CookieD-oh

Well, I'm finally getting to post some of the birthday cakes from this week.  Yay!  First, here is the cake for my great aunt's 75th birthday.  It was fun, but next time I will use one large flower cutter, as opposed to cutting each petal individually.  It took a really.  long.  time. And here is where we get into the "D'oh!" part of the name.  I have already admitted that I'm a lousy photographer.  However, on this one I actually forgot to take any pictures.  This picture was taken with my phone in my grandma's basement.  (Hi Grandma!)  I have one better quality picture, but I can't bring myself to post it because the phone was crooked or something, and the cake looks like it's listing pretty severely to one side.  And it wasn't. I promise.  (However, you'll notice that right corner of the white tier is lower than the other corners.  Not really sure what happened there, and I'm not sure why I didn't notic...

This is going to be a really exciting post!  Well, maybe not.  But it's all I've got right now.  I've been baking and baking, but then I've been wrapping my cakes in plastic and foil and tossing them into the freezer.  Why? Because I have a job and kids and in order to make cakes, I have to do them in stages.  So, for my great-aunt's birthday party on Sunday, I have been baking and freezing.  On Friday I'll take the cakes out of the freezer, fill them and let them settle.  On Saturday I will ice and decorate.  On Sunday the finished cake will be ready to go!  At least that's the plan. Anyhoo, I was getting ready to bake this morning and realized I was out of cake release.  I used to use grease and flour, which works just fine, but once I tried this stuff I was won over.  And since it's really easy to make, I whipped up a batch and took some pictures.  If you have never used homemade cake realease, you are missing out....

I started thinking about what kind of cookies I was going to make for Valentine's Day a few weeks ago.  I didn't want anything too super-girly because I was going to send them to school with the boy for their Valentine's Day party.  Well, his teacher decided not to do a whole party this year.  They're going to make ice cream sundaes and exchange Valentines instead.  That took some pressure off of me, but I still wanted to make the cookies I had planned.  So I did. Just not as many as orignally anticipated.  And there is the finished product.  Owls!  I have seen owls all over the web lately.  I guess they're a big trend right now.  Most of the owl cookies I see are made using a tulip cutter.  Well, that's all well and good, but then the owls don't have tails.  And every owl I've ever seen has a tail.  So I flipped the tulip cutter upside down and cut a scoop out of the top.  Like so: That allowed me to make t...

So today I get to share how disorganized I am!  Yay!  On LilaLoa's blog today, she is asking readers to share how they store their icing colors.  If I had anywhere else to post my photos to link to her blog, I certainly would not be posting about it here.  But all I have is a blog.  No Facebook, no Flickr.  I do have a Twitter account, but I set that up under protest because I needed it to join Pinterest.  I have absolutely no interest in Tweeting.  In fact, when I found out that they FORCE you to follow, like, 20 people just to set up a Twitter account, I nearly called the whole thing off.  But I really, really wanted to join Pinterest, so I followed a bunch of people, then unfollowed then immediately afterward.  Except for CakeWrecks.  I still follow them.  But I don't ever check Twitter, so it's just for show, really. Anyway, all that to say that THIS is how I store my icing colors.  They are not all the same size a...

It seems like I've been baking quite a bit the last couple weeks, and it's only going to get more busy as the month wears on!  There are some important birthdays coming up, Valentine's Day, etc.  I'm not a business, but I bake things for friends when they ask nicely, so that keeps me pretty busy. So today I took cupcakes to work for a co-worker's birthday.  I used my go-to chocolate cake recipe and topped them with cream cheese icing and a little fondant decoration.  I love fondant cut-outs.  They're sooooo easy, and they just add a little something special to a cupcake.  And I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking... "Wow, CookieD-oh, I wish I had a classy cupcake carrier like that."  Or maybe not.  I was too lazy busy to go to the store and get boxes.    Anywho, I made 48 cupcakes, two dozen for today, and two dozen for my friend's other daughter (look at me doing math and stuff).  I double...