Treats for Tummy Monsters

She works hard for the money.

2009-11-03T20:51:00.000-08:00

So I'm finally employed again! WOOT!

Since I got laid off from my job several months ago, I've been looking and looking and LOOKING for a new job and I am finally working again.

I was having a hard time finding anything that was full time and permanent in the web design business and even trying to go back to waitressing wasn't going so well for me so I thought I would apply to some grocery stores and chains in their bakery.

I hit the jackpot and got a job in the bakery at Target. Which is like, my other home. I've been there almost a week and so far I'm LOVING IT. My boss is super rad and she's excited that I want to decorate because she doesn't like to. I was hoping to try my hand at being a baker, but they get there at 2 AM and any way I tried to work it out in my mind, I just couldn't find a plausible way to make the schedule work. I may still learn how and do it in a pinch, but with the Noodle, it would just be too hard.

I closed for the first time tonight and we have to throw away the outdated baked goods and I felt like I was committing a crime throwing away so many cakes and desserts. Target donates a lot of the packaged goods to a local mission, which is awesome, but the things we package ourselves have to go in the trash. When I was throwing the desserts into our trash compactor though, I had a strange sense of fulfillment in destroying that which I love.

I also wrote on a cookie cake and a regular cake and the customer didn't throw the cake back in my face, which gave me a sense of accomplishment. My handwriting is atrocious, but thankfully the consistency of the icing we use makes it super easy to do.

Hooray for a job and even MORE hooray for a bakery job!!!

Shameless Plug For My Husband

2009-10-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

That's right. I'm doing a shameless plug for my husband, who is also an artist. He's submitted a design for the latest Shirt.Woot Derby. The theme is Halloween and being that it is our favorite holiday, I'm taking a break from baking to try to win votes for his design.

Click the link:

http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=36307

This is Halloween, this is Halloween...

2009-10-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah! It's my favorite time of year!!!

If I could bake something every day during October, I totally would. My ass would probably hate me, but I couldn't care less!

I started this season off with a really simple Jack O'Lantern cake. I saw this Wilton Iridescent Jack-O-Lantern Pan and just knew I had to make a cake from it. Plus the features get baked right in so you really can't screw it up.

Here's the first step of the icing.

Yes, that is a cookie sheet wrapped in aluminum foil that the cake is sitting on. Don't hate on my MacGuyver type skillz in making a cake board. I decided on a whim to make this cake one afternoon not realizing I didn't have a cake board that was big enough for it. So I slapped some foil on one of my small cookie sheets and voila! Instant cake board! I did cut my finger on the foil as I applied it though. I think the cake gods were made that I was mocking them.

Here's the cake almost all finished up:

Just add one final touch:

Shifty eyes! This cake was super simple and easy to make. I had a fun time making it and think it's a perfect kick start to the holiday! I just used a boxed spice cake mix and added a tablespoon of pumpkin spice to the mix. I made regular old buttercream for the icing and it was a big hit!

Click Here to look at the whole album for making the cake.

Cake Wrecks Book Signing!

2009-10-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

I know you all know what Cake Wrecks is, right? Do I have to explain? OK, well go to this website: Cake Wrecks and then come back here. I'll wait.

Once you've wiped up the mess you made from laughing so hard at this blog, you'll know why I was excited to go meet Jen, the blog author, in person. My mom, sister and I drove about an hour to Legacy Books in Plano for the signing. (As an aside, this was my first visit to Legacy Books and I have to say, it was the nicest, most elegant bookstore I've ever set foot in. I felt under dressed walking in there. I plan on taking a trip back up there when I have time to shop. If you're in the DFW area, check it out. There's also a cemetary right in the middle of these posh shops too. Way neat!)

Here's me with Jen after waiting in line for my book to get signed. She was super nice and sweet and I feel SO awful for her that her husband has gotten terribly ill at the time of this blog post and is currently in ICU at a Dallas hospital and she's had to cancel the rest of her book tour.

Way to try to kill the husband of Cake Wrecks, Dallas!!! I'm sure she'll never set foot in Dallas again after all this! I'm probably being dramatic here, but I'm hoping that she'll make it out of Texas in one piece and that her husband makes a speedy recovery.

