Sugar 'n' Sweets

Rrrrruff(ely) Week...

2012-03-02T01:01:00.000-05:00

Mahalo, S'n'S friends!

As much of a night owl that I usually am, I'm pretty sure that I should be sleeping right about now! This blog post comes to you as a result of some good news and bad news. The good news being that I have been off work the WHOLE week and the bad news being that I've been tres sick. Like, for real. The kind that I will actually acknowledge.

Background story: My mom comes from her own special belief where having a cold is not considered "sick". It's a cold. Therefore, for as far back as I can remember in elementary school, I was never kept at home because I of a cold. I can totally see parents nowadays with their mouths open in shock at the thought of me being sent to school to share my germs with everyone else, but *shrugs* back in the day, it wasn't as big a thing as it is now.

So, long story short, that upbringing kind of spilled over into my work ethic and as such, I've got a pretty good "attendance" at work (which still comes as a surprise to me because I'm pretty lazy and prone to procrastinate everywhere else in my life *LOL*). Meaning, if it were up to me to classify, I'm never sick. If I had a headache, I took Advil and got down to work. If I had the sniffles, I took Advil Cold and Sinus and got down to work, if I had chills, I wore an extra sweater and got down to work, if I was sweaty, I took off the extra sweater and got down to work. One time, I spent half the night barfing and came in for a staff meeting with Gatorade cleverly hidden in my Starbucks stainless steel mug until I almost barfed on my boss as he was coming in from the washroom and I was trying hard to make it to the washroom. I got sent home after that.

Last week, I felt like I was coming down with a bit of a cold and after refusing to stay home to "rest" I thought I was bouncing back from it pretty well. Until Friday night when I realized that it wasn't just a cold that I had and that I was not, according to Bart, just being extra whine-y about my cold. I was actually sick. Or another, more specific word...I was shingle-y. UGH. SHINGLES.

Quick WebMD in a nutshell: shingles is from the chicken pox virus (varicella zoster). Once you get chicken pox, the virus that caused it doesn't actually go away. It hangs out with you in a dormant state constantly being pinned down by the Spartan warrior known as your immune system. SOMETIMES, when your weakling of a Spartan warrior is being a big giant wuss due to stress and other factors, the dormant virus can overpower it and instead of getting chicken pox again (since you can't), it manifests itself as shingles. Shingles hangs out in your nerve endings (thereby only affecting one side of your body) and usually shows up as a strip most commonly on your chest. I'm so, SO lucky that it shows up on my face. MY FACE. So if you remember chicken pox, you know those little itchy spots all over your body? Imagine taking all those individual spots, forming them into a CLUSTER and you've got shingles. Take that cluster and smack it the middle of your face on your NOSE and you've got me with shingles - which is pretty contagious. That's all I'm going to describe about it since it's gross and I've poorly planned to do a tutorial for this post, so if you want to know more, you can Google it of course. One thing I will point out is that Google mentions that once a person gets shingles (which is most commonly found in OLD people due to a weakened immune system) it is VERY RARE that they will get it again. So imagine how awesome it is that I can NOT win a draw, a raffle or a lottery, but it just SO HAPPENS that I can totally beat the shingles odds. This time around will mark me third time :( I'm the shingles lottery winner of the world.

Anywho, I got carried away with myself again. You'll have to forgive me, today marks the first day in a week where I've felt well enough to actually spend more than an hour on the computer and when my medication hasn't knocked me out, so I feel like those stay-at-home mom's who're craving for any kind of adult conversation.

SO! As I said, since today was the first day I felt well enough to be conscious for longer than a few hours, I thought I'd get productive and practice making some ruffle flowers that I'm planning on having on a bridal shower cake I have for this coming June.

Ta-daaa. That's what's floating around in my head at the moment. When Sylvia, a co-worker of mine from across the way, came to talk about my doing a cake for her daughter's bridal shower, this was what popped into my head when she mentioned making some DIY paper flowers that she learned from Martha Stewart. I had been seeing these faux paper/fabric flowers being done on CakeCentral so I was excited to give it a try since it seemed to fit with the decor/theme. I was even MORE excited when she told me the bride's colours are fuschia and black.

As almost, I'm not the biggest fan of SUPER coloured cakes, so I was happy to think that I could go with a plain, white fondant cake and have fuschia vintage ruffle flowers and black accents that would POP against the stark background.

I also like what I'm envisioning in my head (based on some cakes I've seen on CakeCentral) because the flowers can be made well in advance (I'm all about keeping myself as UNSTRESSED as possible since my last bout with being sick). There aren't a lot of faux paper/fabric ruffle flower tutorials around but from what I could see, it reminded me of the first thing we learned at the first fondant class Melissa and I ever went to (was it also the last? *LOL*) so I thought I would try that out and see how it went.

So, basic materials:

First things first, you'll want to make friends with an AWESOME friend named Ann who might one day come to visit you in Canada and who might bring you a fondant/gumpaste flower making tool set such as the one pictured above (*hugs* Thanks again, Ann!). Or, if you're not as luck as I am to have a fabulous friend named Ann, you could just get yourself this set (Michaels, NOT without a coupon! or Bulk Barn). If I also remember correctly, Wilton's first class kit for the fondant class will have a basic ball and pick tool. Or if you're really sad and don't have a fabulous friend Ann or don't want to go to a Michaels or a Bulk Barn, believe me when I say that I toothpick will also do the trick.

This right here is probably, hands down, my bestest, most favouritest baking find ever (besides Ramone, my mixer). It's not JUST circle cutters, it's circle cutters AND scalloped circle cutters in ONE. And the bonus best part? They're NESTED. I know, right?!

So to start, I took a small amount of fondant that I had just coloured fuschia (a large amount of white, mixed with a small amount of red fondant and then a good amount of hot pink gel colour and a dab of violet gel colour) and rolled it out. Once you've got it rolled out, roll it flat one more time. I've noticed the ruffles come out rufflier when working with a nice, thin circle. For ONE ruffled flower, I cut out a large circle and a smaller circle (in this case, 1 and 3/4 and 1 and 1/2).

Place the circle cut-out on your thin foam and position the ball tool just on the edge of your circle. It works better for me when I hold my tool exactly like I would a crayon and I'm about to colour. NOTE: I'm left-handed, so you'll want to flip my pictures around to get to see it the other way if you're right handed.

So, where was I? Right, crayon. Colouring. Which is exactly what we'll proceed to do next. Pulling the ball tool towards myself, I gently press down on the edge of the circle with the bal tool and I gently "colour" or go over the edge a few times until the edge flattens out and curls. Once it's got the desired "ruffled"/curled edge that I'm looking for, I turn the foam and continue to gently glide the ball tool over the edge of the circle, following the edge but also pulling towards myself until the entire circle is - you guess it, ruffled. If you are using a toothpick, you'll want to lie your toothpick, one point facing inwards and the majority of your toothpick off the fondant circle and then you'll want to roll your toothpick with your finger over the edges until it flattens and curls the edges just as I described with the ball tool.

With either tool that you are using (ball or toothpick), do the same with the smaller circle (or the bigger circle, it all depends which one you started ruffling with first) and layer one on top of the other (the smaller preferably the one on top). In this instance, I just flattened a rolled up piece of fondant on top as the centre. Honestly, you don't have to be too neat or precise about this, which is the beauty of this flower. We're going for that shabby chic look, so just go with it. Whatever gets your circle ruffled, I'd call it a success.

My next flower, I got the ruffled edge and a whole new look/texture but using the tool with a curved pick.

It kind of looks like the tool your dentist uses to clean your teeth. The tool from the Wilton set has a dual tip, and I used the smaller/skinner end.

Again, holding your tool as you would a pen/pencil, starting from the centre, gently press down and draw a straight line outwards. Continue following the circle and as you do so, the edges will begin to "ruffle"/curl of their own accord until you're done and you get this:

The more you practice or play around, you'll notice that different amounts of pressure with the tool will achieve different degrees of "ruffle" or curl to your fondant circle. Follow the same procedure with the second (third, fourth, etc.) fondant circle and layer them and you'll have something like this:

Voila. For this one, I used a button mold I had made earlier last year as the centre to get that sort of "vintage" button feel.

Repeated this process a couple more times and I can say that I'm fairly confident with my ruffled flowers for the June bridal shower cake:

The second photo is the flowers hanging out on top of the black cake stand that I am planning to have my cake on.

Right now, if nothing changes (including my mind), I see myself making a three layer tall 8" cake and a three layer tall 6". I'm getting to be a fan of the taller looking cakes. Depending on the thickness of my cake layers, I might even do a four-layer, but we'll see, I'm getting ambitious in my down time, but I'm hoping with the right amount of careful time-planning and prepping ahead that the cake shouldn't give me too much trouble. The other accents on the cake besides the flowers will include some faux black pearls (can't wait to try out my pearl fondant mold!) and black nonpareils and disco dust to decorate the flower centres to give the idea of jewels and brooches.

I'm glad I got the practice for the flowers out of the way now, so that it won't catch me off guard closer to the date and I'll be able to make fresh ones in advance to save myself some time and stress!

After a week's hiatus, I guess I'm not surprised by the length of this post - hope I didn't scare you off (or gross you out too much! LOL). I'm glad to say that next week, I'll be back to work and it will be business as usual!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Sunday Shopping

2012-02-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

Another Sunday of ultimate frisbee has come and gone!

I've taken my camera a couple of times meaning to take pictures of us, but I've been too busy trying to blink the black spots from my vision and taking in enough oxygen to maintain consciousness so it's been a little difficult trying to take pictures as well *LOL*

It does feel a little easier than it did the first time we played but oh my lanta, all the running around is difficult! Today marks the first time I learned how to flick the frisbee the "cool" way - as I was practicing I said I wouldn't do it during the game because my flicking is awful, but as I was getting the stalls counted against me, I had no choice and it actually made it to the person I meant to throw it to! YAY me!

If you're not clear about how to play ultimate frisbee, I was lucky enough to find an illustrated guide from Gin and Tronic that helped me out!

I skipped part one because it didn't really apply to me. I'd like to think that I've/I'd never join a team just because of a guy - or pretend to not know how to play! Part two caught my eye because Tara and I are firm supporters that if you're going to do something, you better look the part! I bought cleats after last week's faceplant! *LOL*

Tricking your stalker is SO much harder than they make it sound! It requires a lot of running and deking in and out and ducking in zig-zag patterns. I think next time, I will twirl. No one will ever expect that!

*cries* I'm the slow, fat person in point four. It's okay, I've made my peace with it. Sometimes I have quick bursts of speed though. And one of these days I'm going to twirl and leap and prance. They'll never see it coming!

The rest of the illustrated guide can be found HERE.

Anywho, so needless to say, all my "d-ing" and ducking and zigging and zagging left me really tired and I think all my muscles are stiffening up! All I wanted to do is just lie down, but the fluffeh puppeh needed some food and poop bags so I told Bart I'd stop by the dollar store and the pet food store in the plaza around the corner.

After I got the food, I ducked into the dollar store for a quick second to get the bags and twenty minutes later, I came out with two bags full of stuff. The dollar store is my weakness!

But have a peek at what I picked up!

*SQUEALS* I love dollarstore baking finds! I really DID need some funnels though since my last sprinkle debacle that involved a LOT of sprinkles on the floor. I don't use dowels very often when I stack my cakes, but it's always good to have some on hand just in case. And the squirt bottle is for storing some simple syrup. Another tip I picked up from Jess over at Jessicakes!

My fabulous find: cupcake liners! I'm a frequent dollar store visitor and all I've ever seen were the plain white liners so I actually let out a loud squeal when I saw these liners! For $1! I know, right!? I love the black ones at the bottom the best, how fitting is a cupcake liner covered with cupcakes and cakes! I seriously love cupcake liners!

And how awesome are these jars! I've got a bunch of these already filled with scrapbooking/cardmaking stuff, but these worked out awesome for my nonpareils! Oh right! I found some black nonpareils! And I didn't have to go any farther than across the street to the local baking supply shop! And I used the funnel to get all the little buggers in there, no fuss no muss!

Alright, that's it for me! I'm off to spend some fitting family day time with my family! The plan is to go tubing but we'll see how packed it is at the tube park! Is it bad that I'm more excited for the hot chocolate and chit chat in the chalet than actually lugging a tube up a hill? *LOL* Have an awesome Monday, everyone!
Stay Sweet,
Catherine

You spin me right around...

2012-02-19T18:04:00.000-05:00

It's a long weekend, folks!

Happy Family Day to my Canadian friends and happy President's Day to my American buddies out there! Hope you're enjoying a nice, relaxing Sunday without having to stress that there's work tomorrow! And for those who have to go in... *HUGS* Sorry!

I made a semi-last-minute cake for my dad's birthday yesterday and since I had the whole Saturday to putter around, I thought it would be a good time to try my hand at a tutorial of sorts - seeing as I just learned this not too long ago from Jess (over at Jessicakes - a link to her blog is on my blog list if you would like to visit!), I wouldn't really say it's a tutorial of sorts, just a photo log of how I ice my cakes.

Let me just say that since I started icing my cakes this way, I've never gone back to the regular way and I was mad that I didn't find out about this sooner! It's so easy and stress free! Sooo, to get started, you'll need:

Silly me, I kind of buried one of the important items that you would need for this to make it an easier experience, so I'll point out that although you don't REALLY need it, it will make your life easier if you have a cake turntable (which I do have TWO of) although for some reason, I've become very fond of this clear, glass lazy susan that I picked up at a surplus store.

Another tip before we even get started is that you don't really need the tape if you are using parchment paper because it totally does NOT stick to it. After I freaked out about my parchment paper moving around, you may find that a nice good dab of icing on the turntable/lazy susan and underneath the parchment paper will stick a lot better - but I'm getting ahead of myself!

So as you can see, I cut my parchment paper very roughly to the size of my turntable. This photo was taken right before I flipped out about my tape not sticking.

So you'll need a good amount of icing in the middle of your parchment paper and you'll want to use an icing spatula to smooth it down to a slightly larger diameter/circumference of the cake that you'll be icing.

You don't need to worry too much about how it's looking, you just want to get it pretty smooth and even. The biggest thing to remember is to make sure that it's larger than your cake.

Best way to see...plop your cake onto it and find out! *LOL* I have no big tips about getting your cake onto the circle of icing. My cakes are pretty firm/dense enough that I can just pick them up by the sides and legit plop it onto the icing, but you may also find it easier if you have your cake on a board already and then place the turntable of icing onto the cake and then turn it over. However/whichever method you find that works better for you, your main goal at the end of the day is to have the cake on TOP of your circle of icing because once is all said and down, the bottom of your cake (with the circle of icing) will become the TOP of your cake. Oooooh...

I like making my icing circle quite larger than the diameter of my cake because nothing gets wasted anyway. Once your cake is on your circle of icing, you'll want to take your icing spatula, slide it underneath the circle of icing that is in excess of your cake, and you'll want to FLIP it up onto the side of the cake. I go all the way around my cake, flipping up the excess circle icing until it's all onto my cake. This is where the turntable/lazy susan will make your life a lot easier.

Once you've flicked up the excess onto your cake, you'll want to go ahead and ice the rest of your cake. But from this photo, you can see that the bottom of the cake where I flicked up the icing, it's already starting to have a nice, sharp edge. This is a thumbs up.

Note: As Igeeked up the whole of Saturday morning playing Lego Batman on the XBOX instead of prepping for a cake that I planed on baking, I threw my icing together pretty quickly. I tend to gravitate more to super stiff buttercream, hence why it's looking so stiff and crumbly here, but the best part of having too stiff icing means that you can always keep adding small increments of water to it for a softer consistency. It's easier than going too soft first and then having to add more sugar, etc.

To get the smooth sides and more importantly, the super sharp icing edge that you're looking for, you'll need a bench scraper. I picked mine up at a baking supply store and it's used SOLELY for the purpose of smoothing icing (and picking up piles of chopped up baking chocolate). Since I mentioend that my buttercream was extra, super stiff, before I get to smoothing the side of my cake, I do take a squirt bottle (again, also used SOLELY for cake decorating - Sweet Sugarbelle did a huge post on how AWESOME a water squirt bottle is for baking and she was NOT wrong - I also use it spray down the sides of my mixing bowl *two thumbs up*). In this case, I have my bottle (cheapo I picked up at the dollar store, no need to get fancy with it) set on the finest mist and before I start smoothing down my cake, I lightly spray the sides of my cake so that when I rest my scraper against my cake and start turning my turntable/lazy susan, I end up with this:

Smooooooooooth criminal. The cake/icing is not really against abiding by the law. I just wanted to add the criminal part after I said smoooooth. Now I've got that song's beat in my head.

Anywho, this was after my first go around with the scraper. Don't fuss about it too much or else you'll end up like me the first time when I pretty much ended up scraping off ALL the icing I put on the cake! *LOL* I also like to go around with the scraper once and then I pop the cake back into the fridge to get the buttercream to set for a bit and then I'll go back later and ice it again and smooth it down more. Or when you're feeling lazy and SERIOUSLY running out of time because your dad's birthday party was supposed to be at 5 and it's now 4:30 and you still haven't started with the fondant...well, however you like to deal with your iced cake is fine.

Once you're ready to move on, smooth a small amount of buttercream on the "top" of your cake so that you can prep it to become the BOTTOM of your cake. KWIM?

Place your cake board or cake stand or platter or plate, or whatever it is that you're wanting your cake to hang out on until it gets cut, make sure you've got it centred exactly how you'd like it (at this point, if you're very type A, OCD or a perfectionist, you may want to grab a leveler and level out your cake to make sure it's not lopsided or what not - in this case, I didn't do it and just relied on how unlopsided the cake looked to my naked eye) and then hold your breath, send up a bunch of prayers, wish on every star you can see and FLIP your cake OVER.

HOLY CRAP you just FLIPPED a CAKE over!!! That's crazy!

If you know me well enough, you'll know that I can't walk a straight line on completely flat, unrubbled ground and NOT fall. I can't walk to the bathroom from the living room without stubbing a toe, catching a sweater on something or hitting my arm on a doorknob. Basically, I'm klutzy as all-getout and I've managed to flip cakes over for the last several months. It's honestly not that scary.

So VOILA. There is your cakeboard on the bottom of your cake where it should be that was on TOP of the cake not two seconds ago and there's your parchment paper that was on the BOTTOM of your cake underneath a circle of buttercream and now it's on top. Yes. In that moment, you just turned your world COMPLETELY upside down until it was right-side-up.

Now, the piece de resistance...the moment of truth, the WHOLE reason why you'd crazily flip a cake in the first place:

BAM! Oh. I forgot to mention that before I peel away my parchment paper, I do place the cake back in the fridge to allow the buttercream to set a bit. It's up to you, for this particular cake, I had pretty much run out of time, so I peeled it off straightaway, hence the scraggy edges from the icing that came up a bit, but the icing should be crusted over enough that you could just smooth out any parts that you'd like with a dampened finger or you could place a clean piece of parchment over it and smooth out the buttercream more if you like. My only tip, once you've pulled off the parchment, try not to fuss with it too much more. Honestly, you shouldn't need to once you've taken off the parchment paper. Just let it hang and out and admire the super straight, perfect edge that is your cake without touching it all over and screwing it all up.

While I prepped my fondant, I placed the iced cake in the fridged and it was ready to be covered a short while later.

From here on out, I was rushing like a madwoman to get this cake finished and over to my parents as my dad had already called wondering where I was, so I basically rushed everything from there to get this:

Hopefully a cake fit enough for a hunter. I downloaded and printed the first deer silhouette that I saw and only realized after it was on the cake that it was the John Deere logo, but whatever. It's meant to be a deer prancing in the target eye piece of my dad's bow. Supposedly. I try not to think about him hunting too much because it makes me cry every single time I think about the poor deer. The fondant was also my first attempt at a "camo" look - it didn't really go over that well in my books, but it was done and by that time, I was definitely ready to get to my parents house, celebrate my dad and EAT! I'm trying not to notice the BAJILLIONS of air bubbles underneath the fondant.

So there you have it! The upside down cake icing method to get a smoothly iced cake with sharp, straight edges. Hope you give it a try and if my quickie photo post isn't as detailed as you need, don't forget to check out Jess' blog for the video tutorial! If you try it out, please definitely let me know how it works for you, too!

I am now off to lie down in bed and whine to my hubby about how my body and muscles hate me from this week's Ultimate frisbee session and hope he brings me treats.

P.S. I TOTALLY caught the frisbee today. It was Ah-MAAAY-zing (but we still lost). Enjoy the rest of your Sunday and long weekend Monday!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Oh baby, baby, baby, OH!

2012-02-17T12:04:00.001-05:00

"You know you love me, I know you care..."

So. Against my principles, I had to make a Justin Bieber cake earlier this week.

"Just shout whenever and I'll be there..."

Don't tell anyone.

"You are my love, you are my heart..."

Even worse. It had hearts all over it. Hearts. Justin Bieber hearts.

"And we will never, ever, ever be apart."

*sighs* There's no going back from this.

So, I don't really have anything against Justin Bieber per se. I just don't get the whole craze about him. I was never really much of a celebrity idol person when I was a teeny-bopper besides that one month when I swore up and down that I was going to be Mrs. Jonathan Taylor Thomas after I got my first BOP magazine for my birthday. It wound down pretty fast though because I just have no patience with it. He got to be on TV, but so did a bunch of people. I guess I was more of a absence makes the heart not give a darn falutin' toot. I feel like I'm misquoting that... *LOL*

So needless to say, I don't understand when people cry over celebrities, and fawn all over them and want to see them and want to hang pictures of them or own the stuff they talk about, or own stuff they've worn (ew) and I don't get wanting their faces on a cake.

