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.

An Anniversary Cake_Part 1: The pre-decorating

For this weekend, Andrew and I volunteered to make his grandparents a 50th wedding anniversary cake. So, I am attempting roses...on the cake...for the first time. (Just picture a scared look on my face, right about now.) I've done roses before, but in the decorating icing (regular "buttercream," without the butter), and not on a cake. They were pretty good and stayed firm for several days. But sometimes I'm not too clever on some things and I think this was one of them.... I'm trying them with very, very, greasy, buttery, buttercream icing. This is not your ordinary buttercream icing that you get on a cake from a grocery bakery, this is melt in your mouth and your hand, buttery, sweet, creamy (and cream colored) icing--which tastes best on a red-velvet cake....hmmm, yummy.


I've already started on the roses, actually started on Wednesday, and I'm keeping them in the freezer. This is partly because it's so humid down here in Alabama this week that the icing thaws out in just a few minutes....or is that because we have a crappy freezer? It could be both. Either way, I hope we can make it to Rome, GA from Huntsville, AL without any disasters. Oh, by the way, we're taking the air conditioned vehicle.

A Busy Weekend

I hope for other posts, I can come up with better names than that. But, seriously, this weekend was busy. We did three separate gigs--cupcakes for a co-worker's birthday at my job, birthday cake for my nephew's 16th birthday, and a birthday cake for a girl in my husband's and my Sunday School class. Wow, pretty much a Friday, Saturday, Sunday kind of delivery schedule.

For people's birthdays at my day job, the secretary girl gets some form of cupcake/pastry for that person's birthday. So, this time it was her birthday and I volunteered to make the cupcakes. Well, I told her after a previous birthday, that I would do it because she got some Wal-Mart cupcakes. Now, don't get me wrong, if you like Wal-Mart cupcakes, then I'm all for it. However, I am spoiled and think Wal-Mart cakes taste like they were made by a press on a conveyor belt. When I eat one all I can think about is somebody pulling a lever down, a big metal press coming down onto the conveyor belt, then lifting up to reveal a "cake." I'm sorry if I'm offending anybody who works for a department/grocery store bakery. I'm not meaning to, it's just my opinion. Anyway, back to my cupcakes. I had no idea what to do for this girl's birthday cupcakes and I was suppose to deliver the next day. Yeah...nothing like waiting until the last minute to finish a project. I started out making a swirly flower design with a couple of leaves around it on pastel pink, white, pastel'ish yellow-iced cupcakes. This looked horrible and very messy to me. Then, I tried a generic flower design (on a plate) and didn't like it either. So, I scraped off the icing from the cupcakes I did the swirly flowers on. Then, re-iced them in the pink I had left over. At this point, I was back at yellow, white, and pink. I arranged them in a circle and asked my hubby to come and tell me what he thought I should do. He said that they looked kind of like a sunflower. I went with that to sprinkle some left over crushed oreos from the construction cake on a yellow one, arrange the white ones as a stem with a few leaves, and the pink ones as random flowers with a few leaves. This did not work out either and I was getting more and more frustrated by the minute. I left it alone for a while and decided to take the "leaves" off and eat the one with the oreos on it. Eating seems to always help me calm down, and a hot shower helped, too. Andrew and I started taking the leaves off and realized that they were too soft and green spots were left on the background color. So, being the wonderful husband as he is, Andrew said he would go get some chocolate to make green happy birthday letters from so we could try to hide the green spots. The letters ended up being a lot smaller and a lot darker than was planned. But, thankfully, when I came home for lunch the day, and minutes before, I was to bring the cupcakes to work, it dawned on me to mix up some colored sugar to match the green spots. It worked perfectly, the green sugar blended nicely with the random spots and made them disappear. The letters were still a little dark, so I sprinkled some of the sugar on them. The pink ones with the green sugar didn't look all that great to me, so I set them aside as the "ugly extra ones." Turned out that everybody loved the cupcakes and the "ugly extra ones" were the first to go. Go figure... Out of 18 cupcakes and 9 co-workers (including the birthday girl) I took home 3 cupcakes. Needless to say they're gone, too.

On to Saturday, it was my nephew's 16th birthday. He hasn't gotten his license, yet. But, I think he'd be a good driver. Well....hopefully. Anyway, I asked him if he wanted me to do a cake for him, and of course he said yes. But, to my surprise, he just asked for, as he put it, "one of your famous butterfinger cakes." I thought he'd want like a decorated cake or a car cake or something like that, but he wanted a butterfinger cake. If you don't know what a butterfinger cake is, it's just a german chocolate cake with sweetened condense milk poured over it (while it's still hot) and a cool-whip and crushed butterfinger candy bar topping. It's more of a leave-in-the-pan cake. So, that was easy, especially compared to the cupcakes I did the day before. I did just that and wrote "Happy 16th Kyle" in cool-whip and melted chocolate. Oh my goodness, there were 13 people there and I made an 11x15 cake. It was huge. By the time I got the cool-whip and butterfingers on there the cake was about 3" maybe 3.5" tall. When the party was over, 3/4ths of the cake was gone! Andrew had a sugar rush and tummy ache on the way home, but my nephew ate more than anybody...I can only imagine his pains. He said while he was eating it, it would be worth it. I was glad he liked it, he had been craving one for a while and was very satisfied.

The last cake we did was for a girl in our Sunday School class. She wanted a huge chocolate bar from somebody else in the class, so I decided to make a chocolate bar cake. I tried a chocolate cake recipe for the first time, which turned out pretty good. Then, Andrew made some of his marshmellow fondant and I made some molding chocolate to make the fondant a chocolate flavor. I also used some of the molding chocolate under the fondant layer on the cake to make the indentions like a candy bar. The cake turned out pretty good. I probably could have used more indentions than I did, but again, I was finishing this cake at the last minute. Literally, I skipped first service to finish the cake in time for the Sunday School during the second service. Oh, by the way, she didn't come to Sunday School. lol. I think she was major tired from her soccer game the day before. It's ok. I gave her what was left that night. She is so sweet though. I didn't want her to feel bad about that. I just wanted her to enjoy her birthday cake.