There was a cupcake Wreck replication contest and these were the entries. I'm HORRIBLY disappointed that I only found out about the signing yesterday, or else I SO would have been on this. My favorite was the flash drive replication one. I think I literally LOL'd when I first saw this one on the blog.

I had a great time at the signing and am SO glad that I braved the weather and the traffic to trek my happy ass up to Plano to be involved in this. There were a lot of cool people there too, though due to my awkwardness I think I only spoke to the girl in front of me in the signing line. Maybe one day I'll learn how to make friends. :D

Anyway, if you want to see the rest of the album of pics I took, clicky here: Cake Wrecks Signing Photo Album

Pom Pom's Birthday Cake

2009-09-22T08:19:00.001-07:00

Like I said in my previous post, I promised my husband's grandmother (nicknamed Pom Pom), a birthday cake to celebrate her 88th birthday.

I had a really fun time making the cake and it turned out way better than I expected. The only problem I ran into was that my icing kept getting too hot and the roses were falling apart and sticking to the flower nail so I was ruining them trying to transfer them to the cake.

The cake was lemon flavored (Duncan Hines boxed mix) and I made homemade chocolate icing. I used the Wilton canned decorator icing in white that I tinted hot pink (Pom Pom's favorite color) for the roses and the border.

I also made the white icing for the writing and the green for the leaves.

The cake was a hit. Pom Pom loved it and it tasted great. Click on my photo gallery button to the right for the rest of the pictures of the cake.

Now I will be starting on Halloween treats (my FAVORITE) and I will be practicing a guitar cake for my son's 2nd birthday.

Rose Cupcakes

2009-09-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

Because I am a glutton for punishment, or I just like a challenge, I promised my husband's grandmother a birthday cake with roses on it for her 88th birthday. Her birthday party is next week and so I, of course, wait until the last minute to try to perfect my rose technique.

Lots of crying, frustration and arm twinges later, I had to Google. There MUST be a better recipe than the regular Wilton buttercream recipe to make stiff icing for roses. I found a blog of a girl who completed the Wilton class that I took a few months ago and she gave me the Holy Grail.

She said her instructor told her that the best frosting to use was the Wilton canned decorating frosting because it was basically the only frosting that was smooth enough to make the roses. I think I heard a symphony when I read this. (I am a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE Googler because I forgot the name of the blog and didn't bookmark it to link to. Boo.) I KNEW IT. The Wilton class buttercream recipe I've been using has just been TOO thick. And when I've thinned it, the petals just dropped like a bag of hammers. I thought I was going crazy because it NEVER looked as smooth as my go-bys.

I ran to Jo Ann's yesterday, in the RAIN, and bought two cans of the Wilton icing.

If I was a religious person I would tell you that angels sang as I put this icing in a decorator bag and piped out my first rose. Since I'm not, I'll just say that "We Are The Champions" rang briefly through my mind as I made a rose.

And it looked awesome. Well, as awesome and someone who was basically making one for the first time. Now my only excuse for how bad they look is my technique. Or my left-handedness.

So I baked a batch of cupcakes and practiced the roses on all the tops of all of them.

This week, I WILL triumph and make a super rad cake for my grandmother-in-law. She's a super sweet lady so I'm sure this cake will make her happy, and I can stop crying about why my icing sucks so much.

Please ignore what a craptastic job I did on the base white icing of these cupcakes. I was rushing and just needed a canvas to practice the roses on. Don't hate on my cavalier attitude about my cupcakes. They still taste divine even if their terrain is a bit rough.

I Can't Get No... Satisfaction...

2009-08-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

So today is my mom's birthday! WOOT!

I love my mom. She's been invaluable to me as a mother and now even more so as a grandmother to my son. She's probably the most selfless person I know and would give you the shirt off her back if she had it to give.

She always puts everyone above herself and I wanted to bake something cool for her for her birthday. I remember all the cool cakes she made for me and my sister when we were kids and part of my baking journey is wanting to re-create that wonder for my own children.

I'm a super novice at working with fondant, and I know I'm probably doing it all wrong, but I decided to try to make my mom a Rolling Stones cake. My mom is THE biggest Stones fan I've ever met and I thought it would be cool if I could pull off the classic tongue logo for her on a cake.

The cake turned out really well. I had to buy red icing just because I could never get that perfect shade of red I was going for. And I didn't have time or resources to spend on icing colors and keep trying at it. I am not ashamed of it. HA HA.