My co-worker Tara asked me to make a cake for her daughter Abbey's 10th birthday and knowing Abbey, the first thing I said was, "I'm not making a Justin Bieber cake" and after Tara went to check with Abbey, apparently ALL she wanted was a Justin Bieber cake. So even though I had said I was never going to make a Justin Bieber cake (or really, any celebrity cake for that matter), I conceded but I put my foot down on putting his actual face on the cake. I was most definitely not going to try to draw him on the cake and I briefly entertained getting my local grocery store baker to print his picture on edible paper for me to put on the cake, but I nixed that. To get what Abbey wanted and in order for me to be okay with it, I figured I could still do pictures but it wouldn't technically be TOUCHING the cake.

I am aware that I'm being a big brat about this! *LOL*

But in my defense, I can honestly say that my main reason against people/theme cakes such as this is that I favor clean-cut cakes. I don't use a lot of colored fondant if I don't have to and I don't make a lot of fondant figures, shapes, pictures, etc. so I still wanted to make a cake that had the clean lines and simplicity but that Abbey would still like. Plus, this way, she can pull off the pictures and keep them under her pillow or something or whatever it is that girls these days do! LOL

The hearts on the cake are a two-fold reason and not just because Abbey luuuuuuvs JB, but also because Abbey's birthday is on VALENTINE'S DAY! Originally, Tara had asked me to do the cake in a heart shape to commemorate the day that Abbey's birthday is on, but I didn't have the cake pans to accomodate her request at that time, so this was what I came up with.

The cake is dangerously similar (I don't know why I say dangerously since it implies a seriousness that doesn't really exist) to the baby shower cake I made last month, but I have a hard time letting go of cool things I just learned and since I just figured out how to use my straight-edge design cutters, I wanted to play with it again and I love my criss-cross pattern with the cushion-y look the indents on the intersections make.

The heart shapes I made by rolling a teeny, tiny amount of fondant into a ball and using my fingers to pinch the bottom to get the bottom of the heart and then I took my craft knife and gently pushed it in the middle of the top of the circle to form the heart. It was nice and easy to come up with the heart that I actually have half a mind to sit down to a couple movies with a bunch of different colours of fondant and make teeny tiny 3D heart-shaped sprinkles.

But there it is. Justin Bieber hanging out on one of my cakes. The beauty of making cakes for others is that you'll always get pushed to work outside of the box that you put yourself into and it's nice when you can say that you were able to do something that you said you'd never do (me in this case) or couldn't do. And the cherry on top, Tara told me Abbey LOVED her cake which of course gave me the warm fuzzies and made me going against what I said worth it :)

So, did you have a celebrity crush as a teeny-bopper? Did you have the posters, collector dolls, etc?

P.S. Do you totally have that song in your head now?

"Oh baby, baby, baby, oh

Like baby, baby, baby oh

I thought you'd always be mine, mine"

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Not so sweet but oh so simple!

2012-02-14T22:05:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if it's a Filipino thing or just my family, but I always thought it was funny (odd, not funny ha-ha) that my mom and some other people I know would say she liked a dessert because it wasn't too sweet. I thought this was odd because I thought the whole point of dessert was that it be SWEET!

In any case, because of this fondness for not-to-sweet desserts, it's not a surprise that out of all the cakes and sweets I've made that I've ~~forced~~ asked them nicely to try, they've liked the ones that I'd substituted chocolate ganache for the usual buttercream icing.

And what's not to love, it's smooth, silky, rich, decadent and lovely. Not to mention that it's CHOCOLATE!

Confession: Plus, from a cake decorator's viewpoint, it's awesome because covering a cake with chocolate ganache makes for a nice, smoooooooth base to lay fondant over. Easy peasy! Buttercream and I have a love-hate relationship at the best of times.

In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd do up a quickie chocolate ganache tutorial! I recently made up a batch of chocolate ganache when I was experimenting with red velvet cupcakes and didn't want to turn to the same ol' cream cheese icing.

I start with 12 oz of semi-sweet Baker's brand baking chocolate. I'm not really brand specific, but this is usually what I gravitate to when I'm in the baking aisle, and this is the case where you would go by the adage you get what you pay for. Better quality chocolate will yield consistently lovely ganache - I know, I tried to save my wallet (confession: okay, I totally cheaped out) by buying a no name bag of semi-sweet chips for like, $1 and well...

So anywho! The Baker's brand and any others that come in blocks that look like the ones above, ie. one individually wrapped square is a measured ounce. So of course, you'll want 12 of these squares chopped pretty finely to ensure an even consistent melt. You don't want huge chunks hanging out while the rest of the chocolate has already melted, right?

I've read that people microwave their chocolate or pour heated cream over and let them melt that way, but I am a double-boiler kind of girl for making chocolate ganache. I like it because it's easy and it gives me time to get other things done, ie. clean up the mess I've already undoubtedly made while baking or get started on baking LOL. Plus, the peeps on Food Network do it and it makes me feel so uber pro-star with a double-boiler on the go! It's so Martha!

Plus, to me it's pretty fool-proof. It's hard to really burn chocolate this way with indirect heating and I don't have to watch it like a hawk. Win-win situation. Two thumbs up!

Once I'm done doing whatever else I'm puttering around the kitchen for, I check on my chocolate and when it's gotten pretty melt-y (yes, TOTALLY a culinary term), a nice stir will get the rest of the remaining chocolate chunks to mellow until you get THIS:

Ooooooooh!

A thought just occurred to me, but I'm not really sure how much foundation it's got, but I can totally see where some baking superstitions can come from because who really wants to mess with a sure thing? Because I was given a huge bunch of Pampered Chef items (my mom threw me a Pampered Chef bridal shower which I would TOTALLY recommend as I love all my kitchen stuff - even though I don't technically use many of them LOL), anytime I'm inclined to stir, a wooden spoon is always the first utensil I grab. I've read that some people have had trouble when using a spatula but I've never really tried to see if this is true or not. I mean, if it ain't broke...? If you know anything about this, I would love to hear about it, but in the meantime, I'll just avoid tempting fate by just sticking to my wooden spoon since I know it works just fine.

So where were we? Oh yes, ooooooooooh! Smooth and shiny CHOCOLATE.

To get this bowl of lovely, melt-y chocolate in ganache form, the next thing you'll need is a cup of heavy whipping cream. Although I know it's more cost effective to get them in larger sizes, the lazy baker in me likes to pick up the cartons of cream that's already measured out into 250 mL, ie. one cup. No measuring required!

I open the carton and toss it into the microwave for about 45 seconds or more to warm it up before pouring it into my bowl of melt-y chocolate.

What happens when you skip/forget the heating of heavy cream? Ask my poor, shattered bowl the first time I ever tried to make ganache. I totally forgot about heating up my cream and poured it into my hot, melty chocolate and it was not long until the bowl completely cracked. Hot and cold glass...I think chemistry should have taught me that lesson already! Once you've got your cream poured, it's just like a bowl of Coco Puffs. The cream slowly starts to turn a chocolate-y colour, and it will look like the chocolate and the cream are not going to want to be friends, but use your possibly-not-necessary wooden spoon and coax them into the land of togetherness and eventually you'll have this:

A thicker, glossy version of the melt-y chocolate you had a few minutes ago.

At this point, allow your chocolate (and bowl) to cool and then to get your ganache to set, cool it in the refrigerator until you're ready to use it. Impatient me of course usually makes the ganache only right before I need it so once the bowl is cool enough, I actually put it in the freezer to set it faster.

And VOILA, folks! At that point, you now have chocolate ganache!

When I'm using it to cover a cake, I find I don't need to let it cool in the fridge/freezer for too long because once I start icing the cake (or would I say 'ganache-ing' the cake?), it sets pretty quickly. I also love using chocolate ganache to cover my cakes because I don't really have to be that neat and tidy about it. I just slap in on the cake and once it's set, I can scrape it down into the desired smoothness that I need using a scraper. If you've left your ganache in the fridge/freezer longer than you meant or it's gotten too hard for the purposes you require it for, you can allow it to hang out at room temperature and use it then, or after that, you can put it in the microwave for a few seconds.

Ganache, like some tried and true things is pretty dependable and consistent, but sometimes, you may want to spice it up a bit - literally.

A friend recently introduced me to chocolate chai ganache and after having a bunch of little baggies of each of the different spices, I finally figured it may be easier for me to just pre-mix my own.

Those are my super cute Pampered Chef measuring spoons! I swear, I'm not actually trying to endorse/advertise for them, but I've only recently started using the stuff I got four years ago before my wedding, so it's pretty exciting! *LOL*

My friend told me that she adds this to her batch of ganache in the following increments:

1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (I totally just used ground nutmeg for this)
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground cardamom

Instead of measuring it out every single time, I decided to just make a bigger batch:

and into this spice jar it goes:

Adding up the total measurements, I just mix in 3 tsp into the heavy cream before I pour it into the bowl of melty chocolate.

Now, before you lecture me, I am aware that once pre-mixed, it may not end up being the exact ratio/measurements called for for each spice, but so far I haven't noticed very signficant difference in using 3 tsps of my new mix as opposed to measuring them all out separately.

For my recent experiment that called upon the existence of this particular batch of chocolate ganache, I was trying out cayenne pepper and cinnamon with it. I love cinnamon hearts and chocolate so I figured it would be fun to try getting the best of both worlds in one. Plus, Bart and I had visited this awesome chocolatier shop in the Toronto Distillery District where they were offering Mexican hot chocolate and I know there's a bunch of recipes like this floating around so I thought I'd try it out on a red velvet cupcakes. Red velvet cupcakes, topped with rich, sweet chocolate that ends with a slow, tingly, subtle heat and teensy, tiny heart-shaped sprinkles?! It's Valentine's Day in a BITE.

Footnote: Apparently, I must have completely lost my mind or I was in a choclate-induced stupor because I did NOT take a picture of my cupcakes! *GASP* I know! Who am I!? I promise it will never happen again!

That's all for me for now! Wishing you a day that's a little spicy, a touch of sexy and most definitely a whole lot of SWEET! And just like the spirit of Valentine's, chocolate ganache and cupcakes are good ANY day of the year, so don't just save it for one! :)

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Disbelief

2012-02-06T22:33:00.001-05:00

Definition:
When I had a HUGE, gigantic post and pressed backspace in order to delete a couple of letters and realizing that the cursor was not in the typing area and having the browser go BACK instead and then pressing forward to get back to the blog post and then seeing that EVERYTHING I had been typing and working on is gone because in that WHOLE hour and a half that I'd been typing, Blogger's autosave did NOT do what it was supposed to do and I'm now currently left with a BIG, blank space full of white nothingness where 5 minutes ago I had actual content.

*cries*
*whimper*

Blogger and I are currently on the outs.

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Baking for Brandon!

2012-02-02T00:03:00.000-05:00

Bonjour my baking friends and non-bakers alike!

CONFESSION: I actually had a LOT of this blog post written out already and my laptop had a spaz-tastic moment in which it chose to just blip to death with a black screen of nothingness which I was mystified though didn't mind so much until I realized that Blogger's autosave feature completely failed me. But in a post such as this, you have to POWER ON!

I was originally going to use Baking for Cancer as the title (although I'm still second-guessing myself on what it should really have been Baking Against Cancer? Baking to Fight Cancer?) my utter fondness for alliterations completely won out instead. I'm so weak...

But in actual fairness, this time around, Brandon will be the one doing the work and I'm just going to be baking for him to help out, so I still think the title works. I digress...

Let me introduce you to Brandon:

Eldest of my two awesome nephews! That's us this past year on his 16th birthday. Obviously, Bart being 6'2", it's just from the height that you can tell that he's my nephew from Bart's side, right?

So, my super awesome nephew has just signed up for the Ride to Conquer Cancer and listening to him talk about it completely blew me away, both by the ride itself and his commitment to it! I've watched Brandon grow (literally and figuratively) into a seriously cool young man (does saying that make me sound as old I think it did!?). From playing video games and arguing with his brother, to waking up at 4 am (AM!!!!!) to get ready for rowing practice, to taking on part-time jobs to save up some money for university and spare bike parts and now to this, setting a goal to fundraise and participate in this ride for a worthwhile cause. All in all, he has himself one very proud Aunt Catherine.

In signing up for the Ride to Conquer Cancer, Brandon has set himself with the goal of not JUST raising $2,750.00 to help go towards cancer research (event minimum is $2,500.00) but also in actually riding for that cause. And when I say riding, I mean:

He will be completing the Classic which is a 2-day, 200 km bike ride (and here I was thinking I was going to pass out from a 5 km walk!) from Toronto to Niagara armed with nothing but his bike, a helmet and your support!

...Okay, I tend to wax drama, so in the interest of full disclosure, I'm pretty sure he'll have more than that with him during the ride, like...food...water...possibly some music to make the two. HUNDRED. KILOMETRES fly by.

So here's where I come in (and hopefully you?). While listening to him talk and plan out this ride and worry about not being able to raise the minimum fundraising goal, I wanted to do MORE to help him out than just make a donation (though of course Uncle Bart and I will be visiting his donation page as well!) I was hoping that I could add a little incentive to make donating to a really good cause that much sweeter.

In the hopes of being able to make Brandon's journey to 200 km a little bit easier (considering he's the one who actually has to bike it! LOL), I would like to offer up some baked goods, if you will.

You will be entered to win:

Minimum donation of $25 will qualify for one (1) entry for a one-tiered (3-layer) cake of your choice of size (6" or 8") with basic decoration (along the lines of the cakes pictured above), one flavor and one filling
Minimum donation of $10 will qualify for one (1) entry for a dozen (12) cupcakes or a dozen cakepops (one cake flavor for either cupcake or cakepop, one decoration for all cupcakes and up to two candy coating colours for cake pops)

To get your entries:

You will need to leave me a comment here with your name (as provided on your donation pledge form) so I know that you've entered. I know that donations can be a personal matter, so if you want, you can leave the amount you entered, but I'm hoping that I'll just be able to ask Brandon to confirm the amounts via his pledge form. This will be the only way in which I'll know to give you an entry.
Donations are...cumulative? What I'm trying to say is that if you made more than the minimum donation, each subsequent amount of your donation will qualify for an entry if it fits the minimum donation for a particular incentive. Ie. $50 pledge qualifies the donor for two (2) entries into the cake incentive. $20 pledge qualifies the donor for two (2) entries into the cupcake/cake pop incentive. A $30 pledge qualifies the donor for one (1) entry into the cake incentive and one (1) entry into the cupcake/cakepop incentive and so on.
The winner will be chosen using a random integer generator, therefore entries that be logged in comment sequence. If you are the first person to comment that you have made a donation, you will be listed with entry #1. If a comment qualifies for more than one entry, that person will be listed sequentially based on the number of valid entries, ie. If commenter #2 gets two entries, they will also be entry #2 and #3 and so on. So just because you are commenter #5, it may not actually mean you are logged as entry #5, does that make sense?

I did just come up with this on the fly so bear with me while I get a couple logistics and rules off the top of my head here:

Incentive closes: April 30, 2012.
I'm really sorry, but because I don't think anyone would want to eat anything that's been bumped around in a shipping box, I'm going to have to keep this incentive local to the Kitchener/Waterloo/Cambridge/Guelph region, although making a donation is not contained to any specific area, you can do that from aaanywhere in the world!
See, I haven't even finished writing this post and I've changed stuff already - I could not in good conscience exclude out of towners just because you don't have the extreme luck of living near me (*cheeky grin*) so in the event of an out-of-town winner, I will be providing one (1) $50 online gift card (I'm not sure for where yet...Amazon is coming to mind? I'll get back to you on that one) or one (1) $25 online gift card - entries for this will be based on your minimum donation as outlined above. $50 online gift card = cake, $25 online gift card = cupcake/cakepops, comprende?
As the incentive will be contained close to home, I will be available to deliver your winnings during non-business hours in which I will be busy making money to purchase more sprinkles
Prizes must be claimed within this calendar year and I will need a minimum of 2-weeks notice prior to the date in which you will need/want your baked goods
This section can be subject to change as other things occur to me or as my friends who will be made to read this to give me their opinions give me their opinions

Disclaimers:

This incentive, or the entire contents of this post is not, by any means intended to force, coerce or guilt you into making a donation if you are not inclined to do so or have reasons of your own that you cannot. It is simply meant as my sincerest form of wanting to help assist in a family member's commitment with whom I am very impressed with and proud of.
If you do not want the added incentive (Really? No cake!?) and was just wanting to make a donation, please accept my thanks on Brandon's behalf.
If you don't want cake (seriously, no cake?!) or don't/can't donate, that is also cool. I hope you come back and visit the blog again, though if I haven't freaked you out with the lengths of my posts!
Serious business such as tax receipts and other questions such as what exactly your donation funds can be answered/addressed with the Ride to Conquer organizers HERE

I think that's it for now with the rules and so forth. I'm very excited about this and at the same time I hope that this will help Brandon out with his fundraising goal! Last but not least:

BRANDON'S DONATION PAGE

Thank you so much for sticking it out with me and bearing with me through this post! Have an AWESOME evening and as always...

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

P.S. As the CHA convention festivities wind down and all my crafty friends are now hopefully safe and sound at home, I'd like to also offer up this post, the incentives and my donation not just for Brandon's journey to ride to conquer cancer and all those whose lives have been touched by cancer (because sadly, in this day and age, I don't actually know anyone who hasn't been) but in the memory of Katie Emerson Renz. You were in my thoughts this week and I try to think of you and your strength and courage and all the hopes and wishes you had any time I forget that life here is not a series of trials meant to struggle through but a beautiful gift of precious moments that cannot be returned or refunded. We just get one.

Ghosts of Christmas Passed: The Published Cake

2012-02-01T20:34:00.000-05:00

"Ron Burgundy: I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal.

Veronica Corningstone: Really.

Ron Burgundy: People know me."

Anchorman

Obviously I know better than to let getting published go to my head! I mean, I still crack my own eggs open and everything! *LOL*

But it goes without saying that I was really happy with how my Holiday Cake, Part 2 turned out! Granted that it wasn't as technique-laden as I would have liked to showcase, but we all know where that went when I tried to go for all cross-over techniques. The results were definitely kind of ugly. My nose still automatically wrinkles everytime I think of it - or as Marti would say, it's not just my nose, I get all wrinkle-faced!

It's kind of fitting that I'm posting my papercraft-crossed-cake decorated project that was featured in Marti's magazine publication because this week, as I may have mentioned, is the last few days of the insanely awesome Craft and Hobby Association convention. I have been living vicariously through Marti's posts and entertainingly detailed play-by-play of her week in Anaheim and it's totally renewed my need to be there next year. I must. If not just to ensure that Marti and I roll around in feathers at a booth's display, harrass people at Target, order the most complicated drinks we can possibly think of at Starbucks (okay, possibly only I do this), get told off for talking or being know-it-alls in class or for vulturizing the breakfast buffet at our hotel! It also doesn't hurt that the booths also WANT to give you goody bags of their product samples. Except I DON'T suggest doing what I did the last time I was there and totally talking up a product to a CREATOR and then realizing that the product your are totally talking up is a similar item that is in fact the rival of the creator's product. HOLY MOLY, I also get wrinkle-faced when I remember that moment. To help clear me of my confusion though, she did make sure that I left the convention with a whole arsenal of the product she ACTUALLY created. *WINCE* As a close to this nice walk down memory lane, here's Marti and I...being Marti and I:

I still have no idea why everyone doesn't love us. *LOL* Who can blame us? You just can't walk by a booth like that and NOT want to roll around in all the pretty feathers!

Okay. I have brought myself back from CHA and am now currently in the present. To talk about my CAKE! That got PUBLISHED!

I guess I should actually show it to you... *LOL*

Ta -daaa! I LOVE it because Chewy's in it!

Forgive the photos, I believe that since this cake was made in OCTOBER that I was still just getting used to my new SLR. I shaped Chewy out of a mix of fondant and gumpaste and achieved his FLUFFEH look using a toothpick and just dragging it through in short, quick strokes.

The cake itself is made using two layers of cake baked in an 8" square cake pan and then cut in half. So if I remember correctly, there is four layers of cake hanging out in my Santa-ready fireplace.

Because I was worried about knocking the cake over or squishing it if I layed the fondant over it like I would traditionally cover a cake with fondant, I wrapped the fondant around the sides of the cake and the front and then just cut a same-sized square piece of fondant and laid it over the back. I used a little bit of Crisco on my fingers to pull the seams together. I did lay the mantel piece of "wood" over the cake top as I would normally cover a cake and once it was on, I was back with my toothpick to "distress" the fondant to make it look more wood grain-like, including little whorls that you may see in pieces of wood/lumber.

Once the cake was covered, the rest of it all came together pretty darn quickly. Using the same colour fondant mixed with a little bit of chocolate fondant to get a swirly-like pattern for my "rock" I just added them randomly so you get the idea.

CONFESSION: I actually REALLY meant to cover the ENTIRE fireplace with "rocks" but besides getting lazy, I thought it would be a bit much to have all those individually rolled "rocks". This is one of the very few times that I've ever succumbed to the "less is more" theory, but I thing it definitely worked its purpose and did the project justice.

