Cookies and Wreaths! It's Christmas time!!

Ah, Christmas. The time of year for family and friends to come together, share good food, fun, and cheer--and for people to stress the heck out right before everyone comes together to share good food, fun, and cheer.

I've mentioned several times that Sean and I have moved a lot  over the past 6 years or so. This seems to have an adverse impact on the amount of time we spend decorating. When we moved to Alaska we knew it was temporary, so we only brought up our tree and left our tubs and tubs of Christmas decorations in storage.

When we moved to our renovated loft apartment in New York, We put up the tree and a few knick-knacks here and there...but neither of us felt like trying to rent or buy a ladder to hang garlands, and there wasn't much surface area for porcelain Christmas villages and stuffed snowmen and the like, so we just let it go.

At THIS house, though, I was full of plans and dreams. We got our tree up around the first weekend in December. I put a wreath on the door. When my mom shipped me a better wreath, I put that one on the door instead, with plans to put the matching garland up. I went to Michaels and bought some new stuff.

And..... nothing's up. And now we're faced with the fact that we really only have about one week left before we take off to visit family and come back in January. So... the odds of it happening are slim now.

BUT. I blame my lack of decorating on another Christmas tradition. Baking. It's becoming somewhat of a tradition that Sean brings in baked goodie boxes for his team. And I, like a fool, cheerfully volunteer each year. So, this year for his 10-person team, I made this salted chocolate toffee pretzel bark (which is freaking amazing and amazingly simple), peppermint bark (also amazingly simple), spiced rum balls, cut gingerbread cookies, and --by their one request-- red velvet whoopie pies.

And of course I didn't remember to take pictures of any of it until literally everything was all boxed up and all that was left were these "reject" gingerbread cookies. And I want to get something straight... these snowflake cookies look all pretty and I'm proud of them and they were dang tasty...but they were also a ROYAL pain in the keister. Each of those arrow-head holes is made one-by-one with a cutter. So yes.  If you're feeling particularly artsy--by all means! Be my guest! If you're trying to mass-produce an insane number of cookies for 10 treat boxes, you may wish to stick with the smaller flakes or choose a different shape. And your husband might want to go grab you a beer after he hears you muttering in frustration when the dang itty bitty triangle jams up with gingerbread again. And that's before you even frost the suckers. He might want to bust out the vodka for you on that one.

Speaking of frosting, I don't really like royal icing. I think it's gritty and has a strange bitter sort of taste to it. However, I really wanted something with a fluid enough consistency that it could drip through the cracks of the snowflake, and I wanted it to have the side benefit of being hard or crusted. I had plans of piping each cookie with buttercream, but it only took me about three cookie cut-outs to realize that was never going to happen.

I stumbled upon this recipe for glaze, and I tweaked it a bit. I'm sure it's tasty just the way it is in the link, but I added an egg white (even though I don't like it in royal icing) in order to make the glaze crust faster, and then I also added more water until it reached the consistency I wanted. Then I just dipped and flipped the cookies and set them on racks to dry.

       For the glaze:
           1 lb of powdered sugar
           1/4 cup light corn syrup
           1/4 cup water, give or take for your desired consistency
           1 egg white
           Vanilla/almond/lemon/orange/mint extract--whatever you prefer
           Coloring gel, if desired

Basically, add everything together in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Start with a lesser amount of water and add more by the tablespoonful until the desired consistency is reached. If you want multiple colors from your glaze, divide it out into separate containers to color. Pipe, dip and flip, or pour the glaze. Et voila!

And then, as though 10 treat boxes weren't enough, Sean volunteered me to make a dessert for a holiday potluck party at his office. Granted, he knows that it's a pretty safe thing to volunteer me for--and everyone pretty much expects/hopes for a dessert from me anyway.

I wanted something classy that didn't require a TON of effort, so I decided to go with a variation of the winter wreath that can be found in the popular cookbook What's Up, Cupcake? Simply melt some white chips, white melties, or white vanilla-flavored candy coating and use your finger to smooth it on mint leaves. Set the leaves aside on a wax paper-lined cookie sheet and put in the fridge for a few minutes, until set. Slowly and carefully remove the mint leaves from the chocolate. If the chocolate isn't too hot when you slather it on and if you're careful when you peel back the leaves from the chocolate, you can use the leaves to make multiple chocolate molds.

The wreath above is actually two rows of mini cupcakes, but you can do it with regular sized cupcakes. And to tell you the truth, I really ought to have more leaves, but I was too lazy and decided to leave well enough alone. Use M&Ms, Cadbury Holiday Chocolates (pictured), or other candies for the red berries. The wreath also looks pretty with a ribbon or fondant bow.

By the way, this post took me nearly three days to write because, you know, all the stressing. And the baking, and the packing, and the cleaning, and the shopping, and the dog trimming. Maybe that last one is just me.

Merry Christmas, and happy baking!

A-touristing we shall go....

Touristing with Sean and I really ought to come with some sort of warning label.

"CAUTION: Touristing with this couple may cause your feet to fall off."

Or maybe, "WARNING: Proceed with tourist activities with Sean and Jillian at your own risk."

Or, "DANGER: These two individuals are not your standard tourists. If you have any injuries which may preclude you from running a marathon, the Surgeon General of the United States advises against proceeding further."

Sean's friend flew out from Phoenix, and we met him in Washington D.C. for a long weekend (yes, it was a long jaunt for him, but Southwest Airlines fare sales are not to be ignored). 

Now, Jeff is no fool. He visited us in Japan when we lived there, and we warned him to bring his most comfortable shoes because we were going to be walking to the back of beyond--and back again.  He kind of grinned at this statement at first, but dag gum it...we walked that grin right off his face.

The Washington Monument. Smithsonian Castle on the left.

I've gained quite a bit of weight since returning from Japan, but because of the wonder that is Crocs (no, not the fugly ones that look like clogs--and "fugly" is not a typo, don't ask me to explain it--but the cute ones that look like mary janes or ballet flats or sandals), I can still pull off 6-10 mile days without too much pain. Or so I thought. I always bring my two most comfortable pairs of walking shoes, which fit differently. That way, if one rubs me and gives me blisters on one day, I switch it out to the other pair the next to give myself a break--or sometimes I carry the secondary pair with me. And I always load up on a bunch of band-aids and pass them out like candy to everyone in our party.

We met up with a friend of mine who lives in DC and had a relatively easy first evening. We probably only logged 4-5 miles. It would have been less, but we got off at the wrong metro stop. We viewed the Washington Monument and the Capitol at sunset on the way to the hotel, and then in full dark on our walk back to meet with my friend. 

The Capitol Building

The next day.... well, the next day felt fairly epic. Being in DC on Veteran's Day is an experience in and of itself. We started out in Arlington National Cemetery and walked as far as we could, even though the whole place was on relative lockdown due to Secret Service security before the President came to lay a wreath at the  Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. We looked at the crowds gathering to take the shuttle up to the Tomb and decided that as cool as it would be to see the President at the ceremony, we didn't feel like being jammed in with 5,000 of our closest friends for nearly 3 hours for a 20-minute ceremony. Instead, we walked as far as they would let us before we felt moderately intimidated by an MP squad of Marines in full dress blues. 

Arlington National Cemetery

Then we walked back down through Arlington and crossed the bridge to the National Mall and Mr. Abe Lincoln himself. Right about then is when we saw the Presidential Motorcade whipping through the streets. We were talking about it later, and it really probably would have been cheaper to have the President come in on Marine One rather than shutting down the motorcade route and pulling the Marines, the Police, and the Secret Service into the mix, but then we realized there's really nowhere in Arlington to land a helicopter. 

