The Maners Family

End of 2013 + 4 Years of Marriage!

2014-01-03T02:01:54Z

Well the end of 2013 rocked the Maners household! I spent more time working than I care to admit (both NCSU & freelance) and then add in Christmas production at church (I was the lighting designer you can check out the full thing online at http://yourfavoritechristmas.com), traveling to my parents’ for Christmas, then to Florida for a wedding, and stopping in Savannah to see the e’Silvas; needless to say we spent very little time at home. Ryker has been an extreme trooper through it all, including the 1200+ miles in a car seat!

As with any infant, we had to take lots of photos over the holidays including some adorable ones of Ryker in front of Mimi Maners’ Christmas tree. Thanks to my buddy Brian C. for letting me borrow a remote flash and shoot through umbrella setup. You can see them all at http://photos.themanersfamily.com/Ryker/Christmas-2013. The photos came out way better than I could have imagined so I hope you enjoy!

Believe it or not, today marks 4 years of marriage for LaBranda and I. We’ve shared a lot of excitement as well as a lot of challenges over these few short years. Thanks to all of our friends and family who support, encourage, and share this crazy thing called life with us. We are forever grateful to God for seeing fit to bring us together and we can’t wait to see what He has in store for us!

Cooking for a Crowd

2013-11-03T03:10:54Z

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas season our church hosts an event for ladies to help orient our minds to the true meaning of the holidays, rightly called Holidays Fit for the King. Today, I was honored to lead a seminar on cooking for a crowd and I told the ladies in my seminar that I would post links to the products I talked about this morning, so here they are! Thank you all for allowing me to chat with you today and thank you for being such an interactive group!

Online resources

Food Network Recipes

Allrecipes.com

Dinner for a crowd using spreadsheets A great resource to organize your thoughts digitally, rather than using a notebook.

Temperature Rules! A graphic for quick reference of proper cooking temperatures.

Prepare the perfect ham A breakdown of different hams, as well as tips for a successful ham.

Turkey recipe Alton Brown’s recipe that I’ve successfully used in the past.

Great tools to use in the kitchen

Ziplock bags – Use for more than just storage. Remember, you can also use them to protect printed recipes, phones or tablets that you might be using in the kitchen.

Kitchen timer app

Crock-Pot

Kitchen timer/leave in thermometer

Instant read thermometer

Silicone basting brush

Immersion blender

Small prep bowls

Ryker 3 Month Update

2013-09-03T20:40:30Z

Wow! Where has the time gone? It seems like just a few days ago when I posted a few updates on Ryker at 7 weeks and now he is 3 months old! A lot has changed in the last several weeks as Ryker continues to grow and develop. We are starting to see his personality come out, he’s smiling more and more, and constantly bringing joy to his Mom and Dad’s hearts. We hope you enjoy some of the photos below from the past few weeks! Feel free to check out more over on our SmugMug site.

Glazed Mini Meatloaves

2016-07-03T02:28:07Z

Recently, I joined a meal exchange group with a few ladies from the area. I had thought on and off about starting a group in the past, but never got around to it in the craziness of life. When a friend sent out a message seeing who would be interested in being a part of a group, I got super excited and responded right away! If you don’t know what a meal exchange group is, here is an explanation of the basics. One thing that the ladies in my group are doing is posting links to their recipes in a shared document, the only slight problem I ran into when thinking of what recipe I was going to make,is the fact that a lot of my everyday recipes aren’t written down or in web format…I know, it’s a bad habit that I’ve slipped into, and one that has gotten way worse since I stopped working in the industry. So here is the first meal I’m going to make for the month of August, I’m sure there will be more posted in the coming months, so be on the lookout![amd-zlrecipe-recipe:1]

Ryker 7 Week Update

2013-07-18T21:38:24Z

Ryker continues to grow leaps and bounds. We’ll have his 2 month check-up in just over two weeks from now. I’ll be really interested to hear how much weight he’s gained! He’s gotten on a relatively good schedule, eating about every 3 hours except at night where he’ll go about 6 – 7 hours between feeding. In the next week or so, we’ll be trying to get rid of that middle of the night feeding. I know LaBranda will be a whole lot more grateful about that, as she’s usually the one that gets up to feed him at 4am! Hope you enjoy a few recent photos!

The Smiles Have Started

2013-07-06T15:53:34Z

Of course his smiles elicit big smiles from Mommy and Daddy.

