There's at least cake in the name

I realize that there hasn't been just a whole lot of cakes here lately, but this is sorta close. The hubbin's boss at TCTMNBN had a birthday a while back and I got word that she's a big cheesecake fan. So I made her a chocolate cheesecake. Bittersweet chocolate, real Oreo crust (couldn't find the ready-made crumbs at the store so I ended up separating and crushing the cookies myself), and white chocolate topping. I think this may be the recipe I used, but honestly, it's been a while. I heard it went over well.

I even requested a piece of the cheesecake make its way back home so I could have some.

The food that made my momma puke

So yes, she totally did puke after eating these, but I ate half of them and ended up fine so I don't know what her issue was. I thought they were good.



I've toyed with the idea of scones in the past, but it sounded scary. But then I finally looked at a recipe and found out that this is probably the easiest thing to bake ever created. In honor of the holidays I opted for White Chocolate and Cranberry Scones. My little brother and I added some melted white chocolate to the top of the scones. I'll definately make them again (even though the hubbin turned his nose up at them because he "doesn't like cranberries").



And yes, this is a terrible photo. It happens. We've talked before about my photo abilities and my lack of a real camera over Thanksgiving anyway.

More Deep Fried Food

The sopapillas weren't the only deep fried food I made over Thanksgiving. My little brother is an idiot savant when it comes to cooking. He comes up with all sorts of ideas, but this time he had me there to actually carry them out. His bright idea? Sweet potato wontons.



Now I know this sounds strange, but they were SO DANG GOOD! Of course I can't just link to a recipe this time, but we were just winging it as we went anyway. Baked a couple sweet potatoes and toasted some pecan pieces. Then mixed the sweet potatoes with cream cheese, cinnamon, salt, the pecans, and a hit of cayenne pepper. Then we put the sweet potato mixture and a mini marshmallow into a wonton wrapper. Of course the HEB (one of only two grocery stores in town and my mother has announced quite loudly her reasons for not shopping at Wal-Mart) was out of wontons, but they did have egg roll wrappers so we just cut those into smaller squares. Seal up the sides of the wrapper and deep fry until golden brown. Then dust with cinnamon and sugar.



HOLY CRAP!!! These were totally amazing and addicting and even reheated the next day pretty easily. The only shot I got of them (again, with the cell phone):

A Texan Thanksgiving

The hubbin and I got to go home this year for Thanksgiving and unlike 90% of the rest of the U.S., I didn't eat a bit of Turkey. Which is just fine with me. My Mom's family had fajitas and my in-laws had barbque. A real Texas Thanksgiving.



I have to share one of my favorite parts of the holidays. This is why we love my Aunt Linda:

Disclaimer: I didn't take a camera back home with me, so all the pictures from Thanksgiving are taken with my cell phone.

I ended up not baking for this meal, but I did supply the quintessential Tex-Mex dessert: Sopapillas! Is there anything better than deep-fried, dusted with cinnamon and sugar, and then filled with butter and honey goodness?

 These are actually surprisingly easy to make. All it takes is a few easy baking ingredients and a big pot of some HOT oil. And honey, of course. There are lots of recipes that call for yeast, but that's too fussy in my book. Just some Crisco and baking powder are really all that is needed. I used this one. The secret is the oil must be really hot to get them to puff up just right so that you have a big hole to fill with honey.

Or just dump the honey on top. That works too.

Ben Roethlisberger is allegedly a terrible person

I just thought I'd get that out of the way right off the bat. The cake design should not be miscontrued as approval of any king of Mr. Roethisberger's alleged actions. But the cake turned out pretty cute. :)



My hubbin's co-worker at TCTMNBN is a big Pittsburg fan. (It's much easier than being a Cardinals fan.) So in honor of his birthday, he got a Steelers cake. Flavors are chocolate cake, peanut butter filling, chocolate ganache frosting, and fondant. I bought the black fondant since I've always heard that it is really hard to get the right color otherwise. It stained my countertop pink. Thanks bathroom cleaner with bleach, you got it out pretty good.



