Nurse Cake

This was a cake we did for a graduation party. 

The cake is two cakes together in the shape of a T.  The top was iced and then I took a spatula to draw out the shoulders on top.  Although it looks in this picture like the cake is cut, the corners of the top are actually iced in white icing. 

We used fondant to make each end of the stethoscope. Wilton and Duff both make silver color spray to make it look metallic. 

Using a basketweave tip we drew out the top V and the pockets, as well as lined the end of the sleeves. 

The emblem is an edible image.

You could use this same theory for jerseys and similar.

As always, it is topped with sparkly sugar.

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Crock Pot Ribs

We really like tender, fall off the bone ribs as compared to charred ones that require a lot of chewing.  My mom has it down to an art using a crockpot.

Put small potatoes in the bottom of your crockpot and lay the ribs on them.  Add just enough water to cover it all (obviously will vary by size of crockpot and amount of ingredients) and add seasoned salt and pepper.

IF it were me, you know I would add a couple of TB of butter in at this point too.  It is however, not necessary...

Cook on high for about 8 hours.

Remove the ribs and place them in a pan lined with foil.  Spread BBQ sauce on them and broil them in your oven for about 5-10 minutes.  This will get them a bit crispier on the outside, more like the grill, and carmelize the sugars in the BBQ sauce.  It is a nice process especially for those of us in an apartment with no grill!

We served them up with the roasted potatoes and cornbread cakes. 

What better thing to come home to than ribs?

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Wizard of Oz Cupcakes

Here are some super cute Oz cupcakes we made for a local play. 

They utilized fun sparkly rings from a local cake shop.  Cake shops have a lot of easy fun things that you can pop on a cupcake when you need a fantastic but quick answer to decorating.

Never doubt what is in the toy section too, toy tractors make some CUTE decorations.

Short, SWEET, and too the point!

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Homemade Coasters: Shelf Liner Backing

I see a lot of people online making their own coasters, which I have done for a year or so now myself.  I have run the gamut in things I have used as backing, but my favorite is the shelf liner that feels like a silicone web.

You can find it at Wal-Mart for a VERY fair price.  One roll will go a very long way. 

I stick it right on with E6000, of course.

Felt is rather frustrating, those little felt pads are EXPENSIVE, and all of it just about needs E6000 anyway to stay on.

Best benefit of shelf liner? Perfectly slice-able with your handy dandy paper cutter (thanks Xacto for another quality product!).

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Flourless Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Cookies

Ingredients:
-3/4 C Sugar
-1 large egg
-1/2 C peanut butter
-1/2 C Nutella
-1 tsp vanilla

Mix all of the ingredients EXCEPT the Nutella in a bowl, mixing until well incorporated.  Add in the Nutella and fold it in to the batter, not overmixing so that it is swirled throughout. 

You can either drop it by tablespoonfuls, flatten a little, and bake at 350 for ten minutes...

Or you can put giant scoops on a parchment paper lined sheet, not flatten it at all, and let them bake for about 16 minutes at 350 until the edges are starting to brown and firm up.

I am a big fan of giant cookies, so it is not hard to guess which one I chose.  It made nine 2-2.5 diameter cookies.  They each had varying levels of swirls.

Best part about this is it makes your place smell FANTASTIC. And it will give me something to put on my tall cake stand.

I am not gluten free, although I have been exploring a lot of flourless recipes of late.  What I am is an occasional minimalist.  If I can make something with fewer ingredients, I want to know.  If I can make something that is just as tasty, if not more so, with fewer ingredients, then I DEFINITELY want to know.  That way, if I am out of flour (unlikely) and in desperate need of cookies (less unlikely) I am fully prepared to make them using what I already have.

Not to mention, I have friends that are gluten free, so it is always worthwhile to have a few recipes up your sleeve for that.  Especially for parents, you just never know when your kid is going to come home with a gluten free friend!

If you want them to be more peanut buttery and less Nutella feel free to do 75% PB and 25% Nutella.  These cookies came out with chewy yummy edges and softer cores. 

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Encased in Resin: Hardware

You can make a LOT of interesting jewelry and crafty things with resin.  I like to buy the resin from Hobby Lobby that comes with about 8 ounces, which you can usually find near the wood crafting stuff.  There is also another kind of resin in the jewelry section at hobby lobby that is a little more straightforward for mixing, but comes in much smaller quantities.  If you are doing a highly critical project that you only have enough time to do right the first time, your safest bet will be the jewelry section resin.