We took in the crowds around the Vietnam Wall and decided to hit it later, then squeezed in to see Lincoln with our fellow patriots. Sean had gone for a six-mile run around the Mall in the morning around dawn, and he convinced us that doing the Mall and the Tidal Basin at dawn meant that we'd be sharing the monuments with four of our closest friends, not 4000. Not being a morning person, I really didn't want to consider the dawn jaunt...but then Sean showed me some pictures on his phone from the run, and I decided he was right.

Washington Monument at dawn 

Washington Monument pre-dawn

So, we trekked to the nearest metro station--which happened to be named Foggy Bottom, isn't that cool?--about two miles away, to meet up with my friend again in Friendship Heights for lunch. After another long walk from the metro station, it's a darn good thing Pete's New Haven Style Pizza was as tasty as Kirstin promised. At this point, we're about 5 miles into our day.

And then the conversation went something like this:

Sean - "How far away is the zoo from here?"

Kirstin - "Close-ish. Just a couple of metro stops. Did you want to walk, or take the metro?"

Sean - "I'm always up for walking. Let's walk."

Jeff and I exchange loaded looks of foreboding and doom. 

Somewhat reassured by Kirstin's statement that the zoo was "just down the hill," we began trekking in the general direction. Kirstin kept us moving on mostly level or downhill areas, so that was good. And she took us through some really scenic neighborhood. But one and a half miles in, I was starting to wonder just how far "down the hill" is. And then we came to another metro station, and the conversation again went something like this: 

Kirstin - "Do you guys want to keep walking, or take the metro?"

Sean - "How far away is it?"

Kirstin - "The entrance is between two metro stops, so it depends on which one you want to go to. So just one or two more stops. It's close-ish."

Sean, after looking at Jeff and I - "Let's walk."

Jeff and I  shift painfully from foot to foot and exchange glances of foreboding and doom.

A mile later, and Kirstin says we're "close-ish." By this time, we're starting to razz her. We figure our breakdown in communication lies in our relative understanding of the distance between metro stops. Sean and I--being used to NYC subways--figured two stops would be something like a mile, maybe a mile and half. Not three. One mile = close-ish. Three miles = take the metro.

And by now, Jeff is lagging a bit but trying not to show it. I'm lagging a bit and trying not to show it, but Sean must have a radar, because he drops back to ask me how I'm doing. At this point, my right foot is radiating pain into my toes, and the pad of the foot feels like I'm walking on bone, not muscle and skin. 

Tien Tien, the male panda

"I'm mostly fine," I say, "but do you have any Advil in your bag?" He doesn't. I say that it's fine, I'll power through anyway. But another block down, and the pain is excruciating. I went from legitimately being "mostly fine" to feeling like I have to amputate my foot. Luckily, there's a Walgreens, so I go in and buy some pills and a soda and dope myself up. I never dope up on pain meds of any kind, so that in itself is a signal of severity.

Then it's half a mile to the zoo. Then it's walking around and around the zoo. I'm trying not to limp. For whatever reason, it's just my right foot. Sean swears he's a little sore, too, but ironically he's doing the best out of all of us--even after his 6 mile run. Jeff is starting to sit down on any benches that present themselves when it appears that we're going to be stationary for more than 30 seconds. I'm afraid to sit down, because I don't know if I'll make it back up.

We finally call it quits in the zoo and hike back up the hill. Jeff suggests eating at the frozen yogurt place across from the entrance. I don't think anyone was very hungry, but I readily agree because I. am. in. so. much. friggin'. pain. 

Washed-out White House

We take our time at the yogurt shop and end up sitting for close to 40 minutes. At this point, we're on mile 9 or so. The pills are kicking in and the sitting has done me good, so when we get up, I'm the one that suggests we walk to the White House. I ignore Jeff's look of foreboding and doom. 

Half a mile down the road, and I'm fantasizing about chewing off my foot at the ankle. But I'm the one that suggested this trek, so I'm gonna suffer in silence, dammit. We make it to the White House and "ooh" and "ahh," then make our way back to the Mall. We stop in at a Cosi for coffee and the bathrooms, and Jeff again sacks out on a chair. After limping back from washing my hands, I join him. Sean is already there.

Coffees in hand, we head back out to the Mall. We walk down the length--which is pretty long on its own. We hit the Vietnam Wall, and I don't even want to walk the length of it--I say it's dark and I've seen it before, but the truth is, I'm still fantasizing about cutting off my foot. We're on mile 10, easy. Possibly even 12.

Washington Monument at dark

Then we cruise over to Lincoln and see him again at night from a distance, and take some awesome pictures of the Washington Monument. This is when Sean starts saying that it's really worth it to come in at dawn, and I'm starting to believe him, just because I don't want to walk the rest of the way. Then Jeff says that he's game to walk it all tonight AND tomorrow if we want to... he'll be fine.

So we cruise on over to the Korean War Memorial, then across the street to the Tidal Basin to peek in on MLK. We stop at the restrooms, and Jeff sacks out on a bench. It's obvious that he's in a lot of pain, and I'm cycling in and out of it. In the restroom, I tell Kirstin that I think we need to cut it short and find out where to eat dinner. When we get outside, Sean and I do one of those silent communication things that only married people on the same wavelength can pull off, and he agrees. So, we go see MLK since he's right there. As we're walking, I realize that I'm doing this as much for me as for Jeff, because dammit, pain is not supposed to spike up my toes like this. 

We see MLK and accidentally photo bomb some people, then head back to the far side of the Mall to try and find dinner. Halfway through, we give up and try to find a taxi. We finally find one, ask the driver to drop us off at a usually busy intersection, and when we get to the intersection to find food.....everything is closed. Sunday night off the Mall on Veteran's Day, and not an open eatery to be found--for under $60/plate. So we walk for four more blocks before we dive into an open joint. It's not even 7:30, but it feels like midnight. Jeff is dead on his feet, and just wants to go to bed. He encourages us to stay out, but none of us want to, either. As much pain as I'm in, I'm somewhat used to it. If he's on Phoenix time and just wants to go to bed, I know he's in serious pain.

So, though the metro stop is legitimately close (the joke of the weekend became adding "-ish" to the end of words to sarcastically indicate the opposite... "close-ish" for really far, "fun-ish" for misery, etc.), we hail the first cab we can find and ride it back to the hotel. We rationalize that splitting the cab fare three ways actually ends up cheaper than three metro tickets. 

Jeff heads up to the room immediately while Sean and I stop in the sundry shop for something sweet and some drinks. By the time we get up to the room, he's ready for bed and just waiting to climb in. 8:30 PM in Washington DC, and he's out like a light. 

Washington Monument at dawn, day 2

I end up being awake the longest. I beat both of the boys by more than an hour, and am ironically the second one up before dawn--Sean, of course, was first. We take a cab back down to Lincoln and walk the mall at dawn. I just have to get out of the car and see the sun starting to rise, the empty mall, and smell the fresh air to think, "this is so worth it."

So anyway, you're getting the point, I'm sure. We walk Lincoln and Korea and MLK and FDR and Jefferson and back to our hotel. And after Jefferson, it's becoming obvious that my right foot is fine, but now my left foot is spiking pain. But I say that walking back to the hotel is fine, even though we're already on two miles, and it's at least two miles back. I tough it out because it's a gorgeous day, but by the time we get back to the hotel, I can't hide my limp. 

So after all this walking, and the laps we did of Union Station and the Baltimore airport, when I was no longer trying to hide the fact that I was in pain... I'm feeling pretty low about myself that I'm wussing out after all this walking.

