I scream for ice cream...AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

This cake was for my boyfriend's nephew's 5th birthday in December.  I was told vanilla cake, vanilla frosting with bananas on it. Real bananas. Then something about a car but that really didn't make sense so his mom told me we could put a toy car on it or something.

Well, here I was thinking I was a clever gal so in order to incorporate real bananas, I would make a cake that looked like a banana split!  I made this cake at my boyfriend's house with limited tools/equipment, so it didn't look particularly great, but it was recognizable.

Yeah, piping skills still sub-par.  Ah well.  Vanilla cake, vanilla frosting. I baked the base cake in a round pan and carved it into the sundae dish shape.  I used a Wilton Mini Wonder Mold pan and cut down the mini cakes to be short like ice cream scoops. I colored the vanilla frosting to have the colors I needed and used a little chocolate frosting for the chocolate scoop, and colored some chocolate frosting for the "fudge" on the chocolate scoop. The caramel is real caramel topping, the whipped cream is frosting, the strawberry topping is gum paste, as are the cherries.

The verdict? He immediately tried to take the cherries off because he didn't want them on there and he didn't like the cake in general. :-( I was crushed, but he IS only 5.  Looking back, I would have gone with a Hot Wheels cake (he loooves HW) and just ignored his request for the bananas, but ah well. Live and learn.

Rice EFFIN' Krispies, Anyone?

This was just a fun little activity to do. Who doesn't love Rice Krispie Treats? If you said yourself, you're a stinkin' liar and your pants might be aflame. Don't expect me to help you though. You lied to me.

This picture is bigger because, HELLO? Rice Krispies...DUH! Yeah, so I made some RKT (Rice Krispie Treats, for the newbies. Keep this in mind, I hope to be using the terminology one day and on a regular basis, as I foray into more advanced baking, i.e. Food Network Challenge type cake sculpting). I spread 'em into a pan, let 'em chill for a while, then melted some Wilton candy melts in varying colors. I dipped them bad boys and then had fun with all kinds of sprankles! So yumaroo. RKT, candy and sprankles. Sighhhh....heaven.

Are you ready for some football?

My boyfriend is a die hard Houston Texans fan. It doesn't matter that they haven't made the playoffs in their entire existence. He loves them and I feel sorry for anyone who makes fun of them in his presence. He will throw a huge tantrum! Haha, just kidding. He'll flick you hard, though.

For his birthday last year (July), his request was red velvet cake with buttercream frosting and something having to do with the Texans. Since he is an amazing artist (you should see what he drew me for my birthday), I asked him to draw me a Texans logo in a certain size.  I definitely didn't want to make the logo look like others I've seen, all wonky and misshapen. After he drew me the logo, I created a stencil out of it and went to work.

I took my stencil, colored and rolled out some gumpaste and used my trusty Exacto knife for the logo. This was my first "carved" cake and I was soooo nervous. Plus it was for my boyfriend so I was extra nervous. I think the cake was box and the buttercream was a mix but I can't be sure. He totally loved it and it took him a couple days to actually allow the logo layer to be cut into.  I was proud of myself on this one, for sure.

Chocolate, Chocolate and more Chocolate...

This next beauty was easy-peasy but looked super cute.  This was made for a kiddo who wanted chocolate cake and chocolate frosting for his birthday.  I looked for inspiration online and came across a beauty of a cake at http://designdazzle.blogspot.com that was perfect. I just went with chocolate instead of vanilla and used mini m&ms in addition to regular and peanut.

Mmmmmm...this is MY kinda cake.  Once again, box mix and canned frosting - but this time, chocolate.  I bought mini, regular and peanut m&ms and just lined em up with no rhyme or reason to the size but I liked the stripe effect with the colors. My boyfriend and his sister helped with the m&ms...and definitely enjoyed partaking in a few while we decorated. Sillies.


Who likes football?

Happy Birthday to ME? Not today though...

Next up we have my birthday cupcakes from last year. This was June, and Melinda (remember her?) and I decided to make some cupcakes. Once again, we pulled out the cuteness of "Hello, Cupcake" and tried to replicate it. We got sooo much closer this time.