So the pics:

 The circles around the cake have the symbols for the six SuperBowls the Steelers have won. The most recent was against the Cardinals. It should be noted that in SuperBowl XXX, the Steelers lost to the Cowboys.

Check out these awesme layers to this cake. How pretty even inside.

 





Lemon Flavored Crack

Okay, not P.C., but I have found the world's best frosting. Seriously, literally (and I use that word literally because I hate when people misuse it). I'm not really a sweets kind of person, though I love to bake. But I can sit with this stuff in a bowl and eat it for days. What is this magic elixir? This ambrosia sent to us lowly baking souls from the gods of the flour and the baking soda? It's swiss meringue buttercream. Martha Stewart has, yet again, won my heart with her recipes. When you have to give a recipe in POUNDS of butter, you know it's gonna be good. So I needed an excuse to make some and came up with two!



Reason #1- My particularly attractive, previously pregnant friend has a newborn at home who is more concerned with his next meal or pooping to give him mom much free time. So I decided she deserved baked goods. :)



Reason #2- The hubbin got a new boss at TCTMNBN. And since his coworkers are my usual guinea pigs, she needed a "Welcome to the Company" cupcake. The hubbin ditched my idea of spelling out "Welcome New Mary" in fondant on the cupcakes.



I dubbed this batch my Strawberry lemonade cake. Though it was pretty skimpy on the strawberries. I was using the rest of the ones I got on sale and I was too cheap to go buy some more. The batter was my go-to vanilla. I'm pretty boring apparently, this is one of my favorite cakes to eat. It tastes like sugar cookies, and who doesn't love them? I chopped up strawberries and added them to the batter. The frosting is Martha's Swiss Meringue Buttercream (see link above). But I dumped in some fresh lemon juice. Melinda declared that she liked her shower cake better, the hubbin declared it wasn't "my best" but I ate like 6 of the dang cupcakes and loved it.



Don't judge me by my frosting or piping abilities- It's rusty with all the fondant here lately and I was running low on frosting (again). But I did bust out my flower making skills from my Wilton's classes and added some roses that were totally off-center. You can find Melinda's pictures of the cake (which I told her couldn't show anything but the flowers since the frosting looks so bad) AND of her particularly attractive baby boy, Camden, on her blog. She has some nice shots of the roses to show you that not everything on this looked like crap.

For the cupcakes, I really like the idea of having tiny little decorations on each of them. So I made some tiny little flowers, then added my pearl drages to them cause I liked it, then I remembered I had some green fondant leftovers and added a leaf. I love them.

Making a Splash

I was approached to make a birthday cake for a little boy celebrating a big birthday, his first one!

Meet Miles-

Miles' momma, Cammie, told me that he really likes to go swimming, so she wanted some sort of pool cake. This is him in his swimming outfit. Check out those beautiful blue eyes!  Cammie wanted a two tier cake, one for the party guests and one just for Miles, and I found this cake on my favorite cake website. We decided to make figures of Miles doing different pool stuff, and I told Cammie I had to include his blue swimming hat. :) So without further ado:



The cake! My go-to Magnolia Bakery vanilla cake, ganache filling, and chocolate buttercream.

The Mileses!

I added an umbrella as I was sketching, I thought it was sorta cute. And thanks to an evening run to Wal-Mart by the hubbin', I thought it came out pretty cute. It's made of gumpaste, which hardens better than fondant and is more sturdy since it was going to be wobbling off the side of the cake. I rolled out the green and the brown fairly thin and stacked them, then cut the openings in the brown so the green would show through. The perfectly round shape? I draped it over a Styrofoam ball that I covered in plastic wrap. Brilliant!

Diving board- It was a pool, I thought it appropriate.

Beachball- Cammie asked for some pool toys. I had beach balls, noodles of varying colors, swim rings, and one of those inflatable rubber ducky ring things.

The view from the top. The water is piping gel tinted with food coloring. I'd read a note online someone had made that said to use the coloring sparingly because the piping gel gets dark really fast, she wasn't kidding! This was my sky blue!

But of course the nice blue gel makes a nice big mess when the birthday boy gets into it. :)

Happy 1st Birthday Miles!