So I hope my mom enjoys her birthday and her birthday cake!

* This entry was a little rushed so I apologize. I was trying to get it done while my son napped and it didn't quite work out. Next time I'll be 10 shades of interesting, I promise.

Cupcake Pops!

2009-07-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

So I guess I have some catching up to do! I have been baking things here and there.

I made this chocolate cake when my Dad came to visit last month. It was a hit! It was also the first time I've made chocolate buttercream icing. Delish!

I also just completed making some Cupcake Pops. The idea was ~~stolen~~ borrowed from Bakerella and holy CRAP these things are AWESOME! They take a LONG time to do and are very time consuming, but worth it!

Here's just a tiny taste of what it took to make them (click HERE to see the whole process. Thanks to my Sissypoo for coming over with her fancypants camera and taking really nice photos for me.)

I paid my sister in cake pops. I think she was well compensated.

I'm just glad that I didn't get any chocolate on her camera, since I can't do anything without having some sort of shenanigans, there were a few casualties when my styrofoam went TIIIIMMMMMMBEEEEEEERRRRRRRRR and fell over after the weight of the pops sent their big bullom heads keeling over into my sister's fancy light and all over the table.

We took a few pictures and then ate them really fast so the others wouldn't get nervous.

In other news, my mom, sister and sister-in-law all went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince this morning. We decided to go to the 9:30 am showing, because it's summertime and people are LAZY and don't wake up that early to see movies, right? RIGHT?

WRONG! There were a shit ton of people there and we ended up not being able to sit together. My mom had a burping and farting kid sitting next to her, and I felt really bad for her. I only heard the one loud burp the kid did at the beginning of the movie, causing the three teenage girls sitting next to me to giggle profusely.

The movie was great, but it left out a LOT of stuff that, in my opinion, was information that people would probably want to know. And that's all I'll say on it unless I'm asked.

To recap: Cupcake Pops = AWESOME, Harry Potter = ALSO AWESOME, but gets an Awesome Minus for not giving us the goods.

The Wilton Class Day 2

2009-05-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

So I just completed my second lesson in the Wilton Decorating Class I'm taking and I must say, it's damn hard work baking and making icing. My hands hurt like hell and I smell like butter and sugar all the time.

But I finished my very first cake from the course and I think it turned out pretty good!

My cake writing skills need work, but my handwriting isn't all that great so I don't know if I'll ever be that good at writing on cakes.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the class and I hope the muscles in my hand realize that I'm in it for the long haul.

Also, here's some Mother's Day cupcakes I made for the heck of it:

Click on photos for a few more pictures of the cupcakes and the cake for my class.

Wilton Cake Decorating Class!

2009-04-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to take a Wilton Cake Decorating Class to hone my skillz. Or learn some skillz.

We've got a fancy new Jo Ann's store near us and they've got a sick cake decorating section. Sorry, Hobby Lobby, I won't be going to YOU anymore!

I've been wanting to take a class for a while so I decided to hell with my insecurities and worries that I will only screw up and I signed up. In my haste to learn I also signed up for the fondant and gum paste class at the same time. After paying for the classes, my mom was going to meet me at the store before lunch, so I was walking around the cake decorating section and I looked over the class info sheets the nice lady at the counter had provided me.

And the fondant and gum paste class ended up looking WAY too advanced for me. Sure, I made some Flash cupcakes, but I really don't know shit about what I'm doing with fondant at this point. So I sheepishly made my way back to the counter to beg them to let me out of the class, that I was in over my head and I didn't want to look like an asshat.

The two counter ladies looked at me like I was crazy but they refunded my money with zero guff. I thanked them profusely and took Griffin back over to the cake aisle to hide until my mom showed up.

So the class starts next Thursday and it last for 4 weeks. I'm REALLY excited about it! One, because I've never really decorated a cake in a fancy way before, and Two, I freaking LOVE cake!

I'll post pics and updates as the class goes on. Wish me luck!

Catching Up

2009-03-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

So it's March already and not a lot has been going on along the baking front for me.

After Noodle's birthday I kind of took a break from baking just to save my sanity for a little bit.

