Next Adventure in Baking

Four years ago, the Boy was obsessed with the Disney movie Cars. I'm not the world's greatest baker, but for the kids' birthdays, I ask them what sort of cake they'd like and then, I do my darnedest to make the cake they'd like. I used to do bakery cakes, but it's kind of fun to see just what I can do, when I try.

So, for the Boy's fourth birthday, the year he was all about Cars, he asked for a cake in the shape of Lightning McQueen. I agreed, wondered where the hell I was going to do this, since I'm not the most artistic tool in the shed, and promptly hit Google for advice. Lo and behold, I happened upon a wonderful blog that actually gave me a step by step how-to on making a Lightning McQueen cake. I made the cake, it was a hit, and posted about it right here.  A few weeks later, still reeling from the success of McQueen (who I though really looked more like Doc Hudson, but that's neither here nor there) I did a panda bear for the Girl. Panda came out well, but the black icing gave us all funny smiles.

Well now, the Boy's obsession is everything Titanic. He watches You Tube videos about Titanic. He takes books from the library about Titanic. He builds Titanics from his endless supply of Legos. He's even asked for a Lego Titanic set for his birthday (sadly, I don't think we're going to be able to find this. I haven't been able to so far and his birthday is only a little over a week away.)

And now? I'm going to be attempting a Titanic birthday cake. Go. Me.

Now, I will confess, I have a pretty twisted sense of humor, so I immediately envisioned a Titanic on a sea of blue fondant (I know, but no one will eat it and it's only for a base) with the heads from his Lego people bobbing on the blue surface. Like I said, twisted sense of humor.

So now I'm scouring Pinterest and all things Google to find a decent looking Titanic cake. I'm actually pretty amazed at the amount of stuff I've found. Who knew there were so many eight year olds so into Titanic?

I'm getting together my supply list now. Next, I'll be trying my hand at it. It should be interesting.

I'll post pictures.

Happy Sixth Birthday to the Boy

**Note - this post first appeared last October


At about 12:30PM today, my son, The Boy, officially turns six.

How is that possible? It seems like only yesterday he was born. Small, but stocky, he was quickly nicknamed Tank. When Tank because mobile, look out. Nothing was safe. Unless you made him laugh. I wish I could describe his laugh because it is the most infectious, silvery giggle I've ever heard. He still has that laugh and it is impossible to hear it and not join in. And he has a charmer's personality to boot. I can just imagine the endless stream of girls who are going to be calling my house in the near future. Not looking forward to it.

But now, he is still my baby. He hates being called my baby boy, but he will always be my baby boy. Always. That's how it works for us mothers. Our babies are always our babies, right, moms?

So, putting the silliness aside, I love my boy. He's come a long way in the last five years - when we first thought he might be autistic and began working with him to get him to speak. Now, he never shuts up and that's a good thing. He's becoming a normal, happy, healthy little boy with a little extra energy who loves a good hug every now and again. He started kindergarten in a regular ol' school. He's amazing and I love him more than I ever thought possible to love another person. He's my boy.

Happy 6th Birthday, my little man,

Mommy loves you.

Happy Fifth Birthday to The Boy

At about 12:30PM today, my son, The Boy, officially turns five.

How is that possible? It seems like only yesterday he was born. Small, but stocky, he was quickly nicknamed Tank. When Tank because mobile, look out. Nothing was safe. Unless you made him laugh. I wish I could describe his laugh because it is the most infectious, silvery giggle I've ever heard. He still has that laugh and it is impossible to hear it and not join in. And he has a charmer's personality to boot. I can just imagine the endless stream of girls who are going to be calling my house in the near future. Not looking forward to it.

But now, he is still my baby. He hates being called my baby boy, but he will always be my baby boy. Always. That's how it works for us mothers. Our babies are always our babies, right, moms?

So, putting the silliness aside, I love my boy. He's come a long way in the last three years - when we first thought he might be autistic and began working with him to get him to speak. Now, he never shuts up and that's a good thing. He's becoming a normal, happy, healthy little boy with a little extra energy who loves a good hug every now and again. I love him more than I ever thought possible to love another person. He's my boy.

Happy 5th Birthday, my little man,

Mommy loves you.

