Happy Fourth of July!

As I start this, I have one minute left to officially wish you all "Happy Independence Day. "And now it's July 5th. We had a good, full day today. We did not except it to be very eventful (all we had planned was community group tonight) - but it was!

We started with a family trip to the mall - we got a handsome, big umbrella for the back deck. Very fun!

Then we spent most of the afternoon (besides setting this up) preparing for a somewhat last minute grill-out with our community group. Steve made the most delish hamburgers I've ever had, and I whipped up 3 desserts (well, to be fair - I did start the popsicles yesterday).

First up was my standard raspberry buttermilk-but-I-substitute-yogurt cake - recipe from smitten kitchen.  It is my go-to summer cake (translate: it is one of the only cakes I ever make, but I only make it in the summer). I wanted to do blueberries in the middle in the shape of a star like this:

But as it turns out - since that's a tart it looks all nice and perfect on there. On a cake it's not so ... perfect. In fact my star looks awful and un-starlike. But it was tasty tasty! And just so you don't think I'm a complete buffoon - strawberries were actually covering the whole rest of the top, but they sink into the cake when it cooks (one of the reasons it is so amazing).

I had better luck with the presentation of my filled strawberries. I finally got a pastry bag with good tips so piping in the cream cheese filling was super fun on these ....

And also super tasty were the fresh fruit, lemonade, & honey popsicles. To anyone interested in making these: Since it's not 4th of July any more - and even if it were, it's more purple than blue anyway - skip the blueberry layer. Blueberries just don't puree smoothly enough to make this layer excellent. And the other two layers are excellent. I had extra strawberry puree so I made two that were strawberry on both ends with no blueberry layer. If I make these again I will do it like that, for sure.

Yum.

And after sharing this deliciousness with some dear friends, we sat outside and watched fireworks someone set off in our neighborhood, played with some sparklers thanks to our neighbors, and (are you ready for this?) watched the Boston Pops fireworks show in their backyard on a HUGE tarp/screen with a projector and awesome sound system that he set up. My Dad would have loved it.

Lastly, because no post would be complete with a picture of my sweet girl, so here she is in her red, white, and blue!

Happy 4th!