All that was left was to personalize it a little bit (ie. suck up a little? Nooooo...) to the publication editors by adding some ready-to-be-filled-by-Santa stockings under our itty bitty little Christmas tree (Note: Not to get all political since I'm really in no place to discuss things I'm not entirely sure of or clear on, I'm going to go ahead and say Christmas tree because I'm really having a hard time trying to remember the words I'm allowed to say. I say it not in the hopes that you'll take any offense to it or that it's a subtle dig at any religion or holiday that you celebrate, but because it is what I celebrate during that time of year. If at any time you are celebrating something meaningful to you and with that comes an overwhelming outpouring in which you wish to pass along your warm fuzzy feelings that have resulted from it and you greet me in a manner of your choosing [within reason! LOL] I will have no qualms about returning the greeting and really just meaning that I wish you well and joy during a wonderful time/moment for you. /Soapbox)

I got distracted again.

...So there's my published cake in all its Christmas-y, festive-y, holiday glory. Although I didn't end up using as much fun techniques as I would have liked to showcase the versatility of some crafting tools, I was very happy with how it turned out and a bunch of us was VERY happy with how we got to eat it after for no good reason other than it was there and it was CHOCOLATE. If you are so inclined to know, the cake was published in "Through the Craftroom Door" (Website | Blog) which I have mentioned previously, is a broader look at a bunch of other craft mediums with examples and tutorials from the very BEST out there - ie. YOU! P.S. They also do fun things like feature sneakpeeks and walk-throughs of readers' craftrooms and I swear, you will want to live and/or play in them AAAAAAALL! Glitter, sparkles, sprinkles, cabochons, if they're all organized in a BAJILLION different colours, in super cute organizational jars/bins, etc. I want to see them ALL!

And as Christmas has already come and gone (although you won't be able to tell the way I keep trying to bring it back up!), I will just leave you with a picture of Chewy sans cozy fireplace:

Although at this time it's unseasonably warm, I've heard that more cold and snow is on its way, so stay warm, friends, and as always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Ghosts of Christmas Passed: The Shimmery Holiday Cake Fail

2012-01-31T20:53:00.000-05:00

Hello again, my super fabulous S'n'S friends! Or did I scare you off with the length of yesterday's post? After I looked it over, it didn't seem all that long to me... *LOL*

I am back with part two of sorts of my journey to publication. Last post, I attempted to outlined how to quickly turn a regular fondant/gumpaste bow into an extra snazzy (zazzy, if you will) bow by using an open embossing folder to impress some wintery designs onto the loops. The crossover from the papercrafting world being the embossing folder that was used primarily for paper turned fondant tool since I certainly wasn't using it for anything else!

My next attempt was to bring over the quick, shimmery goodness technique I learned for paper.

My crafty friend Marti and I kind of have a borderline unhealthy obsession with shimmer. In reality, there is nothing that exists that I won't want to shimmer. Be it my paper, my dog (if Bart would let me and if I didn't think my fellow blogger Mary would be TOTALLY be against) and of course, my cakes! In the papercrafting world, I was a big fan of using Perfect Pearls to add shimmer to my projects.

It comes as a pigment powder and the most obvious use would be to use a dry brush and brush on whatever it is that you are wanting to shimmer. Using it dry meant it added this really light, subtle shimmer with a hint of whatever colour it was.

Another way to use this would be with a wet paintbrush to get a more concentrated amount of shimmery powder and paint it on a section or area of paper.

Like this, for example! The birds on the white card are embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder (*nudge nudge* from the last post!) and each of the embossed areas and the white cloth on the cross are painted with Perfect Pearls and a clean, wet brush. I am very informative on this particular card because I made it :D

The last particular way I want to point out how I used my Perfect Pearls is in a shimmer mist. This was my ABSOLUTE favourite way of using Perfect Pearls because it changes any plain ol' thing into something fancy and la-di-da in a few simple steps. Take a mister, scoop a tiny bit of Perfect Pearl powder into it and then fill the rest with water and SHAKE and SPRITZ. For my in-law's 50th wedding anniversary invitations, instead of shelling out the extra cash to buy pre-shimmered paper, I just took the plain cardstock I already had on hand and GOLD Perfect Pearls and spritzed until I had the perfect shimmery gold invitation paper I was going for.

So, now that I've finished taking a little bit of a walk down crafty memory lane, I have now arrived at the whole point of the story. The jar of Perfect Pearls and the contents within it look EXACTLY like lustre dust. In fact, when I was first new to cake decorating and wanted to add some shimmer to something, I automatically turned towards my craft room to grab some Perfect Pearls until I remembered that it actually has to be edible.

I figured that if I could shimmer with Perfect Pearls, I could shimmer with lustre dust. I just had to figure out how because the main component of shimmer mist is water and water and sugar don't exactly mix. This brought me back to the painting with Perfect Pearls and how I learned that you can "paint" with lustre dust using a small amount of vodka because when the alcohol evaporates, all you're left with is the shimmer. Being the not so biggest fan of the taste of alcohol and although I've been assured otherwise by many people, I still can't get around to using vodka in my cakes and since I'd be SPRAYING a good amount of surface area, I was definitely not a fan of using vodka as the base to my edible shimmer mist. I'm a big fan of the notion that if you say something is edible, you should also make sure it tastes good, too. So I thought I would try out the idea using vanilla extract. Yes, I am aware that it is made with alcohol (is it vodka, too? Food Network told me, but I forget :S) but it tastes delicious!

So a small amount usually goes as long way for Perfect Pearls but I wanted to make sure that I had maximum amount of shimmer on my cake so I did go the more-is-more route and added more than I usually good. Still less than half a teaspoon, though, I'd say. Once I had shaken it, I kept the mini mister at a pretty good distance and spritzed away. I wiped after a few spritzes to prevent and clogs and having a huge blob of liquid on my cake, but of course I want spritz-happy and definitely sprayed more than I should have and did not allow for sufficient drying time in between. So my fondant did get alarmingly wet and sticky, however, it did dry overnight and was dry to the touch after. I haven't had a chance to play with it again (because I got lazy and totally bought the Wilton shimmer spray for the same amount that I paid for a tube of pearl lustre dust) but in a pinch or when you can't get your hands on an aerosal can of shimmer, this would be an awesome way to go. I do suggest allowing for a lot more drying time in between shimmer mist coats (as in more than two seconds like I did) and not doing more than two coats to avoid a melty, sugary disaster and isntead get this:

SHIMMERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! I am so tempted to upload an audio of me saying it because I have this paranoid notion that if you're not hearing it or saying it the same way in your head as I'm growling/bellowing it out loud right now, you won't understand the extent and depth of the shimmery goodness that is displayed before you. It's like a diamond. It has shimmery facets. FACETS, I tell you!

Also, from this shimmery photo, you can also begin to tell the epic failure that was this cake. Starting with the colour combo. Yeah, I have no idea. I liked pink. I liked purple. I liked turquoise. I liked silver (although I couldn't get it past the gray look). I just forgot to think if putting them all together would be aesthetically pleasing. In this case, sadly it was not.

Prepare to be horrified.

This is my sad attempt at building up your negative expectations so that when I show you the actual final project, you have this huuuge, staggeringly ugly picture in your head that anything will look good in comparison to it...

*shudders* I'm not even going to begin to tell you about the shenanigans I had with disco dust. Given that glitter was also a main component to my papercrafting, I thought transitioning it to the cake world would be a cinch. Nacht. I couldn't get past the fact that although disco dust is said to be edible, it legit looks like glitter to me. I'm not entirely sure what real glitter is made up of, but just because something is non-toxic doesn't automatically translate as edible to me. If you're more in the know than I am, I would definitely invite you to enlighten me, because I'd like to get along with disco dust, I really would. But in the meantime, I could NOT get past the fact that I couldn't tell the difference between it and regular glitter. Except in one aspect. COST. *wince* Because I'm cheap, I was trying to use the disco dust sparingly, but it just wasn't going to be happening with this. I think to even pull off the bottom tier of this cake (I address just the bottom tier, because I really don't think that this case is an example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts) I would have needed to cover each polka dot ENTIRELY in glitter. My wallet said no way and that was the end of that discussion.

Overall, if you haven't guessed it, I was kind of trying to go with the gray shimmery entity as wrapping paper to show that the entire cake was a gift. But there was no way in any dimension that I was submitting this for publication. Even if it was okay, if you don't feel proud looking at it, then that just speaks for itself, right? Instead I plopped it down in front of Bart and said that if he doesn't eat it, it's going in the garbage.

So! Somewhere in there was a tutorial on edible shimmer mist and my thoughts on disco dust and a cake fail. Out of all of that, a cake I deemed worthy of publication did come about. Of course, it came at the last minute where it's all or nothing and fortunately, as is thankfully the case in a lot of tough circumstances, I've found that I work MUCH better under pressure and was able to eke something out that I didn't mind having my name attached to. If you're still with me, thanks for that and hopefully you're stay tuned for the third ghost of Christmas passed. The published cake itself!

Hope you have a wonderful evening and as always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Ghosts of Christmas Passed: The Holiday Bow

2012-01-30T22:36:00.004-05:00

Hey there, S'n'S friends!

I know, I know, it's like the Christmas that won't go away with me, isn't it? Yes, it's another Christmas-y post but once I get down to business, I hope that you'll understand why it's coming up now. At least I'm posting it while there's still snow on the ground and not, say...June! *LOL*

Before I posted, I actually had to double check if I was okay to do this post yet!

Why the double check, you ask? Because it was PUBLISHED!
Explanation: For this particular publication, a published project is not allowed to be posted within the two months after the publication date

*happy dance*

So my road to publication came about through my super crafty buddy, Marti! She and a friend of hers, fellow CHA (Craft and Hobby Association) convention attendee started a magazine publication to address the need for more spotlight in crafting areas other than cards and scrapbooking (which I was also particularly interested in (and still am, though haven't had a chance to play as much) a while back! Marti and I were exploring the idea of me making a cake for their holiday edition using some of the methods I was quite fond of in the papercrafting area since I had noticed a good amount of overlap and re-purpose of craft tools (I say re-purpose because I'd like to point out that anything that I used in this project or in any other projects since were brand new and food safe and once used were then designated solely for the purpose of food/cake decorating! LOL) So of course I agreed not really realizing that I would have to make a Christmas/Holiday themed came in September/October.

Ugh. Let me just start off by saying that I had ZERO Christmas/Holiday inspiration in September/October - hence my epic first attempt fail.

CONFESSION: It's been known to happen more often than I post about it :D

My original thought was more centred around how to cross over papercrafting techniques into the cake decorating world and not in the actual aesthetic design of the cake which was already the first sign of my imminent downfall, but I'll power through, shall I?

Something that was quite big in papercrafting when I was right in the midst of it a few years back was the Cuttlebug which is a paper embossing machine. Using plastic embossing folders, you would insert a piece of paper in between the plates and squish them so that the design is imprinted into the paper. This was an obvious thing for me to cross over seeing as how Wilton had a bunch of impression mats that cost a bajillion times more than my embossing folders that I completely hoarded and barely even opened. I didn't really use them, I just WANTED them. ALL. *LOL*

NOTE: At this time, I can already tell this is going to be a LONG post. I feel like I get more long-winded the older I get. Bear with me, won't you? In the course of this post, there will also be a tutorial on how to make a fondant/gumpaste bow. And you thought it wouldn't be worth sticking around!

Bam! Check THAT out! So forgive my photography skills since both pictures look like they have completely different fondant colours. They're the same! Kind of brings to mind that snide comment I made in my head one time that was along the lines of, "having a good camera doesn't actually make you a good photographer..." *COUGHS* Pot. Black. What? The irony is not lost on me...

Sooo, there I have my piece of beautifully embossed fondant. Of course given the folder is a 5x7 or an A7 size I believe they call it...(did you know that 99% of facts are made up on the spot? I bring that up right now for no reason at all...) it's not the greatest for covering large surfaces (although you TOTALLY can if you were of the mind to!). In this case, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to take a pretty fondant/gumpaste bow up a notch. From here, I cut up my fondant into evenly-sized strips

I'd love to tell you that I used one of these since I've had it in my fondant starter kit for forever but the amount of assembly it required versus me just getting a knife just didn't stack up in its favor. But you COULD use it if you wanted to...like...have evenly sized strips of fondant....as opposed to like...super fun surprise sized strips of fondant, but whatever. To each their own!

Loop your strips and attach them together using "fondant glue" (a mixture made of a small amount of gumpaste dissolved into water - which the Wilton supply list COMPLETELY neglected to elaborate on in my very first lesson so I can't speak for Melissa, but I actually brought a glue stick to our first class. I just figured there was a crapload of secrets in the cake decorating world...how was I supposed to know that the "glue" on the supply list was gumpaste and water!?) A more economical path would just be to use water considering that in order to ensure your bow remains a bow-like shape, you would have some gumpaste in there already. So voila! I saved you a few pennies! Tuck that away for a special occasion, I've got one for you my next post if I can ever get through this one without all the digression! So, as I was saying, make your strips into loops, stick 'em and notch off the corners of the end you just stuck together with "glue" aka water. I don't have a picture of that. Is this the WORST tutorial EVAH or what?!

To help my zazzy (word courtesy of Sheldon) bow even zazzier, I thought I'd add some twirly "ribbon". This is where I didn't take that fondant strip cutter and didn't cut evenly-sized strips of fondant, which was WAY better anyway, because twirly ribbon was never meant to be identical. It's like a snowflake, no two are alike! Being all scrappy, I used whatever was on hand (cake pop sticks) to wrap my fondant strip around in order to achieve a twirly-like formation. See!? It just goes to show you don't need a bunch of fancy tools and gadgets to decorate a cake! (BWAHAHAHA, I'm totally LYING, I WANT them ALL - in pink if possible!)

So after your loops have hardened into their loopy shape, all that's left is basic assembly which is SO easy that even a three year old child can do it. You do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and voila you have a beautiful, zazzy, twirly-rific bow.

TRANSLATION: ...after your loops have hardened into their loopy shape, all that's left is basic assembly in which you try to form a simple frickin' bow, break a couple pieces (did I mention that you should make more than what you actually need, like take the number you think you need and multiply it by 10...give or take), swear and mutter under your breath a little, squeeze on some more icing, swear and mutter a little louder, break a couple more pieces, throw one across the room, just smash the remaining pieces down and swear that you will make their little zazzy, loopy bow lives a living hell if they don't STAY exactly where you place them this time around and after they rebel against you, you quickly change from threats to downright pleading and promising that you'll treat them better next time if only they will please stay put. In the end, you and the frickin' zazzy, stupid loops have come to a rocky, yet tentative truce in which you use the twirly ribbon as the go-between to cover any failures that you or the zazzy loops may have inflicted upon each other. Then you also pick up that loop you threw so your puppy doesn't eat it and barf on your bed spread.

NOTE: As I can completely see that I have veered off the path less travelled in a normal, non-slightly-crazy tutorial, I have decided to break up my original post into three smaller (small-ish?) posts so you don't take one look at this entry and run screaming off into the night.

So this was actually meant to be a full-on helpful bow tutorial until my repressed memory and anxiety over making this bow resurfaced and took it in a totally different direction. In case this wasn't actually all that helpful, and I promise I won't be all that offended if you come away from this thinking it really wasn't, please feel free to message me any questions you may have and I will be glad to help out in any way I can. I also promise that bow loops (both zazzy and not) and I have made peace with each other and are managing to co-exist in a manner more suitable for cake decorating.

Next up in this papercrafting/cake decorating amalgamation of cake projects is shimmerizing a cake - the easy way! (I am 100% certain that some of the words in that sentence are non-existant or don't actually belong there). I will also explain how all this led to the epic fail that was a cake project and how all of that led to my published cake.

Thanks for sticking it out with me! As always...
Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Baking for Birthdays Week!

2012-01-22T21:42:00.005-05:00

Hello S'n'S friends!

I almost typed good morning until I looked at the clock and realized that almost 2:00 pm doesn't exactly qualify as morning anymore! In fact, if we're looking at it from my rapidly aging point of view, you could say that it's almost dinner time and then bedtime for li'l OLD me! *LOL*

I guess it's high time that I posted a couple actual cake projects here and this week definitely provided some great events to do so! For work, we have this tradition that the birthday celebrant brings treats in to the office. Normally my coworker Julie and I put our birthday "parties" together because there's just a day in between our birthdays, but because they fell on separate weeks, we thought it would be more fun to have separate parties so we have fun things to look forward to for TWO weeks instead of one. We also figured that it's not as fun to bring in your OWN treats for your birthday, so we traded. Julie brought in the savoury food and I brought her treats (cake pops and cupcakes!) and tomorrow, I'm bringing in pulled pork, meatballs and other goodies and she'll be bringing in sweet treats for me! SO excited!

I'm pretty sure I'd be a little bit more excited about the party and all the food if I wasn't so FULL from today's birthday celebrating! Alrighty, so on the docket for this week all of a sudden was cake pops and cupcakes on top of the two cake orders I just finished taking a day before we decided the dessert trade-off because I had nothing on my baking to-do list! *LOL* Isn't it always like that, though? From nothing going on, to a bunch of stuff!

So first up, the baby shower cake! Funny story about this one! I had asked my aunt if the couple knew the sex of their baby and she had said not yet, so I thought it would be fun to do alternating layers of pink and blue cake for them to see when they cut into it! I had finished baking the pink layers and as it cooled, I logged on to FB and saw that the couple I was baking the shower cake for just had their baby! And it was a BOY! *LOL* Now I had some pink cake that I certainly couldn't use for the cake anymore (it worked out perfectly though because then I didn't have to bake the cake to use for cake pops! *LOL*) So after baking a new set of blue cake layers, I was ready to fill it and fondant it, but I wasn't entirely sure of what it would look like yet! Actually, I think it was finding out that it was a beautifully, healthy baby boy was what gave me the inspiration to decide. What's cuter for a little baby boy than a teeny, tiny pair of blue all-star converse sneakers!

And what's me making a cake without trying out my newly recenty purchase to add a little SHIMMER?

Besides deciding on the Converse sneakers, I pretty much just decided everything else on the fly. When nothing else was coming to me, I figured if I just got out the fondant and set out to finish the cake, things would come to me and it did! As I was rolling out the blue fondant, I remembered I had some border cutters that I had purchased months ago and still hadn't opened! I was having a little problem figuring out how to use them since they were straight and plastic and I wanted to cover a round cake, but thank GOODNESS that everything I wanted to try was just falling in place! I laid the blue fondant cover over the cake and just lined up the straight cutter and rocked it right to left following the perimeter of the cake, pressing enough to cut the first layer, but not deep enough to cut through the base fondant layer. The bottom border was a little easier to do since I could cut the border on its own and place it on the cake. To keep with the all-star theme, I used little star-shaped sprinkles to fill the intersections of my angles and I was also really wanting to making those little divets to make it look all cushion-y. It sort of ended up looking like a cushion-y drum with shoes hanging out on top, but I was COMPLETELY in love with this cake, if that's okay to say about something you make yourself...

Up next: the first year birthday birdhouse cake! I was *SO* super excited to start decorating this one because of the little bits and pieces I had already made beforehand. I was also scared to say it out loud because I didn't want to look forward to decorating a pretty cake and then not having it turn out exactly how I was imagining it would! Again, if I may say so myself...it really turned out how I was imagining it would! I guess you can't really see how I was imagining it, but it was something like this:

*SWOON* I love how this turned out! I was also really happy that the fondant didn't give me as hard a time as I was imagining it would considering this is was the tallest cake I tried to cover. All in all, it was actually pretty simple especially since I made the house, the flowers and picket fences a week ahead. All I had to do pretty much was slap everything on once I'd laid out the branches over the cake!

Ta-daaa! Finished projects all lined up in a row! Best part was that I didn't have to pull any crazy all-nighters or take time off of work to finish it and I was relaxed and just plain ol' happy with how the projects went from start to finish! Planning ahead definitely helped out a LOT!

Alrighty! That's it from me for today, I was trying to keep it as short adn sweet as possible, but you know me and my words! Enjoy the rest of your weekend and here's to an awesome week ahead!

As always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Less Baking = More Shopping!

2012-01-18T22:10:00.000-05:00

I have a very hard time going into a baking store to pick up ONE thing and actually coming out with ONE thing.

I am a 'more is more' kind of girl and usually, it's once I've picked one thing up, it's like I might as well grab a couple of other things to make the debit swipe worth it - and I don't even know why I have that mentality, it's not like I get charged for the number of debit swipes I use! I'd like to say it stems from the number of times I've gone in and grabbed the one thing I think I need only to get home and realize that I also need something else and it sucks because I was just AT the store and could have grabbed it, but more or else, I just like looking around and seeing fun baking things I don't yet have and must make mine! *LOL*

Despite the lack of baking I've done in the new year, I was out and about and couldn't help peeking into a couple of my regular baking supply haunts to see what was what.

First things first:

OOOOOOOH! It's the #1 cake stand on my 'must-have cake stands' list! Although, I would have actually preferred the round one (okay, honestly, I want BOTH shapes and multiple sizes!) the BEST thing about this cake stand is that I saw it over the holidays and managed to resist making it mine then only because of the insane length of my Christmas shopping gift list and as a reward for my patience, I got it at CLEARANCE price! *happy dance* Of course, because the holidays are over and everything is on clearance, this was the only one left and the round stands that I was also coveting were either sold out when it was regular price or someone else lucked out and managed to grab it before I could get my hot little hands on them! No matter, it alarms Bart less when I amass my cake stand collection at a slower pace anyway!

