Let Them Eat Cake!!!

A summer of cake baking, won't change since birthdays will remain the same! This first one is not for a birthday though. This little double layer six inch cake was finished Saturday morning. My niece's husband asked me if I could duplicate the top of the cake I had made them last summer for their wedding. I iced it this morning and met my niece for the delivery, tomorrow is their 1st anniversary and they lost the top layer they had frozen during our week without power after the April storms.

The bones for the cake I did last week, finishing Saturday, just in time to get to the party.

My 4 year old nephew had a Star Wars themed party and I decided to make Chewbacca. Here's the "head" before I shaped it up a little.

After carving a little, I frosted it in the black chocolate buttercream frosting.

Here's the sheet cake iced in black with some white icing "stars" for the galaxy.

Thought I made an in process photo of him but I started getting rushed. (Hate when I do that) Not thrilled with the writing but he loved it!

Mr. Unplugged's birthday cake was coconut topped with toasted coconut. What's to say, no decorating but it was really tasty and he liked it!







Ahhhh, the true monster of the summer. My 5 year old great nephew loves the Legend of Zelda. I was torn what to do on this one cause none of the design choices were easy. Finally went with the shield. First time to do much cutting shapes out. It wasn't bad at all....the secret is to freeze the cake. But....I had procrastinated because of my fear of it, the design, knew it wouldn't be easy.....so, I was rushed towards the end which made it messier than it should have been.

I was still pleased at this point.

But Eli loved it and I learned much from this cake. It weighed a ton, fortunately I didn't have to carry it over to the party, his dad did. VolleyGirl and I showed up later for it.

Next up? BigBoy's birthday is next week and he wants a character on his cake too.

Celebrations Continue

Yesterday was another festive day, Eli's 3rd birthday! This made three days in a row of celebration! The birthday tyke is in the middle, with his brother, Finn, on the left, and their sweet mom.

Blow that last candle out Eli!!!!

Isn't this the cutest 'sushi' that my niece made for the party! The green 'wasabi' is icing I tinted with her direction.

My niece baked the cake and I offered to make the icings and went over yesterday morning to decorate it. The theme was 'Samuri Jack', the flames up the side of the character on the raised portion are made from fruit roll-ups. The part was molded of rice krispie treats, iced, then decorated. It took a bit longer than anticipated but was great fun spending time with my eldest niece and seeing 3 year old Eli and 4 and a half year old Finn see the cake. We all attended the party later in the afternoon.

It's been another barn raisin' busy week again, aren't they all? Mr. Unplugged wanted to go out of town together for a night, so we went to the casinos a few hours away. It's not my favorite thing to do but we had a really great time. However, I knew that mounds of lovely laundry would be awaiting and since we all went to the pool, cooked out and I made ice cream last night, then we took in the fireworks....well, not a whole lot was done yesterday or today around here so.........I will be bleeding lint the next couple of days. VolleyGirl started a two week driver's education class this morning so I am extremely excited about getting up to get her off before 8:00 for that then straight to volleyball practice this week. That also means the 'cleaning elves' will be responsible for her room that is almost finished....oh, and she has two birthday events to attend this week also and a photo for the team program.

FINALLY finished the volleyball ads last week...$600 dollars worth.....good riddance to that task for another 11 months. Next tasks....back to 'maytagaramas' AND the next art festival is this Saturday............do I dare try to do some small paintings and large zentangles PLUS build a display for it? Hmmmm, not sure, having intense knee and back pain presently, but I really want to. There is good health news, finally had that freakin' abdominal ultrasound last week and I HAVE ALL THE RIGHT PARTS AND THEY LOOK NORMAL...they didn't even comment that I had a fatty liver! Though....I have to dig deeper with a specialist to find out about the elevated liver enzymes.

Very Sweet Easter......

BigBoy's request was this stove top drop cookie made of chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal.

My neighbor's mom passed away so I made this cream cheese pastry for them.

Mr. Unplugged's favorite is the coconut cream pie - he is finishing off the very last piece now!

The in-laws grabbed some of these before we even had the meal. It is a well known Paula Deen recipe, Gooey Butter Cake...though it really is cut into bars.

This was the new recipe, another Paula Deen recipe, Decadent Chocolate Layer Cake.

The middle layer is cheese cake.......it was very, very good. I do believe that milk was left out of the ingredients for the icing. I made it Saturday evening, which was the very last thing I mixed up. It was like concrete, I thought the big mixer was going to tear up, I had to add some milk, a little at a time to try to get it to a spreadable consistency. It was it a big ball clung tightly around the beater. I probably read over that part of the recipe a dozen times making sure I had not left something out.....12 ounces of chocolate melted, a cup of butter and six cups of confectioners sugar with only 3 tablespoons of Amaretto liqueur was not going to work.

I had started my baking Thursday with a cinnamon pull apart cake for the neighbors but I took a quick shower and left it in just a bit too long and left it here and made them the cream cheese pastry. It is one of their favorites. Needless to say, the family here was thrilled with that. Next, I made BigBoy's cookies so they would be here when he arrived, double batch, they stayed here and he took remainder back to school with him.

Friday I made the coconut cream pie, baked the chocolate cake and the cheesecake layer, the butter cake and the pasta dish for the tournament on Saturday. The pasta has chicken, bacon bits, cheddar cheese, celery, spiral pasta and mixed with ranch dressing.....the girls love it....it's actually called 'Volleyball Pasta'. I also mixed a tortilla chip dip made with cream cheese, chopped green chili peppers, shredded parmesan cheese, sprinkled with bread crumbs and baked. It was the first time I made it.....all of it was eaten at the tournament. The girls did well at the tournament but only came in second in their pool play.....VolleyGirl played very well. We arrived at the tournament before 8 a.m. and left around 5 p.m. Our last club tournament is this weekend in Atlanta, we will leave Friday and return Sunday. Guess what...school volleyball starts that Monday. Thankfully, I will not have to bring food this weekend. In-between the baking I was doing wash. My goal was to get the baking done by Friday so that I could have Friday and Saturday night free except for mixing the icing and putting the cake together. BigBoy helped me finish up the icing...........We went to my in-laws, came home, got BB off to school around 4:00 then I went to my brother's for awhile. Today, VolleyGirl's school was still out so I taxied her to meet friends for lunch and a movie. It's at a shopping center so I browsed awhile then went to the bookstore, plopped down and finished my drawing. I will post that tomorrow. Okay.....that's a 'not so quick' rundown!!!!! I probably still won't get around to all of you till tomorrow....have to clean kitchen after preparing supper....VG is doing homework!! Love ya!