Oh, and for any of you who might remember the Lightning McQueen cake I made for the Boy last year... This year's cake is going to be hot air balloons. I'll post step-by steps for it. Wish me luck~

Imagine: John Lennon 10/9/40 - 12/8/80

Today would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday. I was nine years old when he was murdered and I remember when the news broke out on Monday Night Football. I love his music, love his message, and I wear black every December 8th.

Check out how Google is commemorating his birthday.

Happy Birthday, John.

Your voice is missed.

Happy Birthday, A Few Thoughts!

Whoa... I was checking my email when a Google reminder popped up to let me know that my little blog is four years old. Egads... that's so hard to believe. Four years of rants and raves, ups and downs, good news and bad news...

Thanks to everyone who's read it - whether on a regular basis or a Oh, yeah, I haven't been on that blog in forever. Maybe she actually has something new posted basis. And many thanks to everyone who's taken the time to leave a comment (even if it wasn't the nicest of comments. :D)

Now, unfortunately, since I kind of **coughcough**forgot**coughcough** about this birthday, I don't have anything to celebrate it. However, I will. I promise. It will combine this and my upcoming Aspen Mountain Aurora Regency release, The Pursuit. Perhaps an ARC as a prize... I don't know yet. Either way, I will eventually have something (since The Pursuit doesn't come out until July... ugh... I should set that reminder for more than the day before. **facepalm** what was I  thinking??

And, as always, any contest suggestions (or prize suggestions) are always welcome!

The Cake (Part Deux)!

So... the Girl's birthday is at the end of December (yes, I know - poor planning on our part. Oops.) Since I made the Lightning McQueen cake for the Boy's birthday in October, I thought it only fair that she get a special cake as well. That and I like to think I'm a lot more talented than I really am. :D

We did a little back and forth about what kind of cake she'd like (she apparently also thinks I'm a lot more talented than I really am - she had some pretty high expectations where this cake was concerned), and finally, we reached an agreement.

A panda bear.

Sounds easy enough, right? And I found the most adorable looking panda cake right here, and it looked fairly easy, so panda it was, Gold help me.

So after a trip to the grocery store and to Michael's to find 8" round cake pans, here it is - the Panda Cake!

I started off with baking 2 round cakes and 1 13" x 9" cake. I did them the night before and popped them into the freezer overnight (they're easier to cut that way.)

One round cake is Panda's head. The other was cut up to make Panda's face. Part of the 13" x 9" cake was also cut up for paws.

Yes, that is black icing. I had black food coloring paste left from Lightning, so I mixed it into vanilla icing. I probably should have stuck with the original recipe and used chocolate icing - the vanilla used up an entire jar of food coloring. And this is real frosting - I played with the idea of using fondant, which I might do next time to give it a much smoother appearance. This bear looked a little... fuzzy... by the time it was all frosted.

After shaping all panda body parts, I spread a thin layer of icing on everything to seal in crumbs. Then the whole mess went back into the fridge for an hour to set.

Now the panda has all his parts. His crumbs are sealed in, so it's time to really frost him. I started off piping black icing to delineate the borders for the black, and then white icing to delineate those borders. Since I don't have a piping bag, I made one using small Ziploc sandwich bags with the corner cut off. Effective, but kind of messy and, at one point with each color and each bag (I used 2 or 3 per color), the pressure caused the zipper to pop open and frosting to ooze out the top. And yes, after playing with the black icing, my hands were purple again, just like with Lightning. I scrubbed them to pink, and the rest of the color was gone by that night. Whew.

After piping in the color, I filled in the outlines with frosting as well. The front legs are just frosting on top of frosting (my teeth hurt just thinking about how thick that frosting it) to give the illusion of depth and make them look like they exist. Ahh... the power of optical illusion!

Next came his face. I piped in black, smooshed it down with halved marshmallows. The pupils are brown M&Ms. His nose and mouth are piped in frosting as well, as is the white on his paws. At this point, I'd been working on the cake for about 4 hours and I was feeling a little... punchy... so I gave him crossed eyes. I wish I'd taken a picture of it because he really looked demented. But I didn't, so just try to imagine this already kind-of psycho looking panda with crossed eyes. :)

And here he is - ready to be served and the Girl was happy with him. My mother in law was a little skeptical about the black icing, but everyone seemed to enjoy it and there was much chuckling over the fact that the black icing gave us all Goth smiles.

