Catch up!

Tough Weekend!

I did some fun things this weekend! Two cakes and 4 dozen cupcakes on Saturday.... followed up by some inspirational cooking and baking today. Not sure if I am done for the night but I will post what I have so far.

First up-- a cake for a friend's little boy. I make the little boy's first birthday cake last year and I did my best to make the cake as ordered this year. I don't know what I missed but to make a long story short, the child's mother was NOT happy with the cake... :(. I have NEVER had that happen so I was really sad but I thought the cake was cute!

Next, I made a cake and cupcakes for my friend Nicole's little girl Lily. Lily had a Purplicious party with purple marshmallows and purple cookies and I did my best with a purple cake and purple cupcakes.

On Sunday, I was reading a blog about restaurant food so I decided to duplicate a few of our favorites. First I made Bang Bang Shrimp Po Boys... they tasted almost EXACTLY like Bonefish Grill's appetizer!
For dinner, I made fried pickle spears-- that I paired with homemade ranch dressing made by my darling husband!

So on to the desserts-- again! I bought some tiny tin foil pie tins a few weeks ago and I've been waiting to try them out. Today I made a pecan pie and an apple pie... neither of them were more than 3 inches across at their widest-- they are so cute! I also blind baked a few tiny crusts that I will turn into chocolate pie or coconut cream sometime this week-- stay tuned!


I accidentally bought some peanut butter at the club last week when I already had some so I now have a surplus! So what to do with too much peanut butter? Today was peanut butter and jelly cookies! Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe peanut butter cupcakes...

Then for some reason, I decided that pralines were necessary... so I cooked up a batch of those too!


To finish off the evening, I was determined to duplicate the recipe for an appetizer that we had at Ruth's Chris a few nights ago: it was an entire tomato, sliced horizontally and fried in an almost tempura-like batter. The slices are then reassembled back into their original shape but with goat cheese spread in between each layer... then the whole thing is topped with remoulade. My effort looked really pretty and tasted pretty good, but it is not yet right! Needs a better batter and a firmer tomato-- sounds like there will be lots more attempts in my future!

New Year-- anticipate a LENGTHY catch-up!

I am in SUCH trouble! I can't believe I haven't updated my blog in SIX months! Do you know how many birthdays, weddings, baby showers and just DESSERTS have been made since then??? I have lots of catching up to do...
Today I made a cake for a one-year old's birthday. Colby's birthday theme was the Cat in the Hat. Dave has gotten SO helpful with making things for my cakes and I even broke out the Cricut today!

I also made these cute little ice cream cone cake pops... the whole thing is LESS than 4 inches tall! Aren't they adorable? Now I need to figure out WHAT to do with them!

Yellow Wedding and a Cowboy Birthday

Big weekend! First up, my friend Jon got married yesterday... his fiancee's grandmother makes cakes but she has been in poor health so they asked me to make the cake. The bride, Chelsea, is VERY easygoing-- not a Bridezilla at all! She had no real requirements or even guidelines- I love brides like that! :)
Their invitations were black and yellow, simple but trendy. I tried to pull some of the details of the invites into the cake but the best part was the "I DO" button I put on the second tier. Each tier of the cake was a different flavor: white with buttercream filling, chocolate with chocolate fudge filling, butter pecan with cream cheese filling and strawberry with cream cheese filling.
The second cake this weekend was for my friend Katie's little girl Kaia. Katie is an amazing scrapbooker-- she makes a lot of the cake toppers that I put on some of my more elaborate cakes. Kaia had a rodeo-themed party so we went with a denim and bandanna print design for her cake.

Happy Birthday Maddie!

Baby Maddie gets her very own post!

Maddie turned 1 on July 1. While I made a shower cake for her impending arrival MORE than a year ago, this is the first cake I got to make specifically for Maddie. Her mom gave me no guidelines-- I got to make whatever I wanted! I did my best to make Maddie a HUGE-mongous cake that would still look like the partyware her mom bought.

Here is Maddie's cake:


Here is Maddie discovering what the button on the grip of her new Power Wheels is for:


Here is Maddie enjoying her "smash" cake:


She was so funny! Her Aunt Jess stuck her finger in the icing to taste it and Maddie got mad and waved her away-- every time someone else got close to her cake she tried to swipe at them!

Catch Up!