Most confusing birthday cake ever

As I was gathering ideas for a birthday cake for Trevor, I happened upon a brilliant idea: make the inside of a computer board! I don’t know if I’d say Trevor loves computers, because that’s a more than extremely broad statement. Computers are everywhere… but it’s a hobby of his. He builds them, tinkers with them, clicks… types… whatever one does with computers as a hobby.

SO

The only problem was… I had NO idea what the inside of a computer board might look like when translated into cake form.

So I simply copied the example computer board I found online. And this is what I came up with:

 

He recognized it immediately, which told me I did at least a passable job. To him it actually looked like parts. To me, it looked like Twizzlers, cookies, chocolate chips & Rolos. And a weird sour rainbow thing that’s supposed to be wires, I think.

He loved it.

Mission: Accomplished.

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My Inner Martha

Weddings

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New Format

Hello loyal readers! I’m excited to announce that I will have a completely new format for my blog very soon! New logos, new icons, new everything! I’m very excited! Check back for updates, or better yet, subscribe to my blog so you can get all of the updates as soon as they happen.
Happy baking, happy crafting, happy photographing… happy everything!

It’s a Cook-In!

It’s just not Memorial Day without a cook-out! Unfortunately it’s difficult to execute a barbecue in an apartment. So for the past couple of years, we’ve been hosting a cook-in. Sunday Dinner this month was another one of these such events.

It was an amazing feat. Almost every dish that came to Sunday Dinner was a Weight-Watchers recipe or WW-friendly. I don’t believe that has ever happened before. Everybody felt a little less guilty chowing down.

Here’s Vicki helping set up the dirt cake garden.

Mer looking cute!

Sarah facebooking about the event.

Here’s Renate fixing up her Caprese Pasta Salad. Mmmmmmm

Let’s not forget the bun fort.

Time to eat!

Dirt Cake Garden!

The only thing that wasn’t WW-friendly was Alyssa’s absolutely to-die-for chocolate trifle. Mmmm

After dinner we had a group craft! Because I’m a kindergarten teacher, apparently. And because everybody loves a group craft.

We painted our dirt cake pots!

Now I’m merging Edibles with Martha. Oops!

I’m so glad we brought back Sunday Dinner. It’s my favorite event! Up next… Dimanche diner a Paris!

Wedding Cake: First attempt ever!

For the most part, when I told a person I was making my friend Kelly’s wedding cake, his/her reaction was “uhhhhhhhh… have you ever made a wedding cake before?” Well… uhhhhh… no. BUT. Because Kelly has such elegantly simple taste, when I offered to make her wedding cake, I was confident I could handle anything she would want. The fact that this post is appearing on Enchanting Edibles and not Fabulous Flops should tell you that I could, in fact, handle it.

Kelly’s cake was made of:

5.25 POUNDS of butter

17.5 Cups of sugar

35 Eggs

7 teaspoons of vanilla

5 teaspoons of almond extract

21 Cups of flour

5 teaspoons of baking powder

2 teaspoons of salt

7 Cups of milk

Holy cake ingredients, batman. And that’s not even counting the filling or the frosting.

Because I am who I am and I do what I do, I forgot to take photos of the assembly of the actual ingredients. So you can use your imagination on that one. I’ll give you a hint. It looked like cake batter being assembled.

I did use, for the first time, Wilton’s Cake Release. It worked like a charm. The cake was so easy to release from the pan, it was hesitant to even get INTO the pan. It said, “Nooo! Don’t put me in the pan! I’m just gooey delicious batter! Don’t change my chemical make-up by introducing heat! Then the people will EAT me!”

Eh hem.

Well I wrastled it in, and I put the core in. A core is an aluminum piece that sets into the middle of any cake larger than 10″ so that the middle cooks at the same rate as the edges. Another Wilton product worked like a charm. How I love the Wilton. One small design suggestion. The core is closed. So you have to put batter INTO the core in order for you to have a middle piece of the cake. Why not make the core with an open bottom so that it cuts the batter? No weird muffiny thing to deal with.