My son's already throwing out suggestions for his next birthday cake. Thank God I've got until October to really worry about it!

Where Does Time Go?

Today is the Girl's 9th birthday.

Nine.

How the hell did that happen? One minute, she's barely crawling and now BAM! she's nine!

That makes me....



.... old.


It's so hard to believe how fast the time has gone by. She's not a baby. She's not even a little kid anymore. She's--- dare I say it?

a tween.



NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

But I have to admit, she is an awesome kid all around, and getting cooler by the day (when she's not all mouthy like, as girls are wont to be at times.) There are no words to describe how proud she makes me, or how lucky I feel to be her mother. We got lucky with both the Girl and the Boy.

And for her birthday, I'm making a panda cake (at least, I think it will be a panda. That will all depend on whether or not I can turn vanilla icing black (compliments of black food coloring paste). If I can only get it gray, then we will have a polar bear instead, so wish me luck. (And yes, I will post photos of said cake, just like I did with Lightning McQueen.) We're doing her big family party tomorrow. Tonight will just be the four of us, a small ice cream cake, and presents.

I just can't get over it.

My baby is nine.

The Cake...

Okay, as promised - here is the cake I made for my son's fourth birthday this past Wednesday. Many thanks go to Kay Martin at Kitchen Scrapbook, because hers was the first blog I happened upon when I did a Google search of Lightning McQueen and birthday cakes.

My son is a Cars nut. We've watched the DVD so many times that I had to replace it because we wore it out (oh, and that he used to take it upon himself to get it to watch didn't do the disc a whole lot of good, either.) He was Lightning McQueen for Halloween last year. True, he wore the costume for all of about five minutes, but stilll...

He has Cars up the wazoo, from the die-cast metal cars of each character, to his bedding. The Boy. Loves. Cars.

Well, last year, I ordered his cake from the bakery. They did a lovely job. But this year, I was feeling very domestic and I thought (and I should know better by now. When I think this, nothing good can come of it) "How hard can it be? I betcha I can do a Lightning McQueen cake."

So, as any good researcher will do, my first step was to try out my Google-fu. That led me to the aforementioned Kitchen Scrapbook blog and a step-by-step on how to make a Lightning McQueen birthday cake.

And let the games begin. :)

The night before his birthday, I baked the cake. Basic. Yellow. Cake. When it was cooled, I froze it (it's easier to slice that way) and the next morning, after both kids left for school, the fun began.

The cake was originally 13x9. I cut it down to approximately 11x7 and put the sliced off pieces aside for later use. I wish I had taken a picture of the cake, but I didn't. Oh well. Imagine a cut-up yellow cake.

Now, the blog called for using fondant. As a reader of Cake Wrecks, I know that fondant is a huge no-no. But, the pictures on Kay's blog looked good, so I asked Cake Wrecks for forgiveness (and thought I could always submit my own wreck later on. See, you gotta keep positive!) and trekked to Michael's to buy two boxes of white fondant, and jars of food coloring paste. I didn't even know there was such a thing as food coloring paste before looking up this cake. There is much to learn from the internet!

Remember that piece I sliced off to use later? I used it to form Lightning's cab. Then, I iced the whole mess:

See the laptop in the background? I had it with me to double check my car against the one on Kitchen Scrapbook. So far, mine only sort of resembles anything remotely resembling a car... Oh well. I'm not the most artistic tool in the shed.

Once Lightning's got his primer coat on (I think I was supposed to make buttercream frosting, but I used Betty Crocker icing. Worked for me. Bakers everywhere might be wincing, though), it was time for the fondant...

I opened the first box of fondant. If you don't know what it is, the best way I can think of to describe it is edible Play-Doh. I mixed red food coloring paste into the fondant. I suppose the smart way to do it would have been to wear gloves. But I don't necessarily think things like this through. Ergo, I had no gloves. Ergo-ergo, I had red hands when I was done, because to blend in the color, I had to knead the hell out of the fondant - just like Play-Doh. I tried to get a picture of my hands, but the red didn't really show up. Trust me - they were red. I washed them a dozen times when I was done, and the red became pink. I could live with pink.

