CookieD-oh

A friend had a baby shower and I got to bring cookies and cupcakes! We were very excited for her, as this baby has been a long time coming. Unfortunately, I got ZERO good photos of the cookies. And I mean ZERO-er than normal. Made some onesies... Some bottles, rattles and bibs...  A plaque or two... And then I also made some cupcakes! I used my usual go-to chocolate cake, plus some white to go with them. Half the chocolate cupcakes were filled with dulce du leche (the ones with the dollops on top) and half of the white cupcakes were filled with lemon curd (also with the dollops on top). They were pretty darn tasty. Again, not a good photo, but you get the idea. They're cupcakes. :-) The little one arrived a few weeks ago and mom and dad couldn't be happier! Well, that's all for now. Enjoy!

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...

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...

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!

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...

It's been a busy few weeks here in the D-oh household. Lots of stuff going on.  Nothing exciting, just lots of stuff.  *sigh* But I did find time to make some cookies!  Two of the boy's classmates tested for their black belts this weekend, so the boy wanted to take cookies to the belt performance.  He is only three months behind these kids, so now I have to think up something to take to HIS performance.  Eek. I was not terribly thrilled with how they came out, but they were fine.  The kids loved them. I used the Ninjabread Men cutters (again) because they're perfect, even if my cookies aren't. I made sixty of these bad boys, so I was pretty glad when it was all over.  Almond cookies with vanilla icing.  They were supposed to be lemon, but apparently "lemon" and "almond" look the same when it's written on an extract bottle. Anyhoo...that's all for today. Enjoy!

OK, these are old-ish, too.  We saw the Pioneer Woman feature these cutters on her blog back in 2010, and immediately ordered a set.  Because ninja are awesome. To celebrate the boy getting his temporary black belt in Taekwondo, here are some ninja (remember, according to Lego Ninjago, "ninja" is both singular and plural).  I didn't think of making them for his class until it was too late.  D'oh!  They would have been so perfect.  But the instructors do get a plate full every Christmas, so they're getting used to them. I've improved my technique since making these, but they're still super cute.  I mean, really, who doesn't love ninja?  (Except maybe samurai.) Well, that's all for today. Enjoy!

We successfully completed our juice fast!  Well, me more than hubby.  He may have dropped out a day or so early.  But it was still a big accomplishment! And what better way to celebrate the end of a juice fast than with making giant birthday cake that you can't eat because you're trying to stay healthy!? My dad turned 65, so Grandma threw him a party!  I brought the cake.  And a lemon meringue pie.  The cake was served at the party.  The pie was not. Dad's favorite is chocolate cake, so I made a giant chocolate cake.  Only, because it's me, I had to do a little something extra.  So the bottom tier wasn't chocolate at all. It was a flag cake!  Sorry for the hacked up picture. The slices themselves were perfectly flaggy.  But I didn't get any pictures of those. Of course. For the flag cake I used this recipe from Sweetapolita . I actually make the cake recipe four times. Each recipe filled a 10-inch cake tin about perf...

My coworker asked me to make a cake for her son's birthday.  Apparently he's quite the wresting fan.  She wanted a wrestling ring, so this is what I came up with. Nothing fancy.  She had some toys action figures she was going to put in it.  I hear he loved it. That's all for now. Enjoy!

This year, the boy wanted a Minecraft-themed birthday cake. And since I aim to please, he got one. We had the party at my brother's house.  He's got a lot more natural light than I do.  See how the picture isn't yellow?  He's also got more space, which is the main reason we had the party there, not just for the natural light. I really don't get the whole Minecraft craze.  But it's sweeping our part of the nation.  All the kids at school are playing it.  All the kids at martial arts class are playing it.  All the kids at my SIL's homeschool co-op are playing it.  I'm baffled. Anyhoo, Minecraft is incredibly pixellated.  I explained to the boy, that while I love him dearly, I don't have that kind of time.  So his cake was not going to be crafted of six million individually cut squares of fondant.  Being the rational young man that he is, he went with it. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Minecraft phenomena, ...

Valentine Robots via SweetSugarBelle! Her tutorial is here.   I did mine a little differently because every time I outline sections with icing, you can see the outlines when I'm done.  Totally bums me out. So I did it this way: It worked for me.  And I didn't spray them with the luster spray because I forgot to buy some.  D'oh! Anyhoo, I bagged them up and I'll be sending them to school with the boy on Valentine's Day.  Because he was very excited to see Valentine cookies that weren't all sappy and pink and girly. That's all for now. Enjoy!

I was going to call this post "The Ghost of Birthday Cakes Past", but then I figured you'd expect to see more than one cake.  And I'm only showing you one cake. Anyhoo, this is the cake I made for the Boy's fifth birthday (or 5st, if you're a Cake Wrecks follower).  He wanted penguins and an igloo and a slide.  We saw a Christmas cake on Cake Central by BarbieAnnplayswithherFOOD and adapted from there. He wanted ten penguins.  No more, no less. Little igloo on top.  White cake, I think.  Nothing fancy. Sprinkled with a little "pixie dust" disco dust.  Looked very icy. Penguins sliding.  The little guy at the top of the slide was my favorite. Snowball fight! Hanging out. Building a snowman. I definitely see things I would have done differently.  I should have used more colors.  Maybe some trees, or something. I don't know what I was thinking to make the snowman's hat and scarf blue.  Should have ...

Well, it's certainly been a while since I've posted.  I have no excuses, except that it's summertime, and the boy is not in school, which means we have to do more stuff to keep him busy.  Which for us, usually just means going outside and running through the sprinkler...but it's something, anyway. So, my co-worker demanded asked that I make a cake for her son's 4th birthday.  She brought me a picture, but, again, I have no idea who made the original.  And here it is: I could have done better, if I'd had a chance to do it over, but it came out ok.  I'm not an artist, so I wasn't able to capture their expressions, but it's like enough so you know who it is.  I think.  I've never actually seen Cars.  (The original photo has a blue guy on top, but I have no idea who he is.  He has a monocle, though.) Top tier is strawberry, bottom is chocolate.  Vanilla buttercream filling and homemade chocolate marshmallow f...