Happy Memorial Day!! Did you know Texas Had a Birthday!!

What I tend to do is make a cake and then TRY to find time to post it on my blog. However, there are the 3 children and the husband - 2 cakes and 2 hamsters living here and the fact that in the spring and early summer I am at war with the ANT army. Keeps a girl busy and blog passages start to pile up. Pile Up you ask? What do you mean by Pile Up? Well - I generally do get as far as being able to upload them onto the computer - but where the process slows down is that I don't get the time to write the story that goes with it. And so they sit in Blog World Limbo waiting for a story and to be released to the world in my head that they go to. If you are reading this........congrats..........you are now part of the world in my head.

Disturbing right?

Anyway..........this particular cake came about when a friend that I met at a craft show and through Catherine (obviously) asked if I could do some Birthday cakes for her. 2. 1 for her hubby to take to work and 1 for her to take to work. I said sure - when? She said - well, ah ...tomorrow. OH. Well Birthdays are a big deal to our family so I wasn't going to not do her birthday celebration - so I agreed if it was a simplish cake.....which to me means buttercream decorations. She said sure - and I asked whose birthday it was......she said Texas's Birthday.

Really. I did not realize that my friend was a transplant from Texas. Everyone here in our area of the world is a transplant so I just don't ask so much "where from"........I am almost MORE amazed when the person has family who live nearby so I am more often asking - "Wait, you grew up here?"

Anyway - this friend explained to me just how SERIOUS Texas Independance day is - that it is the Birthday of Texas and that really Texas should be its own country - well she didn't offer that last part up.........I just hear things and asked her if she thought it should be its own country and she agreed - she said every true Texan believes it is anyway. I hear that too. They are making their own academic books to be used in the classroom which will be much different from the rest of the country. But we won't go into that.
Anyway - the funny thing about this cake that was supposed to be so EASY...........well did you read above where I spelled Independance? Do you see how I spelled it here on this cake?

Pop Quiz - Which is right? Independance or Independence?

Remember I had 2 cakes - a His cake for work and a Her cake for work. I did them both with the state flag as requested and then did the message on the sides. The other side said Happy 175th Birthday (they are old!)
I had finished the first cake and then moved onto the second cake. While looking at the second cake I realized that of all words I spelt Birthday wrong!! Birthday - Geez O I spell Birthday a million times a week it seems and I messed it up. Can't even blame distraction by a child on this.........all alone - maybe it was the radio - ever sing to the radio while writing and then find out that you have typed the words to the song out? No? That's just me? Huh.

So anyhoo - I corrected Birthday on the cake and thought to myself - "well worse things could happen. that was an easy fix and it was only 1 letter and I hadn't finished the word completely" - but just to make certain I double checked the first cake..........and guess what I found.......

Yep - a spelling error on a COMPLETED word - and the letter was close to the center - and that meant scrapping a few letters off and correcting the white and PRAYING that the blue didn't leave any so that it would not bleed on the white as I corrected it. It all worked out. But for the love of cupcakes these were the Quick & Easy cakes!
So......did you search the word yet? Which is correct? Is this picture BEFORE or AFTER I made the correction?

Independence or Independance?

Oh and since we are being Patriotic - kinda - I mean they aren't their own country yet so we are talking about a US state..........Happy Memorial Day!! Hug a Vet today!

I can't even remember what flavor cake these were - I mean I could look in my log - but that would mean actually getting up and walking over and I know this woman well enough to know her favorite and his favorite..........so I will guess..........These cakes were half and half - half Chocolate Chocolate Chip and half White cake with a Vanilla Buttercream icing. Yum!!

If You Give a Cake a Cookie

This week we decided it was time to do my son, Ben's, teachers Half Birthday. Why a Half Birthday? Well primarily because my friend, Stephanie - our class lead, and the rest of us helping out in the class MISSED her real birthday. That was in September. So close to the start of the school year that honestly we didn't feel terrible about missing it - because we hardly had our backpack's on straight enough to have caught it. Yet at the same time - we LOVE LOVE LOVE Mrs. Burns and didn't want her to think we weren't "thinking" of her. So we counted 6 months from the month and had a party.

Now best laid plans are sometimes better then the actual happening. Stephanie contacted our favorite student teacher - Ms. Brown - who ALL the boys have a crush on (although Ben would deny this.........his friend, Malik, called him out on it by saying, "Dude you know you crush on her because we all think she is hot" - I even think she is very cute so he was totally fibbing). Anyway - Stephanie contacted Ms. Brown who helped her send out notes to the class asking for donations for a gift. Then I made a cake.......since we were buying her a gift card to a scrapping store I thought a cute Scrapbook Replica cake. Had it all planned out to the gumpaste scissors.


Then Ms. Brown let us know that while we could still do the party........it would also be the day they do the Multiplication Ice Cream party. You earn a scoop and/or topping for every times table you complete. Ben earned both scoops and 6 toppings with whipped cream - yea Ben!! Which seems weird since they did 0 - 12........where are the other toppings? So anyway - now we were doing the Birthday at the same time as the Ice Cream - as a parent we did the responsible thing and downsized the cake to a "Take Home Gift". Cake AND Ice Cream might be a party tradition, but it makes for a giant mess in the class and we didn't want to take away from the experience of what toppings they earned.

So the cake morphed. I was still thinking gumpaste scissors - but then I thought about the fact that it was very close to St. Pat's........and we are TOTALLY lucky to have such a Great Teacher.....and I just received a delivery of cutters.....and I was COMPLETELY surprised that the shamrock I bought was GIGANTIC!! and immediately thought "well that is as big as an 8" cake round......and I wanted to try out my cookie cutters and a few cookie recipes.......so why not use cookies to border the cake and top it with a cute Shamrock with a message?

Idea born. Cake Baked (I know Mrs. Burns a chocolate fan). Cookies Baked (I didn't know she was a shortbread cookie fan - bonus!). Cake Decorated!

Turned out pretty cute. A little icing flare at the bottom and the cake only took a few more minutes to decorate. Love the cookie thing. Ben came in as I was finishing and said in an unbelieving and thinking I had lost my mind voice (you know how kids do that?)...."Why would you put cookies on a cake?"....I said, "To decorate it and tell Mrs. Burns how lucky we are to have her teaching you." Ben thought for a minute and then said, "So she gets cake AND COOKIES TOO? She is the lucky one." followed by, "Are there any cookies left?"

This cake was Chocolate Chocolate Chip with a Chocolate Buttercream icing and small Cinnamon Shortbread Cookies and one giant Traditional Sugar Cookie.

Cookie Time!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! One day late - yeah yeah, but I still posted these pretty close to the date I actually made them. So many of the cakes are going up a few weeks - sometimes months after I make the cake.............unless the person I made it for has asked me specifically to put it up here so that they can share it with friends or family.

Anyway - cookies are something new for me. I guess making and baking cookie cutter cookies would seem to be a Gimme since I am decorating cakes, but in my sometimes addled head it seemed as though decorating cookies would be tedious. Honestly........all those sprinkles and jimmies are what I am avoiding.

Then people started to ask - Can You Do Decorated Cookies? And I found myself saying - Sure.........and buying cool cookie cutters and googling Royal Iced Cookies. Although I do already have a TON of cookies cutters! At least 200 - I know this because I cataloged them to make sure that I didn't buy anymore doubles in the same size.

To mess around and for a cake I thought I would make 3 sugar cookie style recipes. 1 Traditional Sugar Cookie - 1 Shortbread Cookie and 1 Cinnamon Cookie (I just added cinnamon - not brain surgery in my kitchen). Then made a bunch of shamrocks!! Tah Dah!!