Jefferson Memorial at dawn on the Tidal Basin

Tidal Basin at dawn

Well, it turns out it's a legit problem, and not just because I'm out of shape. Apparently there's some sort of nerve bundle in that part of my foot that might need some form of surgery--so good news that I'm not just a wuss, but bad news on the whole nerve bundle thing.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial at dawn

Kirstin texted me that she could feel all of our trekking in her hip the next day--and we were 5 miles in before we met up with her.  Jeff was still recuperating himself. He spent a good deal of time rubbing his knee. The only person that appeared mostly unscathed was Sean. Of course. 

In fact, he just came to say goodnight, and peeked over my shoulder.

"You have me intrigued by your warnings at the top," he said.

"Yeah, I figured they're pretty accurate," I replied.

"Did you tell them about 'close-ish'?" he asked.

"Yeah, I did," I said.

"What about Marriott coffee?" 

I shuddered. "No, I didn't tell them about Marriott coffee. The post is getting really long, and besides.... it's not supposed to be a horror story."

He laughed. "True. Are you coming up to bed?"

"Soon-ish," I say.

OMG! That's an iPhone cake? LOL!

A couple of months ago, a friend at work sent me a link to a picture she had found on Pinterest (believe it or not, I have never been on Pinterest. I also don't have a Twitter account, and I barely check my Facebook. Oh, and I still don't know what tumblr is. Yeah. I guess I'm "lame" like that). It was a bunch of cute-as-a-button iPhone cupcakes, arranged in a grid against a patterned background to suggest it was the screen of an iPhone, and each cupcake was a little app. If such technology could be cute, it was cute.

So that got me thinking that I wanted to do an iPhone cake for Sean's birthday. I looked online and googled iPhone cake images, and I was disappointed in the number of cakes that used edible paper and food-grade ink to just print the iPhone screen and lay it on top of fondant. I mean, I could rally on about how such cakes don't use artistry or skill, but really, it was more the fact that I don't have one of those printers, edible paper, or food-grade ink. So I totally couldn't do that even if I wanted to. Which I didn't. Even though it would be easier and more accurate than hand-shaped apps. Meh. Actually, I'm kind of glad that I don't have edible paper and food-grade ink. I might have caved to temptation.

I did find a couple that made little app buttons out of fondant, so I knew there was hope.

The truth of the matter, though, is that after a week of intense baking and my day job (not to mention that it was also a week of intense baking failures), I had kind of lost all enthusiasm for baking the cake. In fact, I might have backed out if I hadn't already sneakily arranged for Sean to be booked in a "meeting" at work with his team so that I could pounce on him with the cake and embarrass him with an off-tune chorus of "Happy Birthday".

For once, I used regular rolled fondant instead of making my own marshmallow fondant. I just didn't have the gumption. Because I work from home, I was able to make the cake and have it done and cleaned up before Sean got home--but only because it was a slow day at work.

And man alive...I honestly feel like this is my favorite cake to date. Really. I love it. First cake that I didn't want anyone to cut.

Cool, right? So cool, it's like I wasn't even the one to make it. It's got the Settings app cog wheel! Maps app! The Safari compass! Volume buttons on the side, the headphone jack and switch on top, and the charging point on the bottom! C'mon... if you have an iPhone, please tell me you can recognize a lot of these!

Oh, sure. There are things I would do differently. I would make the background a lighter color of grey. I would use less water to clean the powdered sugar off the fondant so that it wasn't so shiny (though it WAS less shiny after chilling out all night. These photos were taken approximately 30 seconds after completion).

And Sean was surprised, so that part of it was a success. He figured something might be going on when his team asked him to come into the meeting, but he didn't expect me there, or the iPhone cake of Awesomeness.

He gawked at it for a little bit, afraid to cut it--and gawking was fine, because everyone was crowding in to get pictures before it was destroyed.

"Well," he said, once he finally took the plunge, "at least it makes for good portion control. Who wants what app?"

(I got the photo album sunflower.)

I wonder if there's a niche market just for iPhone cakes...

Hap-bee Halloween!

When I was little, I LOVED Halloween. I would drag out the big box of decorations from the hallway closet and decorate the house. We lived in the country, though, so we never got trick-or-treaters...and mom always shuttled me into my grandma's neighborhood, or one down in town.

As I've gotten older, I don't have the same love of Halloween as I did when I was little. I HATE slasher movies (hate, hate, hate, hate them), don't really like supernatural/spooky movies (kinda hate them, too), and roll my eyes a little bit when I drive past the houses with miles of fake spider webs and a whole graveyard in the front yard.

I do love autumn, though, and I feel like a little celebration of Halloween is always fun. So, earlier this week, I carved this:

Not a traditional jack-o-lantern, but I had fun making it. I used an X-acto knife, a $2 pumpkin knife from Michael's, and--believe it or not--a jumbo open-star frosting tip.

And then I made this:

mmmmmm......braaaaaiiiiiiiins......

And this:

Mummy!

Some cute, non-scary Halloween-themed cupcakes for my husband's Halloween-themed office party.

And then, I dressed up my long-suffering dog like this, and told him to bee a good dog:

Aw! So cute!

Hap-bee Halloween!

60 Sucks...the Epic Fail Resolution

So, remember how in my last post I was writing it at 2:30 in the morning because I had the epic fail of awesomeness with the stacked cake, so I was going to make a sheet cake?

Well, the sheet cake was also an epic fail. The client wanted half chocolate, half vanilla together in one cake. And I knew... I KNEW as soon as I started frosting that it wasn't going to work. When the chocolate cake started pulling apart during the crumb coat, not the actual frosting... I knew I was doomed, but I tried to persevere, anyway.

And the weird thing is that on both the sheet cake and stacked cake, it was the chocolate cake that failed. The vanilla was fine. So, apparently, I need to revisit that particular recipe.

So, at about 3:30 in the morning, I finally broke down, searching through my pantry in tears for magical Option #3. When I came across the marshmallows, I knew I had it. I made marshmallow fondant, and after a few failed attempts to make badges for cupcakes with NY Mets colors of orange, white, and blue, I finally dyed the fondant orange, and used white icing to pipe "60" and blue icing to pipe "Sucks!"

See, it was a surprise 60th birthday party, and they wanted "60 Sucks!" with a bunch of lollipops as a cake topper. Tongue-in-cheek cute, right? Or maybe back-handedly insulting? Either way, it was a close group of people, and they thought it would be hilarious. I ended up sticking a blue and orange Tootsie Pop mini sucker (with white writing on the labels! Mets colors!) on the top of every cupcake, so they looked like this:


I had gone to bed at 5:30 in the morning with the plan to sleep until about 8, but then, ironically, I couldn't really get to sleep. At 8, I texted the client, telling her that the cake gods were really, really angry with me.

She replied, "Fire and brimstone angry?"

I explained the situation as succinctly as I could, aided in large part by sending her the photo of the epic fail. Then I told her that cake #2 also failed, so I made badges for cupcakes (sent pic) and was willing to provide 24 to 36 cupcakes for free, and lend her any cupcake display equipment that I had. She was okay with that--even insisted on paying me anyway--and so I got up, went to the store for eggs, shortening, and cocoa powder (somehow I  had run out during the night, imagine that), and got to work baking.

For once, everything turned out fine--and worked the first time.

She sent me a photo from the party, and said that everyone loved the cupcakes. I think cupcakes are kind of more fun at casual parties anyway--but of course I would think that after the night that I had!

Early in the Evening of Failure, before things started to go bad, I had told Sean that my sister texted me to tell me that she thought the Sweet 13 post was hilarious, because she could imagine Sean trying to duck and cover. 

"She asked if you minded being the comic relief," I said.

"And what did you say?" he asked.

"I said that you didn't mind because you never really read my blog, but I had told you that you were the comic relief, and that sometimes you peek over my shoulder at what I'm writing. And I only (mostly) tell the truth, anyway."

"Mostly?"