After my trip from the place where cake stands live and wait to be adopted, I headed over to Bulk Barn to pick up some chocolate Merkins candy wafers and of course to see what else I could toss into my basket.

Ta-daaaa! I also saw these over the holidays and didn't pick them up ASAP because Bart told me I wasn't allowed to buy anything more for myself until I finished buying for other people (apparently, he did NOT hear the 'one for you, one for me' policy I like to abide by) so I had to skip them over. As I saw them on an endcap, I thought I'd grab a couple (or possibly more than a couple, but I admit to nothing!) in case they are a seasonal product - although I would NOT get that logic considering shimmery things are a 24/7 necessity for me! I asked the clerk at the checkout counter but she said that she wasn't aware of them not carrying them...but she didn't seem so sure, so maybe I grabbed a few more. If you think about it this way, the small, teeny, tiny vials of pearl lustre dust are slightly more expensive than these bottles and they take a considerable amount of more work to apply onto projects than spraying from a can! In any case, these require no justification. They are a must. I would only kick myself if I didn't get them and then found that I needed them and they are only around at Christmas. It would be a travesty, I tell you.

Next little find:

You know how they have those little buckets of things right at the cash register that are so cute and sweet and little that you just can't help but grab one and you totally KNOW that they're put there just to upsell you and sucker you into making last minute, unplanned purchases? These were sorta kinda one of those except for the fact that I was actually looking for them...I just hadn't planned on getting five. I had remembered seeing these during one of my random wanderings at Bulk Barn and had the idea (hope?) that I could use them to liven up my plain as day buttercream.

I realized lately that I'm not very adventurous with my baking, from my cakes being either chocolate or vanilla or my fillings being either buttercream or Nutella or chocolate when I can't use Nutella due to nut allergies. So, now that I'm typing it out, it's still not all that adventurous seeing as how my filling is still buttercream, but at least this time it's flavored buttercream! I've only been able to use the strawberry one and although I didn't get a chance to taste the finished cake itself, I think it turned out well! The flavoring is red but it didn't color the buttercream and even though I had heard that the flavoring is so concentrated that I only need to use a drop or so, I think I used about 1/4 of the little, teeny tiny bottle *LOL* Remember, more is more?

I was going for a strawberries 'n' cream flavor. It's so weird, but with each drop I kept thinking it didn't really taste like anything, but when Bart tried it, he thought I went a little heavy with the flavoring. I'm nervously waiting for the taste results from the family that ordered the cake but I'm a little bit worried because I had told them that even if it doesn't taste good, they should just lie to me and tell me that it did! *LOL*

Alrighty, so obviously you can tell I have a lot to do because I don't want to do any of it! But I guess I had better get to bakin'! From having no baking projects, all of a sudden I've got some cake pops to make, two dozen red velvet cupcakes and the two cakes I've got going on! I've got myself a FABULOUS to-do list and it's keeping me nice and in line to have things finished on time with less stress!

Have a wonderful week everyone and as always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Cake Walk...

2012-01-15T23:23:00.000-05:00

Hello, friends!

I hope you're all enjoying what's left of your weekend! I know I've been super MIA these last couple of months and it's not really a shortage of projects, since I do have a couple projects I haven't posted yet, it just seems like every time I open a fresh post, my fingers rest on the keyboard and they don't move! So hopefully you'll be a bit patient with me while I go in search of my cake mojo!

My first step in my search is the most obvious place: the beginning!

Although I'm very proud of the cakes I've made, for some reason, there are moments where it feels like I'll never be 100% happy with my work. It's hard not to ignore the little bubbles, cracks, lopsidedness, and other things others may not necessarily notice but cake decorators just know they're there! But taking a moment to see where it all started, it's hard to deny that however I feel about my projects, I've come a good way from that first Michael's class!

*LOL* I still remember my outrage while sitting in that first cake decorating class and finding out that I had to BAKE cakes. Me?! BAKE?! Okay, you're probably reading this wondering how the heck I could be so surprised about this, but really, the brochure never actually said anything about baking. It said they would teach me how to DECORATE a cake. So I kind of just assumed I would waltz into the class and they'd have all the materials ready for me to decorate a fake cake they've got ready for me. But nope, when we walked in there, they handed us a list of things we needed to buy and worst of all, that we had to bake the cakes every week that we were going to decorate!

CONFESSION: I legit called a local bakery after that first class and tried to order un-decorated cakes that I could just buy and decorate myself! My desire to NOT bake was slightly less than the $12 they were charging me for a PLAIN cake. *wince*

Aaaaw, look at me so proud of my ugly cake! BWAHAHAHA! At this point, I was more interested in eating the cake rather than what it looked like!

Alrighty, cake number two! I took more time with this one (the extra time I had came from the fact that I totally haven't showered or brushed my hair! Nobody said cake decorators had to brush their hair right? Just wash their hands!) and it turned out a lot neater looking than the first. I also cheated a lot of bought a bucket of icing instead of making my own. If I had to bake my own cake, I was going to find every other way not to have to do anything else!

Hello Kitty and CAKE! This was my first and last time to ever try/use the piping gel transfer method with the star tip. I still think it turned out nice and pretty, but I just don't really have a lot of patience for piping. Or icing for that matter!

...aaaaand there's our last cake for the first class! This is pretty much the last time I've iced a cake without covering it with fondant too. *LOL* Those are the pretty icing roses that a very nice lady on YouTube taught me and a bajillion other people. Sadly, it was a lot easier to learn from her than the instructor we had from the class.

Booya! First and last decorating class I completed before I headed off into the wonderful world of fondant!

December 2011

Currently, I have finished baking three layers of chocolate devil's food cake for a 6" wide, hopefully 6" tall cake that will also hopefully house a cute little pink and blue birdhouse I just finished making out of rice crispy treats. If you know me well enough, you'll probably have already guessed that I totally bought a family-sized box of generic, individually wrapped rice crispy treats instead of making them and having to suffer through the cleanup of it!

Along with the pink picket-fence, cherry blossom garden bird house, I've also got to make a baby shower cake in which I don't exactly have any idea what it's going to look like yet. I'm thinking cute baby animals in pastel or generic baby's room items with a frilly bassinet on top. We'll see...because also for this weekend I need to have a dozen or so red velvet cupcakes ready as well as some cake pops and I'm not entiiiiirely sure I have the time this week to get everything done with the overtime I will probably have to do this week as well. *shrugs* Ah well! *insert a bunch of work-related thoughts here*

Keep your fingers crossed for me and have yourselves a wondefully sweet week!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

12 Days of Christmas Roundup

2012-01-08T23:41:00.003-05:00

I know I'm going a bit backwards here, but the holidays tipped right into overdrive and it went right by me in a couple blinks of an eye! I had this post saved so I didn't want to wait another twelve months until I was able to post it! *LOL* I'm sure like always, I'll get a bit carried away, but here we go!

On the 12 Days of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

12. Twelve bags of crab legs

So...I guess I got kind of carried away with the number of bags of crab legs! It somehow became tradition to do away with the turkey and head to the sea instead for Christmas Eve dinners and since the first time my aunt fed us lobster, it`s kind of stuck. I offered to host Christmas Eve this year as we also do celebrate it on rotation so as to not leave one house/person always stuck with the cleaning. The host provides the main and the rest is potluck. A big reason for my offering to host is to have a procrastination-proof way to make sure that the house gets clean. Like, a real BIG clean. Not just shoving things into a room with a door that can close. What better motivation than to know your mother is coming with the rest of the family? *LOL*

11. Eleven days off of work

Sorta kinda the best perk with working in an academic setting! When the students are off, we get a little bit of a break! *teehee* Although it seemed like a lot when I was duplicating and placing the "no's" on the calendar, the days definitely went by quickly! From one celebration to the next and so. Much. FOOD! And may I point out that through all those days and up to this moment, I've kept the house nice and clean! Okay...cleaner than it was before I took time off of work to overhaul the house! If only I didn't have to do so much of the work, I'd say it's just so nice to come home to a clean house! *LOL*

10. Ten bowling kiddos

My youngest cousin's birthday falls very close to Christmas, so he got a nice bowling party to ensure he doesn't feel like he's been overlooked due to the holiday shenanigans. To be fair, there was actually eleven kids at this party but one of them threw the mother of all raging fits when we merely suggested that he be in this picture, so we thought it better to just let him do as he pleases *LOL* The kids had an awesome time and the grown-ups ie. my brothers got a little carried away at a friendly bowling match! I let them be and after dropping off Raymund's Sponge Bob's cake, I hung out in the party room ate ate curly friends!

9. Nine Glittery Christmas Ball Thingies

Pretty Christmas decorations! So, according to Bart, I've sorta kinda been a Christmas Scrooge these past couple of years, although, I like to think of it as logical. I wasn't that big into celebrating Christmas here at home because we were always so busy jumping from one house to the next, one celebration to the next and none of them were ever at home, so why would we decorate? We'd only have to clean it up later! But once I volunteered our house, I figured we'd need to have a few decorations. We got our first tree (yes, after four years of marriage we didn't have a tree!) and when I realized we needed some ornaments, well, it was all over from there. From Christmas Scrooge to Christmas overboard! For our theme/colour for this year, I figured to keep it nice and elegantly traditional with GOLD. We had multi-toned gold ornaments, poinsettas, ribbons, snowflakes, wreaths and garlands - and of course, those glittery ball thingies! Once I started buying Christmas decorations, I couldn't stop and now we've got 6 bins worth of Christmas decorations! *LOL*

8. Eight Christmas Hamper Items

Since I got married, my parents have been giving us married kids 'care packages' for Christmas since she had a tough time trying to get her kids-in-law things. The Christmas after Bart and I got married, we had a bunch of things from our registry and wedding gifts, but not a lot of smaller, important/overlooked items, ie. cleaning stuff, etc. that we would need, so as a joke, I asked her to pack us a cleaning lady or some garbage bags and voila! Christmas care packages! This year we got socks and underwear as stocking stuffers (parental tip: no matter how old your kids are, they will ALWAYS need socks and underwear!), Costco-sized boxes of garbage bags, dishwashing tablets, Bounce dryer sheets (for some reason, Bart is a BIG fan of Bounce dryer sheets - and it can't even be the no name kind! *LOL*), BIG fluffy towels (these are my weakness - I LOVE humongous, fluffy towels), laundry detergent and we always get a bed-in-a-bag! A lot of the things usually last us a good portion of the year and it ALWAYS feels so good to have brand new beautiful sheets on the bed!

7. Seven rolls of gift wrap

Bart and I usually go the gift wrap route when it comes to any type of gift-giving since it's still a pretty package, time efficient and a dollar at the dollar store! But since I got bitten by the Christmas bug, I figured it would be much prettier to actually have beautifully wrapped gifts underneath our brand-spankin' new tree! So that meant gift-wrap! I got a seven-pack at WalMart and I wanted to get a bunch more but that was the moment Bart chose to tell me that now I was going overboard! *LOL* So all of our gifts had these same seven wrappings until my mom gave me some of hers because my dad wouldn't let her buy new ones either!

6. Six ladybug cupcakes

My last official order of the year! A co-workers aunt ordered six ladybug cupcakes for her sister's birthday. The week before that I had made her a dozen Christmas cupcakes for a holiday party she threw. Those cupcakes were chocolate with a Hershey kiss surprise in the middle. These ladybug cupcakes are vanilla Oreo cupcakes with an Oreo cookie crumb crust at the bottom! The ladybugs are made out of fondant and I someone once told me not to point out mistakes because a lot of the time, the people who don't know how they were supposed to turn out would never notice a mistake...and technically, it wasn't a mistake, I just plumb ran out of brilliant ideas on how I would do the ladybugs' antenna's so I just left them out altogether! *LOL* Each little black dot is a teeny, tiny rolled up piece of black chocolate fondant as well as the googly ladybug eyes!

5. Five rooms to clean!

Here's the main sitting room all ready for Christmas and visitors! I know it doesn't look like much, but it really did take a day to clean this room and the other days to clean the others! *LOL* There's our beautiful Christmas tree, I think at the last minute, I added pouffy puffs of gold ribbon.

4. Four-piece centrepiece

Even though there is four items here, I actually posted it because I really wanted to show off my beautiful cake stand! Every time I keep saying that I'm done buying cake stands, I see another one of my cake stands that is on my top most-wanted cake stands EVER! How can I pass by one of the TOP must-have cake stands on my list and not buy it! Although it makes it look very Christmas-y, I kind of can't wait to pull out that ribbon. But there it is though, my beautiful cake stand with my 4-piece glittery gold decorations. The card beside it is the first card Bart and I received for the season.

3. Three gingerbread creations

As I was doing my Christmas shopping rounds, I couldn't help but pick up gingerbread kits whenever I came across them. Since Bart and I are youngster-less, it also means our house is just as so (minus all the video games *LOL*) and I figured the kids would get uber bored, so I thought we'd break into teams and have a gingerbread building competition. Of course, the thing about gingerbread and my family is, although we've been here a long while, we're so Filipino that none of us has ever touched a gingerbread kit before. Actually, to this day (since I definitely wasn't going to be ingesting any of the ones we built with), I dont' think I've actually ever eating a gingerbread cookie. Huh. Anyway, yes, myself as well as everyone else in my family have never done a gingerbread house before, so it was kind of a huge catastrophe once we opened up the kits! I mean, we kind of knew the basics, but it was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be and the kids made it even more so by eating all the candy decorations straight out of the package! I'm proud to say that my team's house that I captained got first place!

2. Two Christmas Eve hosts

...on Christmas with a very depressed looking fluffy pup! The fun part was that since we were able to clean all the rooms upstairs, we had a spare empty room with a whole lot of space to set up a little "photo studio". I had asked my mom to bring her backdrop and equipment, but she really thought I was joking that I'd have room for it all, so we had to make do with the lace curtains on one side of the room as a backdrop. Before it got all crazy, each family was able to go into the room to get their family photo taken (all except my own immediate family *aaaw*) but it was fun and I think next year, if we host Christmas Eve again or wherever we do it, we'll set up another "photobooth" and I'll make sure to have funny glasses, hats, wigs and other stuff to use! I'm happy Bart and I got this photo together because I think this is the only one of us taken for the next few days of Christmas celebrating!

...and the day celebrating the birth of a Savior with my family!

Okay, so that family picture was taken last year, as unfortunately, it was way too crazy to get everyone together for a picture this year! We were all over the place, and while it feels like a comfortable amount of room for Bart and I, it was definitely a little snug for the 18 of us! *LOL* There was more of us this year than last as Mae's family is now here from the Philippines so it was definitely a wonderful Christmas to celebrate a lot of good things!

All right! That's it for Christmas and 2011, I promise! What I really need to do is get reunited with my fabulously wodnerful KitchenAid mixer and oven! They are definitely starting to feel neglected just like my poor little blog! I've still got a few projects that I haven't had a chance to post yet and then it's on to 2012 projects! I wonder what this year has in store for us!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

2011: Year in Review

2012-01-02T00:06:00.000-05:00

JANUARY

Obsessed over and brought home a treadmill...then proceeded to use it to hang clean laundry that I was to lazy to fold off of.
Over $100 worth of Starbucks gift cards led to severe insomnia. Can over indulgence of caffeine really be classified as insomnia?
Turned 28.

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"Apparently some people didn't get common sense for Christmas!"
LOL...this is true EVERY year!
"Planning my running event schedule for 2011!" We all know what came of that *LOL*
"It's a triple grande kind of day today..." Hence the sleeplessness!
"Note to self: no more triple grande kind of days for a while." Lesson learned.
"I love Rory Campbell big time." Lock your phone. When you're around Rory Campbell, that is.
"If it's called veggie chips, obviously that means I can eat the whole bag, right?"
OBVIOUSLY.

FEBRUARY

Started my intense obsessive relationship with Bart's XBOX
Melissa and I booked our first fabulous friend trip to the DOMINICAN!
Bart and I celebrated our 7th year of dating anniversary!
Celebrated Valentine's Day with my family up in Blue Mountain skiing (well, Bart did). On the way there, I got all cocky about my 4-wheel drive and totally spun the truck out into a ditch! *LOL* Needless to say, Bart did not let me drive after we were pulled out, but we got there safe and sound and I watched my mom and Tiana take their first skiing lesson (and then I watched Tiana smoke my mom in said lessons!)

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"I have answered the Call of Duty..." Not my favourite game - probably because I wasn't good at it!
"I just played video games for 6+ hours. I'm officially 12 years old."
Sometimes it's a must.
"Keep your overpriced flowers. Valentine's Day = WingsUP and COD marathon. Clothing optional! *LOL*
Clothes stayed on.
"Ouch! My body hurts like I worked out yesterday and we all know that I didn't. What's wrong with me?" Got sick :(
"I'm having a severe allergic reaction to stupid people." Sadly, Reactin doesn't address this.
"Addicted to Fable! I'm officially nerdtastic!" And FABULOUS!
"The day's over already?! What have I done? Oh, just overthrew a king, took over a throne and saved Albion. #Fable"
Sounds pretty productive to me!
"Sometimes I hide my online status [on XBOX Live] so no one can tell the depth of my sickness."
Mom thinks I'm cool.

MARCH

Sweet Valley Confidential FINALLY comes out! Yes, that is another facet to the many sides of me! It turned out very, VERY awful! And I make a lot of allowances for Sweet Valley storylines and plots! *LOL*
Heard the beginnings of some very concerning talks at work using the word: restructuring. Countered it by applying for a job that I thought I was an obvious shoe-in for and then getting beyond depressed when I didn't even get an interview. Don't you hate it that the results of something turn out so COMPLETELY opposite of what you were expecting as kind of a sure thing? Bah!

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"I. love. Rory like big time."
Obviously I don't learn my lesson.
"At a bar. Full of students we may or may not be deregistering. Huh."
I kept it on the DL so as to not be recognized. *LOL*
"Dear You, Too bad they only make deodorant for perspiration and not desperation, because you smell a lot like it. :) Love, Me." Harsh words delivered in a candy coated shell! Still true.
"My treadmill tried to assassinate me last night." It was the beginning of the end for us.
"I went back to bed because I thought it was Saturday. I just realized that it's not. Fail."
Still made it in earlier than some people!
"Mission: to horde enough Cadbury Creme Eggs to last me past Easter."
Sadly, this mission was NOT accomplished!
"Dear HR, it takes two seconds to figure out from my CV that I am awesome and full of win. The job exists so I can have it!"
Unfortunately, HR was NOT reading CV's very clearly that day. Obviously.
"Bart: You smell really pretty. Me: I smell like chocolate chip cookies and failure."
Aw, little pity party for one.

APRIL

Realizing that my lack of keeping an updated blog is giving me nothing to review about this month. Except for the Royal Wedding, but really, I don't care about that.
Is it bad that all I have for this month is that Fast Five came out?

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"The Fast and Furious timeline is giving me a headache. Sorry you're still dead, Letty."
Or are you...?!
"You know what's made out of big balls of gas? Stars! And at the moment, me!" What was it that Shrek said...?
"The royal wedding was today? Why didn't anyone mention anything? /sarcasm" Millions tuned in and other millions spent money to actually go there and watch. Meanwhile, can't get some people to watch a whole World Vision commercial or hand out change to homeless people. *Judging*

MAY

Went on a FABULOUS trip with the hubby and my BFF travel buddy Melissa! Had SUCH an awesome time at SUCH an awesome resort! Best part (at least for me), the resort was barely 10% capacity so we practically had the WHOLE place to ourselves! No line-ups, no crowds! Just pure relaxation in paradise!
In other world news, had a very freaked out moment when I checked my BB for news headlines just shortly after I woke up. Osama and Obama are so close it took me a minute to figure out what the heck I was reading. Have I been reading and watching too many spy/conspiracy theory stories that I took all that with a grain of salt. You have to admit, there MUST be tons of things that we've been told that aren't 100% the truth or things that are going on that we don't know about...hmmm....
Work murmurs using the words "restructuring" get louder. As a result, I actually went into work for a meeting before we left for the airport. Wasn't aa very a good idea, but at least I was in the know!
Melissa and I also began our foray into the wonderful world of golf! We found out pretty quick that we're really awesome at it. True story.
Before we left for the trip, we found out that Chewy became our very one little convict. He bit a mailman while he was out and about with Bart's dad in the yard. We learned that if a bite breaks skin, they must call the police, etc. He was quarantined at Bart's parents place until we came back and someone actually had to come to the house to check on him to make sure he wasn't all foaming at the mouth! Before then and since then, Chewy's come across many different people and animals and he has not ONCE ever tried to bite them. I still call that that mailman did something to provoke him!

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"All this lying around pools and the beach and getting served all day just tires a girl out! *LOL*"
It's hard work. But someone's gotta do it, right?
"I hope it's about colors because I'm still not sure which colors to mix to get green! RT @RebeccaBlack: on the set of the video for my new single!" Did you know that Thursday comes before Friday?
"Apparently throwing things behind doors that close is not classified as cleaning."I beg to differ.

JUNE

My cousin and his fiancee got married and it was awesome because it was the first wedding where my mom and I didn't have to do the flowers for it! *LOL* Plus, the cousins and the rest of the fam bonded harrd (Ke$ha) over Tequila Rose!
Began a tenuous relationship with NetFlix. Almost broke up early because there wasn't any good TV shows or movies! Good thing I stuck it out a bit more...new shows coming in!

