Valentine Fun and Late Cake Making

So I'm sure you are all wondering how I fared with passing another Valentine's Day and still single. Remarkably unscathed. Probably because I was too busy worrying about making my cake that night that I didn't have time to feel sad about being alone. Actually, I just don't really care about Valentine's Day anymore. I've never had a valentine, so to speak, so mostly it just passes like any other day other than these days my friends and I get each other little gifts. I wasn't even jealous of Loralee when David had made her dinner and they ate by candlelight in her room. My mind was just elsewhere.

First, I had sort of forgotten about Valentine's Day until a few days before and realized I needed to think of a little gift to give my friends. A great idea occurred to me, but then the next few days I was just so unmotivated to create it that it didn't happen. So Thursday night, right after work I went to Walmart to pick up a few things for home and went by the holiday section seeing if there was anything that would be fun to give. Stuffed Animals? No. Flowers? No. Candy? No. Then there is was a barage of stuff, extremely inexpensive and fun to boot. I gathered all the stuff together and found the rest of my items and then wanted to hurry and get home to put the gifts together and get started on preparing my cake for class the next night. Unfortunately, I picked the slowest line ever. It was short but I think the girl was new and was being incredibly slow. I was most irritated.

So I get home, quickly eat a little and then hurry to put my gifts together. When I walked in my room, there was something different. My room was still incredibly messy as it was that morning when I left it but there was one glaring difference. My bed was made and I hadn't made it. On the bed resting against my pillow was a card attached to a bad of Peanut M&Ms. It was from Loralee, with a lovely note inside. It made me feel very happy. I wanted to make a card to go with my gifts but I just didn't have time. There was a knock on the door and so I went to answer it, but there was no one there. Just a chocolate flower with a note to me, not signed. I asked that I didn't know who it was from (obviously either Carrie or Melanie). Loralee recognized Melanie's handwriting and they had always done the knock and run thing when delivering Valentines. I went back to getting my gifts ready and about ten minutes later there was another knock on the door. We figured it was Melanie again delivering Loralee's present so we looked out the window to see where she had gone and Loralee went outside and spied her hiding behind her car. So she came and we chatted. I gave her her gift and Loralee as well. Here they are:

And this is what I got from my friends:

Here's a closeup of the card Loralee made me. Isn't it adorable?


I was up until 1:00 am preparing my cake for class the next day. The finale cake! So Here is what you have all been waiting for:



I really like it. Poor Julie got to hear my range of likeness going from "Oh that border is so horrible, the fondant isn't done very well" to "Actually it's really quite cute." The cake part is made out of white cake flavored with a little freshly squeezed orange juice and orange zest with a nice rasberry filling. The icing is all fondant so it's edible but you probably wouldn't want to eat it.

Another Amazing Masterpiece!

Do you think I'm starting to get a little full of myself? Well, I'm not. There is 3/4 sarcasm in that title. So this cake was my first cake using fondant. Which is a lot easier to decorate with, I think. Too bad it doesn't taste the best. The cake part is German Chocolate Cake (with coconut pecan frosting mixed into the batter) with a coconut pecan frosting filling. My next cake will be a two tiered cake, but that won't be for two more weeks. Hope it turns out and I need to make a bajillion roses, okay more like 30 but still.

Wow, it's been crazy busy!

It has been a really long time since I posted, I know. But thanks to RSS feeds you shouldn't have been bothered too much. What? You don't use RSS feeds? Well, you should. Anyway, I have been really busy lately getting ready for Christmas. It amazes me how quickly time goes by when you need to get things done. My room has been in state of disarray since returning from Thanksgiving. It was almost tempting for another round of "See if you can find the object in Cassie's room," but decided against it.

How have I been busy you ask? Well, definitely not taking a cake decorating class. I decided to wait until January as I knew it would stress me out to take time out of my precious Saturdays that I needed to do Christmas shopping. So mainly I have been busy trying to be the perfect daughter, best friend and most generous co-worker that anyone has ever known by procuring the greatest gifts that they have ever seen. Gifts that are thoughtful, heartfelt, perfect for the receiver and very lovely. Well, I'm sad to say that I probably didn't hit the mark but I did the best I could. They range from gift cards to homemade projects. I wasn't very inspired this year as I have been in years past so that it made it difficult and then in order to make whomever I am buying for happy I buy everything on their list (if they have one). I may have gone overboard on some and underboard on others. I'm still looking forward to everyone opening their gifts and giving me the either very genuine or very fake "I love it" smile.