"Yeah, well, in the football helmet one I posted a hypothetical conversation where we were talking about football, and since I root for the perceived underdogs, I asked you which defensive line was smaller, and you said, 'what's a defensive line?' "

He just kind of looked at me.

I said, "I know, I know, that's probably unfair. You know what a defensive line is. Probably even better than I do."

He said, "Yes. It's a line. They get very defensive. They really don't take criticism very well."

I started laughing so hard I was crying, and then he was laughing at me laughing so hard that I was crying, that he started to cry.  I kept trying to stop and get control of myself, but then would say, "they don't take criticism very well! Haaaaa!" and I would snort and be off laughing again. The whole thing lasted for about 10 minutes.

So in case you didn't know what a defensive line in football is, it's a bunch of big, angry men, all lined up--who happen to not take criticism very well!

Ugh. Epic Fail.

Ugh.

Do you ever have one of those days where people ask you how you're doing, and you don't even want to expend the effort that it would take to answer in actual words?

That's how I feel. It's a grunting kind of night. Morning. Whatever.

Here's the deal. It's 2:30 in the morning and I'm writing a post because I'm waiting for cakes to cool.

Why am I waiting for cakes at 2:30 in the morning? Why didn't I have them done earlier?

Well, I did, you see.  I had a lot of them done earlier.  And then this happened.

Ugh.

Yeah. That's three layers of cake awesomeness. And by "awesomeness," I mean "awesomely horrible and catastrophic to a degree that there are no words to further describe it."

It's supposed to be a stacked, three-tier cake with berry filling. Although now that bottom layer kind of looks like a pile of diseased poo carnage.... aren't you glad I just put that image in your head?

I was plagued with problems from the beginning, and the thing is, I can't even figure what went wrong. Besides everything, I mean. Obviously, everything went wrong, but what was the crucial first step? My stacked cake the other day turned out fine. The wedding cake that I stacked this summer turned out fine. I would say "WTF" right about now, but I'm pretty sure my grandma reads my blog, and I'm not sure I want to say "WTF" knowing that she'll see it.

I nearly broke down (a couple of times, actually). But I have my TobyMac music on in the background as loud as it can be with my husband sleeping upstairs, and Toby's keeping me tear-free and bee-bopping around the kitchen. It's another one of my "worst is relative" moments... if this is the worst thing that happens to me this week, I'm ahead of 99.8% of the world. I can handle that.

So, right now I have sheet cakes cooling. I've made the frosting, I have the filling ready. I'll post pictures of the finished--and much downsized--final product tomorrow. Hopefully the client (who is a new one, ironically enough) is chill and won't mind a sudden change in plan--and hopefully nothing goes wrong with the sheet cakes. I could do this tomorrow, but I still have a day job that expects me to show up and put in my time... slave-drivers.

And yeah, to my friend who always lets me know what she thinks of my blog posts--you know who you are--I realize that Sean did not make an appearance in this entry. Hopefully there's enough comedic relief without him.

Oh, and I suppose the day wasn't a total cakey waste. I had a lot of leftover goods from the masterfully epic fail of awesomeness above, so I made this cake for my neighbors in about 15 minutes to thank them for all the yard work they've done for us. I didn't tell them that my writing/scrolling icing also failed. Or that it was made of leftover bits from the other cake. Or that the chocolate leaves have been in our fridge for a while because they were from an aborted birthday cupcake batch. Not my best work, but--as I'm reminded as I look at my kitchen island right now--it's nowhere NEAR my worst.

Sweet...13?

So, I have to admit to an embarrassing truth. Nearly all of my official orders come from one woman. She works with Sean and has a fairly large family, so she usually dials me up for birthdays or other important gigs. I'm grateful for her business, but part of me wishes that I could expand more easily. Wait, what? You're telling me I have to do things like advertise and market and stuff? Oh. Okay. Never mind, for now. 

Anyway, this uber-loyal customer contacted me for her daughter's 13th birthday. As we stood in the parking lot near our cars when I delivered her son's New York Giants helmet cake, she told me that she thought she should make sort of a big deal of this birthday, because it was her 13th. When I commented that I didn't have a big deal made of my 13th birthday--or even my 16th--she agreed with me. But she still wanted to go all-out. Who was I to deny her?

She said that she wanted a stacked cake with zebra print and a funky neon green bow on top, and left the rest of it up to me. I'd never done a fondant bow before, but the online how-tos seemed pretty easy. I got the whole cake done fairly easily, using sugar sheet zebra print to save time (and thus money) for the zebra motif. And the bow I made out of marshmallow fondant. About three of my bow loops cracked and died a premature death before I could get them on the cake. I got the whole thing done and stood back to take pictures, zooming in from different angles. When I looked at the pictures to see how they turned out, the bow was wonky and...stupid. 

Something about pictures makes the subject more objective. Like, looking at it on the little digital screen allowed me to see flaws that I couldn't necessarily see when I was up-close and personal. I turned to my husband across the room.

"This bow sucks, doesn't it?" I asked, already irritated and oozing be careful what you say vibes. 

"What do you mean?" he responded. "It depends on what you're going for."

I stood there, simultaneously gaping at him, tamping down irrational anger, and shooting him a venom-laced look of death.

"What I'm going for?" I hissed in a (reasonably) restrained voice. "What do you mean, what I'm going for?" 

He looked at me, suddenly aware that he was on thin ice. 

"Well, uh, I mean, if you're going for the super-deluxe, luxurious, 5-layer bow, then it's not. But if you're just going for a funky bow, it is." His eyes were wide as he looked back at me, waiting to see if he needed to duck and cover or if he could stand his ground.

I continued to glare at him, and then realized how foolish and how stereotypically hormonally female I was being. I willed myself to GET A GRIP and decompress.

"Could you see how deep you were shoveling that hole of yours the more that you kept talking?" I asked him with a (hopefully) self-deprecating smile.

"Yeah" he said tentatively, obviously still unsure if he was still skating on thin ice. "That's why I decided that I had just better shut up."

I let him escape in relief as I tweaked the bow a bit by pushing some parts in, pulling some parts out, and yada yada yada. It turned out fine. After all, I wasn't going after a "super deluxe, luxurious, 5-layer bow." All I needed was "funky." Mission accomplished. 

Give me an N! Give me a Y! What does that spell? Football!

When people ask me if I'm a Broncos fan, or a Cowboys Fan, or  Steelers fan, or whatever, my usual response is, "Uh, I don't really follow any sports, but I can be if you want me to be." When pressed, I'll say that I'll root for the Patriots, generally--because it makes me feel patriotic. Or the Ravens, because of that movie The Blind Side. But really, the only time football is on in my house is normally as background noise in the fall, because it reminds me of my dad.  If I have to root for someone,  I usually just choose whoever's defensive line looks smallest, because they feel like the underdogs.

My husband, bless his soul, cares even less about sports than I do. For instance, if I said, "Hey, do you know whose defensive line is smaller?" his reply might be something like, "Um... what's a defensive line?"

He has many other redeeming qualities, though. To illustrate: last weekend we took a day trip to look at foliage and hunt down some covered bridges in Vermont. We went to lunch, then walked into a co-op art gallery downtown with my parents. The long-haired, bearded, tie-dye-garbed guy behind the counter squinted at Sean for a few seconds, and then said, "Hey. Has anyone ever told you that you look like Ryan Gosling?"

Sean looked startled for a second, then looked at me, then laughed and said, "Actually....yes."

The first time it happened, it was a little old lady at the grocery store or somewhere. So when I told him that of course I always knew he was good looking, and even strangers agreed with me, he was able to shrug it off and say that she probably needed new glasses.

Hard to come up with that excuse for the young tie-dyed hippie man behind the counter, though.

