Birthday Cakes and Tasting Appointment Tonight

I know what you're thinking:

"Two posts in one day?!? Is this girl crazy or something?" Well, as I was writing this one, I remembered that I forgot to post one about the pies. Interesting wording, huh? Anyway, here's a very rare, second post for the day.

I’m so excited about tonight. A friend of mine is ordering a cake—a free cake, but it’s an order nonetheless—and is coming over for a taste test. It’ll be my first time making cake and icing for a customer to try and see which one they like. It was supposed to have happened last night, but the weather was horrible over here. Tornados, straight-line winds, and torrential down-pours lasted until about 9 or 10 o’clock last night, and a tornado watch was in effect until 2:00 AM this morning.

Anyway, her birthday was last week, but she didn’t get a cake. I felt so bad about going to her birthday shin-dig and not bringing a cake. Especially since she knows about Andrew’s and my business dream and has been spreading the word around. So, she called on Wednesday to order and tell me what she wants. She’s ordering a chocolate cake with butter cream or regular sugar icing. The icing is what she really wanted to taste test because I told her in the real cake world, there is a difference and that I prefer the real butter cream icing over the other on a chocolate cake. I didn’t tell her this, I’ll wait until tonight, but I’m also going to give her a choice of chocolate cake. I found some Chocolate Fudge cake mix when I went shopping and knew I just had to try it….umm….I mean my friend just had to try it. So, I got that and some devil’s food. [Thinking about what I just typed] I’ve always said it, but it’s really funny to type that flavor of cake. I guess because chocolate is “sinful,” it’s called devil’s food. Sorry for the tangent thought.

I had been thinking of how to make the cakes and also make her a sample of it without having to eat two whole cakes and buy another mix of the one she liked. It worked out perfectly that we are tasting tonight instead of last night so I can just make both cakes like I normally would, but reserve a little bit and put it in a ramekin for her own tiny cake. I was quite proud of myself for thinking of that. Then, whatever cake she likes the least will probably turn into cake pops like what Bakerella makes. I love those little things! And plus Andrew made some recently and they were SOOOO delicious. And, the cake pops will go with me sometime Saturday to our church where the “youts” are having a car wash.

The second birthday cake is for Andrew’s best man. His birthday was almost two weeks ago. Yes, we’re a little behind, but remember why we are---

I just love this house. The kitchen may be small, but it’s still a lot bigger than the apartment.

And, I love the investment we made in a steel worktop table from Sam’s. It’s one of the best $80’ish we’ve spent on a kitchen item. I got to find out just how much I loved it when I made fried apple pies. Those batches went SOOO much smoother at the house with room to work with than the apartment.

Well, I’ve already made this post a lot longer than what I had planned. So, I’ll post with updates soon—really this time. I know sometimes my soon means months, but seriously, I’m going to do better.

Procrastination Pays Off on Fried Apple Pies

I have a confession. After I posted about National Pie/Pi Day, I completely forgot about it. Here was a holiday that I could fix a pie, and I forgot! I was so sad and couldn’t believe I did. It wasn’t until the day was almost over or the next day that I had realized. So, I did what most procrastinators do best—I waited.

I had thought about making something for a co-worker’s birthday that was the week before. I didn’t know it was his birthday until it had past (he was working on location in Shelby County that week). Several days went by and I still didn’t make anything. The procrastinator in me was doing it again—waiting, I didn’t know what for, but I was waiting.

St. Patrick’s Day rolled around and I still didn’t do anything.

Then it dawned on me: Why not have all three celebrated at once? So, I waited again. lol. Since St. Patrick’s Day was on a Tuesday, I decided to wait until Friday to bring in my pies. But then I thought that wouldn’t work so well because Fridays are bagel/muffin days at work and I didn’t want to compete with that delicious treat. Thursday was just going to have to do, procrastination or not.

The next question was: What am I going to fix? I thought about making tiny apple pies in a tiny aluminum tin and I thought about fried pies. [drooling] I love fried pies…. So, that’s what I went with, apple, cherry FLAVORED cranberry, and apricot fried pies. Andrew’s reaction to my thinking about making fried pies also helped with that decision.


Let me explain why I made “flavored” all-caps. I went to the store to get dried apples, cherries, and one more fruit/berry. I wasn’t paying attention and only saw “cherry” on the bag, and did not see that it was an ocean-spray bag, which usually only sells cranberries…[face palm] I realized what I had done after I emptied the bag into the pot and actually read the print. lol. Needless to say, those cranberries got a TON of sugar to mellow out the tart flavor.




