Veteran's Dinner

My neighbors the Losoles volunteer to throw a lovely dinner each year in their awe inspiring back yard pool/pub area for a local veterans organization.  It is quite the event and Joe and Teresa are very proud as it is something they truly enjoy doing for others.  This year I made some cookies for the shindig.  My cookies were nothing in comparison to what went into this dinner and next year Allen and I both hope to be able to help more.

It has been a long time since I have posted. Google and my computers were not getting along for a while. Trying to post pictures became so frustrating I gave up on it entirely for a while. BUT I'M BACK! Now that I know it is working again I will try to be more diligent about posting pictures as I take them.

Below are just a few projects that I have done through this "winter that wasn't".  We never even had a day this winter where the high was below 40.  I am a little worried about the bugs this summer. It is only March and the mosquito dragons are everywhere!

I made these fall cookies to take to AR when we went for Thanksgiving. When they are small like this they sure are easy to snack on.



These are some Christmas Light Cookies I made for mt Mom's Christmas party at her house.



These are some Orea Cookie Cupcakes I made for a gal who wanted them for her son's birthday party.  I bake and Oreo into the cupcake but the best part is the icing. Cream cheese with crushed Oreo pieces. Mmmmm...... I also made her some Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cupcakes but didn't take a photo of those (for some reason)

  
Mom has some lips cookies that she wants me to make for a book club gathering and I am in the middle of planning Alex's 4th birthday party (Dr. Seuss themed), so we shall see what I come up with!

Cookies and Cake for a Halloween Baby Shower

My friend Rachel has a sister who is pregnant. Because of the due date, Rachel's family decided on a Halloween themed baby shower. I loved this idea. Rachel commissioned me to make the baked goods for this soiree and I agreed happily. Above is a shot of the cookies I made.  Onesies in the colors of traditional candy corn. And below that is a close up detailed shot of the cake.

I am a nerd and come up with ideas and sketch them out.  I came up with the idea of a pregnant ghost and loved it, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. Thanks goodness I have a handy hubby. For the ghost I bought 2 big gumballs out of a machine and had 2 kabob skewers.  Come ghost assembly time, I called Allen over and showed him what I had and said GO!  In the end, I was VERY Happy with the result. One of my best yet I think.



2 Ingredient Pumpkin Cupcakes

OK, OK, 3 ingredients if you count the powdered sugar I sprinkled on top. These cupcakes are AWESOME.  First of all, you only need 2 ingredients! BONUS: they are in the same isle at the grocery store. ADDED BONUS: you just open them up and throw out the packaging. Easy clean up.  

I got this recipe (if you can even call it that) off of Pinterest. If you use the internet in ANY capacity and do not know what Pinterest is, I feel for you. I really do.  Pinterest.com - a virtual pinboard.  You know how you see a picture of something in a magazine and rip out the page so you can keep it as an idea for later? Pinterest is that exact same thing for the internet.  If you see something you like online you can "pin" it to a board that you create.  You can create ANY idea board you want to: Recipes I like, Ideas for the garden, my favorite movies, etc. You see a picture of something you like online and pin it to one of those boards.  It keeps the picture and the web link so you have it any time you want. The coolest part about itis you can see other people's pins and draw inspiration from those as well.  I found this recipe on someone else's pinboard.  

So i bet you can't guess the first ingredient! Ok, fine.  The first ingredient is pumpkin.  Good guess.  The second ingredient is yellow cake mix.  That's.  It.  

From the picture on Pinterest and even from the ones I have taken of my cupcakes, it looks like these might be dry. They are the opposite.  These are probably the softest, fluffiest, and most moist cupcakes I have had in ages. I dusted the top of them with powdered sugar and they were delish!

An easy something to do for a Fall recipe. 

In other news, I'll be in the kitchen practicing as I have a couple of baby showers coming up I am making cakes for.  I did a tiny practice a week ago.  The first baby shower is a Halloween themed baby shower.  I was not too thrilled with the way my cake turned out, but I have since changed my entire idea for the cake anyway. Below is what I WAS going to do, but not any more. 

Thanks for checking in. Hopefully with the holidays coming up and me needing to practice, I will have some more posts in the near future. I already have a few ideas for Christmas goodies. 

Orange Cake...........eh.....

I decided to practice a little on a fondant cake and make my first two layer cake. I did learn one important thing: put fondant on a room temperature cake, not a cake right out of the fridge.  I did the top layer at room temperature and the bottom layer from the fridge.  The reason I did this was because I put a crumb coat on the bottom layer, and then put it in the fridge while I worked on top layer.