"Or a little bit like Ryan Reynolds, too," hippie man said.  "Like a famous Ryan combo!" Sean and I squinted at each other. Ryan Gosling, ok. That's rooted in truth. But Ryan Reynolds? Not so much.

And my dad really helped. As we were leaving, he said, "Who did that guy say Sean looked like?"

"Ryan Gosling," I responded.

"Who is Ryan Gosling?" he asked.

So anyway, to recap--I just said that my husband's passing resemblance to Ryan Gosling is a redeeming quality for not caring about sports. That both suggests that not caring about sports is something for which redemption is necessary, and that I am shallow enough to accept good looks and relative hotness as said redemption. I don't really feel like either is true, but meh--it makes a good story. (Plus, I've been told by a regular reader that I can't publish any more posts without including Sean as comic relief--so that's naturally going to result in some non-sequiteur stories.)

My original point was that I'm so out of touch with sports that when someone asked if I could make a flat cake shaped like a New York Giant's helmet, I had to do a Google image search and check out the logo first, before I gave an answer. When I saw that the logo was a simple NY on a blue helmet with a red stripe, I said yes.

I printed the logo out on regular paper, then cut it out on top of marshmallow fondant with an Xacto knife. With the exception of the NY, everything else is buttercream. To get the smooth effect, I did the classic coat, chill, and smooth with a Viva paper towel. It works, people. It really works.

I would really love to post the picture of the birthday boy enjoying his cake, but it's against my morals to post other people's kids on a public blog. Let's just say that the little boy was SMEARED with blue, and had to make an immediate trip to the bathtub before he turned smurf-like. You know frosting is kid-rated good when it turns your mouth (and your hands, and your face) blue!

Spicing up Autumn! Cake Mix Tweak #3

I took our pooch for a walk today. It's happening, folks. Autumn is coming. It's not yet cool enough to need a jacket--in fact, we might get hit with some burning-hot Indian Summer days yet--but you can smell it in the air. The leaves are trying to decide if they want to turn. Here and there you can catch a glimpse of red on the traitorous tips of the oak leaves.

I love fall. Every year, I try to decide if fall or spring is my favorite season, and I usually come out on the side of fall. I just love the crispness, and the apples, and the harvest festivals, and the fairs, and leaves, and the chilly air that makes you want to spend time outside and then come in and have some hot apple cider or stew and snuggle up on the couch watching your favorite movie.

But there is one inescapable fact about fall: it comes right before winter.

I like winter, too, more or less. I mean, I don't hate it. But in my perfect little world, it would be fall until about December 12th or so, then it would be snowy with winter until about January 12th, and then spring would sweep in and we'd be all done with the snow and the cold and the ice. We had a really mild winter last season...but that doesn't mean that I want to repeat it so soon!

Anyway, like usual, I digress. To me, fall also means the return of pumpkin and spice and apple flavors. And that brings me to Cake Mix Tweak #3--White Spice. I've got about three different cake mix tweaks up my sleeve relating to spice flavors, but I figure I won't spill them all now. For now, I'll just concentrate on White Spice.

Many of the box mixes for spice cake that you can buy at the super market are dark, heavy, and overly sweet. While I think there's definitely a place for dark spice cakes, I tend to prefer a gentler hand with the spices. For the times that I don't, I have --of course-- a darker spice tweak.

Anyway, start out with your favorite white cake mix. Mix as directed. And then--and disclaimer here, folks, I don't really measure the spices when I dump them in, so these are all just guesses--add a tablespoon of cinnamon, two teaspoons of ginger, a teaspoon and a half of cloves, up to a teaspoon of allspice, and grate in half of a nutmeg. If you don't have freshly grated nutmeg, you should get some. But seriously, if you can't get fresh nutmeg, I would guess that half a nutmeg is about 2-3 teaspoons. Mix well, and bake according to box directions.

Now, if you don't have some of these spices, don't panic. The major taste players in spice cake are cinnamon and nutmeg--and this is your cake and your taste, so do it however you want. Just remember, if you taste the batter, the finished product is going to taste more subtle than the batter does, so don't be afraid if it tastes a little strong.

And if you really want to bring the spice flavor home, you can mix a smaller ratio of the same spices into your canned frosting of choice--though I do think that vanilla, white, or cream cheese frosting is a MUCH better choice to be spiking with spice than chocolate or, say, funfetti.

If you want to impress everyone, you can make little chocolate and caramel "acorns" to top them with, too. It was difficult for me to find the packaged caramels, because we're a tiny bit out of season, but I did find the "caramel bits" near the chocolate chips and they worked fine. If you're using individually-packaged caramels, use a whole one for regular-sized cupcakes or full cakes, and cut it in half for mini cupcakes. If you're using the caramel bits, use one to six little balls.

Zap the caramel in the microwave on low heat for 5-10 seconds or just until it's malleable. Quickly roll it between your palms to create an acorn shape. Set it aside on wax or parchment paper until all acorns are complete.

Heat some chocolate chips--or better, chocolate "melties" available at candy and craft stores--in the microwave until melted. Dip 1/4 to 1/3 of the top of the acorn into the chocolate, and immediately dip and coat the chocolate tops in chocolate "jimmies"--or the chocolate sprinkles that you never knew had a name. Set aside on wax paper until set. Refrigerate if needed. Use melted chocolate (in a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off) to pipe the stem, or use chocolate or brown-tinted icing, if preferred.

And there you go--a shockingly easy, delicious, beautiful presentation for autumn-themed cupcakes--and no one ever needs to know it started in a box!

(For those of you who prefer cakes from scratch, you can still add spices to your white cake for a new flavor--it's one of my favorite kinds of cake!)

Happy baking!

Toddler Mutant Ninja Turtle

I'm dating myself, here. I grew up in the era of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They were pretty cool, right? Patrolling the city's sewers, fighting foes with their awesome martial-artsy skills. It wasn't until I was in college that I really examined how strange the concept of the whole show was. I mean, just listen to the title. Say it out loud. Slowly. Word by word.

Teenage
Mutant
Ninja
Turtles.

What the ... ?

Can you imagine how that studio pitch meeting went?

"Hey Bob, I've got a great new idea for a kids' cartoon."

"Oh yeah? What's the premise?"

"Well, there are these turtles who live in the sewer in the big city. Never know what might actually be in sewers in the big city. Might be alligators. Why not turtles?"

"...Turtles?"

"Yeah! Mutant turtles!"

"Okay...."

"And they all learn martial arts from a wise old rat."

"A mutant rat?"

"Yeah, a wise, old, mutant rat. And they all have these really cool, educated, artsy names. Renaissance masters. Like Michaelangelo."

"All of them?"

"Um, well, maybe. We're working on that."

"Okay.... so, uh, what's the point?"

"Oh, yeah. They go around fighting evil. Basic super hero stuff. But they're not supposed to exist, right? Because they're mutant turtles. So they have to stay in the sewer and fight on the down low and eat pizza and learn from the rat."

Silence.

Awkward shuffle.

"Uh, did I mention that they're teenagers? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

"By God, Mike, why didn't you just say so in the first place! It's brilliant! It's fan-freaking-tastic! We'll start story boards on Monday!"


Come on. Give me a break. It can't have been THAT easy, right? I mean, it sounds like something a college pothead came up with at 2 a.m. for his visual arts class. And yet look at it! It took the world by storm! Swept across the U.S. in a flurry of backpacks and lunch boxes and figurines and lousy live-action movies. I don't remember a whole lot of parents saying "boo" about it. But then again, I probably wasn't paying much attention.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with cake. The reason it's on my mind is because I was asked to do a cutesy turtle cake for a second birthday party. When I told my friend about it, he asked if it was going to be a TMNT cake. I laughed and said no, and that the 2-year-old was WAY too young to even have ridden on the TMNT revival bandwagon. But as I was frosting the cake, my husband wandered by and said, "So cute! All he needs is a little bandanna mask and nun chucks!"