We're also in the process of attempting to sell our house, packing and cleaning and getting rid of things that might make a new buyer hesitant to buy our house. Like all my Nightmare Before Christmas collectibles, Ben's Hellboy collection, and other various things that will cause the Bible Belt to wither and die.

It saddens me because I've got a tub and a half of sugar cookie dough in my fridge just aching to be baked! I hope that stuff doesn't go bad, I should probably check for an expiration date.

I'll end this post with a GLOWING review of the Watchmen movie. If you're a comic fan and know the story, then you will NOT be disappointed. The movie makers took great care in staying VERY true to the comic, and it gave me goosebumps to see in live action that which I've only been able to enjoy in comic form thus far.

There's a reason Watchmen is the greatest comic story ever told, so go see this movie. I command it.

More Than I Can Chew

2009-01-31T18:03:00.000-08:00

I don't know why, but I always seem to attempt these massive undertakings in baking days before I'm supposed to present them at a big get together or something like that.

Noodle's birthday party is next weekend and I want him to have a cake to tear into, but I didn't want to give him some huge thing to destroy. So I found a cute little cupcake recipe in one of my baking books that seemed easy enough to do.

WRONG!

It seems every recipe I attempt uses something I've never worked with before, and for some reason, I always think in my mind that nothing could possibly go wrong. Today was half me not knowing what the hell I was doing and half the fact that Noodle was on a nap boycott today. So I was particularly harried to say the least.

I needed a King Sized Muffin Pan, which I didn't have, so off to Hobby Lobby I went today. Whenever I go there feel like a total outsider for some reason. Maybe because I am a novice and the ladies there "know" I'm totally bullshitting my way through this baking stuff. Or maybe I'm just nuts.

The king size pan didn't have any directions on it as to how long you're supposed to cook things in it, so I was totally playing it by ear checking on the cupcakes every few minutes. The cupcakes themselves turned out REALLY well and were delicious.

But my decorating left a LOT to be desired. For one, I didn't quite remember all the directions for making poured fondant because I was trying to help Ben get Noodle to sleep and make the fondant at the same time.

So today was a FAIL in baking, but I've got some really ugly, but tasty, desserts to keep me over through the weekend.

Oof. I'm just going to make white squares of cake for a little while. I really need to not be so ambitious.

High-Five Inauguration

2009-01-22T09:56:00.001-08:00

Noodle's Birthday Cake and Goodies

2009-01-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

My son's first birthday is coming up hard and fast and I'm just slightly freaking out about it.

Should I make invitations? How many people should I invite? Should it be just family and close friends? Will my kidless friends even give a crap?

I bought this Wilton giant cupcake cake pan several months ago that I keep looking at and looking at, thinking some burst of inspiration is going to hit me if I keep looking at it, and I'm going to come up with this grand idea of how to decorate it. I tried baking one cake in it and it was a disaster. The cake does NOT bake both sides evenly because one side is a solid mass of cake batter and the other side is a smaller amount of cake. So I have to figure out how to bake one side and then the other. And have it not be a complete nightmare.

Noodle's "theme" for his shower, room and what not, has so far been space and robots. So I'd like to maybe make a robot out of marzipan, gum paste, or fondant, but I've never done anything that elaborate before. This also makes me freak out a little bit.

I also want him to have a cake of some sort that he can just tear into, and the Wilton one is WAY too big for that. I'm kind of at a loss, here.

I'm sure I'll figure something out by next month.

I hope.

The Flash Fondant Carrot Cupcakes!

2009-01-11T07:55:00.000-08:00

So today is my husband Ben's birthday! YAY! I'm letting him sleep in at the moment and Noodle is also sleeping, so I'm trying to get this post up before the hounds are released.

In honor of my crazy baking antics and because I've been wanting to start working with fondant I decided to make some cupcakes decorated with The Flash's emblem from DC Comics.

The Flash is Ben's favorite Superhero, and thankfully he has a pretty easy logo to replicate using fondant.

The cupcakes turned out WAY better than I could have imagined. I bought Wilton's Ready to Use fondant at Hobby Lobby, and it was pretty good to work with. The taste is pretty mellow too, which I like. I'm not a fan of SUPER sweet, and the great thing is, you can add your own flavors to the fondant and it won't lose integrity.

Just in case, I also decorated some of the cupcakes with regular cream cheese frosting.