16-inch pan BARELY fit into my oven. You can see how close it is to the edge. I had to actually lock the oven door in order to keep it closed while it was baking.

Seven cake recipes, six cakes and six weird muffiny things later… I had a fridge full of cake. NOMS. At first I tried to put it in the freezer, but my freezer is most definitely not 16 inches deep. Lose.

Now fast forward about five days. To my amazement, the cake stayed incredibly fresh. I baked on Sunday & decorated on Friday. This cake. Was so. Delicious.

Vicki came over to be my assistant.

She assisted effectively.

Her first task was to cut up cucumbers so we didn’t snack on frosting.

It sort of worked. It’s really hard to focus on cucumbers when you have globs of chocolate buttercream filling at your fingertips. And your fingertips are so close to your taste buds. Mmm…

Anyway.

Chocolate Buttercream Filling ingredients:

Yes, we used ALL 12 pounds of sugar.

The chocolate filling was kind of cool how it came together. First it was a big glob of chocolateness. Then it turned into something that resembled Muddy Buddies. (I LOVE Muddy Buddies!) Then when we added the milk, it turned into super creamy delicious buttercream filling! It was to. die. for.

Now it was time for the very scary part: leveling off the cake. I bought this handy cake leveler from where else but Wilton!? It. Sucked. Now, as I was handing over my debit card to the woman (with really awful facial hair) at Michael’s to buy this thing, I was shaking my head and saying to myself, “It is so stupid to buy this thing. Dad could make something ten times better with three pieces of wood and a guitar string.” For those of you wondering, my Dad is neither MacGuyver nor Jack Bauer, but it is a fact that Superman wears Daryl Kosinski pajamas. Well, I was right. It wasn’t good. I had to level them by hand. That actually worked out fine.

And it left these delicious scraps. What scraps? I didn’t see any scraps.

The leveling process didn’t turn out to be as scary because ~REVELATION~ I can flip the cake OVER to have a flat top! Genius! So I slopped some filling onto the bottom layer…

And flopped on the top layer.

Did you get that?

Slop.

Then Flop.

Evened it all out…

And soon I had another fridge full of cake.

Most delicious fridge ever.

Next I had to apply the crumb coat. This is a thin layer of royal icing that kind of helps “glue” the crumbs down so that when you put the “real” icing on, the crumbs don’t get all mixed up in it. The crumb coat can look like crap. Get it? Crumb Coat Crap. (Apply crap?) It’s the final coat that’s the important part.

Here’s the beginning of the crumb coat. After it’s on, it gets spread all over the entire cake. And the entire kitchen, if you’re really skilled.

I was apparently running too low on time to photograph any further steps. Here’s the Snow White Buttercream Icing I used for the finishing coat.

Let’s sidebar on the bowl for a minute.

I love this bowl. It’s the perfect depth, it has a little ring for hanging onto it, it’s easy to pick up and hold onto; the electric mixer catches all the nooks and crannies & it’s just the perfect bowl. I know it’s hard to envision a bowl even having nooks and/or crannies, but believe me, some bowls you just can’t trust. Unfortunately this bowl is not mine. I have been looking for an equally amazing bowl to add to my wedding registry. The search is ongoing. Standby for updates.

OK, moving on. So I had three layers of this cake in my possession, and because they had grown in size due to the addition of layers and layers of sugar, butter, and… (ok mostly sugar and butter), they no longer fit in the fridge.

Here’s the absolutely most challenging part. We had to transport these layers of cake to the Peruzzi’s Meat Market walk-in cooler in 80-degree weather. Holding my breath the entire way and leaving the camera behind, we drove 25 minutes with the AC on full blast to deliver the cake.

Success. We had to do some touch-ups, but standing in the refrigerator (Vicki freezing her poor bum off) was the best thing I could do for the poor melty cake.

When I got home, the kitchen was a complete disaster.