Here are a few pictures that I wanted to post but don't really have too much to say about.

My little sister McKenzie came to visit last month.
Doesn't he just get cuter and cuter?This is the cake I did for Lincoln's baby blessing party.
It's a baby in a carriage. Pretty cute huh?Our little family.

Course 2 Finale Cake

This cake was somewhat of a pain but only before the actual decorating commenced. I baked two small oval cakes but I didn't really layer them properly so the raspberry filling I put in the middle wanted to spill out. So I quickly frosted it with my buttercream in a tub frosting and though it proved a little challenging to not get raspberry mixed in with the frosting I didn't really care because I knew it would be covered up. The next morning as I was leaving for work I noticed a small crack in the frosting where some filling had leaked out. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll just fix it when I get home." When I got home the crack hadn't changed, thank goodness. So I added a little more frosting to cover it up but it looked terrible and it didn't want to go on smoothly again I didn't really care. Okay I cared and said a few choice words but really it was going to be covered up.

I packed up all my supplies for class and grabbed the cookie sheet with the cake on it and carefully headed out to my car. It's somewhat of a long drive to the class and with every bump the cake was not happy. By the time I got there one side of my cake's frosting had fallen revealing the inside. I thought it was irreparable and was upset that I wouldn't get to decorate it. But my teacher showed me a tried and true trick to fix it and with a little spatulaing it was back together. Here is a mock up of what it looked like sans all the flowers and basket weave decoration. I hope this portrays what I saw accurately enough.Here is my finale cake. I made a lot of other different flowers that I'll post pictures of later, but I liked the look of just using two flowers: the daisy and apple blossom. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would. I took pictures at the class because I had a feeling the icing would fall again on the way home. It did even though I tried to drive carefully, but it wasn't as bad and the basket weave distracts from it somewhat. Now who am I going to give this cake to?

One more course left but do I take it next month, on Saturday afternoons where the last class is on Dec. 22 so I wouldn't get to go home for Christmas until that night (but could possibly bring a fabulous cake home) or wait until next year. Decisions, Decisions.

Oh and if you are wondering about the other male cake decorating teacher. He isn't teaching any classes until next year so I won't get to check him out until the end of January and may take his candy making class, which is only one class and strictly observatory. So we'll all have to wait for that story to play out.

Oh Lackadaisical Me

Seriously, I have not had any interest in doing anything. Okay, not anything but this blog for one. I have ideas to post about but then I'm like "eh, it doesn't really matter." Even now it seems to be taking a lot of effort for me to type this out. If my arms and fingers were people they would be heaving breaths right now. I have to stop after typing a few words and rest and then start again. But I'll get through it just like I made it to the top of Mt. Timpanogas (heaving all the way).

So new things in the last two weeks don't seem like anything interesting but maybe you are interested. I became Melanie's tennis buddy. We bought rackets and everything. I know, why are we starting this when winter is descending upon us? Well, it's fun. I've wanted someone to play tennis with for a long time. I figured it would be the only enjoyable way for me to get exercise. I've never really played tennis before. The first time I picked up a racket in who knows how many years was just a couple months ago and I was terrible, but I was playing with a regular and he gave me some tips that have really come in handy. Melanie brought up the idea and I jumped on it. We've been twice now and it's really fun. We get a lot of running in (well I do because I force myself to run for the ball) because neither of us can hit the ball straight very often. I really like it. Hopefully, we can get a little more playtime in before it gets too cold. Then maybe we'll find somewhere indoors.

(small break in typing)

Work is hard for me because I can't seem to make myself care all that much about my job. I know I'm not doing my best and I hate that but not enough right now to fix it. Like I said, lackadaisical (I'm finding that I really like that word.)

And sshh, but I haven't taken a shower since Sunday. It takes too much effort. I plan to tonight though or tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.

I made cupcakes for my bookclub meeting this week. Mainly for the purpose of using up leftover icing from previous cakes. They turned out pretty cute I think and everyone seemed to like them.

Yesterday was my friend Melanie's birthday. Of course, I offered to make her cake. If you have seen the cover of Country Living, that is the cake I made. It's a chocolate pumpkin cake (made from scratch) with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting and chocolate glaze. It was a little time consuming to make but oh it turned out so good. So moist and yummy.
So how do you think it compares in looks? I think I might make this for Thanksgiving this year.