If however you have a little spare time to correct for typical mistakes, the other is a better deal.

There is a LOT of things that I have put in resin.  Extra charms, metal flake, and small hardware have been fun add ins for jewelry. Near the wood crafting where they sell the resin, there are plastic molds in a variety of shapes and sizes.  All you really need to do is put some oddities in the mold, pour in the resin, let it sit, pop it out, and attach necessary pieces to make it a pendant.

A lot of times I wrap mine in wire, mostly because I find it visually interesting and it is an easy way to add a bail.  You can also let a jump ring or similar dry in the resin and then attach directly to a necklace and similar.

If your resin pendant ends up too sticky on the back due to an error in mixing or humidity, I suggest putting a piece of scrapbook paper, saran wrap, foil, or similar on the back so that it seals it in.  I most often use scrapbook paper because it adds another level of detail.  If you notice that it is mostly perfect all the way around but just has a small sticky spot somewhere, use clear nail polish and paint over it to correct the problem.

If it is mixed too incorrectly it will be horrifically sticky and there will be no salvaging it.  That is one of the benefits to the jewelry section, it is more controlled and you pretty much can't goof it.

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Train Cake: Choo Choo!

How...freakishly...CUTE IS THIS CAKE?!?

I love it.

I bought the train pan from Hobby Lobby and completely disregarded the color scheme on the picture.  I did rosettes all over the sides of the cake and as a border on top because I have a pretty rigged up board system under this cake.

There is a 16 inch round under my 16 inch cake.  Then there is a red square board under that.

Why did I not just put the cake on the square board? It is heavy, it needed dual supports.  Why did I just not use two of the same shape board? Clearly did not have any.

In fact, a myriad of fun things happened with this cake.

First, she did not rise as much as I figured she would, and she rose unevenly.  Thanks a lot, gas oven.  I also had to crank it down to 325 3/4 of the way through because my oven was baking it just a little too dark for my liking. Usually we always bake cakes at 350 in my moms electric oven, but this guy heats a bit differently.

So when I cut the part that was above the pan lip off to level it, it pretty much did not level it at all.  My middle was level, but there was inevitably a big gap between my edges and my board all the way around.

No matter, everything can be solved with extra icing.  That is, once you get the pin back in your kitchenaid that fell out while you were making icing last night.

So that is how the rosettes happened.  They were a great way to disguise my goofy looking sides. 

This is my first ever solo cake, and I am actually really happy with it! I used two tips on the whole thing basically, a larger writing tip and a small piping tip.  Which is really backwards when you think about it, and not very handy in the long run.  But I am a firm believer in making it work.

I mounded up some icing to make the puffy clouds.  You are welcome whoever gets one of those slices.

I also quickly realized I only had one coupler. I have 5 rings, just nothing to screw them onto.  Awesome.  This resulted in me doing all things needed in the same color all at once.  I went white, red, yellow, black. Washed the coupler out in between each color, shook my head every single time.  Needless to say when I was done I went directly to the shower to wash off the residual sticky all over me from messing with so much icing.

The train cake almost broke because I had to flip it out train side up for it to cool, transfer it to a different cookie sheet train side down, and then get it on to my cake train side up.  Luckily I sprayed the heck out of the pan, and it came out just fine.  The little pans will get you more often than the big guys.

I just barely had enough oil, literally I don't even think my bottle has a tablespoon left.  I used all of my Crisco, barely had enough icing, but managed to make it through it all without a hitch.

I got it in the cake box just fine, and have press and seal wrapped all the way around it because of course, I don't have tape in this entire apartment.

The real fun begins tomorrow.  Tomorrow morning it will have to be transported to school as it is for a retirement party.  Luckily I think it is far too heavy for the boards to shift, it is just a matter of not dropping it or the cupcakes.  I have never actually witnessed someone dropping a cake, and I do NOT want my first time seeing it be me living the nightmare.

But it is super cute, I love it, and I really don't want to give it away.  But then again, I also don't want to see cake in this apartment for at least the next week.

I ate a salad for dinner because I was so tired of sugar everywhere.

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