From another blog to this blog:

I saw this interesting, yet, very easy desert and thought it looked very delicious so I had a go at it! You can make homemade sugar cookies if you choose but, when your mixing it all in, might as well buy it!

This cookie cuppie is as easy as layering your sugar cookie dough with some of your favorite candies. I had this candy at home, so I just used it.


After baking them, the laffy taffy was very hard to get off the liners. I also had milk duds and those turned out the best. It was just a fun, easy to make desert!

Enjoy!!!

Strawberry Lemonade.

Strawberries are in the air! It is the perfect food that says, "summertime is here!" With both of these strawberry cakes having purred strawberries in them, they scream with delight! I have always been a little leery about my decorating skills with butter cream, but I was quite pleased with this cake. There were just a few areas where I couldn't cover the strawberries unless I had an inch of butter cream on it!

Strawberry summertime cake.

This was a cake order I had for a two year old. I hope she liked it! With the few extra cupcakes that there were, I can verify that it tastes pretty amazing, I'll have to add that recipe to my list of cakes!

This is the cake that went with the cupcakes.

I was very happy with how it turned out!

Around the Farm

I love having my camera around when we go down to see the cows. Will just loves those big tasty animals... It was pretty funny that here he would walk as close as he could until one made a quick movement and he turned and ran back to me. It was pretty classic.

On Mother's Day, I woke up to Will wearing this Larry The Cable Guy shirt. Dennis had cut the sleeves off of the pearlized, button shirt he had bought him in the fall. I couldn't believe that he did that! Latter in the day, he gave Will a 'tattoo'.
While my sister is moving her family and getting their new house ready (only 5 miles away!) I have watched her kiddos a few times. Kaydence still takes a bottle and boy did Will want it! He picked up the bottle and thought really hard about taking a big ol' swig when I told him 'No', he looked at me and then started feeding Kaydence. Such a nice, caring little boy he is!

Well, It's cold again here in Kansas, but there were a few days last week that were right around 100*. I sure would hate to wear a black coat when it is that hot so I try to have a pool for Katie. I set the pool up fully expecting Will to jump in. I was right! He enjoyed splashing around for a while and then decided to just jump in!

Katie was thirsty.

I'm pretty proud of this picture. If money grew on trees, I'd buy a macro lens. I can't get enough of macro photos (minus spiders!!!)

The warmth of the day sure brought all the bugs out.

Multi-colored swirl

I had left over icing that I was wanting to get out of my freezer so I thought I would have some fun and try a new trick.

See my left over frosting!
:)








I decided to use the tip that I posted a few days ago about putting the icing in plastic wrap before putting it into the bag. I now know that I have to do it with BOTH colors and the plastic baggie does not work.








When you put the colors side by side in the bag with a slit in both plastic wraps, the colors should be pretty even coming out of the bag. This I had issues with, especially with the blue.









It turned out pretty good though. Like I said, the blue had issues.

(I also used the left over batter from the s'mores cupcakes I had made a week before hand. I put them in ice cream cones.)

Fondant Roses

This is how you start, roll out your fondant pretty thin. (I could have rolled it out quite a bit thinner, I was hurrying while two babies slept.) You will also need this funky looking petal cutter. After you have cut several flowers out, you will need to make a cone as pictured.

I put this cone on a stick to help me hold it in place. Then I start with one petal and start wrapping the petals, one at a time around the cone. You will need to 'glue' the peddles to the cone by either placing a little water on it or piping gel as I did.















You will repeat this step several times until you have reached the size of rose you are wanting.
























Here are my roses that I made. Ya, I know, I need more practice, but for the first time to have ever done this, I thought I did a pretty good job.


At the end, the base was vary thick and I had to cut some of the fondant off. Really it wasn't a big problem but I'm not sure if the professionals have to do this or if it was just me. I will work on them more.

Baking tips.