I wasn't quite as happy with how these turned out, frosting-wise, but they still tasted really good.

Click on the Photos picture on the right side of the blog to see more pictures of my process.

So Happy Birthday, Ben! I hope you like your cupcakes!

Fondant and The Flash

2009-01-07T20:34:00.001-08:00

Ben's birthday is coming up on Sunday and I always make him a birthday cake for it. He really likes carrot cake, so that's normally what I make. This year I decided to try something different, since, you know, I'm trying to be all fancy with the baking.

I've been wanting to try out working with fondant since I haven't worked with it before and so I figured, what better time to try it out?

Ben's favorite super hero is The Flash and I came up with the idea of creating The Flash's logo out of fondant, make cupcakes instead of just one cake, and covering the cupcakes with the fondant logo.

So I toddled my happy ass over to Hobby Lobby and bought some ready made fondant. (Sinful, I know!) Since I've never worked with fondant before, I didn't want to drive myself bananas by also trying to make it for the first time.

I decided to test out my fondant Flash logo skills by baking some sugar cookies and putting the fondant logo on those, since I could make them about the same diameter of the cupcakes I'll be making.

Here's the finished product:

I had to reserve my red and yellow fondant for showtime because I didn't realize how small the packs were going to be, and I would have wasted ALL of it on my test run. So this is what I will refer to as "Bizarro Flash".

I think they turned out pretty good for my first try. Ben didn't complain how they tasted either.

Yeah, he knows about my plan, there was no way I could hide the cookies without him seeing them, and I wanted to be sure he thought they tasted good too before I surprised him with cupcakes covered in sugar death.

So I'm really excited to try the fondant out on the cupcakes on Friday. I'll update with the finished product then!

Goodbye Old Friend...

2009-01-04T19:14:00.000-08:00

So my camera died. Or I guess I should say, I killed it.

My wonderful, pocket-sized, orange dynamo of a camera. The camera that I coveted on Amazon for so long, and finally got for my birthday, my Casio Exilim EX-S600. She is, no more.

It's no secret that I'm a clutz, but I was really, really good at not doing any damage to this camera because I loved it so much.

Yesterday, as Ben and I were leaving to run errands, I was getting ready to put all my gadgets in my purse, one of them being my camera, when I dropped it. Just a small drop, flat on the floor. I didn't think twice about it until I tried taking some pictures of Noodle this morning.

The screen was WHITE. I took the battery out, tried plugging it in the computer, I yelled at it, pleaded with it, bribed it. Nothing. It still took pictures which I found odd, but since I couldn't see what I was aiming at, I was at a loss.

I tried the Google to find any troubleshooting answers, only to be given the finger. So I did some research about bought myself a Canon Powershot, in blue.

Not quite the orange firecracker I had before, but hopefully this camera will offer me all the joy and comfort that old sunshine did.

Books and Books and Books

2009-01-03T17:50:00.000-08:00

While out and about today, Ben and I stopped at Borders because we were in desperate need of a new calendar. We got a RAD Domo calendar that is making the wall in my kitchen VERY happy at the moment.

I also saw a couple of books that were just screaming at me to buy them. I felt some Christmas money jangling in my pockets, so I thought I'd give them a try.

Here they are:

I think that was it... oh wait, yes there was one more book I bought.

Twilight. Yup, that vampire teen saga that I think they made a movie out of recently. Or something.

I hadn't heard of these books until I saw a trailer for the movie, and I wasn't really all that interested in seeing the movie, or reading the books. But then my friend Nathalie came to visit me and told me what a freak she was about these books and how great they are. So I decided I'd give the first book a shot.

One day, I'll let you know how the cupcake books fair, they were mostly recipes, which I'm a big fan of. I'm always looking for new recipes because, I'll never break up with chocolate cake, I am inclined to cheat on it every once in a while.

And hopefully, once I start reading Twilight I won't give up on everything in my life until I finish it. Because I heard that's a side effect of reading these books.

Sigh... Facebook

2008-12-30T11:14:00.000-08:00

I've been avoiding signing up for Facebook because I just did NOT want another "social networking" site to keep up with. I kind of hate MySpace and the thought of something else just made my skin crawl.

