Versatile Blogger Nominee!

Hello world! Time to take a quick break from cookies and royal icing. A break to thank Candy over at Lovely Buns for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award. Thank you so much Candy! Super sweet of you and I”m so glad you’ve been enjoying my blog! Please stop by her blog and check out her delicious yummies! She’s a hoot too!!

Candy, here are the 7 things about me…probably more than you want to know! LOL

1. In my 35 years, I’ve lived in 7 states and over 20+ houses/apartments! I’m an expert packer 🙂
2. My dream job would be to own a floral shop. I wouldn’t have the skills to make any of the floral designs, but I’d just enjoy seeing and smelling the beauty every day!
3. In my old life (before my two adorable kids) I was a total shoe hound! I had way too many shoes but in my opinion they all had a purpose.
4. I played softball and volleyball in high school. I wasn’t all that good at it but I did hit a home run once in Jr. Varsity softball and blocked a serve during a volleyball tourney. My proud sporting moments 🙂
5. I married the man of my dreams. I knew he was the man of my dreams before I even met him. It goes to show that waiting does work every once in awhile 😉
6. I have a sixth sense for knowing if someone is a good person or not during our first couple interactions. Took me years to actually follow my intuition however. Now my friends are the most amazing people and I am truly blessed to have them in my life!!
7. I have a cheese addiction. I really think I have a slight lactose intolerance issue but that doesn’t stop me. My favorite meal is a plate of dill pickles, soft swiss cheese, a can of smoked oysters and a handful of saltines.

According to the VBA rules, I need to nominate 15 of my favorite bloggers. This is the hard part!! I currently follow more blogs than I have time to look at. They are all amazing bloggers and their subjects are all dear to my heart.

• The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle
• Sweetopia
• Carrie’s Creations
• I Am Baker
• Naps Happen
• Cancun Cookies
• A Kitty And Her Cakes
• Kara’s Party Ideas
• The TomKat Studios
• Play At Home Mom
• The Bloggess
• Cookies and Cups
• The Bearfoot Baker
• Cupcakes Take The Cake
• LilaLoa

These bloggers are A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!!! Please please please go check them out and say hi for me 🙂

Broken Cake

I just want to remind everyone that crappy days do happen

This cake did not happen. It just wasn’t in the cards. But that’s ok. I moved on…although it was incredibly therapeutic to wash it down the garbage disposal 😉

Happy 1 Year Blogaversary Carrie!

I couldn’t realize how many cool people I would meet through this blog. And when I say “meet” I mean virtually 🙂 One of my fellow cake/cookiers, Carrie, mentioned about a month or so ago that she had been blogging for about a year and that her “blogaversary” was coming up. Having only been blogging since the beginning of the year I can attest this is a very special accomplishment!

I want to congratulate her in proper cake style 🙂 When I saw this cake from My Cake School, I knew instantly it was the one I wanted to make for her.

Happy Birthday/Anniversary Carrie’s Creations!! I know it’s not until April 9th, but I couldn’t wait to say “WAY TO GO!!” I can’t wait to see what creations you have for the 2nd year 🙂

If you haven’t checked out her site before, please stop by…she’s very creative and has some really cute cookies that she’s shown off in various posts 🙂

Fondant Fun

Tonight was the fourth class of the third Wilton cake decorating course. It was all about Gum Paste and Fondant. I had such a good time in the class, but I have to say I was WAY outta my comfort zone!! I don’t think we used a piping bag the entire month. And there wasn’t a single dollop of royal icing. Yowsers! But we made some beautiful flowers. Stuff that looks great…but to be honest doesn’t taste good at all. I know there are people that love to eat fondant, but I’m just not one of them. The flowers may look cleaner made in fondant, but I’ll take a buttercream or royal icing rose any day 😉

I thought I would showcase our final cakes. There were two other people in the class with me and their cakes turned out fantastic! One is a 13 year old girl and she did such a good job. She LOVES color that’s for sure 😉

And here’s my cake…

I’m unfortunately not going to be taking the fourth and final course at this time. Just too busy making cookies. This Wilton ride has been a fun and a wild one. Highly recommend it to anyone who wants to dabble in the arts and get out of the house for some “me” time.

Final Cake Full O’ Flowers

Final class of course 2 in the Wilton Cake Decorating series…COMPLETE!

I was telling the other girl in the class that I enjoyed this course (Flowers and Cake Design) more than the first (Decorating Basics) because we did cooler things, but I missed not bringing something home to eat each week like we did in the first course! hehe  Not that I need it of course and not that my husband and I even eat it, but it was still fun to have a little treat.