I have been going to this website, cakecentral.com for quite some time. This site is awesome, any baker, professionals to hobbiests can surf through it all and see cakes, recipies, forums, everything that others post to help other bakers. Its a great site and I have learned a lot and saved a lot of photos that I would love to make someday. It's usually the place I get ideas from. Anyway, I found a link that everyone posted thier best tips and advice from everyone over the last 4-5 years. I thought that I would jot them down and post it for my own use as well as your own if you care to.

~Putting parchment paper at the bottom of the pan before baking will help release it. Esp, with bigger pans.

~Wrapping cakes in plastic while cooling will make the cake even more moist.

~Sift Everything. Sugar, flour, cake mixes, everything.

~Use baking spray with flour

~Bake 8* lower than you normally would.

~measure out ingrediense the night before and put them in a ziplock baggie. Esp, if you have a big cake to do.

~unsweetened, unflavored applesause instead of oil makes all cakes more moist.

~Press a clean towel down on a cake and push the center to make it level. Some have not had to cut the top of the cake it is so level.

~Always have extra decorating tips

~To make butter 'room temp' just drop in warm water for a few minutes.

~Use two cake boards for cakes bigger than 9x13. Just in case it bends in middle, that would be a disaster!

~To clean your decorating tips, put them in a bowl, compleatly cover in water and microwave for a few minutes with 2-3 drops of soap. If the medal tips are compleatly covered, you will not have to worry about sparks. If you are still concerned about this, you may just boil in a sausepan.

~Put wet ingredients in your mixing bowl first and then dry.

~ALWAYS make more frosting than needed, it freezes well if to much is made

~Food saver works great for fondant.

~Ice cube trays work great for egg yolks to freeze for later, white cakes call for whites only and will waste a lot of yolks.

~Measuring sticky stuff like, penut butter, shortening, honey, ect, line measuring cup with plastic wrap = no cleaning!!

~Add a drop of viniger to buttercream, it prevents cracking.

~ceramic tiles work as cake boards, and are very pretty.

~Violet food coloring offsets yellow color and makes it white (MUST TRY THIS YET!)

~If you have a turntable that needs tilted, put a 3-ring binder under it.

~Wrap icing in plactic wrap, then slit a hole at end and drop into a bag with tip, much easier to clean and change colors with the same tip.

~Transporting cakes put a grip-non-slick stuff under the cake board so not to slide.

~Brushing a cake with simple syrup if it takes a few days to decorate it will keep it moist.

Well, there you have it. That is 5+ hours of looking up other baker's tips and techniques they use. I hope that one of these will help you out in some way!

Will's food Dance

Because I have no idea how to flip the videos, you need to watch it oddly. Anytime that we are eating, EVEN if Will has already eaten, he does this little food stomp until he gets some. It is the cutest, funniest thing you will see. The video would be longer but I am having issues with my video on my camera. That's another story.

Cake-pops with my niece

My niece Emi helped me decorate some cake pops for a Mother's Day get together at my in-laws.

I had the cake in the freezer from the Easter cake I made so it wasn't really a big deal of doing it. These are the 3 cake pops that I made. Emi had fun decorating the others with all my sprinkles I have.








We ended up making about 24 of them. Here they are all done up and pretty! (Yep, I said it, done up!)










Here's my niece Emi holding proudly her cake pops. This was the first experience she ever had making them. I hope I didn't scare her away and she will help me decorate again someday.

Sold a cake!

This is the first cake I have sold for money. I felt bad about it too. You can see how not level it is. This is because the cake is THAT moist! It was a very last minute order and so I did not have any time to make another other wise I would have, trust me! The one who ordered this said he didn't even care if it had any decoration on it. At least I know that it tasted amazing!

Making half a batch of this cake, makes this cake above and 2-3 cupcakes. I have wanted to try making cupcakes like this. I thought they turned out pretty cute, I just need the right tools to make it look amazing. I was also going to add a little flower but didn't have the fondant cutouts. So this is what I had.