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"Too hot to sleep, too cheap to turn on the air!" I used the extra money I saved to buy something for myself. *LOL*

JULY

Went crazy and launched Sugar 'n' Sweets! *LOL*
The LAST Harry Potter movie came out! End of en era of epic proportions!
Had a bonfire that was rained out, but there were GIANT marshmallows! (Yes, this is review worthy!)

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"People who leave their dogs or kids in the car in this weather kind of need to be shanked a little..." Another harsh thought covered in a candy coating shell. Still true, though!
"Trying to clean my house purely using the power of my mind. Progress is slow." I'm still working on it.

AUGUST

Experienced a (thankfully) small earthquake while at work. They evacuated us out of the building and I'm still not entirely sure what the proper protocol for earthquakes actually is.
Get woken up by police calling to tell us to answer the door because there's more police knocking on our door. My car was "broken into and both GPSs got stolen. The police recovered the stolen items and then proceeded to steal it by not returning it to us or returning any of our phone calls regarding it. Awesome.
I got my KitchenAid!
Went on my very first dinner boat cruise! Had a lovely time except for the part where I felt sick the WHOLE night! LOL! The mark of an awesome night out with friends, I still had an awesome time even while feeling sick!

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"Well obviously we've got a car robber here. He's climbing in yo cars and snatchin' all yo stuff. So hide yo kids, hide yo wife and hide yo husbands cuz they robbin' erryone up in here!"
'Nuff said.
"If you're making plans with me and you don't see me put it my Blackberry, it's because I have no intentions of going. FYI. :)" I'm a very in-demand kind of girl! LOL
"Just seeing reports now that we were recommended to seek shelter last night due to tornado/storm watch. We went out for wings :s" Sometimes certain situations call for wings.

SEPTEMBER

Bart and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary! It's not an anniversary celebration without Red Lobster!
My mom and I worked on the flowers for my cousin Ali's and Becky's wedding. It worked out very well and the wedding was beautiful!
I had an eensy weensy moment in the parking lot with the truck and an eensy weensy Acura Integra that I didn't see while reversing! Oops! a $900 oops!
I used the money I made from the wedding flowers to get me my very first ever Canon DSLR!

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"It's 2 am - I am one with the flowers, I am ONE with FLOWERS!"
It was touch and go there for a minute *LOL*
"Last night I dreamt I made sugar cookies and they turned out awesome! I'm a little vain even in my dreams! *LOL*"
In my defense, I think it's more hopeful planning!
"I picked up two cake stands today and they're still in the car because I forgot them and NOT because I'm hiding them from Bart." He noticed after I accumulated more than 10 cake stands!
"Knew something was odd, but couldn't figure out what until I realized I was wearing my glasses in the shower. It's been a long week."
Sadly, it's happened a couple more times since then!

OCTOBER

Had the showdown of the century with Good Guyz Auto. Worst garage ever!
Tammy officially takes up her new position and leaves the Business Office :(
Organized the first Couples Retreat at Niagara on the Lake. Had the most AWESOME time with some awesome couples!

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"Officially signed up for the Running Room's Resolution Run! I guess I should figure out where my running shoes are..." We all know how well that went! I can still barely move!
"Financial planner is telling Bart to save and invest more to fund me. At least that's what I heard." I stand by this.
"Happy October! I need to wake up in about three hours! So much to do, so few clones of me to get it all done! Gah!" I still don't know how the calendar can fill up that fast!
"Shooting in RAW. Like a boss!" In real life, I still don't know what that means. *LOL*
"Just totally wiped out outside my house. Ego hurts worse than my bum. :(" Unfortunately, this happens a BUNCH more times!
"Happy Halloween! I'll have my rude and sarcastic costume on all day! Come see, it's so realistic and life-like!"
Seems I've forgotten to take this costume off!

NOVEMBER

Met my wonderful, crafty friend Ann and had a fabulous time exploring Toronto together! Got to ride my first ever segway through the Distillery District!
Discovered Big Bang Theory. 'Nuff said!
Breaking Dawn Part One came out!
Rory gets dirty with thirty. Since I love him big time, I figure this is review worthy.
Had my SECOND car accident in the work parking lot - this time, company mail van slammed into my car :(

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"OMG! There is no water in my house this morning!" Discovered that free water is so not worth not having control over whether or not you can shower! I want to be able to choose not to shower based on my own decisions, thank you very much!
"I reorganized my cake stand collection. Keep your kids away, I'm obviously a bad influence with my wild and crazy shenanigans!"
Never underestimate the importance of an awesomely organized cake stand collection.
"Bacon and eggs for dinner and the first season of Big Bang Theory *LOVE*" Gotta love evenings like this!
"There's a summary of all the books prior at the beginning of The Inheritance because it took so long to come out that nobody remembers what happened before." It was good that Wiki'd the ending. ie. I didn't think it was that good that I should read a bajillion more pages just to know what happens.

DECEMBER

Introduced my boss and the dude who mistakenly thought he was my boss to the real Catherine - with a four paged, size 10 font, single-spaced write up. Facts over emotions will ALWAYS win. Catherine: 1. Hoo-rah!
Took three days off of work to clean the house and get it ready to host Christmas Eve for the family. Spent two weeks prio also using evenings and weekends to clean as well! Yes, the house was THAT bad!
Ran the Resolution Run after not having run at ALL since LAST year's run! Got there JUST as the crowd got the "GO" signal and got going with no time to stretch. Spent the rest of the evening and the next day barely being able to move!
Hubby Bart turned 37!
Had the most wonderful Christmas and New Years with all the people I love most in the world! :)
Got my 64 GB Blackberry PlayBook! I love Rory big time! And this time, I'm actually the one writing it! Thanks to my hubby for getting it for me and to Rory for making it possible!
Left my purse with my wallet, Blackberry, Playbook and eReader in a shopping cart in the Walmart parking lot at midnight and only discovered I had left it there when I got home 15 minutes later. Drove like a speed demon all the way back and found that it was no longer there but that it was turned in to customer service...with everything still inside. I burst into tears right in front of the person behind the counter. Definitely felt my Christmas Angel watching over me that night (or morning?) and felt my cold, cold, heart soften towards humanity! I'm still paying that kindness forward!

2012 thoughts about my random 2011 thoughts through social media updates:

"I just broke my sparkly hairband. This is sad." I rectified the problem by going back to the dollar store and buying 6 more.
"Things that throw me off my game: Bart telling me that everybody be triflin'..." I made myself feel like a parent when I asked him "Where did you learn that???" LOL
"Lacing up for the resolution run tonight. If you don't see me in the new year, look for me passed out on the side of the road 2km into the run route, that's probably where I'll be!" I seriously considered throwing myself in front of a moving vehicle just to make it stop!
"Run done! Bring on the crab legs! What? I run so I can eat! Doesn't everyone?" It's hard to eat when moving any part of your body makes you want to burst into tears of agony. True story.

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-25T23:59:00.000-05:00

08:05 AM Outta the shower by 7:30! I must be setting a personal record! It can only mean one thing: staff meeting :s
04:26 PM Good news: Movember is almost over! My husband will soon no longer be walking around looking like a pedophile or 70's porn star!
04:57 PM Canon macro lens is on sale at FutureShop! Unfortunately, I'm supposed to buy other people stuff for Christmas, so I've been told!
05:04 PM *LOL* Aaaw, I'm getting the impression that someone wants some attention... PHOTO
09:43 PM I heart Rory BIG time! ...or about 64 GB worth, whichever comes first :D
11:36 PM 64 GB BB PlayBook upgrade with HD cables and case! I'm nerdin'.it.UP. *SO* excited! For what?...I'm not sure...cake portfolio? *LOL*
11:48 PM Chewy just ate the breakfast sandwich that I forgot was in my purse because I was busy rushing to get to the meeting this morning! Oy vey...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-24T23:59:00.000-05:00

09:49 AM Building my Christmas playlist for work!
10:56 AM Marianas Trench's "So Soon" is so nice, it's making me cry! #LOVE
08:14 PM I am *SO* over November!
08:39 PM Choir practice :)
08:40 PM I was going to put Marianas Trench's CD on my Secret Santa wishlist, but then I just bought it. I have a thing about patience...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-23T23:59:00.000-05:00

05:53 PM Putting our Christmas tree up!
08:05 PM Ta-daaaaa! PHOTO
09:12 PM Word on the street is: I'm getting a BB Playbook in...ETA 4 days. :D
09:17 PM @shiftmo: shut your face! It's not! *LOL* Lunch next week, homie?

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-22T12:22:00.000-05:00

12:24 AM Found out today that President's Choice has red velvet cake mix! Must give 'er a whirl!
12:30 AM Came across some SVH books at a used bookstore. Couldn't leave until I ordered them numerically #OCD PHOTO
10:34 PM I can now see my table! Cake order for this Friday cancelled! Was a bit relieved to be honest! Definitely needed a cake break!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Small things...

2011-11-22T00:04:00.001-05:00

...come in cute birthday cakes!

Bart and I took his parents out for dinner yesterday for their birthdays. They don't have the same birthday, it's just that we weren't able to stop by and see Bart's dad for his birthday and for Bart's mom's birthday, we gave her a coupon for a dinner because she wasn't able to get together for her birthday. So yesterday was pretty much the first time we could get together. So basically it was to celebrate both birthdays.

That sounds awful. Is that awful?

We've all just been so busy lately with a bunch of different things with work and everything in between. Bart's slightly alarmed that I volunteered that we host Christmas this year for my side of the family (well, my mom's side since my dad's nine brothers and sisters are here and with all the cousins, we usually rent a hall to celebrate with that side of the family) and our kitchen looks like it suffered a natural disaster and then an atomic bomb hit it shortly thereafter. He keeps mention that we have to clean "for real" before Christmas comes...what, like rearranging things isn't cleaning?

ANYWHO! Back to the birthdays!

Because flirting with the edge of my insanity with the recent birthday cake bonanza was one of the reasons why we weren't able to get together with mom and dad for dad's actual birthday, I knew that I couldn't make cakes for a bunch of other people and not my in-laws so Bart and I figured that I would make them a couple of mini cakes. But because the thought of making cakes so soon after the bonanza was triggering my multiple personalities to protect my mind, Bart did say that they could be more on the simple side.

This one's for my MIL. So funny story about baking a cake when you're coming down with a cold. It's hard to tell how it's actually turning out because you can't taste ANYTHING!

What I normally do before getting everything together is the dome of the baked cake that I lop off to level everything, I put together with a bit of the buttercream I make and usually do an impromptu cake test. So to make sure everything's nice and copacetic. Well, this go around, I couldn't taste anything.

And I'd even pulled out all the stops too, so I'm HOPING everyone didn't just lie to me and tell me it tasted fine when really it didn't. It was kind of a smorsgasboard of things. The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink of birthday cakes!

The cake is cookies 'n' cream, buttercream was regular buttercream with a slight hint of hazelnut (helped along by the next splash of hazelnut coffee creamer that I tossed in) crumb coated with a chocolate ganache with a chocolate hazelnut buttercream for a filling...by taking my hazelnut buttercream and mixing it with the ganache. *LOL* I had the bag of Skor bits out, but I thought it was slightly overkill and by this time, I figured I couldn't taste any of it any way so I figured it was a moot point.

For my mom's cake, I just used the chocolate hazelnut buttercream as the filling and the crumb coat prior to the fondant and for my dad's...

I just covered everything with the chocolate ganache. My dad and I have a nice common interest in anything chocolate and mashed potatoes. I was originally going to put both the cakes on these cute little cake stands, but I was having trouble keeping them from falling over during transport, so they both ended up on 6" cake boards in a 12" box which actually ended up being a lot easier to get to the restaurant.

Apparently since Faith's birthday cupcake, I've got a thing for making fondant candles. For this one, instead of making it all swirly, I took a few minutes and helped make it all waxy-driplike, which I thought was kind of cool.

The funniest part? When we got to the restaurant, the staff was kind enough to offer to keep the cakes in the fridge until we were ready for them and after dinner, the waitress came over and asked if we wanted them to light the candles that came with the cake and Bart and I both said, "NO!" at the same time after we figured out which candles she was talking about. *LOL* The cakes came out with the staff singing happy birthday to Tom and Lorraine and the first thing we see is these huge black burn marks on the tips of the fondant candle flames! Awww...I guess I should be happy that my candles looked so lifelike?

All in all, it was a really nice dinner and I was REALLY full. Even though I couldn't really taste it, I did have a small taste of Bart's slice of birthday cake and while his parents offered us the doggy bag of leftovers (which was a LOT), Bart's dad wanted to make sure that the other little cake was coming home with him. *LOL*

Happy Birthday, Tom and Lorraine!

Thanks for stopping by everyone! This week, I've got a conundrum with a drum cake! I guess I should get baking tomorrow!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

06:54 PM Disc 2 of Season 4, getting so sad it's almost over!
06:55 PM I've got a drum cake coming up for this Friday!
07:30 PM Frying battered onion rings!
09:19 PM I have a big, ol' sitcom crush on Sheldon's Amy!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-20T23:59:00.000-05:00

11:52 AM Icing two mini cakes and watching Mission: Impossible!
09:07 PM Bart and I just bought our first Christmas tree!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

What's poppin'?!

2011-11-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine recently asked how I made cake pops and I tried to give hera step-by-step in about three minutes and it ocurred to me that I couldprobably just do up a tutorial based on all the pictures I've ever taken of mycake pops, so...here's a tutorial!

The best part about cake pops is that I can bake a cake and not really haveto worry about how it turns/comes out because the first step towards the worldof cake pops after baking it is massacre-ing it!

I guess it doesn't really matter which pan or what shape you bake your cakein, but I like to use an 11 x 15 pan because it's not so thick that it takelong to bake. Plus it accomodates my cake mix extender recipe. Which brings meto the next bonus of cake pops. It doesn't really matter what cake recipe youuse. You could use a fancy, dense one or you can even go cake mix because itdoesn't matter! Well...I don't have much cake pop experience, but it hasn'tmattered to me, if you've noticed any differences or pros and cons between cakemix or scratch, please let me know!

After the cake is baked and cooled, I transfer the cake in chunks into a bigbowl and use a fork to decimate it. I've heard some people use their mixers orprocessors, but a fork and my hands work just fine for me. One less thing towash is always a good thing in my (aka the lazy baker's) book! Basically youwant to get the cake as...bread-crumb-like as possible.

Once you're satisfied with that, take any flavor buttercream you like. Thisalso goes for the cake which I believe I failed to mention earlier. You canchoose any flavor cake you like. As I've already mentioned, when it comes tocake pops, I can be more known as the Lazy Baker, so I don't really get toofancy with it. All the times I've made cake pops, I've used pre-made frosting,my favourite being Duncan Hines' French Vanilla flavor.

I also don't have any actual measurements, either. (*LOL* Instead of theLazy Baker, you can also refer to me as the Unhelpful Baker, too, if you like!)I usually start with a couple spoonfuls of icing and go from there. I start bymixing the cake crumbs and the icing together with the spoon, but usually I endup going in with (clean) hands. It's easier to make sure everything'sincorporated and to get a feel of how they're sticking together. You don't wantit to be TOO icing-y, but you want to make sure that they hold up together whenyou start forming them into balls. Like so:

If you're Canadian, you're going to aim for slightly smaller than aTimbit. I mean, it's up to you, you can have Timbit-sized cake pops, if youlike. If you're not Canadian and have no idea what I mean by a Timbit...let'ssay a rather large-sized marble or a gumball. Or how about I just say, have funwith it. *LOL*

Alrighty! Once you've formed all your cake balls, you'll want to toss theseinto the freezer for 5 - 10 minutes to give them a chance to hang out while youmelt some candy melts.

Now for candy melts, I personally, use Merckens. I get them in bulk at theBulk Barn. I've also read that some people use Wiltons' candy melts, but fromwhat I've read, more people seem to have problems with them than not. I haven'tactually tried them, so I can't say too much, so if you've also had anyexperience with them, positive or negative, please let me know!

The first time I made cake pops, I popped come candy melts into a bowl andnuked them at 30-second intervals until they were melty. Then I swirled my cakepop into it and tried to get it all covered and more than 50% of the time itplopped into bowl.

Now I've learned the power of a small blob of Crisco...and the painfulrealization that I have to use a LOT of candy melts. Before, I was trying to bea little on the stingy side and only melt a bit, but for a successful cake popsession, I suggest using enough candy melts that when dipped once, the cake popis completely submerged so that swirling and swirling and stirring the cake popis unnecessary. But I'm getting ahead of myself!

Another thing I didn't measure, but with my bowl of candy melts, I put in 1- 2 tsps of Crisco (or any other shortening) so that when it melted down, itwas more thinned out and smoother and silkier. You can play around with this tosome extent. If you find that 1 - 2 tsps isn't the desired consistency,depending on the amount of candy melts you had in your bowl, go ahead andincrease by small amounts and test often to make sure you don't have a bowl ofshotening tasting candy.

First things first, dip a lollipop stick into the candy melts and carefullyinsert the stick about halfway into the cake ball. Repeat with all the cakeballs. After this, I would put the cake pops (they are now cake pops and nolonger cake balls since the stick is now incorporated!) in the freezer tosolidify the candy and thus greatly adhering the stick to the cake. Bwahaha,sorry, I've been watching too much Big Bang Theory. Is it getting alarming thatthis is the LONGEST tutorial EVER?!

Tip: As I've done here, you can also decorate the sticks too! I used curlingribbon here.

Okay! So after they've hung out in the freezer for a bit. This part doesn'thave to be too long since I once tried to cover frozen cake pops in candy andit was totally unsuccessful. At first, I thought it was awesome since the candywas hardening quickly, but as science then showed me, things that are warmingtend to expand. Once the cake pops began to thaw and warm up, they expanded andTOTALLY cracked the candy. *insert sad face here* So, note: you can freeze cakepops. I would freeze them separately before moving them into a ziplock bag sothat they don't stick together. Just make sure to thoroughly thaw them.

Once the cake pop is dipped, let the candy go right up to the dipped stick.If the candy doesn't cover everything entirely, resist the urge to swirl thestick and the cake pop all over the bowl unless you want to eat the cake ballthat plops into the candy. *GUILTY* Instead, rock the stick left, right, up anddown until the entire cake is covered.

Lift the cake pop straight up and allow the candy to drip. I usually like toswirl the cake pop now to allow for extra drip-age. I wait until all the excesscandy has dripped off and then I use a fake cake form ie. styrofoam square tohold the cake pop until the candy hardens. And by this time, the candy is allnice and smooth. YAY PERFECT CAKE POP!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-19T23:59:00.000-05:00

10:39 AM Beautiful Saturday morning with my love! Happy weekend, everyone!
03:48 PM So that was Breaking Dawn, huh?
05:49 PM Hanging out with Chewy and Sheldon! I'm supposed to be baking! Maybe later...
08:40 PM I've got two 4" cookies 'n' cream cakes in the oven!
09:04 PM It's frustrating me that Leonard has a can of Fanta in front of him. I WANTS it!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

07:36 AM TGIF! (Pre-Katy Perry Era)
10:45 PM Amusing myself with Vlingo! I have out-crazied myself! *LOL*
10:52 PM Our power just went out.

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-17T23:59:00.000-05:00

05:43 PM I will not be taken advantage of. Do not mistake my kindness for weakness or stupidity!
10:11 PM I guess I have to wear socks tomorrow?

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-16T23:59:00.000-05:00

07:20 PM I am out of Big Bang Theory episodes! This is unacceptable!
08:36 PM Big Bang Theory Season 2 = accomplished!
09:29 PM @shiftmo: I feel like you should be home now
09:50 PM Sheldon smiling makes me laugh and creeps me out all at the same time! *LOL*
11:29 PM ...aaaand sick! Figured.

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-15T23:59:00.000-05:00

08:01 AM Good morning! I'm going to be THAT tweeter and say: 4 more days 'til I see Breaking Dawn! I'm colon capital d!
08:14 AM I'm wearing pants...that have buttons!
07:16 PM Bacon and eggs for dinner and the first season of The Big Bang Theory! *LOVE*
07:54 PM I heart Sheldon!
08:58 PM TrebleTones are killin' it!
11:15 PM Jess put her turkey Hank, in the dryer for Hanksgiving! Hands down, my favourite show EVER!
11:46 PM There's a summary at the beginning of Inheritance because it took so long to come out that nobody remembers what happened before.

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Roll your segway in, roll your segway out...

2011-11-15T19:34:00.001-05:00

...that's what it's all about! Aboot? A-bow-(as in folding your body forward halfway)-t.

Let me just point out that I say about in a perfectly nice way. In fact, I don't actually notice a difference between when Canadians and Americans say about. Except maybe Southerners and Newfoundlanders...?

So in a rounda~~boot~~ ~~bowt~~ bout way, this brings me to last Sunday!

My fabulous friend Ann and her hubby came up for a visit and luckily Bart and I were able to meet with them for an afternoon of shenanigans!

Actually, CONFESSION: I am the worst person to visit :( I didn't have anything planned, no itineraries, no welcome bags or interesting Canadian trivia. I didn't even have any maple syrup to give or..like...a beaver or loon to show them! With the stress of the birthday cake bonanza, I was a little bit over my head and wasn't able to prepare as much or as well as I would have liked for a visit from a fellow crafter/baker. All I had to offer was extra cake pops and dual-sided straight-edged/scalloped cookie cutters. Albeit, awesomely multicoloured dual-sided straight-edged/scalloped cookie cutters!