I snickered a little bit and said, "but he's way too young for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.* Just two. So wouldn't that be more like the Toddler Mutant Ninja Turtles?"

He just kind of looked at me and shrugged.

Regardless, I ended up with a cutesy turtle cake frosted in buttercream. I didn't want to waste a bunch of excess or carve the cake, so I baked the "shell" in my largest Pyrex* bowl, and the head and feet are made from trimmed cupcakes. I put him in the fridge, and when he came out I used a smooth paper towel, placed it against the cake, and rubbed it gently to give the buttercream a smoothed look--being careful that the heat of my hands didn't make it gooey (and looking at the picture, I really should have done his legs, too). This only works with "crusted" buttercream--and any texture from the paper towel will transfer over. This opens up a whole realm of possibilities (some paper towels have really cool quilted patterns--you can put them on wedding cakes!), but for the "smooth" look, you need something like Viva*. I've had people talk about dipping spatulas in water while you're frosting, too, but you just gotta do what works for you. With something with so many nooks and crannies like this little turtle dude, spatula work was too fine for me.

I free-handed the shell pattern, which you can probably tell, but I thought he looked pretty cute.

Maybe the toddler will grow up, love the third revival of TMNT, and in six years I'll be asked to make a bust of Leonardo. The mutant turtle--not the painter. You never know, right?

*None of these people/businesses/corporations sponsor me or anything. Promise. They're just what I've found that works best. Well, except TMNT. I don't really use them for anything. Just comic relief. But the other stuff--now they're handy. Come to think of it, shouldn't they be sponsoring me??

Dear Ikea

Dear Ikea--

I know that you're a company that strives to keep things inexpensive, and thus some things are cut from your daily operation--like having pre-assembled furniture or people to help you move 100-lb boxes onto your flat cart that is never truly controllable because it has those stupid gliding wheels, so you spend half the time hauling against it with all your weight so that you don't crash into the poor, little old lady wandering through the picking area with her cane.

I understand that you've built a reputation of quality, inexpensive furniture designed on principles of minimalism and customization. I get it.

And having always lived in various places where there was never an Ikea, I looked upon your store like a home-design mecca, overwhelming in its glory and stymieing plethora of items.

But here's the deal. You have a lot of choices. I mean, a ton. If you were to create some sort of computer algorithm, I bet a person walking through Ikea with the intent to purchase a boat-load of stuff would face the possibility of a million decisions or more with colors, doors, configurations, items, additions, whatever. So we did our research, my husband and I. We figured out what we wanted to buy, and bookmarked some stuff we wanted to see on the floor so that we could decide. It turns out that a lot of the stuff we wanted was in your "Besta" line. And we have compact cars, so no way was that going to work to haul all the stuff we wanted to buy all the way back home. Here we were, so dedicated and excited to deck our house out with Ikea goods that we woke up at the crack of dawn, drove 2.5 hours into New Jersey (I mean, Jersey! Do you have any idea what the drivers and the highways are like in Jersey? It's terrifying!), rented a UHaul cargo van, and showed up an hour after you opened.

We had a list. We had a plan. This was going to be easy.

So Ikea, imagine our chagrin, if you will, when every single item on our list that was not related to a closet was "temporarily over-sold." The desk. The shelves. The entertainment center. The cabinets. So we looked at other things we thought we could use as Plan B. Oversold. Oversold. Oversold.

And, now that we're feeling so under-slept because we woke up so early to get that UHaul and make it to your store at opening time, imagine how we felt when we couldn't find anyone to ask about this mysterious plague of overselling. After three laps of the sofa/wall unit/ kitchen departments, we finally found someone--who told us that she has no idea about this "oversold" thing, and that we should go back to wall units. Which we did. And when we still couldn't find anyone, we stalked some other poor Ikea employee to the office section and asked him for help. He was actually quite nice, and called the people in the wall unit section and told them that we were coming. So we went back to the wall unit section for the third time.

Guess what? Your Besta line had quality issues, so you couldn't sell it. In any color. And it's been this way for at least a week. And guess what? Your web site still said that you had all these things in stock, which is why we drove for 2.5 hours at the crack of dawn to get to JERSEY to buy this stuff. We stood in the store  and checked the website again, and it still  said everything was in stock! Is it too much to ask, Ikea, that maybe you could have put a note on your website letting people know? And I know she meant well, but the lady that told us to call the wall unit department before we came "next time" was really unhelpful. You're just lucky that my husband can recognize the signs of impending uncontrollable rage and steered me away before I could do something I would later very much regret. I mean, is it too much to ask to offer to ship this stuff? Or make some sort of accommodation? I know you're a busy kind of place, but surely you can spare some effort for us.

It's okay, Ikea. We came up with a different plan. We could get over the fact that nothing that we had checked on your website or had planned on purchasing was going to work. In fact, maybe what we came up with as Plan C was even better than Plan A, now that we think about it. Score for you!

But I have to say that you lose points on efficiency. We would have paid you to pick our stuff for us. We were exhausted. Our blood sugar was low. We didn't want to play "Frogger" with the carts. But you couldn't do that. Nope. Can't pick orders for people unless you're going to deliver it... even if they're willing to pay the "local" delivery price...and even if another employee of yours (who happened to be in the wall unit department) said that picking was one fee, and delivery was another--we could pay for one or both.

And you lose major points for customer flow. Can you explain to me why, when there are 12 closed checkouts, and a wait time of more than 15 minutes at each open register, that you don't open more checkouts? And what is up with those cramped check-out lanes, anyway? You do realize that people are coming through with gliding flat carts that they can't control, stacked high with hundreds of pounds of disassembled minimalist Swedish decor, with old ladies with canes wandering through at random intervals, right? Why make it more challenging for people by putting over-sized pallets of stuff in the way, so that the customer feels like they're negotiating a game of Pac Man just to be able to pay you for the chance to go home and try to assemble this furniture with instructions that have no words?

Oh, but I did enjoy the free lunch. Thanks for that. After the four wardrobes, and the mirror, and the entertainment center, and the bed frame, and the canvas painting, and the nightstands, and the office chair, and the dishes that we bought, that ten bucks of meatballs was appreciated.

I'm sorry, Ikea. I'm being snarky. And bitter. Really bitter. I really do appreciate the free lunch. In fact, over lunch, my husband and I repeated over and over again how lucky we were that we were able to be able to get all this furniture in the first place. And that our plates of meatballs were more food that a lot of people would see in a week. For a while, reapeating this mantra of blessings helped us to be much more Zen about our experience while we were visiting you. But you see, then our second gliding cart in a row was broken. And we couldn't get through that damn check out line without banging into people. And we had to pick one load, check out, load the van, and go back in and pick another load, check out, load, and be gone. But some of your stuff is "full service," and we really couldn't figure out the logic behind which is which. So after our second time loading, we accidentally drove away without realizing that we had forgotten a chest of drawers that you had to pick for us as a "full service item," and which we paid for. In fact, we didn't realize it for 170 miles. And then you put us on hold for 15 minutes when we called to see if we could refund it, before you transferred us to a new department where we were on hold for another 15 minutes, and then your employee--who was really trying to be nice, I'm sure--says something like, "whoa! Why is this so expensive?" And really, that's simply not what you want to say to someone who has just spent 6 hours in your store, trying against all odds to buy enough stuff to fill a cargo van.

And when we looked online to see if we could just ship the stupid chest of drawers to us, the shipping cost more than the drawers! More than it would be for us to drive another 5 hours round trip, with tolls and gas. Really, Ikea? You're going to charge us $300 dollars to ship a chest of drawers that we're buying--that we really already bought--because all the other stuff we wanted to buy was oversold and you couldn't help us out with any alternatives?

