CookieD-oh

We recently moved into an old farmhouse and we thought it would be fun to go retro with the kitchen decor. We inherited a 1940's kitchen cabinet from Mr. D-oh's Grandma May when she passed a few years back. We love it and it reminds us of Grandma, so why not decorate the kitchen around it? Craig’s List has been good to us thus far. I found an old chrome and Formica table and chairs (in yellow and green Moonglo) as well as a remarkable old stove. I’m still hunting for a refrigerator, but I’m in no hurry. Anyhoo, I made a chocolate cake for a family get-together. Mint chocolate frosting with roses. Added some blue because I read somewhere a long time ago that you should use at least three colors when decorating. So red, blue, and green for this one. I don’t know if that’s really a thing, but it stuck with me. And here’s a bit of the kitchen with the amazing stove. It’s purported to be a 1948 Western Holly. Works like a champ and kind of looks like we have a laund...

The boy is mildly obsessed with penguins, what can I say? About half the time he wants a penguin on his birthday cake. And since he's my boy, I humor him. So we saw the penguin cake on Pinterest and copied it, only he wanted it to be blue instead of black. I still don't know why. Then he couldn't think of anything to put on the bottom cake, and he really wanted there to be a bottom cake. Since the day of his party was getting close, I suggested an angry polar bear face. He agreed (though he had his doubts) and I think it came out ok. It was definitely unique! We had a combined party for both kids this year and the girl wanted a cat cake. First she wanted a cheetah, because she loves cheetahs, but then she saw a cat cake on Pinterest (I know, I know) and changed her mind. Which was good for me because it was the easiest cake ever. And here they are together: Not a bad day's work if I do say so myself. The penguin was coconut cake, the polar bear was le...

Themed because I don't do character cakes...I'm not that talented and I don't want to run afoul of copyright laws...I'm funny that way. Cake: Topper: Matching cupcakes: I think there were 30 cupcakes, so I got to make 30+ fondant strawberries. But it was fun. And I think they came out cute. The topper was to be placed, upright, on the cake. But it didn't fit in the box so I left it off. Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. That's all for now. Enjoy!

This year the girl wanted a ducky cake for her birthday. She didn't really have a reason, just that she wanted ducks. I think she was trying to copy her brother's turtle cake without being too obvious about it. So I found a ducky cake on Pinterest and shamelessly copied it. She was quite pleased. I took the leftovers to work and people kept asking who was having a baby. Because, really, it's a baby shower cake. But, hey, it made her happy. Especially the giant sunglasses-wearing rubber ducky on top. It lights up. Well, that's all for now. Enjoy!

My co-worker Maria asked me to make her some cookies for her birthday. I won't rat her out and announce her age. :-) Again, sorry for the horrible pictures. My husband asked why my phone turned the pictures yellow. Because his doesn't. Even though they're the same phone. Anyhoo, there were candles, cupcakes, party hats and a monogram. The monograms were royal icing transfers and came out pretty nice. Of course, the girl asked me why I didn't use the copy cat. Which was adorable. (And I guess I could have, I just didn't feel like setting it up.) Well, that's all for now. Enjoy!

Ha!  Fooled you!  It's not a chocolate and caramel and pecan birthday cake. (Although that would be lovely, in my opinion.)  It's a cake shaped like a turtle!! Because that's what the boy wanted. I was actually quite happy with how it turned out. I got the idea off of Pinterest, of course. The design as a whole is a mash-up of two different cakes that I saw. I wanted to do more on the base cake, but I was literally finishing up the border as we walked out the door. My time management wasn't the best with this one. The square cake is two giant layers of lemon cake, torted, with two layers of home-made lemon curd filling and one layer of buttercream filling. It was gigantic. It stood almost 5 1/2 inches high (not including the turtle on top) and was incredible heavy. I should have weighed it. The turtle is a 6" round cake, vanilla-almond with buttercream filling. We served it at the party and then I took the rest to work on Monday. It was pretty good. I...

OK, so this isn't baked goods.  But I believe I have already established precedent that says if I have a cute craft project to share, I'll share that as well.  So bear with me while I share a cute craft project. :-) I made this for my niece's birthday. She's quite the talented artist (she comes by it honestly, both of her parents are incredibly talented) and I thought she could use a tote to carry all of her art supplies when she's out and about. The front: The back: The inside: I put just a few art supplies in it for her birthday. Then I filled it up with stuff I found around my house and took a few more pictures. I think she liked it.  I offered to make another one for the girl, but she declined. Oh well. I tried. I found a tutorial on Pinterest. It was a little hard to follow and I made some adjustments along the way, which was kind of a big deal because I'm not exactly a seamstress. But it was a nice weekend project. That'...

My friend asked for a birthday cake for her daughter, so I said,  "Sure!"  Then she sent me a picture of a cake with Olaf from Frozen on it, and I said, "Sure!"  Then I sat down to make said Olaf and cursed the day I'd ever agreed to make a &$(%$# Olaf cake. Live and learn I always say. I failed to capture his overbite. My fondant flattened out on me, but after all the work I put into him, I just went with it. Anyhoo, vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant decoration. That's all for now. Enjoy!

A friend asked me to make a cake for some friends of hers.  There are three boys and they celebrate birthdays at the same time.  (And I never thought to ask if they were triplets or something...I'm going to have to ask her now.) So they like sports. Basketball and Football.  And that's all the direction she gave me. She wanted two cakes, one for a family dinner and one for the party. Here's what I came up with. Family Dinner: Party: And that was the day I learned that my son doesn't know ANYTHING about sports. I felt bad. He thinks he would like sports if he could watch them, but we don't watch them. Mostly because we don't have cable. I need to get the boy to my brother's house, to watch some football, pronto. (He asked me what a quarterback was. I didn't realize it was as bad as that.) Anyhoo. That's all for now. Enjoy!