In fact, it was Ann who brought ME some goodies! Check. Them. OUT!

*SQUEALS* Obviously, Ann knows me well because she gave me THESE:

Giant, glittery, sparkly, crystaly, sugary GEMS! I know it looks like there are a bunch there, but I don't even know if I'd be able to bring myself to use any! Using even one for a tiara on a cake is minus one in my stash! I want to put them under my pillow and hope the magical, gem fairy will come and multiply them!

THANK YOU, ANN!

For our afternoon of fun, I remembered that a friend of mine had recently tried a segway tour in the Distillery District in Toronto and Bart was all about trying something that our friends haven't done before while they were here and the bonus was that we'd never been on a segway either, so we were excited to give 'er a try! The other bonus was that it was in the Distillery District (which I'd never been before) and it automatically made us all think of BEER! *LOL* I volunteered to be DD since I'm not big on drinking and just not a big fan of beer.

But first:

Gotta rock and roll on our segways! We totally brought it - those segways got SERVED! Well, after I freaked out and almost fell off of mine during the training session. Okay, it was a little bit harder than I thought it would be and I had a bit of an issue balancing forward and backward which is what makes the segway move and stop. Nevertheless, I was able to convey to the guides/trainers that I could participate on the tour without driving the segway straight into oncoming traffic and not counting the one time I went over a hump and almost fell flat on my butt, it was AWESOME!

Say cream CHEESE icing!

And now...for the FOOD! We stopped off at Mill St. Pub and had some dinner and Bart and Craig may have partaken in a sampler platter of beer!

I am intensely aware that this is getting a bit long, but I'm not me without pictures of our awesome food!

Bart's shrimp linguine

Craig's cedarplank salmon

Ann's Mill St. beer battered fish and chips

...and the show stopper. The piece de resistance....

BAM! It's my lobster grilled cheese sandwich! There's lobster, there's grilled cheese there's lobster and grilled cheese TOGETHER. And it's on MY plate. *swoon* I would push over a seven-tier wedding cake I just spent an entire two weeks working on if it meant that someone would hand me a lobster grilled cheese sandwich immediately after. Okay...I'm exaggerating. Hopefully. Let's not test it though...I can't guarantee that I won't cross over the the dark side.

All in all, it was SUCH a FUN afternoon! Bart said on the way home that he couldn't tell that this was the first time that Ann and I had gotten together the way we carried on. On the way home, I remembered that I once heard that you're not supposed to bring up topics such as politics and religion in a nice conversation and it ocurred to me that I brought up both during dinner *wince* In my defense, I really was curious about Obama and I didn't get too in-depth about it...but I may have mentioned health care...a couple times...and then Catholicism may have come up...in the way that most people who have gone to a Catholic school have worn kilts. If they were girls. So really, I'm not the worst Canadian to dine with American people, right?!

Anywho! I am aware that I haven't mentioned anything about cake or baking in this post except for that EXTREMELY witty cream cheese icing mention, so thank you SO much for indulging me and thank you SO much, Ann and Craig for spending the afternoon with us! Can't wait for your next visit! *HUGS*

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-14T23:59:00.000-05:00

01:05 AM Wow, torrential downpour outside from the sounds of it (at least it's not snow!) Why am I still awake to hear it?!
05:01 PM A semi-free evening. I could clean the disaster my kitchen currently is...Bwahahahaha.
06:46 PM So much for a cake break! Two 4" cakes for this Sunday and a drum/drummer cake for next Friday!
07:44 PM Spending time with Sheldon and the gang!
11:00 PM Nice evening :)

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-13T23:59:00.000-05:00

11:29 PM Had such a nice Sunday :) Segway tour in the Distillery District and BEER! (Okay, everyone else had beer, I had delicious cola!)

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Weekend Birthday Cake BONANZA!

2011-11-13T23:53:00.001-05:00

Hello SnS friends!

My friend Marilyn contacted me a while ago about possibly doing up a birthday cake for her little girl, Faith's, FIRST birthday and of COURSE I jumped at the chance to make not just a cake, but a fancy, frilly, first-birthday-worthy-cuteness kind of cake! Along with the cake request was an order for 60 cake pops! The most I've done...pretty much ever!

Oooooh! Aaaaah!
I did up 30 white chocolate flavored and 30 milk chocolate flavored pops!
Let me just say, these were probably my BEST cake pops to date though! The beauty of taking the time to read things instead of just jumping into them without my "OBVIOUSLY I know how to make them. I can totally just tell by looking at them!" technique. The difference between these pops and the ones I'd done before...CRISCO!
Of course, once I got the tip, I didn't read further to find out exact measurements, but for each bowl of candy melts I melted, I scooped in a teeny, tiny scoop (probably it was the half a teaspoon one?) of Crisco shortening and it led to beautifully smooooooth melted candy!

It was SUCH an ooooh aaaaah moment for me! I was sitting there totally giggling over the fantasticnesss of these! The other tip that I picked up (from Bakerella's blog, no less!) was that to get the best looking ones, you have to make sure that you're dipping the pops in enough melts that it covers the whole pop. So instead of what I was doing before by using a small-ish bowl and then dipping and swishing my pop around on the stick (which in hindsight, I can now see TOTALLY led to all of them falling off the stick and my having to eat them), you just dip the pop in and if the candy doesn't coat it all in one go, just rock the stick back and forth like a joystick instead of swirling or twirling the pop in the melted candy. I only had ONE incident and I think it was probably done on purpose because I wanted to eat it. And out came these BEAUTIFULLY smooth, unlumpy, non-craptastic cake pops.

Which totally led to this:

I love how just showing photos can totally make time fly by. Let me be more concise...which totally led to this...6 hours later! *LOL*

I did have a little bit of frustration with the Wilton giant cupcake pan (*muttering*). First of all, that it was $50 at Michaels (*more muttering*) and with a coupon it was still totally less at other places, HomeSense, even had them! (*muttering and shaking of the fix*) But that is neither here nor there now, since I have about the same amount of patience as a two year old. What I did have problems with the length of time it took to cook the cake! I had the oven temp lowered, the top part was burning so I turned off the top of the oven and then the bottom part was burning so I turned on both heat wires and then lowered the temperature some more and then it was still jiggly and uncooked and then it was drier on the outside and still slightly pudding-y on the inside. Bah! I guess it was just a whole lot of cake to cook.

Another thing that I noticed as I was getting 'er done was that my fondant seemed a bit odd. I wrote it off considering that I refuse to turn up the heat so it was hanging out in my semi-cold garage for a while. Considering the projects I had on the go, I figured it would be more time efficient to buy my ready-made fondant from my favourite supply store. I've never had any problems with it before, I believe I purchase Virgin Ice Fondant...or something like that, but this time around I noticed it wasn't as elastic-y as I'm used to. I about near killed my arms trying to knead the dough into soft, pliable blobs I could work with and by the time I got to the Superhero cake, I was about ready to throw the bucket out the window. I think maybe that was around...hour 14. *LOL* Needless to say, I was very happy with how Faith's birthday treats turned out. Does it not bode well for me that my favourite thing about the whole project is the candle on the cupcake!? I LOVE that candle! All fondant on a cake pop stick! And of COURSE it goes without saying that the cupcake "frosting" received several coats of lustre dust!

So PRETTY!

And in direct opposite of girly and sweet, I also had to do up a couple of "Superhero/Comic Book" themed cakes for two special little boys! This one was a slightly surprise request that I couldn't turn down. A friend and fellow church group/choir member and family friend close enough for her to be considered an "Aunt" asked if i had time to make a cake for her nephew and grandson's birthday party. She mentioned that it was superhero themed and that if I didn't have time, I could just make one cake and the boys could take turns blowing out the candle.

Well, my Auntie Luz has an uber special place in my heart, one of the reasons being that when my parents and Bart was away (separately, they didn't all just take off together and ditch me *LOL*), I made a big fuss about starving to death or drowning pitifully in pots of macaroni and cheese (did I mention that the women in my family don't cook?) that she invited me over for dinner and even went so far as to pack food for me. If food doesn't say love, then I have no idea what does! I REALLY wanted to do these cakes for her and since they were going to be two of the same cakes, I figured it wouldn't be too much trouble to turn out!

Ta-DAAAAA! Imagine some superhero theme music here! I THINK I've got the Superman in my head...or it could possibly be the American National Anthem, at this point, I can't even tell you what's going through my head...

OH! Before I forget, let me mention here that I tried Jessica from Jessicakes "Upside Down" frosting technique when I iced the cakes, and lawdy lawd, it. is. UH-MAAAAAY-ZING! If I wasn't already full of myself before, I would totally be after these cakes came out! Sharpest, cleanest edges EVAH! Remind me to talk about it more on another post that isn't alarming in length.

Confession: So...it's about 16 hours since I started the cakes (I did Faith's first since she had an earlier delivery time. I took Friday off, thank GOODNESS and ended up using ALL the time!), with the fondant giving me uber trouble, by this time, it was pretty much hardening and drying up WHILE I was kneading it, I was pretty much feeling really disappointed, dejected and seriously a little delusional and delirious at this point. I finished the one cake and just could NOT get on to the next one. I actually called Auntie Luz and told her I had to fall back on her first request of doing only the one cake and having the boys take turns blowing out the candle. She did not even give me a hard time and just said okay, but even after hanging up, I knew I couldn't let those boys SHARE a cake and candle. It made me SO sad to think that I would put them in that situation. So I re-arranged my plans for the day and with a three hour window, I went and bought new white fondant and added pre-made red fondant as well to save more time, and I laid fondant over the (perfectly) iced cakes that I thought were going to get left behind. I rolled out gumpaste that I begged to dry uber quickly, cut them out, drew the comic sound effects and cut out the buildings and drew on them, thanking my lucky stars that the comic book "look" seemed to call for more squiggly, doodle like lines.

Now each boy, although they had the same looking cake, had their OWN individual cakes with their OWN name and candle to blow out :)

And thank goodness I had my brother with me for these deliveries, otherwise, I have NO idea how I would have actually gotten them to the party with no catastrophes. Although we almost had one when the one cake tipped over and the comic sound-effects signs got knocked over. But if you can't see them from here, I'd consider that a blessing that that's the only thing that happened! I also thought they looked super cute in my matching cake stands! See?! A girl needs LOTS and LOTS of cake stands! Even some that are EXACTLY the same! Obviously.

Alright, I guess I'd better wrap this up. As worried as I was about the fondant and working with, what I'm told, is my propensity to over-criticize myself, I have to say that the cakes turned out okay. I hope the special birthday kiddos enjoyed them and had a fabulous time at their respective birthday parties! I'm really happy and honoured I played a special little part in it :)

As for me...I've got a super fun afternoon planned with my friend Ann tomorrow, who's come up from the good ol' US of A and we're gonna see what kind of shenanigans we can get into. After that, I believe a cake break is in order...after a small-ish cake for this weekend, a drum cake for next and then it seems I just got an FB message for possibly another one on the 28th. *LOL*

As always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-12T23:59:00.000-05:00

12:40 AM Wow. I just worked from 8 am yesterday - 12:30 am today almost non-stop, give or take washroom breaks.
07:38 PM So...got home from cake deliveries at 3 pm, passed out and just woke up now. Guess I was tired! *LOL*
10:42 PM 602 blog visitors on November 9th! Definitely a fluke, but thank you! :)
11:35 PM :(
11:48 PM I'm ready for the rough week to be over now, please.

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-11T23:59:00.000-05:00

09:58 AM Making the BEST cake pops I've ever made!
02:26 PM Icing sugar explosion. SRSLY.

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-10T23:59:00.000-05:00

05:33 PM Company mail van slammed into my car today. It really IS a tough week!
07:38 PM Totally spying on an 'extreme couponer' at WalMart. Cashier is 'one coupon per customer-ing' her. Long line-up behind her :s

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-09T23:59:00.000-05:00

07:51 AM *breathe* ..........................
02:42 PM While I know I have many other blessings...It's been a really tough few days.
02:45 PM No water in the house all yesterday evening and overnight and still none at the moment. Keep getting attitude & the runaround from everyone.

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

05:18 PM I may be the owner of two black cake stands! In my defense, they're slightly different sizes *LOL*
06:37 PM I'm being tested. I don't know what for, but if it's patience then I'm totally failing. No water in the house - AGAIN!!!
10:58 PM I didn't do anything productive bake-wise today. Scratch that, I wrapped up 60 cake pops! Good enough. Baking tomorrow! For real!
10:59 PM I re-organized my cake stand collection. Keep your kids away, I'm obviously a bad influence with my wild and crazy shenanigans!
11:06 PM My golf ball collection at work. Rep from the golf team added one with our official logo on it today http://yfrog.com/nth1wxuj

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-07T23:59:00.000-05:00

07:26 AM This day already feels like it's taking forever!
10:10 PM I've got a hate on for cakepops right now. Just sayin'...

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Here's to Katie...

2011-11-07T23:31:00.001-05:00

Today is a sad day.

As some of you may know, okay, the three of you who read this!, I was previously a crafty critter.

Four years ago, a weekend of informercials led to an intense obsession with the Cricut paper cutting machine and once I finally got my hands on it, pretty much didn't do a whole lot with it, but I got totally swept up in the world of cardmaking and blogging.

From the drama of the message boards (okay, Marti and I MAY have had our moments in some of those *LOL*) to design teams, what really started it all for me was starting my blog and talking to myself for the first few posts until all of a sudden something happened. I logged on and saw "1 new comment".

Comments to a blogger is like...water to human beings. I know it sounds so melodramatic, but really, who wants to post projects that we've worked so hard on and not get any validation, encouragement and all-around nice words. For me, I was just yammering to myself until Katie commented on my blog.

Katie was my first online friend/commenter who actually felt like she was leaving thoughtful and kind words and not just saying things so you'll go back on to her blog and say nice things back. She would comment on things I had mentioned in my entry and because of that, when I wrote back, it would lead to conversation. And conversation led to getting to know each other and find out we had a few things in common. She was the online friend that I needed to balance out mine and Marti's crazy soul-sharing shenanigans *LOL*

Today is a sad day because not only did Katie leave the crazy, crafty card world, but she left us all today. After an epic battle with cancer in which Katie definitely gave it a run for its money with her determination and Avatar warrior strength (one of her boys pointed out to her that she totally looked like the Avatar in the movie - and no, not the one with the blue people!) Katie left peacefully surrounded by her family and loves ones including her oldest son, her twin boys and her husband - all of whom the crafty community got to know a lot about over the years.

When Marti first told me that Katie was sick, it was so hard to believe! I mean, look at her! She's beautiful and healthy and happy! She kept us all updated through her blog and in her way, shared more of herself with the rest of us and taught us things that we sadly always seem to forget when we naively think that we'll always have tomorrow to do what we put off today. She was inspiring not because she always said inspiring things, but because she was always so honest and frank about everything that was happening to her and yet she always managed to find beauty around her and have kind words and thoughts to share.

I always feel so inept when faced with sad news so I always tend to not say too much of anything. But everyday, Katie was in my thoughts like she was with so many other people who cared about her. Though it was her path to walk, the way was always crowded as she never had to walk it alone and just like Kevin said in his last update, I know she knows she wasn't alone.

I am deeply saddened by her loss and the life and family she left behind.

Blog posts and comments will always make me think of you, Katie. Pray for us as we pray for you and may angels lead you in.

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

08:33 AM Just had a fluffy puppy and a hubby jump on top of me to wake me up. Can't say that I mind! (Plus, I already got the extra hour of sleep!)
03:42 PM Vanilla cake getting all cozy in my oven! It's destiny: to become cake pops!
09:33 PM Cake balls are now officially cake pops chillin' in my freezer! They'll get their candy coating this week!
11:07 PM Makin' superhero cakes and a giant girly cupcake cake this week! Here's to some special kiddos this weekend!
11:09 PM Kind of excited for this! Got the idea from CakeCentral, I'm sure! http://yfrog.com/khaghhkj

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

You've Got Mail!

2011-11-06T20:26:00.001-05:00

I'm not the best "people" person when it comes to stressful situations, but in a crunch when things need to get done and done fast, I'm your girl. If I don't have to smooth other peoples' ruffled feathers, if I don't have to stroke egos, or make nice, I can get work done. That's pretty much what's been happening this week. We're short one person this week and actually, we're short two since Tammy's not technically considered part of the office anymore, what with her new position. So with that shortage and everyone else's scheduled meetings, vacations, etc., it's leaving only one or two people in the office, and a majority of the time, that person is me. And it's crunch time here. It's pretty much the BUSIEST time for us and the worst part is that it really does deal with a very sensitive matter. Money. And the fact that the people who we deal with don't have it. When they should have had it...four months ago. So not only are we trying to do our jobs, we are encountering a LOT of angry people. As much as possible, the people left in the office have been dividing and conquering and my job is to do all the back-office things that I can just keep chipping away at. E-Mails, E-Mails and MORE E-Mails, mountains of data entry, data pulling and report writing and pulling.

At the beginning of the week, I understood what needed to be done and it was easy to just keep my head down and just keep going. With Tammy in and out of the office with meetings and training for the new department, I not only had to do the back-office things but take care of the front-line. Angry people. So long and the short of it is, even though I was gung-ho at the beginning of the week to just keep my mouth shut, not complain and just get work done, as the week closes, it's been harder and harder to just keep powering through. There's been a few times where I've lost focus on just working on the little things in front of me and freaked out about all that's still left to do and the stress has gotten to the point that if I stop and think about the work I've done and the TONS of work left to do, I want to burst into tears.

So needless to say, it was good just to shut the computers down at the end of the week and call it. I trudged home and looked up to see my mailbox ajar. It's awesome to see my mailbox ajar because that means there's something in there that's too big for it to close. You know what's even better? When the 'something' that's in the mailbox is for ME!

Alright, enough with the heavy! Let's get to the OPENING!

Marti MUST have ESP. I totally NEEDED this. I was already squealing at the sight of the packing label and I hadn't even opened it yet. But, I mean, how can you not? That packing label is AWESOME!

*SCREECH* So, Ms. Pezadoodle knows that it's not JUST sending something (although that's awesome too) but it's in the PACKAGING! I kid you not, I hugged that cute little pillow of prettiness! It didn't take long for me to get in there!

Oooooh! It's a cupcake! It's a frickin' CUPCAKE!

Dear Marti, are you SURE you're not my long, lost sister?!

Awww, it's like the gift that keeps on giving! The cupcake opened up and there was a present inside it!!! It's a cute little flower pin! I tried to put it in my hair, but it's more of a brooch pin and I didn't want to stab my scalp with it, so I set that aside. But get a load of that cupcake gift box. The sprinkles on top look like legit sugar sprinkles. I could lick it! And the inside was not forgotten. It's all pretty and shimmery! I am such a SUCKER for complete packaging and committment to detail!

Underneath my cupcake gift box is a a cute pot holder which is AWESOME because I totally need one. OBVIOUSLY when I was registering prior to my wedding, I didn't think I'd be doing much cooking of hot foods (after all, things that come out of the microwave aren't all that hot *LOL*) that I felt I didn't need any hot handling items and I didn't buy any either so besides my one oven mitt that I'm pretty sure I house-lifted from my mom and dad's, I'm very excited to have this one. What makes it even better is that it matches THIS:

Pardon me for a moment, but it's MORE cute, frickin' cupcakes! CUPCAKES! I LOVE CUPCAKES!

Check. Me. OUT!

Wait, who cares about me! Check. Out. My. APRON!

It's a CUPCAKE APRON! Made just for ME!!! It's got RUFFLES! It's pink and ruffly and it has desserts all over my ruffles! Work? What work problems? I've got a CUPCAKE APRON! Heck, I'm gonna WEAR it to work!

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH, MARTI! I *LOVE* IT!
(And seriously. Not just for the fabulously cute gifts and the incredible generosity and thoughtfulness that went into and behind it, but for just having the best timing. It was seriously SUCH a tough week for me and I didn't think anything would break through my seriously sucky attitude. I had already forgotten about work and the craptasticness of the week as soon as I saw your mailing label and was laughing at the Princess titles. You are honestly a sanity saver, girlfriend. I'm going to try to figure out how to mail a cake to you some day! *LOL*

So OBVIOUSLY I'm going to be the BESTEST baker, EVAH now! How can I not when I've got a rockin' apron just like this? Cute aprons make bakers turn out the cutest things! *swoon*

Anywho, I've got some cake balls hanging out in my freezer waiting for their destiny to become cake pops, so I think I'd better go check on them! Wearing my apron of COURSE! Heaven forbid if I get any baking products on my regular clothes. Actually, I'll probably freak out if I get anything on my apron. Should I wear an uglier apron on top of my super, fabulously pretty apron?

If you want to see what other crazy crafty shenanigans Marti's up to, be sure to check out her blog: http://pezadoodle.blogspot.com and tell her I said hello and THANK YOU, again!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and the extra hour!

As always...
Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-05T23:59:00.000-04:00

12:47 PM 60 cakepop sticks all nice and pretty! I should be baking and/or blogging right now!
2:13 PM Can't get into the baking swing of things, so I'm just gonna cut loose! ...Footloose?
8:20 PM Just pulled names for our family secret santas!