Class 1 Finale Cake

This cake was fun to do only because I didn't have to be so perfect about the icing and stuff and it was just a whole bunch of dots. I donated this cake to the Relief Society Broadcast dinner, which I didn't attend so I don't know how it tasted. It was a strawberry cake, so I probably wouldn't have liked it anyway. I hope others did. I've already signed up for class 2 which starts in 2 weeks. luckily I won't have to make a cake for each class this time so I'll just do them on my own. I already have another birthday coming up and I'm going to do another one for my book club meeting just for fun. I'll take pictures of those too.

2 Cakes and a Prize

I made cupcakes for my last class because I thought it would be less time consuming. I was sure wrong about that. My oven decided to turn itself off in the middle of baking and I didn't realize it until much later I just figured they were cooking really slow (just a bottle brunette). Once I got that all worked out I put in the second batch which came out much better. However, icing the damn things was very precarious. I will grant that my icing consistency wasn't right but it was very hard to get that icing to stay on the cupcake and take the cupcake with it. Anyway we learned how to make clowns which I wasn't very excited about but they turned out pretty cute. (The head is plastic)

We also learned how to do these cute flowers which I incorporated onto a cake I made for my friend's birthday last night. Man that was an arduous night too. My first cake bubbled up way to much that after leveling it only left me with about an inch and a half of usable cake so I rushed out and bought another cake mix and another pan and did another cake using two round pans. This allowed me to make a three-layered cake. Then the icing of the cake began. I haven't quite perfected this yet. I don't think I scrape enough icing off and so some hours later it's too heavy to stick to the cake and it bubbles out until I push it back in with a spatula. This one was doing that a lot. The writing was difficult and not what I had planned but it's not too bad and my flowers are pretty cute I think. And I did this one all my own.

I was feeling pretty blah today: could be that I woke up late or could be that the time of the month started today. Actually, I'm not loving my outfit choice but I only had half an hour. I've been wearing black nylons all week: could be that they are warmer or could be that I haven't had time to shave my legs in the last 2 or 5 days. Basically the only skirts I have (you all know that I have to wear skirts to work everyday) that would go with black nylons are black skirts or mostly black skirts, but I felt I had exhausted that avenue and I wanted to try something new. Black and brown go together now. I have seen it done. So I decided to do a black sweater top with dark green collared shirt underneath with a chocolate brown skirt, black nylons and brown shoes. I only had time to evaluate my look for a minute and called it good, oh did I mention my hair is in a bun and I have virtually no make-up on-it's left over from yesterday. I think the brown shoes was overboard but pretty much the whole outfit looks terrible to me. Luckily there is nobody to impress around here (well, there is one single, pretty cute guy here and luckily I haven't seen him all day).

So here is what perked up my day a little: I won shoes from here and I found another amazing blog. I've only read a few posts so far but I am already in love. I'm going to read from beginning to end because it is so enjoyable so far. That's only four years of posting. I'm sure I can find the time somewhere. (; Anyway check her out if you are so inclined: warning mostly for singles but I think you married folk will get a kick out of it too.

Still looking for someone who knows how to do a second sidebar. Booklogged where are you?!

My First Decorated Cake

We decorated our first cake in class on Saturday. Being a perfectionist I didn't finish and had to finish at home. The night before I made my cake (vanilla from a box) and then made tons of icing. I iced the cake trying to get it as smooth as possible but it just wouldn't get perfectly smooth but it was still pretty good (I would go to say the smoothest in the class.) But it took a while to get it there. Julie and Alyson were good sports to watch me while I did it and made all the icing (they liked to taste test the icing as well). I was pretty exhausted by the time I was done. Then I stayed up talking until 4:00 but it wasn't hard to wake up the next morning to get ready for class. Taking the cake to class was worrisome. I was ever watchful to make sure it didn't slide around but on a few turns I had to rescue it and so I put a couple small dents in the icing but oh well.

We practiced making stars, rose bases, and writing. The teacher came and looked at my progress from time to time but not very often. She told me later that if I felt she was neglecting me it was only because she felt like I was really getting it and didn't need as much help but be sure to let her know if I needed any. I'm a star student! Okay here is the picture.
The reason it's a rainbow is because we needed to practice pattern tranfers and so she wanted some of us to do the rainbow that was provided in our book. My writing needs a little work but I'll just have to practice. It tasted pretty good too.