It seems like there were lots of birthdays this summer. And I made lots of cake.  But didn't take many pictures. For example: I worked really hard on my great-aunt's 80th Birthday cake, and only took two horrible pictures. Here's the better of the two: She's not a pastel buttercream rose kind of gal.  And here you also have a little insight into what my kitchen looks like after a cake. It ain't pretty. Then I took two more bad pictures at the party, so I'll share those, too: Aunt Iva is an Ohio State Buckeye fan, so I made a scarlet and gray cake for her. :-)  As an aside, I love my Agbay .  Best. Tool. Ever. The other two cakes were chocolate.  The one in the foreground had mint chocolate ganache filling.  The one in the back (that you can't see...the pink one) had vanilla buttercream filling. Very tasty all around, if I do say so myself. Anyhoo, that's all for now. Enjoy.

One of the ladies from church asked me to make a cake for her mother's 100th birthday celebration.  I was honored, to say the least.  All she wanted was pink and purple and NO FONDANT. The rest was up to me.  No pressure! Anyhoo, that's what I came up with. It was massive.  14" and very, very heavy.  I make weird roses. I have only made one other 14" cake, and I had forgotten how big that really is. It ended up being too tall for the box so I had to prop the lid open.  It never occurred to me that the cake box wouldn't be deep enough. I felt a little betrayed by the box. Plus 40 cupcakes for the nursing home staff. Because who doesn't like cupcakes? I thought it came out nice, and she loved the cake, so yay! That's all for now. Enjoy!

Hi there!  I'm back.  Blogging has taken a back seat to real life lately.  Sorry about that. Anyhoo, here's a cake I made for a friend's nephew's third birthday.  She e-mailed me a picture of the cake she wanted, so I have no idea where the original inspiration came from, but it's an adorable cake. My sister-in-law disapproves of this cake.  You see, Superman and Batman are DC Comics, and your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is Marvel. Apparently they're not supposed to fraternize. But since the Avengers didn't invite Spider-Man to the party, he can hang out with Superman and Batman on my cake. Do you like the capes?  I thought the capes were such a cute idea!  (Sorry, Edna.) And the very, very best thing about this cake?  I didn't take these pictures! My friend sent them to me from the party.  Now there's a good friend.  The pictures I took sucked. I blame the really bad light in my mustard yellow kitchen.  ick. We...

So there is technically no Barbie on this cake.  In fact, to look at this cake you'd wonder what the heck Barbie has to do with it at all.  Let me explain. The girl has become enamored of "Barbie: Life in the Dream House" on Netflix.  There are 4-ish episodes available to stream.  We may have seen each episode approximately 32 times. But, getting back to the cake, in one of the episodes Chelsea is turning 6.  Chelsea gets a birthday cake.  My precious little princess wanted a replica of Chelsea's cake for her birthday. Chelsea's cake: The girls' cake: Here's the deal.  When I mixed the fondant and started decorating on the morning of the party, the fondant was the shade of pink in the first picture above.  By the time we got to the venue (ok, my brother's house), it had faded to the shade directly above. I was a bit annoyed.  I was out of Americolor Pink, so I used Wilton instead.  Never again. But, it still came out cu...

A friend of mine asked me to make cupcakes and cookies for her daughter's birthday recently.  The theme was Sofia the First. She supplied Sofia cupcake picks for the cupcakes, which was nice.  I forgot to take a picture of the cupcakes.  You can thank me later. But here are the cookies! I have decided that I need a KopyKake. I am no good a freehanding designs.  I ended up tracing a small heart cookie cutter onto the cookies with edible marker, then piping over the outline.  And bagged and beribboned. I don't have a tiara cutter.  Fortunately, the wonderful ladies at Cookiers R Us saved me by suggesting a plaque cutter.  They are actually about 2/3 of a plaque cutter.  Half was too small.  And my girl decided she needed to make a special cookie for the birthday girl so that the birthday girl would be happy. She did a great job!  And used lots of disco dust! That's all for now. Enjoy!

My niece turned 10 recently, and she asked me to make some cookies for her birthday party.  Yay!  My kids never want cookies for their birthdays.  Punks. Anyhoo, the theme of the party was Lego Friends, so here are the cookies I made. The logos were royal icing transfers. They came out a little rough, but they were ok. Lots of blocks.  Easiest. Cookies. Ever. And with all of those dots, I only had six or so craters.  It was a birthday miracle. On the platter for the party. That's all for today. Enjoy!

When I asked the girl, some weeks ago, what flavors of birthday cake she wanted this year, she promptly responded, "Strawberry and grape." Grape.  Really. She opted for strawberry cake and grape cupcakes, instead of a 2-tier cake.  And she wanted her cupcakes to have rainbow frosting like she saw on the Wilton cupcake book in the grocery store.  So I got to mix rainbow colors again.  Joy! But back to the grape cake.  There are really no recipes for grape-flavored birthday cake on the internet. At least not that I could find.  I found cakes with actual grapes in them, but that's not what she wanted. So we got to experiment. First, I used my scratch strawberry cake recipe and adapted it for grape.  The cupcakes tasted good, but they didn't really rise very well.  And they were a strange color. So I set the rest of the batter aside and we moved on to plan B: These cupcakes rose and were purple. Here's a side-by-side: ...