Well, my will was broken last night and the pull of Facebook could no longer be ignored. Ben talked me into joining, and now, I'm not "addicted", but it's WAY nicer than MySpace. I'm not annoyed by spammers and it doesn't take me a year to comment on someone's page.

Oof. Just what I need, another thing to keep me from getting things done during the day.

Oh well.

Happy Christmas Eve!

2008-12-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow is Christmas, and it's my little Noodle's VERY first Christmas! I'm UBER excited to see him open gifts (and try to keep him from eating the paper) even though he's really not going to know what's going on.

I hope everyone has a great holiday, no matter how you celebrate it. Be good to your friends and family, and be good to all of those around you.

I'm going to leave you fine folks with a new kind of crack dessert that I've just recently been brave enough to attempt.

This is the ultra secret recipe for what has made the rounds on the internet as: "Amanda Freaking Rocks" or shortened to "Amanda Rocks" and sometimes just "Rocks". I've been given permission to publish the recipe by my friend Amanda. Now follow the link to her store and buy some stuff from her because you'll want to send her your first born after you taste this dessert.

This is the final product. Just take it in for a second. If you NEED a visual or a flavor indicator, think Thin Mints on Crack. This dessert also has literally 10 minutes of prep time. LESS if you're fast at busting up cookies. I, am not.

Here's what you'll need:

1/2 Bag of Oreo Cookies
1 Regular Sized Bag of Chocolate Chips (I use milk, but semi-sweet, I've heard, is good too.)
1 to 2 tsp. of Peppermint OR Mint Extract to taste (I LUUUURRVE Peppermint so that's what I use.)
1 Cookie Sheet Lined with Parchment Paper

And that's IT! Well, you'll also need some sort of container to put the Rocks in once you're done.

Here are your steps:

Break up the cookies in a medium to large sized bowl.
Melt the chocolate chips until smooth. I nuke them in the microwave for two rounds of 60 seconds each, stirring the chocolate after each revolution.
Add your extract to the melted chocolate. The extract will break up the chocolate a bit so just be sure to stir or whisk it well into the chocolate.
Mix the whole shebang together in the big bowl.
Spread the mix out onto the cookie sheet lined with wax paper as thinly as you can.
Pop the whole thing into the fridge for about an hour or so.
Break it up into pieces and store in an airtight container, or place in a cute tin to give away.

This is what they look like right after you spread them onto the parchment paper. MMM, now doesn't that look tasty?

Amanda Rocks are best served chilled, as the chocolate WILL start to melt if it sits out. Check out my Christmas 2008 Photo Album for step by step photos of the process.

Thanks to Amanda for giving me permission to print her recipe!

Happy Holidays!

Peppermint Chocolate Sandwich Cookies - FAIL

2008-12-23T13:17:00.000-08:00

My mom emailed me this recipe for Peppermint-Chocolate Sandwich Cookies from Giada De Laurentiis and I thought I'd try it.

Well, I made them, but I think they tasted really bad. I don't know if it was because I tried to "cheat" on making the chocolate sandwich filling by just microwaving it instead of melting it on the stove like the directions said. But either way, the freezing and the refrigeration of the cookies made them taste really dry when all was said and done. So I'm giving these cookies a FAIL.

They were also REALLY BIG. Like a meal instead of a cookie. Maybe I should have filled them with meat instead of chocolate and snuck them onto a plate for Ben for dinner.

I think my throw away cookies I made just because Ben can't keep his hands to himself when I'm baking turned out better:

At least they tasted fresh and chewie.

Check out all the photos from my Christmas confection making so far in my photo gallery.

MMM I love me some sugar cookies.

And speaking of sugar cookies I'm going to give a shout out to Nestle's Sugar Cookie Dough that comes in the big tub. This stuff ROCKS. It's in a tub so you can scoop out enough to bake 1 cookie or 24. I freaking HATE those damn tubes of cookie dough because 1) they are hard as HELL to get the dough out of and 2) you basically have to use ALL of it at once unless you feel like tracking something down to store it in.

I don't LIKE tracking things down to store my stuff in because Marlena = lazy. So if I can buy something that is self-contained, then I'm walking on cloud 9. So when you're going to be baking sugar cookies and not feeling like getting all Martha Stewart and making the dough from scratch, I suggest buying this Nestle tub of dough.

It's TEH AWESOME.