The bottom layer puffed up.  The fondant puffed up and pulled away from the cake so............won't be doing that again.

Anyway, here it is. A double layer cake: One layer white almond cake and one layer chocolate.  both had apricot filling.

Orange Fondant with Pink Rock Candy Decor.

I still love the idea of the decoration/concept, but was incredibly disappointed with the cake as a whole. The puffed up fondant was one reason, but as a whole, the cake was not as smooth as I would have liked it to have been.  Again, I guess that is why we call it practice!

Corben's 1st Birthday

SO my pseudo nephew had his first birthday the other day (which I can barely believe). I was in charge of sweets and a smash cake. Can you believe that?  ;) I wouldn't have let it happen any other way!

Lets start with the cookies. I made my usual sugar cookies. Corben's party them was a surf/beach theme. SO I found some appropriate cookie cutters. I think in the end I had close to 70 cookies.  Sunglasses, palm trees, crabs, and just plain rounds.

Then I did Corben's smash cake.  Don't know why this made me so nervous, but it did.  I suppose I just did not want to disappoint Amanda! I thought of a million ways to put this cake together, but in the end, just went with it.  

When I first started putting it all together it was about 11:45 at night and I had been in the kitchen for, let's just say a while. I started with the orange and green circles. I had about 1/4 of it done and just burst into laughter. I mean, tired. sad. laughter.  Remember that the top of the cake was still white at this point and after putting on a few of those orange and green circles all I could see was peas and carrots. Then I decided it looked horrible.  Then all I could hear in my head was Forrest Gump.  Allen had to come console me before I forged ahead. It did turn out ok in the end though. Not a masterpiece, but ok!

Lastly, I decided to do some cupcakes. I had thought about doing this flavor for a while and went ahead and tried it. I baked white cupcakes with an Oreo cookie inside.  Then I crumpled up some cookies and put it in the frosting before I frosted them.  They were delish.  So I did the same thing with chocolate cupcakes and Reese's peanut butter cups.  Received numerous compliments.

Below is the cake after it was all said and done. Poor Corben.  That fondant was pretty tough to tear into.  Mom had to help. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Messing around

I made a huge batch of cake batter and played around with it. I did one cake, one mini cake to practice using different icing tips on, and I had an idea for some Oreo Cookies........

Here we go:

So one thing I am really trying (and struggling) to get better at is 1) crumb coating a cake and 2) putting fondant on cake. Both of these steps are fairly simple, but the end result can be....not so awesome. It's like knitting. I know all the steps, but the end result is probably not going to be something anyone really wants to wear.

To cover a cake in fondant, you first have to level your cake so they sit flat and even. I have discovered that this is much harder than it sounds. Unless you want to buy a special tool, and I do not, it is probably not even though you would swear it is.  Once you have leveled and filled your cake with jam or icing, you want to apply your crumb coat.

A crumb coat serves to help fondant stick to your cake. Since fondant also mirrors whatever you put it on, a crumb coat helps to smooth out the roughness of a cake. It really is a thin smooth layer.

In the future I should take photos to see if I have it even.  In reality, I would have bet the farm that this was even.  In the picture it is just stupid obvious that it isn't.  I'm slightly irritated with that. Slightly is slightly an understatement.

 I let that sit in the fridge overnight. In reality, you should put fondant on immediately. These cakes really do take forever to bake so I don't have 4 hours to stand around in the kitchen that long. SO pretend I didn't put it in the fridge for a night, and started with the fondant pronto.

Fondant is like Play-Doh for adults.  Even though it is work, it is fun in a weird way.  So I rolled out white fondant and put it on the cake.  I then used 2 different shades of blue to make tiny circles. The funny thing about this cake is, I meant for the circle colors to be random.  It wasn't until I was knee deep in it that I noticed I had been using alternating colors and putting them on in a circular pattern.  Then I realized I had made an intricate pattern on accident. Once I was conscious of it, it was damn near impossible to keep up with.  There are quite a few mistakes on the pattern of this cake. Oh well, I guess that is why it is called practice.

So then I had some leftover batter. I made one mini cake and filled a piping bag with my remaining icing and just played around on the mini cake to see what I could do with it. I could see doing an entire cake in the pattern below.  That is, if I ever learn to do a pattern without over thinking it and messing it up!

Believe it or not, I still had some more batter! So I tried something I had thought of a while back.  Doubtful I am the first person to try it, but it was a first for me nonetheless.

Oreo Cookie Cupcakes!  I was out of icing or I would have crushed up some Oreos and mixed the with the icing to top the cupcakes.

They were yummy!

OK, that's all I've got! Although that is a lot for one batch of batter!  Be back soon!