Peanut Butter Buttercream Frosting

I've had a couple people ask about the recipe for the cake I made last weekend. It was a Chocolate Peanut Butter cake modeled after the Peanut Butter Chocolate Cream Torte we had at our wedding. I cheated a little bit and used a regular chocolate cake mix for the cake part. So, really, the only recipe someone would need is the frosting. I decided I would go ahead and put the recipe here since it is one of my favorites. I think that peanut butter-chocolate is the best combination in the world...it just doesn't get any better than that. So, after making a chocolate cake, you should use this frosting:

Peanut Butter Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:
10 oz. Cream Cheese (at room temperature)
1/2 cup Butter (at room temperature)
4 cups Powdered Sugar
2/3 cup Peanut Butter

Directions:
Beat cream cheese and butter together until creamy. Add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time and continue beating until smooth. Add peanut butter and beat some more...until creamy and smooth. Enjoy!

Pub Quiz

On Monday night, we went to the Pub Quiz. I've heard about them and I've been wanting to go so I finally convinced other people to go with me. Its basically a trivia night at a pub. A bunch of teams compete in 10 rounds with various categories and win prizes. We certainly didn't win, but we had a lot of fun and we got some chocolates too. I love trivia...I like to feel smart when I know the answer and learn something when I don't know the answer. All in all, its loads of fun. Emma was our fearless leader...she attends the Pub Quiz more regularly so she knew the rules and the "in's and out's" of the Quiz. Thankfully, she agreed to show us the way. Rachael and Alex were willing to join us for this excitement so we had our team of 5. We were not the smartest team, but we certainly weren't the worst. Basically, it was lots of fun and we're planning to do it again sometime.

our table was reserved

we diligently write our answerswe're having fun

perfect brain food = french friesI'm very proud of our answers

the questions must be too easy!

Emma must keep Rachael from yelling out the answer

everyone had fun

Thanks again for the pictures, Rachael!

Wedding Repeat

We got married last night! Wait, let me explain. We actually got married last June (the 14th to be exact). But, several of my friends here in Rome were not able to attend (understandably) and they wanted to be a part of it. So, we recreated the event last night. We watched the DVD of our wedding and we had pizza and cake, just like at the real wedding. It was a lot of fun - mostly because my friends were so excited about it. I think we all enjoyed it and it was fun to share our special day with them. They took it very seriously and we tried our best to make it as authentic as possible. We had Chicken Pesto Pizza, Pepperoni Pizza, Chicken Wings, Cheesy Bread, and Salad. We also had Chocolate Peanut-Butter cake and Pink Lemonade jumbo cupcakes. It was really good. So, now we have two anniversaries and, as Emma said, Bill has to buy me a present for both!!

(Thanks to Rachael for some of the pictures!)

Super Bowl Party

I'm normally a big fan of the Super Bowl and I enjoy a good Super Bowl party. But, this year, I'm wasn't that excited. First, I don't care that much about the teams playing. Who really cares about the Steelers and the Cardinals anyway? Second, because of the time difference, kickoff isn't until 12:30 AM. Its hard to stay up that late to watch a game when the teams don't really matter to me. But, what I didn't want to miss out on this year was the Super Bowl Party food. We didn't have a proper Super Bowl Party, but we did snack on some tasty treats. All kinds of finger foods and goodies. Of course, we weren't watching football, so I don't know if it counts, but it was good. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Super Bowl Party too!

Meat Lovers

For those of you who voted for the Meat Lovers Pizza (and were disappointed that Taco Pizza won), we decided to appease you and make the pizza after all. It was really good, even though it was only 2nd place! The meats that we decided to "love" for this pizza were pepperoni, sausage, bacon, and ham. Delicious! I have no idea what kind of pizza we'll make next week, maybe we'll go with the 3rd place winner: pepperoni.

Pepperoni

Sausage
Bacon

Ham

the finished product: we LOVE meat!

Steak

We are leaving Rome on July 17 (yay!). We've already started planning and preparing. One of our preparations is to eat all the food in our apartment. It takes longer than you think to eat all the cans of soup and beans and to eat all the frozen food. So, in an attempt to eat everything we picked some meat out of the freezer last night. Tonight's dinner was steak (marinated in Italian Roasted Red Pepper dressing with Parmesan), mashed potatoes, and green beans (also with the Red Pepper dressing). It was so tasty and it was also very delicious looking so I had to take pictures. It was a very good dinner!

Movie Marathon

Yesterday we decided to be ultra lazy and watch movies ALL day. So, we planned a movie marathon. What we did was pick an actor and then picked movies from various times in his career and from different genre. This time, we picked Johnny Depp. There are a lot of movies to choose from and some good ones that we didn't pick, but we managed to watch 5 Johnny Depp movies yesterday (that's a lot of Johnny). We watched our movies in chronological order. The movies were: Ed Wood, Nick of Time, Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Finding Neverland, and The Corpse Bride. I think we both enjoyed Finding Neverland the best. It was a lot of fun to relax and watch movies...a very good thing to do on a 3-day weekend. We are planning to do another movie marathon next month. We're thinking about picking an actress to feature this time. Any suggestions??