I invited a friend of ours over to taste test because he’s a huge fan of my fried pies. He loved the apple ones and almost would only eat that flavor, until that night. He ended up preferring the cherry flavored cranberries, which turned out to taste a lot like cherry. [sigh of relief]


I love to invite people over for taste testing. Except when the food turns out not as good as I thought it would, and then I feel really bad for having people eat it, even if they’re being polite.


With the exception of having to use toothpicks to identify which pie was which flavor, they turned out pretty good, and only two were left out of the 15 I brought to work for the 7 employees at work that day. This is including me. I had to have one. And, man, was it good, especially warmed up in the microwave. DELICIOUS! And, I made a cute little sign to go on top of the carrier, which said:

Happy Belated
Pie/Pi Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Birthday to CJ

Well, it was just a quick print out of that and how to tell which pies have what number of toothpicks in them on a grassy green piece of scrapbook paper. I liked it though.

Oh, I didn’t mention this. Andrew and I bought a brand new fryer to use for these pies. I hope we didn’t waste 80 bucks on something we’re not going to use that often. You, know since fried food is really kind of bad for you. I think you can steam vegetables in it, too. We’ve got to figure it all out. It’s nice though, since I’m used to old Fry Daddy bucket fryers. Those are dangerous. I would be very cautious and somewhat scared I was going to dump the grease all over me. But, this new one is a sturdy box of a fryer with cool-touch handles and a digital thermostat. This was obviously an Alton Brown inspired purchase on Andrew’s part. Oh! And there’s no plastic lid that you can melt. And, yes, I’m speaking from experience. Lol.



At this point, I think I need to start thinking of a catchy ending phrase. You know, like “You stay classy, San Diego. I'm Ron Burgundy?” Wow, that was a pretty random thought. lol.

Mmmm....Pies

I just found out from a favorite blog of mine, Cakespy, that Saturday, March 14, is National Pie Day. Well, it’s actually one of two, but she explains that in her post--Humble Pies. So, I’ve figured out what I’m going to do Saturday besides move.

Oh, yeah. I haven’t mentioned that yet. We’ve bought a house….. YEA!!! We are so excited to be out of our apartment and moving into a house. Here’s our “take a picture in front of the SOLD sign” picture right after signing on the dotted line.

Anyway, back to pie. I was thinking of making one in between moving trips, especially now that I have a bigger kitchen and a pantry and a NICE stove, oven, fridge, dishwasher, etc., etc. I kind of want to go with the traditional apple pie with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. Yum! But, I may try something off that list from Cakespy.

We’ll see what happens….

Oh, and be looking for me on Etsy.com in the next few weeks. I’m going to try to start putting up some stuff on there. I have a few ideas right now, but I don’t want to say anything yet. You’ll just have to be surprised.

A wrap up of this year--part 2.

(Spongebob voice) "Part 2?! Part 2, part 2, part 2.....!!" Yes, I am a Spongebob fan. But, before you start groaning, just remember how old Spongebob really is--10! Yes, Spongebob turns 10 this year! I was barely in high school when it first came out, and now I'm in my mid-twenties. And, yes, again, he has really been around for that long. I can't believe it either. The other day, Andrew and I sat down and turned the TV on to find out Powerpuff Girls was actually on CN. So, we were all like "Yes! Finally, some good, classic stuff." (At least, for us.) Then, CN just had to do it--they announced it was a 10th anniversary of the Powerpuff girls and was having a special "new" episode on next. We looked at each other saying "10 years?!?" No, that can't be. It's true, though. Just look it up on IMDB.com.

Anyway, I digress. On to cakes!

These are some really cute turkey cupcakes for Thanksgiving Day. The idea came from the book Hello Cupcake. It's an adorable book with the cutest cupcakes you have ever seen. So, I decided to make these for my family for Thanksgiving. My mom made some place cards with some Bible verses about thanks and giving thanks for last year and used them again this year. I had a whole lot of help with these cupcakes. Two of my little cousins, an older cousin, and a date of another one of my older cousins helped. Andrew just, well, I don't know where he went. He just kind of disappeared. Haha...


They were cute, but I couldn't find all the stuff to make them. The caramel frosting turned out to be more of a ganash instead of a frosting and the mini cupcake wouldn't stay on top of the big cupcake. So, I had to use a lot of toothpicks to get all the stuff to stay on. It was a little morbid to be poking toothpicks into the turkeys' forheads, but what else could I do. It was either a headless turkey or jab a toothpick into them. They were still delicious though.



