Baking and More Baking

I've been doing a lot of baking the last few days. First, B came home on Wednesday, asking me to make sugar cookies for her class potlatch, to be held Friday morning. Normally, to produce cookies for a Friday/Saturday event, I start them on Tuesday night, so I have time to bake and ice them. Wednesdays I don't get home from rehearsal until after 10:00 pm, so it was a bit of a rush trying to get them done on Thursday:



The acorn cookies were a great hit at the Tlingit-style potlatch, along with the tacos produced by some other parents (don't ask me why an Alaskan tribal potlatch involves tacos and sugar cookies for breakfast--the kids planned it entirely themselves).

Next on the list are cupcakes for a friend's birthday potluck (happening tonight). Devil's Food cupcakes (from a box), filled with homemade pastry cream and glazed with a chocolate glaze:

When Is a Cupcake Not a Cupcake?

When it weighs 1,224 pounds.

I always thought cupcakes were cupcakes because they were small.

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.