked to make the cake.  You see, a couple summers ago I took a Wilton cake decorating class with my mom.  We learned how to make all sorts of things and were definitely the superior mother-daughter team in the class.  As part of that class, I made a whole bunch of royal icing flowers just to practice, and stored them away in tupperware (they