B's Birthday

Current mental soundtrack: "Mister Sandman" by Pat Ballard

B's birthday party was a success! The treasure hunt I planned worked out quite well--none of the clues were too easy, and only one was too hard (the crossword puzzle).

The theme was Ugly Dolls, and the prizes at the end of the treasure hunt were keychain Ugly Dolls wrapped in gold tissue paper. The clues included a word scramble, a cryptogram, sheet music ("Rubber Duckie"), a walk with a compass and measuring tape, and a jigsaw puzzle.

The cake was vanilla with homemade lemon filling and buttercream frosting.

Cake Wrecks

Today B and I went to a book signing for Cake Wrecks. As part of the signing, they had a contest for the best Wreckplica, in cupcake format.

Here is my entry (see the original):



And here is B's entry (see original)




Unfortunately for me, another Cake Wrecks fan had the same idea as I did, and her belly cupcake won the prize. B, however, was one of the top three:




As a prize, she received a carrot jockey necklace:

Counting Down

Current mental soundtrack: "Hymn to the Waters" from Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, Group III, by Gustav Holst

One more day to go! B and I decorated cupcakes tonight for tomorrow's class party:



The cupcakes (what flavor is "yellow" cake, anyway?) are frosted in buttercream, and adorned with fondant decorations. Except for the rocks, which are chocolate (left over from some other project).

Three P's

1. Mr. P
Today B and I went to see her music teacher, Mr. P., perform in Seussical. It was a great show, and the entire audience was kids and parents from her school. I'm really impressed by people who do theater in their "spare time": rehearsing five nights a week on top of a day job is not easy!

2. Poppy
It's hard to take pictures of a dog! I know it's a little blurry, but this is the best one so far.


3. Petits Fours
I finished the petits fours for tomorrow's Voci fundraiser. They look pretty good for a first try, but they're a little on the bland side (vanilla cake, one layer of vanilla buttercream, and vanilla coating). Maybe next time I'll try something more flavorful.

Both kids also commented on the red ones looking like little cheeses: maybe red wasn't the best choice for the ganache. It seemed to fit with the "Flame of Love" theme of the fundraiser, but I guess in the future I'll stick to pink.

All in an Evening's Work

Tonight I baked about a hundred heart-shaped mini-cupcakes for the Voci fundraiser on Sunday. They're going to become petits fours (I hope!). It took forever, because I was too cheap to buy more than one little pan (each pan makes twelve mini-cupcakes). I also folded several loads of laundry (didn't quite finish all of them), and decorated M's T-shirt with a pi. This year, Pi Day falls on a Saturday, so M's school is celebrating tomorrow. In math class, every student will get their own apple pi(e), and M's teacher is offering extra credit for showing up in a pi shirt.

Baking Is Finished

Current mental soundtrack: "Angels on the Head of a Pin" from Angels Are Everywhere, by Daniel Pinkham

As promised, photos of the cake balls:




And for the cake contest, B decorated this castle:




My entry for the cake contest:



It's the first time I've tried using fondant to cover a cake. The cake and starfish came out pretty well, but I think my octopus sculpture leaves something to be desired. He looks rather deflated.

Baking Progress Report 2

Cake balls are finished (I'll post a photo tomorrow). They didn't turn out quite as pretty as I would have liked, but overall they look okay. (Especialy considering I'd never done candy coatings before.) B's cake is baked, and she started decorating while I was at rehearsal tonight. My cake is now defrosting on the counter, and we will decorate together after school tomorrow.

Off to bed!

Baking Progress Report

Between picking up B from school and taking her to ballet class today, I baked and crumbled the cake for the cake balls, and mixed with the buttercream frosting I made on Sunday. (Sorry, no time for photos!). B and I stopped at Spun Sugar on the way to ballet class, and picked up some additional supplies (2 more pounds of fondant, and another pound of candy melts). After dinner, from 6:30-7:00, I shaped the balls, and put them away in the freezer before leaving for sectional rehearsal.

I'm going to try covering my cake with fondant, which I haven't done before, so I had to buy some additional equipment this week. I saw a 20-inch fondant roller at Michael's on Saturday, but since I'm too cheap to pay $21.99 for a plastic cylinder, I made my own; I stopped at Ace Hardware on the way to lunch today, and bought a 24-inch piece of PVC pipe for $3.29.

Another Busy Weekend (And Busy Week Ahead)

Busy weekend here, but I guess that's not news to anyone :-)

Next year, if I happen to mention here that I did something silly like order 37 bulbs (each of which needs to be planted 8 inches deep), will someone please bring me back to reality? The first dozen are in, but that still leaves a bag of 25 to go.

Today, we took F to San Francisco, along with DH's postdoc & wife. We mostly did the same walking tour as last time (minus the cable-car ride), but today was a much more exciting day in San Francisco.

First was the Italian American Heritage parade. We got to see floats and bands and all kinds of Italian-American dignitaries in fancy cars. And, let's not forget the Norcal Waste Systems Precision Drill Team--garbage men with cans on wheels, doing precision drills. And the Ferrari show in Washington Square. The kids received not only candy thrown from the floats, but also bread thrown from the Boudin Bakery wagon (a hunk of baguette in a paper bag).

Second, this is Fleet Week in San Francisco, so we skipped the touristy shops on Pier 39, and crowded onto the wooden pier to watch the air show. The Canadian Snowbirds performed while we were still eating lunch, but we saw the USAF F-16, a red biplane, and the Blue Angels.

This is going to be a crazier week than usual. B and I are both preparing cakes for the cake contest at her school's fall festival, plus I am trying out cake balls for the boutique at the festival. Which means that by Friday at 3:30 pm, the kitchen here has to produce two decorated cakes and dozens of cake balls. Of course, this is the week I have activities on my two normally free evenings: a sectional on Tuesday, and the middle school Science Night on Thursday, so it looks like I'll be working late into the night. I drew up a schedule, and completed the first two tasks tonight: bake and freeze my cake layers, and mix up the buttercream icing (which keeps well in the fridge).

Home Again, Home Again

While B and I were in San Diego, one of the flowers I planted last fall bloomed:

I bought a "blue and white" mixture of Dutch irises, and in the catalog photo the different colors all bloomed at the same time. I guess it doesn't work that way in real life--I now have two white irises and no sign of any blues. Fortunately, while randomly placing bulbs in the flower bed, I somehow managed to put the two white ones at either end, so it looks like I planned it that way!

Tomorrow is choir retreat day (one of two this month). I signed up to bring dessert for the lunch potluck, then discovered that someone is celebrating a birthday, so I went ahead and made a birthday cake:

For once, I'm done with my cake before midnight! (A lot of my cake and cookie decorating happens after 11:00 pm--I never seem to learn the lesson that it always takes longer than I expect.) It took a while to get the green color right. I mixed the first batch using just "Avocado," and when I spread the crumb-coating layer on the cake, B and I both agreed it was a disgusting shade of green. So, I added a little bit of "Forest," which has more blue, then enough "Super Black" to mute the color. M still doesn't approve of the color, but B and I think it looks okay now.