Ryker Newborn Photos

2013-08-05T18:00:01Z

In case you missed our Twitter and Facebook posts, LaBranda and I welcomed our beautiful baby boy, Ryker, into the world on May 30th. It was a long labor process with many ups and downs but in the end we have a very healthy baby boy. A week after his birth, the ever talented Rebecca Mill of The Indie Image (you should really check our her new site – it is pretty awesome) came to our house to photograph some amazing shots.

I’ve shared some of our favorites below. If you want to look at some more, check out the full Ryker’s First Photo Shoot gallery.

Maternity Photos

2013-05-11T20:27:09Z

Early on in our pregnancy we decided that we wanted to invest in some maternity as well as newborn photos. We knew exactly who we wanted to capture these special memories for us – Rebecca Mill of The Indie Image. We met out at Joyner Park in Wake Forest one evening around 6:00pm and in just over an hour, she captured some amazing shots. Once Ryker arrives, we can’t wait to see what sort of newborn shots she captures for us. If you are in need of a photographer for any kind of event, connect with her on Facebook or Twitter. We hope you enjoy some of the photos below!

You can check out the full gallery on our SmugMug page at: http://photos.themanersfamily.com/FriendsFamily/Maternity-Photos/

And Then There Were Three

2013-04-02T10:49:49Z

That’s right folks – in just a few short weeks, there will be a new addition to this Maners Family! On (or about) May 23rd we plan to welcome Ryker Lee Maners into our family. LaBranda and I are VERY excited and can’t wait to share a lot of our new adventures with our little boy. While the blog hasn’t seen much life since this time last year, we plan to rekindle things with photos and more!

Flourless Black Onyx Chocolate Cake

2012-04-19T18:38:20Z

One of the desserts I made for Easter was a flourless chocolate cake. The idea for this cake came when I asked my friends at Savory Spice Shop if they could get in raw cacao nips, boy did they ever deliver. I had little idea what I wanted to do with the nips, other that just snack on them, but I figured I better use them in some kind of recipe. I started racking my brains of what I could make, and thought back to my time at Johnson and Wales. I had made a few flourless chocolate cakes while in school, but somehow most of my recipes that I worked on are MIA. After searching high and low in the black hole known as our garage, I went to work trying to create one from what I remembered, while adding some new touches. Here is what I ended up with, and while it still needs tweaking, it turned out pretty good for this non baking and pastry culinary girl.

Flourless Black Onyx Chocolate Cake

Recipe Type: Dessert

Author: LaBranda Maners

A dense cake perfect for all of my fellow chocolate lovers!

Ingredients

2 tbs. [url href=”http://www.savoryspiceshop.com/spices/cocoablk.html” target=”_blank”]Black onyx cocoa powder[/url]
3/4 c. plus 2 tbs. Unsalted butter, cubed
14 oz. Bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 tsp. [url href=”http://www.savoryspiceshop.com/extracts/vanilextmex.html” target=”_blank”]Vanilla extract, pure Mexican[/url]
6 lg. eggs, at room temperature, separated
6 tbs. Granulated sugar, divided
2-3 tsp. [url href=”http://www.savoryspiceshop.com/spices/cacaonibs.html” target=”_blank”]Cacao nips[/url]

Instructions

Preheat oven to 300℉
Prepare 10″ springform pan by buttering with 2 tbs. softened butter until there is a thin coating on all of the interior. Continue by dusting with the black onyx cocoa powder, tapping out any excess. This process will help to prevent sticking and will also give an extra dose of chocolatey goodness.
In a double broiler, add and heat the chocolate, butter, salt, and vanilla until melted and smooth. Remove bowl from heat and set aside.
Whisk egg yolks with sugar until mixture is a thicker pale yellow (ribbon stage). Once the ribbon stage has been achieved fold chocolate into egg yolk mixture.
In a separate bowl use an electric mixer to whip the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Fold egg whites into chocolate mixture until combined.
Pour into cocoa dusted springform pan, top with cacao nips and bake until center is just set, about 35-40 minutes.
Remove from oven and cool on a rack. You can either remove the ring and slice while it is still slightly warm, or chill in the refrigerator and serve cold.

Notes

When I made this for the first time, I slightly over baked it, baking for 45 minutes. I believe that this led to a drier end product than I was looking for. If you find that reducing the time to 35-40 minutes still produces a drier product, I recommend baking the cake in a water bath to help keep some of the moisture.