Weekend Foodie Warriors- Take 57!

Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you’ve had a great week so far! For this edition of Foodie Adventures, we’re reviewing a local Greenville baker, Creative Cakes by Larissa, with a dessert box that’s perfect for Easter, and showcasing some of our downtown Greenville adventures for Jamie’s birthday a few weekends ago!

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So, the name of this next business we are reviewing might sound familiar to you all. If you remember back to Valentine’s Day last month, we did a short review of Creative Cakes by Larissa’s Valentine’s Day treat box on Instagram. Check out her adorable little Yoda French macarons below!

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A post shared by Pimento & Prose (@pimentoandprose)

This time around, she’s come out with a new dessert box just in time for Easter, with bunnies and marshmallow carrots and all! I decided to sit down with her (virtually) and understand a little more about her business and how she came up with the ideas for her baking inspiration.

So how did you come up with a name for your business? How long have you been in business? Where did you come up with the idea for it?

• I sold my first cake two years ago next month. I don’t love my name and felt rushed to come up with one. All of a sudden, I was getting a bunch of orders and knew I had to come up with a business name because people liked what I had to offer!

Have you always loved baking or do you have any background in the industry?

• I am completely self-taught in every aspect of baking and decorating cakes. I did have a brief stint of working at Baskin Robbins while in college and I decorated ice cream cakes while working there, but that was completely different from what I do now. That’s where the love for decorating started for sure! I had an Easy Bake Oven as a little girl, and I think that’s where the love for baking actually started!

Where did you find the inspiration to start or what gives you inspiration for the things that you make?

• A lot of the time people send me ideas of what they want and I combine the best of all the cakes into one. Other times, they ask me to make it as close to the one picture they send me. Sometimes, I look up ideas for them and send those off and see what they think. And sometimes, people give me complete artistic freedom – those are my favorite cakes to make! 😍
• One of my favorite cakes so far that I’ve made is my “Finding Dory” cake, and the client gave me complete freedom to run with that idea! It was fantastic!!!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEPw9fzjf0e/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

What is your favorite recipe or type of medium to work with when it comes to baking or sweets?

• Macarons are my absolute favorite thing to make! I love being able to make crazy shapes and animals! It took me longer than I like to admit to perfect the basic macaron, and once I had that down, I knew I wanted to play around with shapes. I just love a good challenge. And that was definitely a fun challenge to tackle!
• Also, fondant is so much fun to play with! There’s so much you can do with just a simple piece of sugar paste. It’s amazing, the crazy, cool, and beautiful things you can make with it. I’m definitely known for being able to make a wide range of very detailed pieces!

Is there anything else new you’d like the Foodie Friends to know?

• We hired a web designer to revamp our website, which we are very excited about! We’re definitely working on ramping up our business! I have big ideas that I’m really excited to see unfold in the future.
• Also, my sister is my business partner, and she’s also the one that pushed me into selling my first cake and pursuing this as a business. She’s definitely my biggest cheerleader and the best business partner I could ask for – her name is Katie! 💜

• We’re working on a rebrand/renaming of the business, I’m not sure when exactly that’ll take place but it’s “in the works”, so to speak.
• We’re going to be focusing a lot more on wedding cakes and specialty macarons coming up!

Being in marketing, I’m super excited to hear about the new branding! Just like with my writing, it’s one of my favorite things, to see a business or a recipe get a refresh as it grows and changes and evolves. 🙌

Definitely make sure to check this sister team out to order their new Easter goodie packages! They come with everything you see in this picture above, including:

• 2 Easter Bunny “cake bars”, available in your choice of:
  • White chocolate bunny with lemon blueberry cake and lemon curd filling (this is the one we had, definitely reccomend!)
  • -or- Milk chocolate bunny with chocolate cake and a caramel filling
• 4 Easter French Macrons
  • An Easter egg, a bunny, a carrot, and a baby chick
• 2 Chocolate covered, cookie-dough stuffed Easter eggs (also one of my favorite bites)
• 1 Cadbury Cookie
• 1 M&M Cookie Bar
• A sprinkling of Cadbury Eggs
• And meringue bunny butts 🐰 & Carrots 🥕
  • All priced for $45 + tax

Our favorite bites of the box were definitely the lemon cake bunnies, loved loved the lemon curd. My grandma used to make a lemon curd for me around Easter as a kid, so this was definitely a sweet throwback. The cookie dough stuffed Easter eggs were a big crowd favorite, we fought each other over who got to finish those! Rounding out the top three was the meringue bunny butts and carrots. Not only were they absolutely adorable but they were soo airy and fluffy, almost reminded me of marshmallows you’d add to hot cocoa. There was so much in the box I ended up sharing a good portion of it with friends over a game night we had last week. This is definitely a shareable sweet treats box (or maybe not, keep it all for yourself)! 🥰

Check out their Instagram (here) or Facebook (here) to message them and place your order. Make sure to place your order by Monday, March 29th, which is the last day they take orders. Everything was absolutely delicious, you don’t want to miss out on snagging one of these to munch on while the little ones hunt for Easter eggs!