So, when I was finished kneading the fondant, I rolled it out, then rolled it around the rolling pin, only to unroll it over the cake:

I used a lot of powdered sugar to keep the fondant from sticking, and it got everywhere. But here, it kind of looks like Lightning. It's red. I'm off to a good start, no?

I cut and tucked and pinched until the fondant was the right shape and put the leftovers in a Zip-Loc bag for later use.

Then it was on to the detail...

I painted his eyes on with royal blue and black food coloring and a small paint brush. His windows and smile are just white fondant (and to think, I originally figured I'd use only one box of the stuff. I needed both boxes and should have gotten the box of colored fondant as well - I'll explain later.)

Next, I mixed black food coloring into the fondant. Remember how my hands were now pink from the red coloring? That pink mixed very nicely with the black to turn my hands purple. Yep. I was now purple. Great.

The wheels are black and red fondant, held to the body with toothpicks because as I worked, it became more apparent that I wasn't making Lightning McQueen - it looked more like Doc Hudson (or Doc Holliday, as I kept calling him for some stupid reason) wearing a Lightning McQueen costume. Oh well. The proportions were a little... off.

Okay, so the lightning bolt isn't exactly as it appears on the car. As an artist, it seems I make a damn fine writer. Doesn't it look more like Doc Holliday Hudson?

The 95 is yellow and red food coloring paste painted on fondant cut into the numbers, blended in the middle to make it more orange-y, and outlined with black food coloring paste. I'm amazed at how steady my hand remained, considering I'd been working on this  $#%@ car for about three hours at this point, and had gone through 2 pots of coffee...

I'd taken the track off, and put it back when I was thisclose to finished. The "dirt" is graham cracker crumbs. I kind of cheated with the lettering - it's candy and I bought it at the Stop n' Shop. My handwriting is bad enough in pen or pencil. It's absolutely illegible in icing, I swear.

See the computer page in the background? I was feeding my Hatchlings on Facebook on coffee breaks. =)

You'll notice he has no Rust-Eze stickers - I would have needed brown fondant, and I didn't have any (should have bought the box of the colored stuff). Besides, I was already purple and didn't even want to think what color my hands would turn if I tried to make brown. I thought about using the top of one of extra cupcakes I'd baked for the Boy to take to school - since they were iced in chocolate. I tried it, and it looked like a nose. So, this is Lightning before he had corporate sponsors. =)

And voila! Lightning McQueen (or Doc Holliday Hudson in disguise). The Boy was thrilled, and everyone was duly impressed that I managed to get it to even slightly resemble Lightning McQueen. As I said, as an artist, I make a damn fine writer. Still, it was fun. It took about 4 hours, not including the baking and cooling time, and should I attempt to do this again (and I will because the Girl's birthday is coming up and she's already bugging me about her cake. I'm hoping it's B.O.B. from Monsters vs Aliens because - let's face it - that would be impossible to screw up!) I know what to do and what not to do as well!

And again, a million thanks to Kay Martin - who inspired me to try my hand at this in the first place!

PS - I tried to get a picture of my purple hands, but the light just wasn't letting that happen (it had gone from a sunny day to a cloudy one and the kitchen lights didn't show up the purple in all it's purply glory. It's now what? three days later? Around my fingernails is still purple. It's coming off, but taking its sweet-ass time doing so! 

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

Today is the Boy's fourth birthday.

Four.

Impossible to believe my baby's four years old already. **Sniff** where does the time go? It doesn't seem possible four years have gone by so quickly. Remember when Christmas seemed to take forever to get here? Now, time just flies by.

Since he's still in love with the Pixar movie Cars, he asked for a Lightning McQueen birthday cake. And I, little Suzy Homemaker that I am, am going to attempt to make him a Lightning McQueen birthday cake. I found a step-by-step here at this wonderful blog called Kitchen Scrapbook and I'm going to give it a whirl. That's how I'm spending this morning. Making Lightning McQueen. I'll post pictures, no matter how unlike a race car it ends up looking. I'm going to remain optimistic as long as I can...