Last night I decorated my final cake using the flowers I’d made from the previous classes. I have zero artistic creativity so with some help from the instructor talking through the placement of the flowers I came up with this. Note the last picture is how my husband decided to dig in and eat the cake 🙂

The Cake That Couldn’t Break Me

If you saw my post from earlier today you know I baked a couple cakes to play with today. I need one for Monday’s cake decorating class and the other for my friend’s brunch tomorrow. I’ve been really looking forward to this brunch! I was assigned to bring a fruit salad…lord knows I love fruit so it was a perfect pairing. However, she also said, and I quote,

Should you have any type of homemade pastry/baked good hanging around the house, feel free to bring it with you on Sunday…I mean, why feed the raccoons of Bellingham when you can feed the girls of Arlington..? 🙂

So what’s a sugar crazed girl gonna do? Bake a cake!

Thank you to my sister-in-law who thought of me when she saw this amazingly beautiful cake on Pinterest. I Am Baker is an amazing site for things like this 🙂 Gorgeous! And since I was pretty good with making the rosettes I figured I should give it a whirl 🙂

Ran into a few hurdles along the way, but I was bound and determined to clear em.

First…Ran out of buttercream. I’ve never used buttercream before, but figured I needed quite a bit so I doubled the recipe, which by the way is SCRUMPTIOUS!! However it only made enough to frost the cake and make the roses around the sides.

Second…During mid-cake clean up my hubby crunched my only 1M decorating tip in the garbage disposal because I was an airhead and dumped out the cup they were soaking in. Never never never put the cup you are using to soak tips in the sink…always keep on the counter so you think about what you are doing! Nothing that a quick trip to the local Michael’s craft store can’t fix!

Third…My daughter who I swear grows an inch a week is either taller than she appears or used her go-go gadget arms and stuck a little finger in one of the side roses for an unofficial tasting.

Fourth…New batch of frosting tint doesn’t quiet match the tint for the side roses. Maybe after it sits a bit it’ll blend.

and Fifth…The cake is all done, pictures are taken and I’m happy. If you’ve ever seen the Food Network Cake Challenges you know it’s not over until you move the cake to the table. In my case, move the cake into the cake holder. My finger slipped when pushing the cake board back and whoops! there went my finger through one of the roses. My personal touch I guess 😉

Regardless…I’m happy with the cake for the first time making something like this. It’s pretty and I can’t wait to share it with my wonderful friends. The best part…I used milk chocolate mousse filling in the middle of the layers!! If you haven’t heard of this, it’s like heaven and you can find the recipe on one of my earlier posts here.

I Spy

I’ve been cooped up this week with a nasty head cold, not to mention my two kiddos were under the weather too. It’s been a rough one. I told my husband he’s lucky he can open the door and walk through the kitchen with how I’ve been feeling. But my energy level is back and I’m ready to bake!

On that note…I spy 2 cakes, milk chocolate mousse filling, 4 sticks of butter and new Americolor color gels. (oh and some chocolate chip cookies my hubby made while I was getting my piggies painted) Oh yeah I’m feeling better! Now, what to do…what to do…

Making a Garden

I have to be honest here (I mean I’m writing on the internet so what else could I possibly be??)…I’m loving making flowers. I wasn’t sure I would since I’m more of a cookie gal, but after the last three cake decorating classes I’m seeing how fun other treats can be. The words that come to mind when I look at these flowers are classy, beautiful, elegant, realistic (ok that’s a stretch I even know it), and maybe most appropriate…royal 😉

Here are the flowers I made last night. Now I just need to decide which ones make the cut and get used for my final cake design next week 🙂 All I gotta say is they better put their game face on before judging!

Lillies

Daffodils

Violets

And of course more roses!

Color Me Chartreuse

I’m on a mission to decorate a cookie that looks like a chocolate chip cookie. However, I am the proud owner of only 6 color gels…none of which are close to brown/tan. So I got to thinking…do they make decorating gels in every color or do they have some sort of mixing table to make certain colors? Looks like the latter is where it’s at. I’m happy to say that I will be purchasing some more gels this coming week so I can play around and decorate up some chocolate chip sugar cookies…OH YEAH!

Here are the links I came across that seemed to be the most helpful. I obviously haven’t tried any of them, but wanted to get them documented so I can soon 🙂

Americolor Soft Gel Color Guide

Americolor Guide from Sweet Sugar Belle’s Blog

Chefmaster Color Gels

Chefmaster and Americolor Guide

Wilton

Hodge Podge of Everything

Rose-a-licious

My amazing hubby sent me flowers for Valentine’s Day. They are on my kitchen counter smelling wonderful and making me smile every time I see them. While yesterday was a tough day for me, today things are looking up! I got both girls down for their afternoon naps and I even got a shower in before noon!! I know, GO ME! I came downstairs after my shower and saw my beautiful bouquet of flowers. I immediately knew what I needed to do.

I popped a waffle in the toaster and started filling up a piping bag (yes…waffle first…a woman does have her priorities after all). I decided to practice my Wilton roses. I hardly had any icing left over from Monday’s class, but enough to make 4 roses. So, as Jack Johnson sang sweet love songs to me I piped away! Definitely better before the icing gets too warm from your hand but I think I did pretty good 🙂