Monkeying Around

Happy 2013!

The holidays were low-key, baking wise. I did make cookies for co-workers and teachers, and I can't find a single picture. Nothing too exciting.

My son's friend Lauren has been asking me to make her a cake for 2 years now for her birthday.  Every time in February, we have had something come up where I cannot make it for her.  This year, I committed to making her 19th birthday cake for her February birthday.

She loves monkeys so she & I searched for images and she chose this one from the now-closed Cake Girls in Chicago (fire in 2010 destroyed their storefront. They now just sell supplies on the web.)

Another baker on Flickr, Sweet Xpressions Cakes, made this cake with a few tweaks.

Shiny!  That's usually done with steam on fondant.

I decided to have a trial run because  I always do trial runs!  I don't want to start on a cake that I have never attempted before.

For the trial, I use box cakes (which I do not like at all for making the final cakes.  Too moist, not nearly as tasty as my homemade cakes either) just to save time and money.  I made homemade marshmallow fondant (mmf) too.

I decided to make rice krispie treats (rkt) for the monkeys' heads too, and see if I preferred that over solid fondant/gumpaste heads.

Notes I made:  The rkt is lumpy obviously.  I would need to put two coats of thick  mmf over them to cover the lumps or coat them thickly in royal icing before putting the mmf over it.  I only put one layer with no icing this time, so they looked lumpy.

I might just make them out of fondant or gumpaste after all.

Also obvious, box cake is way too moist, so I was not about to carve the top of the crate flat, but I knew this going in.  So ignore the rounded tops and sides.  Also box cake won't hold the weight of the monkey heads, so there was drooping.  That won't happen in the real trial.

I was mostly trying to see if I could make the monkey heads look good and how I would work the wood grain.

Considering the materials for this cake cost me a whopping $9 to make, I'm happy with what I made. I know what to do and what not to do, and when I make the real cake, those corners should be nice and sharp and the top nice and flat.

I sent pictures to Lauren on her cell as I was making it.  She was very excited to see the progress.

Messy, I know.  

Snowman Cake Pops

I had a few things going on at the same time.  Friends from Boston were coming down to Florida to spend Thanksgiving down here and a co-worker was transferring over to our Chicago branch (yep, crazy) and Wednesday was the last day I was going to see him.

I decided to work on some cute snowman cake pops for them.  These were from Bakerella's book and boy howdy -  very detailed.  I had some staycation days that I used baking and baking and decorating.  My back and legs were killing me from standing up for hours on end.  I made gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies, potato chip cookies and these cake pops.

They came out not too bad.

I made about 48 cake pops.

My Boston pals were given a total of 15 each and my co-worker was given 4.  I saved 4 for people coming over for Thanksgiving, leaving 25 for me and my family to enjoy - tee hee.

This is my coworker's "Things to Remind You of What You're Leaving in Florida" Basket.  A beach towel, flip flops, sunglasses, suntan lotion spray and golf balls.  I also put in the 4 cake pops, 4 Christmas cookies and 2 potato chip cookies I made.

Hello Ginger

The holidays are soooooo close?  Can you feel it?  I can!  I am so excited.  I have started baking and freezing cookies to have them ready for decorating.  Isabel's teacher, my co-workers, friends, etc.   I love decorating cookies.

This year, beside my regular sugar cookies, I decided to try a gingerbread recipe.  The house smelled so good. I can't wait to decorate these little guys.

Cappuccino Truffle Cake

I decided to try a new recipe for a Cappuccino Truffle Cake.  In attempting said recipe, I tried making chocolate truffles.   This was quite funny.  Not.  Actually, it would have worked had my white chocolate melts not petered out.  Rather than melting into a nice coating, they melted into a paste.  Bye bye chocolate truffles.

The cake itself was REALLY yummy.  Almond butter cake with a coffee/Kahlua butter cream, with nuts and store-bought truffles.  (I hid some non-coated truffles under the store-bought ones.

It was a hit.  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture with anything but ze' crappy cell phone camera before we hacked right into this puppy.

My sad little non coated dark chocolate
truffle peeks out from the bottom right of the stack.

Purple Flowers Anniversary Cake

I mentioned earlier that I was working on a cake for a 90th birthday party that ended up getting cancelled due to unforeseen medical issues and car issues on our end.  The cakes remained in the freezer, the 400+ flowers in the pantry.  Since this weekend was our 10 year wedding anniversary, I made my own anniversary cake instead.  :)

Happy 10th Anniversary David

Golf and Deer Cookies

Hello!

I've been a little low-key on the baking lately.  I did start working on a cake for a relative turning 90, but things took a sideways turn, grandma went in the hospital and the party was postponed, so those cake plans were put to a halt.  Grandma is fine, by the way.

This past week, one of my best friends who works at our Baltimore company branch had a male co-worker in the hospital with a scare.  My friend/co-worker B is such a good person.  She went to the hospital several times to check up on our male co-worker K, as he has no family near and was alone until his family could drive in from out of state later that day.

While speaking over emails about him, we 4 gals who talk over email daily decided to do something for him to let him know we're thinking of him.  I offered cookies, they agreed and offered money to help pay for supplies and shipping.

K likes to hunt and golf, so I went on Google Images, found some cute designs and made these cookies below.

Part of company logo on shirt.

Isabel piped the grass on the golf balls.

I'll be mailing these off to him on Monday.  He's off recovering for a couple of weeks.

Get Well Soon, K!

Happy First Birthday Ava!

My niece turned 1 last week and I was asked to make the birthday cake.  (I had already made the baby shower cake when Ava was still "baking.")

The theme for her party?  Pink and black baby skulls.  (click the pics to make them bigger if you'd like.)

The top is a bandana with hearts.  It's an Oreo cookie cake.

The middle is an almond butter cake with buttercream, covered in fondant.

The bottom is a carrot cake in pink cream cheese frosting.  I stink at frosting cakes with icing.

The skull decorations on the cakes were hand cut out of gumpaste, all hand-decorated and all edible.

The only non-edible item was the pink glitter ribbon around the zebra tier.  That was me, being super-tired after an 8-hour work day, and 3 hours of decorating that same night,  saying "I give! No More! What do I have to put around this cake!?"

Ava's Smash Cake

Happy First Cutie Patootie!