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

1:04 AM *sigh*
6:45 AM Ugh. This cake is so meh.
7:14 AM Dear Twitter, it really IS me! I swear!
7:16 AM OMG! There is no water at my house this morning!
4:43 PM Successful cake delivery! It was a really hard week but I have a lot to be thankful for. Hard times pass, but blessings are abundant!
5:02 PM Taking a tiny cake break and then gotta gear up for next week! It's cake-a-palooza!
11:01 PM No cake break! Just realized I have six 8" & four 6" cake layers and a giant cupcake cake to bake tomorrow! And a partridge in a pear tree!

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-03T23:59:00.000-04:00

7:39 PM Edible technical difficulties :s

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-02T23:59:00.000-04:00

7:43 AM I am suffering through the age old saying: "I have nothing to wear!"
11:43 AM Getting a car wash!
5:47 PM Just got the BEST present in the mail today! I heart @pezadoodle!
7:39 PM Cupcakes! Frickin' AWESOME! http://twitpic.com/7a1bn2
10:30 PM Dear chocolate ganache, I love you! Let's be BFFs!
10:43 PM Ribbon wrapping 60 cake pop sticks for next week! For no reason other than 'cuz it's preeeeetty!
11:03 PM *heart* http://twitpic.com/7a4ai0

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Puttering Away

2011-11-02T18:37:00.000-04:00

Hello friends!

I may have mentioned that along with this week's cake delivery of a weightlifting/farewell cake, I've also got two boy birthday cakes, and then my biggest order to date, a two-tier cupcake cake with 60 cake pops for next week.

So I've been following my to-do list very carefully and although I've had to make some adjustments, things are moving nicely! There's been a couple of times where I've started thinking of the bigger picture and all that needs to be done, but as long as I keep working on the small parts, eventually, the sum of it all will make the bigger picture!

Just like these will hopefully make a nice bigger picture for the cake this week:

My coworker's sister has recently just passed an important test and is now an accredited IFBB Pro...which, I'm sorry to say is about as much as I know about the certificate/licensing. But according to Julie, it's a pretty darn big deal and it's big enough that her younger sister is packing it up and moving to Florida!

Hence the second part of the cake's theme. Julie wanted to incorporate them both together since they're tied to each other. I'm pretty happy with how my little bodybuilders have turned out!

After that was done, I thought I would get a head start on next week's big project and get the cakepop base ready:

So excited to see it all come together! Keep your fingers crossed for me!
Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-11-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

5:05 PM End of the work day: Coming up for air! Did you guys know it's GORGEOUS out? Only got to see it now...when it's almost over :(
5:14 PM It's Movember! Note to self, don't ask guys if they're growing that funny mustache for Movember, it's uber awkward when the answer is no! :s
7:29 PM Hope it's good! http://bit.ly/uJH1G1 @GetGlue @InTimeMovie
7:29 PM I unlocked the In Time Box Office sticker on @GetGlue! http://bit.ly/sUmhc2
11:23 PM I believe I just baked my best-est, dense-est, moist-est cake yet! I can't stop gawking at it! ...and most of it was from *gasp* cake mix!

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Secret...

2011-11-01T18:33:00.000-04:00

Psst...
I have a secret!

Can't say too much about it but, I do have this...

*giggles*

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-31T23:59:00.000-04:00

12:09 AM Happy Halloween!
12:10 AM I'll have my rude and sarcastic costume on all day today! Come see, it's so realistic and life-like!
12:15 AM How does a list work?
9:17 PM Tough work day today :s
9:18 PM Hope everyone had a happy Halloween! Wore my rude and sarcastic Minnie Mouse costume today! It was so real and life-like!
9:19 PM I now have an 11 x 15 cake hangin' out in the oven! Cross your fingers for me!
10:54 PMi Chewy probably hates Halloween. And I've prolly earned a Chewy barf on our bed tomorrow...*LOL* http://twitpic.com/7954rg

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T21:15:00.000-04:00

Obviously I don't get my SUPER AWESOME BAKER badge for allowing Halloween to come and go without ANY baked goods of any sort. I especially don't get the super DUPER awesome baker badge for allowing Halloween to come and go without making any Halloween-themed baked goods.

...I'm not exactly Halloween-inclined. *wince* ...and black and orange isn't my favourite colour combination. Okay, that last one was weak considering how awesome black, orange, green and purple are. Especially GLITTERY black, orange, green and purple!

To be completely honest, today was a nightmare without having a bunch of people dress up all scary-like and jump out from around the corner yelling BOO! I know I may have mentioned that I was worried about work before, so I am telling myself to keep my complaining in check, but today was...difficult.

Ah well, good news is that part of it was difficult because it was so busy! So YAY for busy!

No baking project today but I've got a weightlifting/farewell to Florida cake for the end of this week, so I'll be a busy bee in the kitchen!

In the meantime, Happy Halloween!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-30T23:59:00.000-04:00

12:18 AM First crack at the cupcake cake pan and extender recipe results: crunchy on the outside, dense and slightly dry inside :s
12:19 AM Maybe a lower oven temp next time?
10:09 PM New item on my wishlist besides more time? An EOS 1100D battery grip!

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Go Big or Go...Dense?

2011-10-30T23:21:00.001-04:00

Last night while Bart was putting in some overtime, I figured I'd better try experimenting with some denser cake recipes so I could be sure that my cakes would hold up to the stacking and transporting I was planning on putting them through...and really because I really wanted to play with this:

I picked this up at Michaels for an INSANE amount of cold hard cash on a day when I didn't have a coupon handy. It was the last one, so I made the executive decision to pick it up anyway and the next day I was darn sure that I came back with a coupon! It stung a little bit when this lady came up to me and said she say the EXACT same cake pan on sale at Zehrs for $9. Ugh. As a fellow Michael's lady, she should have known better than to pass along that tidbit of information if she knew darn well that they still weren't on sale and that I couldn't return this one. Ah, well...at the end of the day, I wanted this cake pan no matter what so what's done is done.

So, as a not-so-secret impatient person, let me just say that these cakes almost killed me with the amount of time I had to wait for them. The sheer depth of the pans ensure that they needed to be in there for a while and that in hindsight, I think I will need to lower my oven temp by another twenty-five degrees and keep it in there even LONGER. My cakes were slightly char-broiled on the outside and heavily, HEAVILY dense on the inside. I'm not sure if the inside was moist because it was supposed to be moist, or if it was moist because I'm sure I pulled it out not altogether cooked in the middle. Now, I actually liked the way it turned out. As I cut off the top of the bottom part of the cupcake to test, I liked that the outside was crunchy and crumbly while the inside was more...chewy. But then again, that could just be me and I could just be slightly biased. Or in denial.

Ta-daaaa! Look at my cake stand! I mean, look at my giant cupcake! Before I baked the cake, I was wondering if I should dowel the bottom to ensure that the swirl top would be help up securely. After I took the cake out and met my denser recipe, I realized that I could probably throw either half at someone and it could probably accomplish a nice concussion. I'm not enirely sure how properly dense cakes are supposed to look and feel, but I have a feeling that concussion-worthy isn't it. *LOL*

For tomorrow's lab experiment, I think I will reduce the amount of flower and/or increase the amount of water because the actual original recipe that I was using didn't actually call for anything, which I thought was weird. I overrode that recipe with my usual spray bottle, the tip regarding it, I got from Sweet Sugarbelle. As the mixer is going, I use a spray bottle to spray down the sides of the bowl to make sure everything's incorporated. Besides the spray down, which wasn't a whole lot of water, I also dissolved some hazelnut flavored instant coffee in a few tablespoons of water. The instant coffee, or maybe the flavoured instant coffee would be another thing I'd probably omit tomorrow when I recipe tweak.

Unfortunately, I don't have too much time to play around in the "lab" as I need to have something ready to go for this week's cake, but I'm hoping that I'll have some beginners luck tomorrow and hit a nice balance straight away! I'm being very ambitious and overly optimistic here as chemistry was never my strong suit and as baking relies on accurate measurements heavily and I rely heavily on eyeballing things with flair.
I wonder, is it too late to change the name of my blog to The Lazy Baker? *LOL*

Speaking of measurements:

I actually took the time and measured things out! With a ruler, even! Hopefully, it'll make a very nice base for the cake pops I'm planning to go with the giant cupcake cake!

That's it from me for tonight! I was suffering from blogging withdrawal and really wanted to update though I was more experimenting rather than actually baking this weekend and didn't have much photos of any results. Wish me luck this week and hope you all have a safe and happy Halloween!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-29T23:59:00.000-04:00

1:29 PM My oven and I have a date this evening. For shizzle.
10:36 PM Wondering if I should regret the 4 tbsp of hazelnut instant coffee I tossed into my chocolate cake batter...
10:46 PM I've got a giant chocolate hazelnut cupcake cake hanging out in my oven!
11:44 PM This cake is taking fo-evah!

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

What's a Girl to Do?

2011-10-28T22:37:00.000-04:00

BOO!

Did I scare you? Unfortunately, Halloween scares me more thanI am scary. I can’t even flick throughthe channels these days because I’m too scared to pass any of the scary moviesthat I know have been playing non-stop, and the best Halloween costume I’ve hadto date is my rude and sarcastic one. It’spretty life-like if I do say so myself. *LOL* At least I’ve got one sweet thinggoing for me, if not my disposition – CAKE!
A LOT of cake actually!

I’ve got a few orders coming upover the next couple of weeks and I’ve been playing around and experimenting toprepare as all of them are a tad bit out of my comfort zone! You know what they say, though, you can’tlearn and grow by doing the same thing over and over again. Or is that insanity is doing the same thingover and over again and expecting different results? *shrugs* Genius has tohave a little crazy in them, too, right?
I hope it doesn’t sound like I’mcomplaining at all, because I am definitely excited and welcome the opportunityto try out all these cakes, but I do have to admit that I am a tadoverwhelmed. But you know what the cureis for being overwhelmed, right? Beingcrazy prepared! See, you DO have to be abit crazy to undertake certain things, otherwise you’ll never realize you coulddo things you never thought you could! Confession: I’m kind of wishing I was already at that stage instead of thefringes of it. *LOL*

Luckily for me, I am a BIG listperson. I love lists, bullet points,arrows and “if-then” phrases. When work gets busy, I’ve been known to make ato-do list that I leave on my desk for the next morning. That way, after getting a night’s rest andthen coming back in, I won’t freak out over all the things I need to get done,I have a list I can check off and tangible checkmarks to show that I’m gettingthings done. Give me a highlighter and I can take over the world!
So instead of paying muchattention to this overwhelming feeling that wants to come out and play, I’mgoing to make a list! First thingsfirst, what do I need to do and when?

November 4 – Congratulations/Farewell cake (11” x15” cake with half an 8” round cake)
November 11 – 2 x 2-tier Superhero cake (8” + 6”round)
November 12 – 2-tier giant cupcake cake + 60cakepops
November 25 – Drum/Drummer cake (8” + sculpteddrummer/drummer set)

In between and all around that, all my otherobligations – I’m almost forgetting that making cakes is supposed to be my “just-for-fun”hobby! *LOL*

So, now that I’ve got my priorities in order, Ibreak them down in what needs to be done, what could get done ahead of time,etc!

Seriously, I thrive on this stuff! And filling outforms! I *LOVE* filling out forms. Giveme a paper with questions and fields that need filling out and I’m the happiestgirl in the world!

On to the list!

Catherine’s Super Fantastical Get Things Done SoShe Won’t Go Cake Crazy List

1. ~~Try out some denser cake recipes for amore durable cupcake cake and tiered cakes~~

2. ~~Prepare cakepops base~~

3. October 31

a. Re-tweak the denser cake recipes – first testseemed a bit heavy

4. Make any gumpaste elements ahead of time

a. C/F Cake (Nov. 1)

i. ~~Honda~~,~~weights~~, ~~dumbbells~~, Florida HWY sign, flowers, IFBB Pro logo, sunrays

b. Superhero cake

i. None

c. Cupcake cake

i. None

d. Drum/drummer (Nov. 21)

i. Drummer,drumset

5. Buy 11” x 15” rectangle cake pans

6. November 1

a. Colour green fondant

b. Make remaining fondant/gumpaste shapes

7. November 2

a. Bake cake layers: rectangle layers (1 vanilla +1 chocolate), rounds (1 vanilla + 1 chocolate)

b. Buy icing sugar

c. Make buttercream icing and chocolate ganache

d. Fill and ice cakes

8. November 3

a. Cover crumb-coat

b. Cover remaining cake with fondant

c. Assemble cake

d. Freak out over things that aren’t going right

e. Breathe, calm down, get ‘er done

9. November 4

a. Deliver cake

10. November 5

a. Bake vanilla cakes for cake pops

b. Shape and freeze (individually on cookie sheetand then pack in ziplock bags)

c. Buy MORE candy melts

d. Wrap cakepop sticks in ribbon

11. November 6

a. Bake two layer 6” round cake

b. Bake giant cupcake cake

c. Bake 2 two-layer 8” round cakes

d. Bake 2 two-layer 6” round cakes

e. Freeze

12. Back up my Blackberry calendar
13. To be continued...

It's always excellent to have a plan. And despite my impatience and slight tendency towards the sloppy, tornado-hit-my-area look, I'm a stickler for plans and stickin' to 'em! Here's hopin' that a well-thought out plan will keep me in check and have everything running like clockwork!

As always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-27T23:59:00.000-04:00

3:37 PM Just learned that I can mix in a packet of gelatin with my jam fillings to prevent the oozies! I LOVE learning new things!
3:57 PM @jacquiebolton: I am still TOTALLY trying to figure this out! The only thing that's worked so far is filling the cups 1/2 - 3/4 full!
7:59 PM Yay! Cake pop base done! There's the base and the pops, just need the cake! *LOL* http://twitpic.com/76qgv8
8:52 PM Just realized I have 4 cakes for November. How'd that happen?!?
11:01 PM @shiftmo: when battery dies, I've been told you should keep the car running for 30 min or so?

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-26T23:59:00.000-04:00

1:12 AM Dear Sleep, honestly, I have nothing against you. I'm just a bit odd...
8:11 PM Tomorrow: I be bakin'!
8:40 PM I kind of miss blogging, yet I'm sorely lacking in blogging material :(
9:40 PM Got the cake pops base ready! I used a ruler and everything!

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-25T23:59:00.000-04:00

12:44 AM Can't believe October's almost over! Going to shape little weights and dumbbells tomorrow for a cake next week!
7:39 PM ...aaand Chewy barfing on the bed. I'm up, I'm up!
8:15 AM Frost on the windows. I refuse to wear socks until November! *LOL*
6:39 PM I've got a wee little fondant Honda hanging out for next week!
6:42 PM I've got 60 cake pops to do in my near future - as in two weeks. Along with three cakes. Excellent organization and planning trumps stress!
8:25 PM I should be baking...
10:12 PM Garlic cayenne popcorn. Salty over sweet any day for me...except for four days in the month :D

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

12:03 AM I have no idea what I have against sleeping...when it's actually night time. Just finished The Adoration of Jenna. Totally saw it coming.
8:26 AM *insert witty banter here*
9:30 AM Sad day for Bart today :(
5:44 PM *sigh* It's been a long day...
10:06 PM Just snuck a little taste of the beef and mushroom soup stew from the crockpot. And by taste I mean I just ate a huge bowl. Pure comfort!

Stay Sweet,

Catherine

2 - 1 = :(

2011-10-19T23:03:00.000-04:00

Hello SnS friends!

I feel like it's been a while, has it been a while?! I'm sorry I went MIA, it's been a craaaazy busy kind of week and I'm still trying to get a solid footing and also, LoudTwitter seems to be on hiatus for delivering my tweets.

I had a semi last-minute cake commission for this week and it was a pretty special commission too so I wanted to make it extra special!

This is one of my BFFs, Tammy and she's leaving me! *insert sad face here*

It's also been very busy because we've had a lot of changes workwise and Tammy leaving was part of the whirlwind work adventures. The powers-that-be (PTB) have decided that they should take four or five different departments within the company and make them into ONE super duper department to better serve the "customers". Sounds nice right, all in the name of customer service, right? Weeeeeeell, to do that, the PTB thought that they would make the super duper department consist of four people. One department of four people when there used to be four (or five!) departments with 15 front-line people (not counting the non-font-line people)!?!? Say whaaaat?

So y'all know what that means right...the dreaded "R" word. Restructuring. Dun-dun-duuuun!

Ugh, so for a while there, it was pretty touch and go for everyone and I was trying REALLY hard not to freak out about potential joblessness but in the end, for the MOST part, despite all the shuffling, I think everyone involved came out of it a-okay. Hopefully, I haven't been able to touch base with everyone but from what I've heard, some other people went from potentially having no job to having a lot of options, so YAY for everyone, I hope. As for me, I'm HAPPILY staying put. And I'm proud that my TumTums was given a position in the super duper department, because in all honesty, that's awesome. She's like the pioneer of this super duper department! She's making history, but she's also leaving me! Following on the hills that she up and moved CITIES on me too, her leaving the department and hence the desk RIGHT BESIDE ME is hitting me kind of hard. I'm a pretty boring, predictable kind of person, I fear change!

Yesterday, as the web administrator of our department, Tums had me take off her name and contact info from the page and it was uber sad!

ANYWHO, when a door closes a giant window opens, right and at the end of the day, as far as we can tell, this is good news for ALL of us. Because we were all front-line before, we were never able to take lunches together or even take time off of work together because at least two of us still had to be at the office and now with all the changes that are happening, we'll be able to do lunches together and vacay together as well! And there's no being sad when there's a promotion for a friend to celebrate, and what better way than with CAKE!?

Sooo, after all my wordiness (sorry, I hope you indulged me a little bit for rambling on!), the boss and the rest of the girls at work wanted to give Tums (I'd explain the nickname, but that would be way more words, so just go with me when I say that Tammy = Tums) a super special "farewell" party (even though in all actuality, she's only moving across the hall from us *LOL*)!

Ta-daaaa! Would you kill me if I explain the reasoning behind the calculator? *LOL*

Let me just say that these AWESOME pieces of technology (no matter how old school some people may think they are) are one of our lifelines - especially when you're working in a finance-like area...dealing with money...and numbers...and adding and subtracting money and numbers...It's a no-brainer, if mine died, I would suffer a slow, painful death at work. No lie. So given that, imagine how we all freaked out when the manager of the new super duper department where Tums would be going tried to kibosh the notion of these babies. We were like, WHAAAAAT?! No matter how we tried to explain with words how these were a necessity, he kept saying that he just can't believe that the super duper department would need it when there's so much other technology around, he even compared them to an abacus! So after that, instead of trying to TELL him why he needed these, we grabbed one account as an example, pulled up the files and was like, alright. Work out these numbers and tell us where the solution to the problem is without the adding machine. And then I showed him a picture of one of my tapes from a particularly busy period. It was TALLER than me. 'Nuff said. He conceded but he still seemed like he didn't really believe us, so we came up with this calculator cake to give to our Tums to show her that as the original peeps in the trenches with her, we would NEVER let her leave unarmed with one of these! *LOL*

I'm actually loving how it all turned out! I kept it pretty simple and used a chocolate devil's food cake with a chocolate ganahce/buttercream filling. I baked up two chocolate devil's food layers and stacked them and using a sharp, serrated knife, proceded to make a holy mess out of the cake!

I know it would have been easier to freeze the cake prior to carving, but you know me and my patience threshold, right!? I cut the top layer in half on a diagonal and stacked the half that I cut off onto the end and that ended up being the tallest part of the cake. From there, I used the remaining chocolate ganache to crumb-coat or dirty ice the cake, filling in all the holes and crevices and when it hardened, it was nice and smooth and no more filling bulge! From there, I was able to ice the cake with the buttercream and it was soooo nice and smooooooth. I LOVE it. I will never ice a cake without a chocolate ganache coat first!

Anywho, I had already cut out the keys the evening before, so the next day after the cake hung out in the fridge over night, it was just a matter of laying the white fondant and then placing the keys in the right place!

After all that up there, I guess I should say that's it from me today! Thanks for staying with me through that! Hoping you're keeping dry during this very wet, rainy fall week! As always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Peek

2011-10-17T23:53:00.001-04:00

A little peek at what I was working on this evening. Sort of a last-minute commission. Shhh, it's a secret :)

So, what do you think it is?