Everything had a tasty coat of icing on it.

Mom and Dad picked up the cake on Saturday and assembled it in the reception hall while I was tending to the blushing bride.

And she was kind enough to smooth out the icing for me. Cakes don’t travel well. I need a refrigerated van. That would be handy.

Ahhh the cake was complete!

I’m really very happy with it. It’s exactly what Kelly wanted, and it was so super tasty!

Summer has arrived!

Even though it’s been below 60 degrees the last several days, summer really is on the horizon. How do we know that? The first Caprese Salad of the year, of course! I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about fresh mozarella, tomatoes and basil that just make the world so much more delicious!

Trevor prefers it with Balsamic vinegar.

I prefer it without.

Add wine and bread…and don’t forget the Italian Seasonings dipping sauce, thanks to Renate who left it here after the last Sunday Dinner.

YUM

Pink Velvet Topsy Turvy Fondant Ball Cake

Ahh the topsy turvy cake. So much mystery… so much color… so much time… so much fondant… so much delicious.

And really really complicated.

Merilee and I have been planning on making this mini-topsy turvy cake for several weeks. We had no particular occasion, so we felt a mini-cake would be the least dangerous option.

We made 2″, 4″ & 5″ cakes, two layers each.

I got the recipe for Red Velvet Cake from Wilton. Fabulous fabulous fabulous recipe! I would definitely make it again.

It’s kind of a weird recipe… it called for vinegar and baking soda. I made a mini-volcano to put in the cake.

The batter was really cool looking…

After adding in the buttermilk, it looked like a pink river running through the batter!

Oh it was so good!

The cakes came out of the oven & we leveled them off with the Wilton cake leveler. So handy! (That’s Mer doing the leveling. She has nice nails. She could be a hand model.)

Mer also spent a lot of time and elbow grease into kneading the fondant, making it pliable.

I didn’t make her do ALL the work. Meantime, I was filling the layers & shaping the topsy-turvyness.

And for Mer… more kneading…

All the kneading paid off. We had two beautiful colors.

After a couple of hours of fighting with dried out fondant and clumsiness, we had a SUPER cute topsy turvy cake!

Only one problem…we couldn’t figure out what to do on the very tip top of the cake… so we took some left over fondant, rolled it into a ball and decorated it. Well, two problems. I dropped the middle layer & squished some of my pretty squigglies.

Voila!

Chow time!

First we made Ham & Pear Pizza again, but we used maple balsamic reduction instead of the honey balsamic sauce & we chopped the pear instead of sliced. Much much better than the last one. More surface area on the pear pieces in order to let the juices flow out into the rest of the pizza & combine flavors. Num-yummy.

Ok dinner’s over… dessert time!

It disappeared quickly!

Not a bad first try at a topsy turvy cake. I think it would have been easier to work with if it was a full size cake. The mini-size didn’t give us much to work with. I’d definitely try it again if I had an occasion for it!

Happy Easter!

Hi Friends! Wow, it’s been almost a month since I last posted. Fear not; I have not been shirking in my resblogibilities. So much has been going on since Easter! I do have a few neat Easter pictures to share with you, but nothing spectacular. I’m pretty sure it will make you want ham, though.

We spent Easter weekend with Trevor’s family in West Hurley, NY. A new New York State Park opened in October called the Walkway Over the Hudson. It’s a 1.5-mile bridge connecting Poughkeepsie with Highland on the other side. We walked the bridge on Saturday. It’s a nice outing.

There were some neat scenes to be seen at the Walkway, but you can check that out over on Photography.

On the way back, we had the first ice cream of the season!

This is fat-free orange and vanilla twist. YUM.

Here’s Trevor with his chocolate & vanilla twist.

It was a beautiful sunny and warm Easter Sunday. We went to sunrise church & had a nice dinner with Dee & George, Barry’s sister & brother-in-law.

Easter ham…

Beautiful colorful greenful beans…

And of course a lemon meringue pie made by Dee.