This was pretty cool too, and heavy. I am a member of the Madison County Band here in Huntsville. It's a concert band and one of the officers found out I make cakes. Well, I may have helped a little with that. Anyway, Andrew and I were asked to make a cake for our Christmas concert reception. A cake that would feed 120-200 people! The biggest cake yet. So, we decided to make a gingerbread village cake. It turned out to be more of a town square, but it was still cute. Unfortuately, nobody touched the cake! Everyone was all "It's too pretty!" lol. So, I was told several times that I was going to have to cut it myself and eat some because nobody else would. I didn't want to because that cake was 4-11"x15" cakes with tons of plain/vanilla frosting and tons of gingerbread, etc, etc. I was tired of cake. Just thinking back now to that night is making me a little nausous. I ended up doing that anyway, and a few people ate some, but we were left over with a ton of cake. So, it got wrapped up and frozen for the next week for our Christmas party...still only three or four pieces were eaten. Ahh..oh well. It was a nice $200 center piece. lol.



These were delicious cupcakes that I made, also for work. They were my own (sort of) concoction peppermint cupcakes. Regular cake mix with peppermint extract and peppermint flavored frosting with crushed peppermint candies. I ended up, coincidentally, making them and giving them to everybody on National Cupcake Day. After that Monday had past, I found out about National Cupcake Day and was wishing that I had done something. Then, it hit me--I did! Yea! Yes, it's the little things. Especially when I am at work and staring at my computer screen all day. I think these went over better than the halloween cupcakes. My manger/boss guy kept saying all day, "I need another cupcake." It was funny. They were surprisingly refreshing, too. Most all cupcakes I've made and eaten needed a glass of milk or water to rinse it down. Not these, though. The peppermint left your mouth refreshed and actually wanting more...a lot more!



This was a simple little baby shower cake for the youth pastor's wife at my church. The ladies throwing her the party just wanted something simple and traditional. I wanted to put animals on the ark, but I decided to simplify things for myself.

Still more to come later.

A wrap up of this year--part 1.

Well, I am back. And I'm sorry for not posting for a really long time. Full-time day jobs seem to always get in the way. lol. Anyway, a lot has gone on since October and have a got a ton of pictures for you. I won't put it all in one post to save you some reading time. So, without further ado, here you go.

First off, this one was before my Mom's birthday flower pots. Here's a "chocolate bar" cake. A girl in our youth's Sunday School class that Andrew and I teach was having a birthday and she was talking about just wanting a huge chocolate bar for her birthday. It was actually a huge conversation and "you just had to be there" to get it. The cake is chocolate with chocolate fondant. It was fairly easy to make. There wasn't really any crazy stuff happening with this cake. Thank goodness.



These cupcakes were AWESOME. I loved them, anyway. I had made them mostly for work for some halloween goodies. They were regular white/vanilla cupcakes with a peanut butter frosting, chocolate molds with orange colored chocolate webbing, and a halloween pumpkin and fall leaves sprinkles for decoration. The difficulty with these were the chocolate molds. They just kept breaking and especially during handling and the kitchen was warm--all just not good conditions for setting up chocolate. So, I just ended up putting them all in halloween type cupcake cups and they turned out just fine. Everybody at work loved them, too.





Here's the last cake for this post--my first topsy turvey cake. I'll have to dedicate a whole post just for this cake. This was also for the family that we did the construction cake back in August. The girl liked soccer, music, shopping, and, since she was turning 15, driving. So, we incorporated all those themes into this cake with her favorite colors green, pink, and brown. The brown was the chocolate cake. Then, for the frosting/icing in the middle we used a cookies and creme frosting.




More to come later.

Terra Cotta Pots, Some Crumbly Cake, and Some Fondant

Well, a couple of weekends ago was my mom's birthday. So, I decided to make her a cake--a flower pot cake. I only told her I was doing her a cake and wanted the design to be a surprise. She was still so excited, though, because in all the years she's done cakes, very rarely has somebody made her a cake.

I've just got one thing to say about what I did. I need to do more work with fondant. Gosh! That stuff was hard to sculpt and mold to the shape of the cake. Oh, and another thing, I need to stop using the box cake mix that is too moist and crumbly. That didn't help out my cause in getting the fondant to stick to the shape of the cake. I will say, however, that I got the color of a terra cotta pot down. That part looked pretty awesome.