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-15T23:50:00.001-04:00

23:53 Christmas cake (I know!), birthday cake and a calculator cake all in the next three days! Cake break to three cakes in three seconds flat! #
08:26 Chewy's lying on my bladder but I don't want to move because it's a rare occasion when he decides to be all cuddly! #LoveMyDog #
08:29 @itsLenie: For who? Not my little man? #
11:38 At Exposure: Photo & Video Imaging Expo! #
13:55 I'm sold, I want Lightroom 3! #
14:32 New wish list: Lightroom, Mac Book to run Lightroom... #
21:14 Home! Had such a nice girl's day out! #

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Sweet Tweets

2011-10-14T23:50:00.001-04:00

07:36 @shiftmo: So did you? Is it Sailor Moon? #

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Sweet Tweets

2011-10-13T23:50:00.001-04:00

01:56 Kinda sad it took 'til the end of the book to find out it wasn't worth staying up 'til 2 am for :s Staff meeting first thing this am, too :s #
13:05 Asian invasion at Popeyes! Apparently, I'm included in this invasion. It would be cool if it was a flash mob! #
16:58 I'm convinced the bootcamp girl was born specifically to kill me. She is close to accomplishing her destiny. #IFearBootcamp #
17:35 Havin' a BBM cake chat! Love it, getting so inspired and wanting to try out new ideas NOW! Gotta love a little self-imposed challenge! #
17:48 @shiftmo: *LIKE* just gotta find the time! LOL #
20:37 Sketchin' up a storm! Upcoming challenge: Cat in the Hat! t.co/gYOlpg15 #
21:46 My photo watermark is having an identity crisis :s #

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Sweet Tweets

2011-10-12T23:50:00.001-04:00

23:50 No Glee or New Girl made me sad :( #
07:49 Had a brownie mishap yesterday evening. I don't want to talk about it :s #
21:33 I'm using desktop twitter instead of my app. It's like going from cable internet back to dial-up. It just doesn't feel right! #
21:35 @shiftmo: So how'd it go? #
21:37 Whatevs, still a Blackberry girl! #
21:40 @shiftmo: I wanna see you when you have your contacts in! D id touching your eyeball freak you out? Nobody ever made me do that! #
22:00 Confession: Ready to pass out from bootcamp, but I'd REALLY like a cupcake right now! #

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Sweet Tweets

2011-10-11T23:50:00.001-04:00

07:51 It's so hard to get out of bed when the room is pitch dark at 7 am! #
07:52 Happy birthday, Chewy! #

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Sweet Tweets

2011-10-10T23:50:00.001-04:00

01:15 Local multiplayer - we're hooked :s t.co/mDLG1r6C @GetGlue #AWorldOfKeflings #
13:00 Made candied #bacon! BEST thing EVER! #
18:42 @blue_eye3765: Mine stopped delivering last week :( #
22:26 Organizing my eReader. Wild times! #

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Constant Vigilance!

2011-10-09T21:42:00.000-04:00

I was VERY surprised to learn that I had a Saturday free this past weekend - especially considering that it's a long weekend to boot! Bart was working for the day and we didn't have to be at my niece's first birthday party dinner celebration until later on that evening, so what oh what was I going to do with myself? Clean? BWAHAHAHAHAHA, not bloody likely! I'm currently watching Harry Potter as I'm blogging, so their jargon is totally rubbing off on me.

On another note, have you ever had that happen? Just listening to someone's accent, I have this weird urge to imitate it. I don't mean to be rude about it, but it just happens! Yesterday while I was baking, I was watching a Toddlers and Tiaras marathon (I know, I can't help it, it's one of those trainwreck/can't look away things!) and Bart came home and I totally had a southern/American-like accent.

Anywho, where was I? Right, so I most certainly wasn't going to spend a perfectly good day cleaning, so I declared it to be a day of BAKING!

No longer was I going to remain intimidated by sugar cookies! I was going to show them who was boss! Saturday was the day that I was going to conquer the sugar cookie! It was time!

So, before that happened, I burnt the first batch...

Seriously, no exaggeration when I say don't leave those suckers unattended! They're in one minute, they're burnt the next!

Whoops! Slightly crispier than I intended them to be...

Aaaah, that's slightly better. First lesson I learned (after the don't take your eyes away from the cooies in the oven for a minute lesson), I think I need to make them slightly thicker. Or a whole lot thicker, I think...they were pretty thin...

Next lesson I learned? Don't cheap out and not buy the squeeze bottles for flooding. I made a MESS trying to use piping bags to flood cookies! So I'll need to invest in some squeezable bottles in the next little while, that's for sure. I also learned that while flooding is fun, lining the cookies is so NOT! I was stressed out! Before I even tried to pipe out the outline, I had to hold my breath. By the time that I was done outlining a few of the cookies, I was already light-headed from holding my breath trying to keep the lines straight! Cookie decorating is stressful! *LOL*

I was fashioning my cookies after Sweet Sugarbelle's Pinterest cookies and judging from her final product compared to mine, I have a lot of work to do, but I did enjoy my first attempt at cookie decorating!

Ta-daaaa! Impatient me couldn't wait until the icing was fully set, so I just flopped the 'staches right on to the cookies. *LOL*

Bonjour! No big deal, just twirling my mustache like a boss!

Speaking of mustaches...I actually baked these for a specific reason. My friend Rory participates every year in Movember which, I believe, brings attention to manly forms of cancer by getting participants to grow a mustache for the entire month of November. I thought these cookies would be a cool way to kick off his quest for the perfect mo!

For anyone interested, check out Rory's Mo page, and if you feel the need to grow a 'stache of epic proportions to support a worthy and hilariously awesome cause, join his team or start your own!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Couples Retreat/Daycation

2011-10-04T20:20:00.000-04:00

Hello, SnS friends!

Being the non-wine-drinker that I am, it's odd that I am a BIG wine making/tasting/tour fan. I love seeing all the behind the scenes aspects of wine-making and even though I don't like wine all that much, I love the little tastings.

Since we did bottles of icewine for our wedding favours, Bart and I have been making wine every year. It's really fun to get a bunch of friends and bottle big batches of wine and we love having stores of wine bottles in the wine cellar for special occasions or to have as last minute gifts, etc.

With summer being a lot busier than Bart and I had anticipated (I still can't believe summer's over!) we weren't able to go out and about together or with friends as much, so I was really happy to have planned out a couples retreat/'daycation' with another couple and my cousin and her husband. We had to plan it out pretty far in advance as both Anna and Kristine are nurses and they needed to book the day off. I'm calling it a 'daycation' because we only go away for the day. There's a significant price difference between staying and playing throughout the day and staying overnight. I took the money that I saved from not staying overnight and buying more pretty bottles of wine and ICEWINE!

I may not like wine very much at all, but ICEWINE is like water for me! *LOL* Anywho, I just wanted to share a little bit of our day with you. I had SUCH a fabulous time and it was definitely a nice little cake break, though I did have to make a cake delivery the very next day, but I made it feeling nice and relaxed and refreshed!

Our transportation for the morning! Niagara-on-the-Lake Vintage hotels has a wine trolley tour where they'll pick you up at one of the Vintage hotels and you'll spend three hours with them at three different wineries. They give you a listing of the possible wineries that they'll visit, but you don't actually get to find out where you're going until you're on the trolley. I love it because the trolley tour also involves a lot of information on Niagara-on-the-Lake and its history as well as the three different wineries.

The first winery visit includes a full tour as well as the tasting. This is where they'll take you out to the vineyards and the cellars and all the places in between to see how wine is made from beginning to end.

I had a hard time paying attention to the tour out in the vineyard this time around as it was raining! We didn't think they'd actually take us out there since it was raining, but winemakers mean business! *LOL* These are what they call their 'teaching' grapes. This is where they test different things, ie. soils, etc. to see how they affect the grapes and also where they take the tours. We were all invited to test out the grapes on the vine. I believe these are the grapes for making pinot grigio....possibly...

After a little visit in the winery store (where I got two bottles of cabernet franc icewine *giggles*), we were off to the next winery, where this awaited us at Caroline Cellars.

Tasting fleets just for us! Now that the tour portion is over, it's pretty much all-tasting from here on out. Instead of having a particular wine ready for you to taste, Caroline Cellars gives you their entire menu and you get your choice of four tastings. This is where I mean business. I go straight to their dessert wines and start from the fourth last incewine (with the lowest sugar content) to the last which has the highest sugar content.

YUM.OH! This one is their 2008 Riesling icewine with a sugar content of 25!

Bart and I had tried out an icewine tour a few years ago for our anniversary and in it, they took their highest sugar content icewine and had us pour it over ice cream. Who wouldn't love that?! The other people in our group were swirling their wine, and sniffing it and talking about how they can take in notes of apricot and peaches and how it tastes all tart on their tongue (sorry, it did come off as a bit pretentious) and I was like, oh, I just drank mine. Tasted good. Can't tell you what kind of notes I got from them. Delicious notes?

After the wine tour, our trolley dropped us back off at our "hotel" and it was SPA time! Pillar and Post is my home away from home when we're at Niagara-on-the-Lake. While I've never actually stayed there overnight, it's my favourite place ever to just stay and relax. We headed straight to the spa where we had 1 pm appointments for couples massages!

When you book a treatment with them, you are given your own key card and locker key. The keycard gets you into the posh changerooms and the locker key opens your own locker where inside, you'll find a big, fluffy robe and slippers for use while you're there and a little gift. As long as you have a treatment booked, you have FULL use of the entire spa, including their salt-water pool, hot springs, sauna, gym and lounge. We quickly dispatch our clothes and get into our comfy, fluffy bathrobes and head over to the lounge to wait to be called for our treatments.

After getting all nice and relaxed, we got into our swimsuits and headed over to the hotsprings - which is my FAVOURITE part of the spa! You deposit your bathrobe on the hooks inside and wade into the hot, bubbly water and you walk through a doorway and you're outside! There is nothing more relaxing than enjoying glasses of wine in a hotspring outside in the cool October air. BLISS!

My cousin was kind enough to save me from an untimely death by drowning. *LOL* Okay, so it wasn't AS relaxing for the other people in the hotspring since we were playing around, but everyone's so laidback and blissed out, nobody seemed to care. And maybe we were all a little bit tipsy/smashered at this point...

Getting massaged and relaxed is obviously such hard work and we built up quite an appetite, so after our hotsprings adventure, we got dressed for our reservations at the hotel's restaurant.

Waiting for my food. I never said I was the most patient person ever. *LOL*

After a DELICIOUS meal - I had lemon garlic butter risotto with jumbo sea scallops wrapped in bacon - we all switched to non-alcoholic drinks at this point since we would be heading home after this. I was tempted to get a dessert, but it's so hard to order a slice of cake for $9.50 when you could practically bake a WHOLE cake for that amount!

We headed home with relaxed muscles, full tummies and sore cheeks from so much enjoyment and laughter. I'd call that daycation a SUCCESS! So much so, that we all agreed that we wil DEFINITELY go again next year!

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Robots in disguise...as cake?

2011-10-03T22:55:00.000-04:00

Happy OCTOBER, SnS friends!

Can you believe it's October already?! Not even JUST October already, it's three days into October already! Honestly, I can't believe I used to complain about time going by so slowly and now, I can't even grab a day and hold it down so I can get a few minutes with it!

You know what's great about October, besides the cooler, crisper weather and the trees turning awesome shades of reds and yellows and oranges so that at certain times in the day, the forests look like they're literally on fire? My FAVOURITE godson's (only godson, but that still doesn't change the fact that he's my FAVOURITE) birthday! On October 4th (not 8th...like I originally thought...*LOL*)

This year, my adoooorable 6-year old godson wanted a Transformers cake, so I thought I'd try to step it up a notch from my last stab at a Transformers cake.

Here's the sketch:

...and here's Thai's cake:

As my "awesome" friend Josho kindly pointed out, it doesn't actualy look like Optimus Prime, or how I envisioned he would look in the sketch, but when I asked Thai who that was he said "Optimus Prime" so I'm the happiest godmomma ever.

Here's the rest of Thai's present:

There's Mudflap, Bumblebee, Prime, and two other Autobots that I have no idea hanging out on some red velvet cupcakes.

I baked the cakes a couple days ahead of time and thought I'd play out the optimus prime in full by making the bottom tier three layers, alternating red and blue layers and then Optimus' head is two layers of red 4' rounds. The one layer I didn't tort and instead just sort of shaped the risen mound (*LOL* is it just me or does that funny..risen mound...*LOL*) to be the round part of his helmet/head? I tried to shape the helmet a bit and ended up just cutting out a flat part at the 'front' of the helmet for the visor/eyes. I used extra cake pieces from the layer that I did tort and shaped it for the 'mouth' part. After I covered it with fondant, I was a little disappointed to see that Optimus sort of resembled a blue versio of Barney the children's dinosaur head. Booo! Once I got the rest of the helmet pieces on, Bart said i doesn't looked less like Barney. *LOL*

The bottom tier is my FAVOURITE tier of all time! I wanted to keep the cake 'nut-free' since this was going to a children's play facility and so I used chocolate ganache as a filling. I guess I underestimate everything because I ended up making a LOT of ganache for the filling. So while I was looking at the extra ganache, I figured I would just use it to fill in some of the gaps in the seams of the layer. I figured this might help avoid the "fondant bulge". I got a dollop of ganache and kind of used it as a spackle to cover up the larger 'hole' in the seam and then next thing I know, I liked it so much that I covered the entire cake in chocolate ganache. I know I've heard some people ice their cakes with ganache, but that was the first time I really understood WHY. It's AWESOME! I was covering the cake and it was so smoooooooooooth. And it was solidifying so I knew for SURE it wasn't going to bulge through the fondant! My edges were SHARP and everything was so nice and smooth! I didn't have to put it in the fridge to set and it made laying my fondant so EASY!

If possible, I'm only going to ice my cakes in ganache! LOVED IT! Hope my godson and the rest of the party guests liked it too! I was a little bit worried that chocolate ganache was a bit sophisticated for six-year olds. *LOL* To make the cake a bit sweeter, I did put a layer of buttercream between each layer as well. Next time around, I may just ice my cake with a thin coating of ganache and then proceed to cover that with my buttercream icing.

I've got a cupcake order to fill for this THANKSGIVING weekend (holy moly, I totally just found out it was Thanksgiving this weekend, can you BELIEVE it?!) and then a birthday cake for my mother-in-law and then I've got a meet-and-greet/consultation with another client to talk about her daughter's first birthday cake! We will be meeting at Montana's. I think that ALL cake consultations should include ribs. Plus, they've got brown paper and crayons so two birds with one stone! I can get my sketch on and eat ribs at the SAME time!

For my Canadian friends, Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for family, friends and CUPCAKES! What about you?

As always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-10-02T23:50:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

02:54 Last 3 FoodNetwork commercials are of chef's not cooking, but eating. If I wanted to watch someone eat, I'd eat in front of a mirror :s
02:54 P.S. It's 3 am and I'm whining about food shows instead of sleeping! That's the REAL problem!
02:58 But I got this guy done, at least. Oh, and 12 hit or miss red velvet cupcakes... t.co/DYUU2781

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Sweet Tweets

2011-10-01T23:50:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

01:34 I should be upset that my Optimus Prime head for the cake resembles a blue Barney the dinosaur...
01:52 Happy October! I need to wake up in about three hours! So much to do, so little clones of me to get it all done! Gah!
05:48 I feel like I just closed my eyes :(
12:03 Wine tour bottle count: 2!

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Sweet Tweets

2011-09-29T23:50:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

07:40 Knew something was odd, but couldn't figure out what until I realized I was wearing my glasses in the shower. It's been a long week.
21:03 I really need to get my bake on!
22:47 OMG, Philadelphia Cream Cheese just aired a CHRISTMAS commercial!!! Nooooo!

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Sweet Tweets

2011-09-28T23:50:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

19:54 Wednesday retreat! When exactly am I going to get this cake done? I have no idea! *LOL*

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Sweet Tweets

2011-09-27T23:50:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

22:25 I may have eaten three red velvet cupcakes today. Possibly. Not admitting to anything.

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Sweet Tweets

2011-09-26T23:40:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

17:02 I've got a dozen red velvet cupcakes to make coming up in my near future!
17:09 Confession: I've actually never even tasted red velvet...or figured out what the big deal about it is...
19:28 Near future meant today. Right now. Red velvet cupcakes coming out of the oven!
19:41 You'd think I would be, but I'm not a fan of cream cheese frosting :s
20:50 Sassy red velvet cupcakes for the sassy girls at work! t.co/jPcWdTpF
23:17 I've resorted to having to charge my #BB every night. I usually close everything when I'm not using them (apps), is it my WiFi?
23:20 NeoCitran and Eat, Pray, Love. Goodnight, world. See you tomorrow :)

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"A new religion...

2011-09-26T22:11:00.000-04:00

...that will bring you to your knees

red velvet, if you pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaase!"

So apparently the song doesn't actually go like that. I'm sure if she'd had some red velvet cupcakes before the recording of the song, it would go a little differently, I think. I'd totally write and sing a song about cupcakes! Who wouldn't?

I'd recently said I would bake a dozen red velvet cupcakes for an order, of course acting like I do it all the time in my sleep, when in reality, I've never baked red velvet cupcakes nor have I actually even tasted a red velvet cupcake.

To my understanding, it's just chocolate cake with red food colouring.

It might be because I have a hard time eating coloured baked goods. Like when I make my cakes, if you'll notice that a majority of the time - especially when I have free reign on the design - I choose white or lighter coloured fondant. For some reason, when it's REALLY coloured, I have a hard time allowing it into my mouth. I mean, I know it makes no difference, but it's just weird. I can't do it. You know that movie "The Wedding Planner" where the guy chucks out all of the coloured M&Ms except the brown ones because there's less artificial colouring because chocolate's already brown? That's kind of me...except to a lesser extent because I judged that movie for wasting perfectly good M&Ms.

Anywho, even after is all said and done, I don't get all the fuss about red velvet, but I had a good time making cupcakes today. I have a teeny, tiny tickle in my throat and I have a feeling that my immune system has eluded the sickies long enough that it's high time I succumbed to the little cold I've been fighting, so it was nice to just relax and bake at my own pace.

What I did like was the bright red colour my batter ended up being, it's just so sassy!

I LOVE the red of this! You can see bits of flour and powder everywhere. I guess I'm still not used to the mixer, I was pouring into the bowl and caught the whisk and flour went eeeeverywhere. Bart walked by and was like, "I thought you said it would be less messy with the stand mixer compared to the hand mixer." He totally didn't see me stick my tongue out at his back.

So I have a problem with cream cheese icing. I don't like it. At all.

I remember my ex-boss' wife made a batch of chocolate, brownie, peanut butter cup cupcakes with the peanut butter being in the cream cheese icing and I was SO excited to eat it, I took a giant bite and had to spit it right back out into a napkin and then I had to pretend that I ate the whole thing really fast and just loved it but was currently on a diet which was why I could only eat one. Later on in the afternoon, I did give them another shot and this time just chucked the entire top of the cupcake into the bin and ate the cake and it was delicious, but from that moment on, I knew that cream cheese icing and I were not compatible.

Do you ever get those moments where you don't like something right away, but given enough time, you start thinking to yourself that maybe you made a split-second decision and maybe didn't give the yucky tasting thing enough of a chance? That's me with cream cheese icing and miso soup. Every single time I go to an Oriental restaurant, I get to thinking that I probably really WOULD like miso soup if I just give it one more try and that OBVIOUSLY the last 15 tries were all flukes. I must have had weird taste bud strike going on or something and just THOUGHT that miso soup tastes like feet that have been hanging out in wet socks all day and dried out in the hot, hot sun. So every time I try it again ready to embrace the fact that I MUST have been wrong and to begin a new-found love affair with miso soup and every single time, I have to try VERY hard not to spit the spoonful back into the bowl of soup. Miso sorry miso soup. Miso no like you still! Hehehe. Clever!

This time around I figured that I would like cream cheese icing if I made it myself. I looked up a recipe and chose Martha Stewart's (because really, you just can't go wrong with Martha) and I substituted half shortening instead of the full amount of cream cheese it wanted me to use. In fact, I took the actual amount of cream cheese it wanted me to use and only used 3/4 of it too. After making it to Martha's specifications, I snuck a tasting spoon into the mixing bowl ready to welcome cream cheese icing with open arms and...it's just so...yucky. I mean, I LOVE cheesecake, why don't I like this? It's just too...tangy for my taste. It's kind of off-putting. So I just turned my mixer back on and continued to dump icing sugar in until you can just barely taste the cream cheese. I also doubled up the vanilla it asked me to put in and only caught it the second glance at the recipe that it called for white/clear vanilla. Oops. I busted out the big guns and got the pure, delicious vanilla extract that we brought back with us from Mexico, so my icing isn't purely white and fluffy like Martha intended it to be.

Now that it's got more icing sugar, I'm finding that I like it a lot better. It's still got that subtle hint of cream cheese in it but it's no longer off-putting and doesn't cause my nose to wrinkle automatically every single time. This is my kind of cream cheese icing.

And then just to showcase the two new cake stands I got that I completely forgot were in the truck (well, I may have left them in there because Bart was home when I got home, but then I forgot they were in there when Bart and I traded vehicles and he brought them in for me this evening...oops! LOL), I decided to play a little with a display and my camera!

I think the last picture makes them look so ooh-la-la! As cupcakes described as red velvet ought to!

That's it from me, maybe I'll have one more before bed to go with my NeoCitran! Have a wonderful rest of your evening, SnS friends! As always...

Stay Sweet,
Catherine

Sweet Tweets

2011-09-25T23:50:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

10:30 Beautiful day and I'm supposed to be out on a boat cruising the day away! Too bad it got cancelled due to mechanical difficulties :(
19:23 I'm watching Abduction (293 others checked-in) t.co/ifzWZYfx @GetGlue #Abduction
19:23 I unlocked the Opening Week sticker on @GetGlue! t.co/NmERaCL9
23:00 Hot showers with lots of scrubs, pretty soaps, etc. always help when I feel bad. I may not be totally better after but at least I'm cleaner.

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Sweet Tweets

2011-09-24T23:50:00.001-04:00

Random thoughts throughout the day...

01:17 Didn't realize I was sitting hunched over for almost six hours straight yesterday! Feelin' it now, that's for sure!
01:21 Cake delivery later today! Keep your fingers crossed - I won't actually be there! Just too many places to be at once! *wince*
01:22 Transformers cake next week and got a cake order request via BBM at 2:21 am yesterday morning! *LOL*
08:30 Full weekend ahead and none of it has anything to do with cake! #CakeBreak!
22:58 Cake delivery = success! Photoshoot = success! Can't believe it's only 11 pm, I feel like I've been up for 24 hours straight!

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