Bunny bunny cake pop!

Success! I finally figured out how to make cake pops! Thanks to Bakerella for this highly adorable and fantastically delicious idea! Now… let me warn you… mine are not as perfect as Bakerella’s. Hers are amazing.

OK here goes! There are two cakes here for three kinds of cake pops: Bunnies, Chickies & Flowers. I did strawberry cake with pink vanilla frosting & white cake with vanilla frosting.

I just love the pink vanilla frosting! Cutest frosting ever!

So you take your beautiful cake that you just spent all that time baking, and you smash it to smithereens. Real smithereens. I’m talking about channeling your inner ten-year-old boy. Your goal is destruction.

Smashed enough:

Not smashed enough:

I thought it was a great idea to remove the tough edges of the cake that wouldn’t smash so good.

And then something happened to them and they disappeared.

I don’t know where they went.

So then you empty a can of frosting into your smashed cake & you mix it til it’s all the same consistency. Then ~and this is very important~ you sample handfuls of this goop. As many as you want. You wouldn’t want to gift something that hasn’t been amply taste tested.

Now it’s time to get out the project tray.

Let’s sidebar on the project tray for a moment. Many of you may remember doing any number of projects on this tray, especially if you were in 4-H with me. It has seen everything from pumpkin carving to volcano-making. Papier mache, salt dough, collages, Christmas cookies, who knows what else. I think there were several of these metal trays floating around for various projects. I’m so glad I ended up with one. It’s so useful!

So the Project Tray was added to my work station. This is my work station, by the way. Yes, the new rolls of toilet paper are in the side table, and yes, I was watching Meet the Press. David Gregory is my favorite Muppet-like human.

OK back to the cake pops…

I formed the batter into balls & about half of them were to become cake pops. The other half would be cake balls.

This time I was smarter than the cake pop. See Fabulous Flops for the last incident… This time I decided to “glue” the stick to the cake. That way… hopefully… they wouldn’t separate when I dipped them.

Aw, my little cake pop soldiers all lined up and ready to get dunked.

I filled my freezer with cake pop soldiers & watched this week’s Lost again.

The dunking was successful!

Yum!

Decorating time! I used tiny sprinkles in different shapes for the face details, and Easter candy corn as the bunny ears. All recommended by Bakerella.

Ha, it looks like they’re looking away from me.

But they really don’t have faces yet!

Here are their faces!

And little chickies too!

The final product was a bouquet of bunnies, chickies & flowers!

“Yes mother, I’ll buy it on The iTunes”

Last week, Sharon and Brittany and I went to a pub called Armsby Abbey. We had a surprisingly fantastic pizza: ham & pear. Who would think to put those two things together? Well tonight I tried my own version of Ham & Pear Pizza.

Their description:

Applewood Smoked Ham from Green Mountain Farm (Ludlow, VT) and Crumbled Great Hill Blue Cheese (Marion, MA) topped with shaved An’Jou Pear and fresh Arugula finished with a Maple-Balsamic Reduction

My version:

Smoked Ham from Stop & Shop

Sliced Pear

Fresh Mozzarella

Organic Traditional Pasta Sauce

Honey-Balsamic Sauce

First we made the sauce:

Enough honey to cover the bottom of a mini mixing bowl (my measurements are exact!)

Top that off with balsamic… about the same amount? Maybe?

Olive oil…

Next, we prepare the pizza. I used a store bought crust. I know I know. It was already late! I’ll make my own dough from PW‘s recipe some time soon.

We cut the mozzarella as thin as we could and laid it on top of the pasta sauce.

We cut the ham into strips & the pears into slices.

The ham & pear slices went next… then we drizzled the sauce over the whole pizza.

15 minutes on 400 in the oven and we had one tasty gourmet pizza!

Goooooood dinner! It went perfectly with this week’s episode of The Big Bang Theory, whose quotes are too priceless to not include in some way. If you were wondering why this post is titled as such… well, that’s why.