Disappointment

My cake was dry :( So sad.

When your feet are the size of the Easter bunny's...

We eventually plan to celebrate the bunnies & candy side of Easter, but at this point The Cupcake has no use for an Easter basket and neither of her parents needed another excuse to down a pound of chocolate, so we basically just skipped it. Luckily my mother (GrammyCupcake) put on a lovely Easter dinner and invited me and TC over to share in the feast (the hubby had baseball tix).

I'm still not great at getting out of the house with my little one, I tend to agonize over getting everything packed and ready so that I'm exhausted before I even leave, but the sleep situation has been getting better and better, and I found myself awake on Easter morning while The Cupcake was doing this:

(My Little Snugabunny Swing by Fisher Price, I <3 You!)

So I walked into my kitchen and whipped up these:



jumbo chocolate dipped strawberries, and two of these:



Vanilla cakes that I smushed the frosting of, but they still tasted okay. Neither of these creations was very exciting on their own, but when you realize that they signify MY FIRST BAKING WHATSOEVER since the baby bomb dropped on our lives, I'm pretty darned impressed! I think this may have been the first time the oven has been on in 4 months. It was exciting.

And then I somehow even managed to clean myself up a tiny bit, and wrestle TC into a pretty little dress so we looked presentable for about 10 minutes:



And then the puking started, so we were right back to the dirty stinky mess our lives usually are. And then I broke my toe on GrammyCupcake's beautiful but deadly antique sofa, so that kinda sucked too. But at least we had HAM! :)

Challenge: Horror Cakes

I love the "Challenge" series on Food Network. They usually center around cake or sugar artists creating huge extreme works of edible art on a theme ranging from baby showers to Christmas. Last night I was OVERJOYED to see the episode titled "HORROR CAKES" - is that not right up my alley?

I watched it in my favorite way - on DVR, so I could buzz through the commercials and all the "coming up next" repetitive nonsense, and I absolutely fell in love with the cake that The White Flower Cake Shoppe created:



Evil killer cupcakes and donuts, and a zombie wedding cake?!?!? I'm in love!!!

The little cupcakes and donutes actually moved too.

Sadly, the judges were against them from the start, they kept saying the cake was too "Dr. Seuss" and "not really horror" which I'm irritated at. Who said Horror = Gore? and who wants to eat a gory cake anyways? I thought White Flower did an amazing job actually making their characters fairly scary, while still appetizing and really well crafted.

In the end a grim reaper riding a chopper won, which is appalling - they admitted it wasn't enough cake to fulfill the rules AND you could see the metal armatures, both violations should have DQ'd the entry let alone kept it from winning.

Miscarriage of justice.

End rant.

If you're lucky enough to live in Ohio, they're selling evil monster cupcakes this week in honor of the show - wish I were close enough to nab one! They also have a blog here.

Oldies but goodies...

Here are a couple of my old standbys prepared for my grandparents-in-laws' 60th wedding anniversary last year. Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting, piped through a large star tip, topped with jumbo red heart sprinkles, and strawberry cake with vanilla pudding filling, vanilla frosting, and fresh strawberry garnish.

Strawberry cake

I think this cake was created around 2003 while we were living up north, it was for a co-worker's birthday and she had mentioned she loved strawberry cake, so I thought I'd try one. The frosting is all vanilla, so it has that sort of "strawberries & cream" flavor pairing, and was simply piped stars with fresh strawberries as garnish.

I love this cake size since it fits perfectly in my cake carrier (bought at target for under $10 and SO USEFUL! - Now I have two :) with plenty of room for even the highest and widest decorations, and it takes just one mix. Mix...did I say mix? YIKES, my secret is out! I admit it, I use mixes almost exclusively, and since the response is always so positive, I'm not even interested in dealing with making cakes from scratch, not when a mix takes 5 minutes and I could spend the rest of the time on a 2nd dessert or elaborate decorations. I generally use the Pillsbury or Betty Crocker Super Moist mixes, in dark chocolate, white (though I don't bother separating the yolks), strawberry, and carrot. I've found I don't like the milk chocolate (too wimpy in the flavor department) and I'm not huge on funfetti, though if it's a good deal (like packaged with free frosting) it's fine. I avoid the chocolate that requires butter, just because the extra step is annoying.

Anyways, this was my very first strawberry cake, and I've since done many similar decorating variations, including a lot of birthday cakes for my husband and in-laws (they're big fans of the strawberry cake...which oddly enough, I'm NOT! And I love strawberries! So strange.)

My one suggestion about using fresh strawberries is not to add them until right before displaying the cake, or they will bleed and turn brown. Putting them in the fridge seems to speed up this process, so if I'm bringing a cake somewhere I'll wash and dry the berries, but cut them on site. I like that if you slice them vertically they look like little hearts :)

Baby Face

In 2007 I hosted a baby shower (actually, a "sprinkle" - a 2nd baby shower that was more of a celebration and reason to get together than a gift extravaganza). We knew she was having a boy, so I decorated the cottage in "baby boy blue", and came up with what I think was a really cute design for baby face cookies and a round cake.

I took a cue from Charles Schultz and went minimal and cartoonish - I used the simple round shapes of the cake and cookie rather than fighting or trying to overcome them. I flat iced everything in a flesh-tone vanilla frosting, and used fudge frosting in a pastry bag with a small round tip (#2 or 3) to draw in the faces.

I stuck with a curl of hair, and varied the eyes and noses to cover a range of emotions. The cookies were sugar cookies, by the way.

The morning of the shower I ran to the party store for some last minute supplies, and ended up finding a balloon that matched my cookies & cake almost exactly! I hadn't planned it that way, but it all tied together perfectly.