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For Jamie’s birthday a few weekends ago, I treated him to a birthday brunch and a shopping trip in downtown Greenville. His best friend Eric tagged along. We love to take Eric out for brunch with us whenever we get the chance, as he lives out in the country where brunch places are slim pickings.

We decided to go to Reid’s for brunch, as we hadn’t been back since around their grand opening in October of last year. Jamie’s birthday falls right around Saint Patrick’s day too, so we wanted to check out the butcher’s counter and see if they had any corned beef.

We started out with their awesome coffee. They have non-dairy milk options, which always makes me super happy.

Jamie ended up getting the Nashville hot chicken sandwich, no surprise there, but since the last time we came, they’ve definitely increased the size of the chicken on the sandwich. This was definitely one of those “would you like a little bread with your chicken sandwich?” type scenarios. Jamie definitely wasn’t complaining though. 😂

Eric has lived in the South his whole life but has never tried Chicken and Waffles, to our shock and amazement! So, we insisted that he try it if he was up for having something new. He ended up loving it which I was super excited about. It’s always awesome to have friends get to try something new and maybe a little out of their comfort zone. Little victories, I like to say!

I ended up getting the fish tacos with cabbage and sriracha aioli, which were the perfect size for me. Sometimes I am absolutely ravenous and eat a massive brunch, and other times I don’t have as big of an appetite. Reid’s has a really good selection of not only savory and sweet things but also different-sized meals portion-wise. There’s definitely something here for everyone!

I love looking through the market too! If I lived downtown, I could definitely see myself stopping here to get a bunch of specialty items or sauces, maybe even lunches during the week, or their cool take-home meals for dinner. If you haven’t stopped by this is a cool place to check out, you won’t be disappointed by their food. Definitely another solid brunch place for downtown!

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So after brunch, Jamie and I spent the day checking out new clothes, shoe stores, and strolling around downtown Greenville. It was such a gorgeous weekend, about 50 to 60 degrees (F) when we were out and about.

I don’t know if this is a well-known fact, but I used to be quite a book nerd. If I had a book that I started I would refuse to put it down, forget to eat, and I wouldn’t want to sleep. My mom would tell me to go to bed, and then at 3 am, you would find me with a light on under the covers, still reading the same book. I could get through a 400-page novel in 24 to 48 hours! I’ve also been writing poems and short stories ever since I was in 5th grade, this is where part of the name “Prose” comes from in the blog title. Knowing that, I was very excited to be able to help out a cousin I have from across the pond with a project.

My dad’s family is from England, and I am second generation American, so I have a lot of cousins and extended family in Great Britain. One of my little cousins over there, James, is working on a Flat Stanley project, based on the book of the same name. In case it’s been a while since you’ve read it, the main concept of the book is a little kid named Stanley accidentally gets pressed into a book and becomes flat, but can now travel around the world and has his picture taken with all the places that he visits.

My mom and I, being such book lovers, definitely wanted to help out with this. So we took Flat Stanley to Lake Norman to show him our biggest landmark nearby in North Carolina. My mom ended up sending a copy of Flat Stanley to my cousins and family in New England, and he was photographed there too!

Of course, we could not forget to take Flat Stanley with us on our brunch trip. Please enjoy these pictures of Flat Stanley from downtown Greenville in Falls Park in front of our beautiful suspension bridge over the Reedy River, and hanging out with two of the nine “Mice on Main”.

Did you know that all of the mice have names? There is a map and a scavenger hunt that you can use to find all the mice, with instructions to follow. This sounds like fun to me, because I don’t know if I’ve ever found all of them! Click the link below to view detailed information about each mouse and where they’re hiding: Mice on Main.

This would be such a cute activity to do with kiddos, and I’m so happy to have been able to show James a little piece of our hometown here in the United States. He originally thought that he was only going to get pictures from North Carolina, so to have all of our friends and family help and take pictures with Flat Stanley was such a cool experience. I wish I could see the look on his face when he gets all of these extra pictures and locations he wasn’t expecting. What are some of your favorite locations to take pictures in and around Greenville?

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So how was your weekend, Foodie Friends? What are your favorite Easter traditions? Is there a special dish you make or activity you always do? What’s the next business we need to review? Sound out in the comments below to let us know your suggestions of what dishes to make or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