Look. I'm sorry. You don't deserve this. Really, you don't. I shouldn't even be writing this, but it's really late and my better judgement is gone. You're busy. You serve a lot of people. And I had just made a resolution to be more grateful about things like this in my life. I mean, when you really think about it, this whole scenario is quite a first-world problem, isn't it? I mean, really. I'm writing a diatribe to a furniture store, for Pete's sake. Life could be much worse. This letter just makes me sound like a bitter, entitled, self-righteous person--and I guess that right now, I'm okay with that. Sarcasm aside (and I do mean that seriously), thank you for providing me so many opportunities to count my blessings. It's really only my own fault that I wasn't able to more successfully overcome my frustration and just be grateful. You're still home-design mecca. I just won't have the energy to visit you for a while.

But seriously, Ikea? Seriously? Throw a girl a bone, here. Or at least some free shipping.

Sincerely,
Bested by Besta

"Worst" is Relative

Our little white dog practices his stealth camouflage
skills in a pile of white packing paper.

So here's the truth. I haven't yet figured out what I want this blog to really be. I like to write--a lot--but I also like to bake. It was supposed to be a place to showcase my baked goods for potential customers. But every once in a while, I just want to write something and know that someone out there is reading it--even if it was only an accident. So I suppose I'll settle for 90-10 or 80-20.... 90 percent baking, 10 percent random musings (or there about).

If you've read my earlier posts, you know that we've just moved. We're no strangers to moving. We've been shuffling our stuff all over this vast expanse of a nation, and even globally once or twice. But the thing is, most of the time the move is work-related, so my husband's company chips in for some of the relocation. Usually we're (I'm) a little bitter and disillusioned with the process when it happens, so I don't really touch much of anything before movers come. That means that we've been moved at least twice and I haven't culled anything out. Well, that's not strictly true. I got rid of some stuff when we moved to Alaska. Kind of a lot really, but just the easy stuff. My husband hadn't really sorted through much, either.

This time it was our choice to move, so no movers--just us. It took us so incredibly long to pack, mostly because 50 percent of the time was spent unpacking stuff that we hadn't even looked at in years in order to either get rid of it or re-pack it.

Through Craigslist and donations, we got rid of a small UHaul's worth of stuff. That is a lot of stuff  to get rid of. I felt pretty good about it and about us. We were making progress. It felt cathartic. I have a friend who works on a farm, and she recruited some of her friends to help us move. We stayed up until midnight the night before the move to make sure everything was as organized as it could be. We were good. It was going to be hard, but should flow well. And we got rid of a whole truck's worth of junk. And UHaul swore that our 26-foot truck would move a 3-4 bedroom house, and we only had 1.5 bedrooms and an office. We were golden!

Oh, my. How far the righteous can fall.

We got up early to move things from our storage unit to the freight elevator and the loading dock, and were immediately stymied by locked doors and passenger elevators that weren't working. And then the freight elevator wouldn't work, but by happy coincidence we caught the weekend maintenance man as he was walking in. By then we had gotten nearly nothing out of the storage unit, but it was time to back the truck up and meet the crew that was going to help us--who all showed up right on time.

One thing maybe I haven't mentioned is that the apartment we were moving out of was in an old, renovated cotton mill that was originally built in 1870. At the time, it was the longest continuous manufacturing/mill building in the world, which means it's about 3-4 blocks long. We lived on the far end of it, as far as you can get from the loading dock. Delivery men have told me that they called our unit the "apartment at the end of the hallway from The Shining." Everything we moved, we had to shuttle two blocks, inside, down a hallway to the elevator, from the elevator to the dock, and from the dock to the truck. And we had a fridge and a stove and a washer and dryer, and furniture, and an upright piano... anyway, this post is getting really long, so I'll try to wrap it up.

The apartment wouldn't let us reserve the dock for more than 3 hours. 3 hours is not near enough when you're traipsing your stuff two blocks down a hallway. UHaul lied. No way in heck that truck was going to take all our stuff in one go. The freight elevator broke down. The fridge turned into the fridge from hell, because it wouldn't fit through any of the doors without severe jimmying, bending, pushing, huffing, puffing, rolling, cursing, and high blood pressure. We got kicked out of the loading dock--while all of our stuff was still scattered around it. It was one of the hottest and most humid days of the summer. We made trip #1 to the house, and while backing into the driveway I put a nice set of deep, muddy ruts in my new neighbor's still-growing lawn. We unloaded most of the truck and then we released the farm helpers, and our friends stayed on to help us. We went back to the loading dock. We couldn't get the elevator. We finally got the elevator. We packed up the truck with round 2. We got all the easy stuff off the truck. We couldn't get the piano in the house. We left it in the garage. We got the fridge into the house... barely. We couldn't fit the fridge in the kitchen. At all. The kitchen that was built for this fridge. We couldn't maneuver it around the island. We messed with it for about 2 hours. I have begun to hate that fridge. We ran to Lowes 15 minutes before closing and picked up a cheapo garage fridge/freezer that I'll use for baking.

We finally said goodbye to our loyal, loyal friends at about 11 pm--who had shown up promptly at 8 am and live an hour away--and who wouldn't take payment. We were tired, and cranky, and for about the fourth time that day I felt like breaking down in tears. Except for the tears part, Sean felt the same. The whole thing had taken about 3 times longer than we thought, we weren't even able to get everything in the house with help, and we couldn't even feel like we'd accomplished anything, because now it was time for all the unpacking. We decided that we'd run to the store to get a very, very, very late dinner, and treat ourselves to a soda and a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone at McDonald's.

McDonald's was out of chocolate for the chocolate-dipped cones. And they were out of diet soda. That was the moment that I think Sean wanted to burst into tears. "This whole day should just be called The Day of Disappointment," he said (with quite a bit of passion, I might add).

I had to agree. The next day I woke up tired and achy and cranky and just generally no fun to be around, and I told my mom that the move day had been my worst day in recent memory. But at some point I had a major change of heart. I don't know what triggered it, but it's amazing how my outlook changed.

We are lucky enough to be moving into a new house. Poor us. We are lucky enough that when our massive fridge didn't fit in the kitchen, we could go buy another one, just because we didn't want our food to spoil-- which also means that we had food and more to spare. We have jobs. We live in a free country. As a woman, I enjoy equal rights with men. I have education. I have freedom of religion. I have the right to vote. I don't have to worry about being killed like that poor woman in Afghanistan who was filmed as she was executed for alleged adultery. I don't live somewhere with a horrible regime like Syria. I can go to the grocery store, with its aisles and aisles of food and fresh produce and get whatever I want. I don't wake up each morning and wonder how in the world I'm simply going to survive. On my worst day, 98% of the world would still envy me. "Worst" is very, very relative.

It's amazing how trivial your problems become when you stop to count your blessings.

A Zoo of a Baby Shower

 I'm pulling stuff out of ancient history here, people. Because of the move, I don't think I'll have anything brand-spankin' new to post very soon, so--in order to try and stick to my promise to try and post every week or two--I pulled these photos off my computer from nearly two years ago.