Apples, anyone? Box vanilla cupcake, canned vanilla frosting, chocolate covered donuts, more vanilla frosting, colored sugar, Tootsie Roll stem and seeds, Airheads softened and cut/molded into leaves.  So fun to make!

m&ms anyone? Stand by!

Read the "Unattractive Cupcake" Disclaimer!

Yes. Here it is: These cupcakes are hideous! Oh em gee, I can't even believe I am posting them, but properly documenting the learning process is integral to this. To what? My embarrassment, obviously. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Ugly cupcakes forthcoming...

See what I mean? So ugly. Cute in it's ugliness. I believe these are also from, "Hello, Cupcake". My boyfriend and I decided to make these for Father's Day.  They involve box vanilla mix, donut holes, melted frosting, food coloring, lots of ugly and no know-how whatsoever. Heehee.  The "eyes" called for candy coated sunflower seeds (shelled) but I had NO IDEA (at the time) where to find those so we used a combination of icing and unsteady hands. Lookit these. No, don't look. I hide in shame. :-p

Next up, a little cuteness! Stay tuned!

zzzzZZZzzzzz...*snort*, "Wha...? I'm supposed to keep writing?"

Okay, so it's been a few...weeks. I'm a busy gal! Sheesh! I need more hours in the day or another day of the week! Maybe we can petition for another day of the week and call it, "Someday". Think of all the awesome stuff that would happen on it! Everyone's always talking about all the things they're going to do/accomplish "someday". We could all actually do those things finally! p.s. It would totally be a weekend day.

Anywayeeez. I have been doing a lot of baking, as usual. I started taking pictures as I go along with the intention of posting tutorials and such, but there's a problem. Every time I bake, I start off taking step-by-step pictures, only to get so caught up in the baking that I forget to snap pics all the way through.  If I was to post these with an entry, you'd all be like, "Hey, buttface! How did you go from combining dry ingredients to a really pretty cupcake?" Then you would want to kick me in the shin. Can't have that, I likey my shins. I promise, promise, super promise to get on the ball with that.  I have been kissing up to my mom, trying to get her to teach me her awesome numero uno recipe for baklava and I hope that will come to fruition soon, especially since I got a request for it from a VIP (pronounced, "vip" or "vee aye pee", your preference). That way I could take pics while she actually does it and explains, or she can take pics while she talks me through it. *fingers crossed*

In my previous entry I promised to post pictures of baking I've already done, so I'll go ahead and start those posts. I'll describe what the pics are and if anyone is interested in a tutorial or recipe, comment and I'll share it if I still have it - those early days of documented baking were dark times...meaning I hadn't really found the LOVE for scratch baking so some things were made from box mix and canned frosting. My bad. Sometimes there just wasn't enough time/energy for baking AND decorating efforts, so one got the ax.

Enough talky, here we go. This first set was an idea from the book, "Hello, Cupcake" (I think).

These are box mix and canned frosting. The effort was obviously reserved for decorating.  Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting, colored with Wilton color gel. Green for the "grass" base, Oreos (regular and mini) for the centers. Colored the vanilla frosting yellow and orange, then just pretty much shoved it in a Ziploc bag, cut one of the tips in an inverted "V" for the petal shape and went at it. As you can see, some of the petals are orange, some are yellow, and some (like the single above) have both colors when they FINALLY started to come out swirled.  The ladybugs are m&ms with chocolate frosting (colored black) piped on with another Ziploc bag with a very, very small amount of a tip snipped off.

This was before I started trying to learn legit skills and did things the hard way. I had no idea about icing plugs and obviously had no piping skills.  I just decided that I wanted to make some pretty cupcakes and I wanted to make my boyfriend decorate girly cupcakes. *snicker* He totally did, too, but he had a few beers while doing it so the manly cancels out the unmanly. Shhhh! He thinks so, don't burst his bubble. If you want to try these, I would suggest you use ready-made decorator's frosting or make your own thick, firm frosting. Canned is waayyyyy too soft. We had to keep pausing to put the bags in the fridge for the frosting to firm up. Sooo much time wasted.

Until next post!

Don't get sad, the next post is coming right up!