The Beehive Cake

2008-12-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

One of my nearest and dearest friends, Lori, got married this year. The big fancy wedding she was hoping for got pushed to the side when her Dad had to have back surgery and she ended up getting married at the courthouse and just having a simple reception at her house with her nearest and dearest.

Well, to some of her friends, myself included, that wasn't good enough. We decided to throw her (and her new hubby) a couples shower because she didn't get the chance to have one before she got married. So a few of us girls planned it out and I decided to make a Beehive Cake, because Lori's got a mad on about bees.

This is the picture of the cake from the Williams Sonoma website. I borrowed the pan from another of the shower planners whose mother had purchased the pan and then never used it. I can honestly say, my cake looked nowhere NEAR as nice as this one did. I half blame my inexperience and I half blame my wackadoo oven.

Since I'm pyscho, I decided I needed to make one, or ten, "practice cakes" because I wanted it to be PERFECT for her shower.

The recipe was a DELICIOUS lemon yellow cake, and it was the first time I had EVER made my own icing. I thought I was pretty hot shit making this cake, I must say. After a few title bouts with my oven (more on THAT in another post) I perfected the cake and it tasted divine. My husband, Ben, can tell you how good it was, since he was forced to eat practically ALL of the practice cakes that I made.

Next came the sugar bees. Misty's mom (the cake pan owner) had purchased some sugar bees that went with the pan, but wasn't ready to part with them, so I had to get creative on how to get some real bees on that cake.

Enter: Marzipan. My mom, oddly enough, had purchased some Martha Stewart magazine days before the cake was set to debut and it had a picture of a beehive cake that was eerily similar to the one I was baking. AND it had directions on how to make Marzipan bees with almond sliver wings.

SCORE!

So I made the bees out of Marzipan and all was well. I even made some chocolate cupcakes with yellow icing and black stipes on them in case we ran out of cake, or if my cake tasted like death to some of the shower attendees.

Lori might have some pictures, if she does, I'll post an update with them.

Don't Call it a Comeback...

2008-12-17T20:52:00.000-08:00

So here we are!

This is the grand opening of Treats for Tummy Monsters! My new blog that has replaced my old blog, Empty Lunchbox.

If you've found your way here from the Lunchbox, thanks for sticking around. If you've tumbled your way here from "The Google" or some other form of interwebbing, thanks for stopping by. I promise things will get more interesting as I catalog my baking victories and failures, as well as spouting off random nonsense about nothing.

We'll start off with my first success! Halloween cupcakes!

One of my first purchases in this baking avenue was a 1M decorator's tip. It seemed like one of the easier tricks to pull off, and I'd eaten enough grocery store cupcakes to know what a 1M swirl is "supposed" to look like.

I think I did a pretty good job on the swirl. My icing coloring does leave some stuff to be desired. It was orange, but not that spooky Halloween orange we've all come to know and love. In my own defense, I've NEVER used decorating gel icing color before so I was a bit scared of what it would do.

That same weekend, I committed an EPIC FAIL trying to make some Wilton Stackables Halloween Cut-Out cookies. I've always been a bit "ambitious" in my vast undertakings, and these cookies were like trying to solve a Rubik's cube in the first grade. The actual cookies turned out decent, but I had never made royal icing before, and I attempted the outline and flood technique, which turned out, well... bad. The icing was paste and so I attempted to make the icing thinner by adding corn syrup to it, which kind of worked. By that time I was so tired from making icing and fucking it up that I was not even about to attempt to color the icing. Which explains my superb icing job on these babies.

Enjoy:

Are you still here? Well, great! You know what you should do now? Look over to the right and partake in the buying of some handy swag that will help you in your baking needs! Or if you don't give a crap about baking, you can just do an Amazon search for something you DO give a crap about.

Also, check out my ferris wheel of "Rad Things". These are things that I like, music, movies, whatever.

Almost There

2008-12-14T20:43:00.000-08:00

So this blog is finally starting to take shape.

Just a few more things and we'll be rocking and rolling.

Welcome.

2008-10-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

To the soon to be home of Treats for Tummy Monsters. The blog about baking and whatever other randomness I can think up.

Well, I guess it kind of already IS the home of Treats for Tummy Monsters since the blog exists...

Anyway, soon, my pets. Soon. There will be content.

And sugar.

LOTS of sugar.