Quick Cake Pops

I was bored Saturday, so I decided to make cake pops for Jacob's drama troupe's last performance that evening.  I've made cake pops before.  They're simple, yet messy.

On some,  I used food color pens.  It did not work too well though.
The candy coating was too waxy for the pens

Others I just sprinkled with sugar.

Cake pops "drying."

  They're even more fun to EAT!  To quote a fellow thespian in Jacob's troupe who had never seen a cake pop: "It's perfect! It's cake...on a STICK!"

Adventure Time!

My kids and I are addicted to Cartoon Network, especially "Regular Show" and "Adventure Time."  We are constantly watching these shows, as well as Mad.  We lurve Finn, Jake, Princess Bubblegum and the whole cast of insanity.



This past week we had to deal with the death of a loved one in the middle of a play week for Jacob. There was a lot of driving back and forth with my son.  For his play, the troupe was also having a concession stand to sell food to raise funds.  I decided to bake some cupcakes to donate for sale.  And of course I chose Adventure Time as my theme.

I made Finn & Jake,



BMo


and Marceline.

They're all butter cream, hence the..goopy-ness, but they're so cute!!

Isabel donated her drawing talents to decorate the table.

Portal 2 Cake

My son turned 18 in December.  Ugh.  I am old.

Anyway, we decided that for his birthday party, we would make him a Portal 2 Cake.  It's a really great video game that I cannot wrap my head around.  When the family plays it together, I just watch as they shoot portals, gels., etc. to jump from place to place.  It's really intricate and well-done.

The main character in single-player is Chell. I decided to make Chell the main part of the cake.

Those boots were a pain.

Then it was time to make fondant, bake cakes and put it all together.

In the rush of the holidays and work, etc. etc.  I had exactly one night after work to make the fillings, icing, stack the cake, dirty ice it and put the fondant over it.  Needless to say, I ran out of time.  My icing did not have time to crust, I did not have time to put an extra layer of icing or even attempt a second fondant layer, and as usual, I got lumpy-looking fondant because the icing below was not totally set.

The cake is not a lie!

Christmas Cookies

It's that time again!  Time for cookies.

I was in Panama last week for work and before I left, I decided to make some cookies for co-workers there.  They were surprised and loved them.  I had one co-worker's spouse try to figure out how she could get 100 cookies made and shipped to her by 12/29!  LOL Too expensive, freight-wise.  Another co-worker's friend thought they were professionally made and was asked where she got them so she could buy some too.  :)

Thanksgiving/Fall Cake

We had a house-full of people come over.  In all, we had 12 adults (counting my 17-yr. old), 4 kids and 2 babies.  We had a lot of prepping and cleaning to do, and I really thought I would not decorate a cake this time, but when I was icing my carrot cake, I decided to quickly decorate with the extra cream cheese icing I had.  I found a design on Cake Central that was pretty simple.

PS.  Never let your carrot-cake addicted sisters near a carrot cake.

I'm Here! With Coin Cookies

If I told you all the things I've been up to, you would not believe me. Suffice it to say, from end of July to September, I was on 16 different airplanes, the computer died, we had all 3 of our cars break down or give us problems in the same week and had other various things occur.

The cake-making has been waylaid.  Big time.

My son has been rehearsing for his school's production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" for several weeks.  Last week, Wednesday through Friday, were the performance evenings.  Jacob played Hamlet.  If you don't know about the play, Google or Wiki it.  I, for one, love it, but I'm a literature freak and love Shakespeare, so I get "R&G are Dead."

I wanted to make something special for all the kids involved in the play, whether it be on or off stage.  I decided to make cookies.  In the play, they play with coins a lot.  So, I made them one large coin cookie on a stick, and two smaller cookies depicting the Comedy and Tragedy masks.

Then last week happened and I ran out of time.  I was decorating until midnight and 1 a.m. on two nights, and got off early on Friday so I could put the cookies all together for them.  The mask cookies looked like a 5th grader made them; they were horrible.  I was pretty proud of my coin cookies though.

Yummy Carrot Cake

Hi all,

We have been traveling and now our computer is dead!  Bummer!!

Using a borrowed laptop, I want to quickly show you the carrot cake I made to take down to my sister's house in July, to meet my new niece Ava.

I wasn't going to do anything special, until my son saw the basket weave instruction sheet from back when I took classes and he mentioned how he did not understand it.  I took the cake and started a row, just to show him, and then just kept going.  It looks really bad, and the side hit the side of the box on the drive down, but let me tell you, I make a MEAN carrot cake.  My husband overheard someone say, when I was not around, "This is the best carrot cake I've ever had.  Wow. Better than TooJay's!"

It says "Somebunny loves Ava"

We love you Ava!  I can't WAIT to make your first birthday cake!!