A little-known fact about women (at least little-known by those who aren't women--namely men and small children) is that sometimes we just don't like baby showers. We don't! We don't know anybody else there. We're starving and all there is to eat is itty-bitty quiches and cucumber sandwiches. We really don't want to play the game where someone melts a bunch of candy bars onto diapers and we all have to guess what kind of candy bar now looks like it squirted straight from a baby's bottom. (Snickers, anyone?) But we go because we feel a sense of duty to the mom-to-be. Or because when it's our turn, we want people to show up, too.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Some women enjoy baby showers. Sometimes even I enjoy baby showers. I like the ones where I know all the people and we eat chips and salsa and drink beer (except for the mom to be) and eat cake and tease each other mercilessly. I even enjoy the mini quiche and cucumber sandwich soirees, but not always. And let it be known that I have nothing against itty-bitty quiches and cucumber sandwiches. I happen to like both of them--just not when I'm so hungry that I'm this close to putting a few dashes of hot sauce on my arm and chewing it off--but I have to be polite and reserved and only eat two mini quiches instead of two dozen. Don't pretend like it hasn't happened to you. We both know it has.

So when the mom of a friend asked if I would make cupcakes themed to "Baby Animal" for her daughter-in-law's baby shower... well, I said yes. I had to, right?

These cupcakes were based off of and inspired by the hit cupcake cookbook, What's Up, Cupcake? I made a few changes, but it's generally the same. Using breakfast cereal, mini M&Ms, pull-n-peel Twizzlers, some chocolate melties, and food coloring, I created this little baby shower zoo.

Then I went to the shower, set up the cakes, and examined 6 different diapers full of melted chocolate poo--and won. Oh--and they had guacamole, so it wasn't so bad, after all!

Four-letter words

I'm moving, folks. Again. This is why, despite my new-found blogging dedication, I haven't posted anything for about 4 weeks. I should work on another cake mix tweak or something.

I've moved a lot. I should be used to it. This one is a relatively simple, local move. But I still hate it. While I look forward to settling down in our new place--I'm in love with it--I really, really hate the process of getting there. My mother-in-law always says that "move" is a four-letter word, and she's right. It doesn't have the hard, staccato consonants and harsh syllables of traditional cuss words, but in my mind, it's the worst of them.

In random updates, I got feedback from the bride that she loved her cake, and that she got compliments during the reception that it was the tastiest wedding cake some of the guests had ever had. She also ended up with a whole sheet cake left over (I forgot how tiny the waitstaff tends to cut slices), and she brought in the leftovers to work THREE WEEKS after her wedding, and still got compliments. When I heard that she brought it in three weeks later, my first thought was, "Dear Lord, I hope no one dies." My second thought was, "Still getting compliments? Either someone is lying through their teeth, or there is a large percentage of people in this world who have been deprived of good cake." Turns out she had actually frozen it for a while. But still.

And speaking of good cake deprivation, I bought a slice of red velvet cake from a schmancy bakery on a whim on the Fourth of July. I was going to make my own "Red Velvet and Blue Suede" cake, but with the packing and the moving and all, I lost my gumption. So I thought, "Huh. This is supposed to be good...I'll just pick up a slice."

Man. What a disappointment. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. It was overly-schmancified. Sometimes, good old-fashioned comfort food flavors just need to be left alone. Ah, well. I've learned my lesson. And let's get this straight: I'm not the Goddess of Cakes, here. Not even close. Some store-bought or bakery-bought cakes are wicked tasty. I can think of a particular chocolate fudge one right this minute... but sadly, a lot of them aren't. I'm just on a life-long journey to discover what things I need to make on my own, apparently.

Up soon: a 3D turtle cake for a 2-year old's birthday party!

What it takes for a Wedding Cake

My, oh my, oh my. What I didn't know about what it takes for a wedding cake.  THIS is what it takes for a wedding cake:

1 day off + Saturday morning
1 patient husband
1 hell of a messy kitchen
8 lbs of butter
14 lbs of powdered sugar
4 lbs of shortening
2 lbs of raspberry preserves
1 qt heavy cream
2 lbs bittersweet chocolate
4 oz egg whites
2 oz food coloring
80 eggs
~2 cups (yes, cups) vanilla extract
~20 combined pounds of flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and all the other stuff that goes into a cake.
~2 years' worth of stress

And, folks, yes, two of the layers in the above picture are fake--styrofoam--at the bride's request. And thank God for that. The list above doesn't mention the ribbon, or the zip top bags, or the fake flowers, or the floral tape, or the cardboard rounds, or the cake drum, or the boxes for the sheet cakes I made for the actual serving, or the special-order baking pans, or the parchment paper, or the materials to make your own damask stencil... but you get the point.

This was my first wedding cake. Looking at these pictures, I can see little imperfections that I couldn't see while I was there in person. And neither could my husband. And we made sure to look at it from all angles, from near and far before we left. In fact, as we were pulling out of the parking lot to leave, I looked at these photos and made my husband turn around so I could go back in and try to fix them.... and then I got back inside, face-to-face with the cake, and could no longer see them.

I haven't heard from the bride, so I assume she's happy. Or just had much better things to do than call the amateur cake maker and bawl her out. Yeah. I'm gonna assume she's happy.

To be fair, I would not have used nearly as much butter, shortening, vanilla, and powdered sugar if I hadn't botched four batches of frosting--four!!--and had to scrape it off. Weather was not my friend (hot and humid), so it took me too long to realize that I needed to modify my traditional buttercream recipe. This resulted in a whole wasted sheet cake which is currently lurking in our fridge, mocking both my husband and I, who have psychological problems with the waste associated with just tossing it in the garbage. To top it off, it was the raspberry-filled one. I really don't like fruit-based fillings. Why couldn't it have been the chocolate ganache one I messed up? Wait, scratch that. This probably works in my favor. I'm less likely to chow down on the raspberry-filled one. My husband complained that it doesn't have a high enough cake-to-frosting ratio (all it got was a crumb coat of frosting before I realized that it just was not going to work), so then I just handed him the massive bowl of scraped-off frosting, and he created his own perfect cake-to-frosting ratio.

And then there was the problem of matching the color of the royal icing for damask print on the double layer... it was supposed to match the ribbon that the bride supplied. I used one whole bottle of burgundy gel food coloring, and it turned out far too grape-y. So then I called my mom, the artist, and asked her how to make maroon. Half an hour later, after endless mixing of red, blue, black, and a hint of yellow, I had something that wasn't quite a match, but it had to be close enough for government work--the frosting had reached a saturation point and the color was no longer changing. I figured it was ok anyway, because it needed to darken a couple shades to match the ribbon, and royal icing tends to darken as it dries.

So, I swallowed my nerves and piped the damask print, and then put it in the fridge. And to my horror, it darkened not just one or two shades as it dried, but more like five or six. It was no longer close to the brilliant burgundy of the ribbon. My heart was in my throat in full-fledged panic mode, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had only two hours before I had to leave for the wedding, and there was too much else to get done. I couldn't scrape it off, re-ice the cake, chill it, mix new icing, and re-pipe it in time. I just figured I could offer the bride a discount if she was angry.

But then, oh, then... in a crazy twist of fate, the buttercream frosting stained the burgundy ribbon once it was on the cake. I had expected some mild staining of the ribbon--it wasn't waxed, and a frosting that is entirely composed of fat and sugar tends to result in a staining grease. At first I panicked, and then I realized that the ribbon was now stained the exact same shade as the damask. It was like it was on purpose! As though I had planned it! The ribbon on one of the fake layers actually wasn't staining because the frosting had crusted too much, so I literally removed the offending ribbon and smeared my emergency repair frosting on it until it was uniformly stained, and then put it back on. Fortune favors the inventive, my friends.

I'm sure with practice, wedding cakes would be easier. I'm sure with a better-equipped kitchen with a fridge that can accommodate all the layers, things would be better. But I think I'm going to stay away from wedding cakes. I don't want the responsibility of so many hopes and dreams pinned to my shoulders. Yeah, so no more wedding cakes for me.

Oh, shoot.  Wait a minute... didn't I already offer one to my other friends for a wedding gift? Crap.


Maybe they'll be happy with cupcakes...