Oh, by the way, I did it again by staying up until midnight to finish the cakes. One day, hopefully soon, I'll get to start on the cake sometime in the morning and finish sometime in the afternoon rather than starting late in the afternoon and finishing early in the morning. Yuck.

Update finally (1/25/09)
Pictures! Yea!

An Anniversary Cake_Part 2: The Completion and Delivery

(Sigh of relief) The cake got there safe and sound, was pleasantly commented on, eaten, and eaten some more. Andrew's mom and aunt invited 50 people to the party, but not very many people showed up--about 25 people. So, needless to say, we left with some cake.

So, the beginning. We waited until the last minute...as usual. Yesterday Andrew baked all the cakes while I was at work. Unfortunately, one of the cakes did not come out so well and he had to go get more cake mix, eggs, butter, and then gas. And as we all know, getting gas yesterday (and today) was no easy feat. He was going to get it from Sam's, but there was a line out into the streets. I'm sure it was the same wherever you're reading. However, I digress. It was very yummy to come home to an apartment that smelled of cake. (Hmm......)

When I got home from work, I piddled around a little before my clarinet lesson student came over at 6. After the lesson, around 7:15, we decided we were hungry. Again with the food...can't do anything without it. We ended up going to Sam's (the back way because there still was some gas traffic) to get a hotdog and pizza. Did you know Sam's has a fantastic deal on powdered sugar?!? It's a little over $4 for 7 lbs of sugar! I love Sam's.

Anyway, we got back and started on icing. Those cakes ended up being more trouble than we expected. The butter cake Andrew made was so crumbly, but it was SOOO good! The buttercream icing was lighter than the edge of the cake so it was a little difficult getting the cake itself hidden.

Not only was the cake crumbly, but trying to use icing techniques was difficult, too. Since we are in an apartment, we don't have any raised countertops or high bars to use for eye-level decorating. Then, I remembered what my mom suggested a while back--using bed risers for the table. It is the best idea I was ever told and ever decided to try. The bed raisers worked perfectly to raise the table up so the cake would be closer to eye-level for me. Being 5'9-1/2" it's really hard to bend over a table or short counter to decorate, and sometimes even getting down and standing on my knees makes me a little too tall or maybe we just have small stuff. I really like the table up like that. It makes me want to get some bar stools and leave it like that.


Anyway, nothing else really eventful happened last night other than we stayed up until 1:00, again, trying to finish this cake. (Ugh!) Why do I do that? Why do I wait until the last minute to finish things? Well, it's a time honored tradition of mine to ALWAYS wait until the last minute to finish any project.



This is the awesome rig that Andrew came up with to transport our cakes safely and coolly. (Is that a word?) He went into our spare room to find some cardboard and came up with this. We put an open cooler full of ice under it so the cardboard acted kind of like a refridgerator. To my surprise, the cakes did not move under that cardboard. Usually my truck doesn't have much of a center, a place that doesn't move as much as the rest of the vehicle (just in case you didn't know). I know that one center point is under the cup holders on the dashboard, but that doesn't help out much for anything. But, after all the turns and bumbs in the road and 2-1/2 hours, the cakes arrived in perfect condition.


We used about an hour before the party assembling the cake. Back on the whole eye-level thing, there was nothing there to really help me in that situation. But, I have the best in-laws ever. Andrew's mom saw me kneeling on the floor trying to decorate, and she went to get me a huge stock pot so my lazy suzan could sit on top of it, and it on the table. So, thanks to her, I was able to comfortably sit at the table and decorate.

Everybody loved the way the cake looked and loved the way it tasted. Come on, butter cake with buttercream icing...butter, butter, and more butter.......how can you go wrong?? It just makes me think of Paula Dean--butter, ya'll! (Not making fun of Paula Dean, all you Paula fans, just joking around. )

I'm just glad that's over, the cake that is. The party was amazing and fun. I love being with family, and since they are my family now, it makes it even more special to be apart of their celebrations. I just hope more people get along so well with their in-laws like I do. I love them so much!

Here's some pictures from the road trip through Scottsboro and Fort Payne, AL and pictures from the party.

This is from the bridge going over the Tennessee River in Scottsboro.

The view from going up the mountain in Scottsboro.

This hand is kind of scary for a nail salon. Looks like a cartoon witch's hand.


"And my home's in Alabama!" Yeah, the group Alabama is from Fort Payne, AL. And they love it. There's even life-sized bronze statues of them in the downtown area. I didn't get my camera out fast enough to take a picture of it.


The finished cake at the party.


I think I did pretty good with this picture.


My new family, well, only part of them.