Birthday Cakes!

Long story short, I was going through my 'baked goods' folder on flickr and fell in love again with some of the cakes I've done. Consider this a "best of" list. Post for wedding cakes to follow.

The inside

The outside. Seriously probably one of the coolest cakes I've done. I think I might do it again for the baby's birthday.

This is marshmallow fondant and the black was hand painted with watered down coloring gel.

Seeing how it's for my sister, I'm 99.8% sure this cake was lemon.

One of my husbands coworkers asked if I could make this cake. Apparently his wife had tried twice and failed miserably both times. I'm not positive of the cake flavor but it's covered in chocolate ganache and the mouth and eyes are marshmallow fondant.

This really isn't a birthday cake, it was a just for fun cake. Every year my sister does a christmas wrapping party where you just sit around, gab and wrap your christmas presents. I'm fairly sure the cake was chocolate. I do remember it being way too much cake.

I made this for someones 60th birthday, I believe. The cake was lemon and there was a smaller one that was stacked on top. It's hard to tell in the photo but it's a subtle ombre effect in the color, maybe a little too subtle.

For her 4th birthday my niece asked me to make her a Frozen cake. Specifically an Anna cake. I remember my mom making us barbie birthday cakes growing up and we LOVED them. Unfortunately, someone in our family had some pretty serious medical issues around the same time as the party so I didn't get to dedicate as much time as I wanted to in decorating it. The cake was vanilla, vanilla frosting with some strawberry preserves in the layers. The cake itself was dyed BRIGHT PINK (upon request, of course). Funny story, at her party we had to go around cake eating time and the birthday girl asked if she could give my baby a kiss before we left. So sweet, right? So I held the baby down to her level and right as she planted the sweetest kiss on his cheek, he grabbed a fist full of her pink cake right off of her plate. 

Macaron disaster of 2014

Ok, so the title might be a little dramatic. For thanksgiving I decided to make some lemon macarons because my sister loves all things lemon and it was super easy. I put a little lemon zest in the actual macarons and the filling was lemon curd with a circle of white chocolate to keep it from gushing out. They were quite tasty and successful. I bake each year for christmas gifts for the husband to hand out at work. Usually it's easy; caramel corn, quick breads, candied nuts, etc. Since the macarons were so easy to the first time and people are generally impressed by them, I decided to make them for this years gift. Since they were most likely going to sit on peoples desks and not be refrigerated, I decided on chocolate macaron with ganache filling and a gingerbread macaron with a caramel filling. The first batch of chocolate macarons went fine, they were beautiful. I made some caramel with sweetened condensed milk in the oven and it was beautiful. It all started to go downhill with the first batch of gingerbread. The tops cracked and the feet weren't too big so I scrapped them and decided to start again. The day before the husband wanted to hand them out. Ugh. The second batch turned out worse, cracks everywhere and virtually no feet. I moved ahead and made a second batch of chocolate since the yield on the first wasn't enough. I don't even know what happened but they were flat, full of bubbles, just all around terrible. At this point I lost my composure. I wanted to scrap the entire idea but I had spent days on this already. I stepped away, went to the store to get more almonds and came back and tried to be very precise in making the 3rd batch of chocolate. Again, more cracks and minimal feet. I was over it so I assembled and packaged all the macarons and decided to call them "meringue cookies" because it was just downright embarrassing to call them macarons. Lesson learned about being cocky in the kitchen. Also, making sandwich cookies for 15 people means you'll be making too many cookies.

Happy Birthday Cousin!

Today is my nieces 1st birthday. Having an older sister, I knew that she didn't really need anything so I went the crafty route. I decided to make a quiet book. Mostly used to keep kids quiet in church, but I thought it would also be helpful for appointments and such when little ones seems especially squirmy. Don't let the simplicity fool you, these things take time! I doubled up and made each page twice, one for cousin and another for baby E since his birthday isn't too far off. Sewing 18 cupcake cups, 18 pieces of velcro to the tops of the cupcakes and the corresponding piece onto the page...it was a lot. There were little pieces of felt everywhere and the husband was quite happy when I finished. I actually planned on 2 more pages but my patience ran out and we can always add to them down the line. Some of the pages have pieces that are a little small for a 1 year old to play with but I figured that her 4 year old sister could enjoy them and pages can easily be removed and stashed away. I think my favorite page is the apples.

Under each shape is a foam animal sticker.

The water is divided into pockets so you can stuff the fish in. The ribbon to the side of the hair is for hair clips and whatnot.

I also made her a flying squirrel using the below pattern. I made a tester one for baby E which he didn't really care for but I know that cousin is way more into squishy things. And by "is way more into" I mean that she likes to bite and suck and anything squishy.
http://wildolive.blogspot.com/2014/09/guest-project-abby-glassenbergs-flying.html?spref=pi

HTV and more cameo love

Historically I've been the freezer paper queen when it came to making shirts. But after the smashing failure of my beehive shirt, I figured that there had to be a better way. I started looking into vinyl and thought that vinyl might make a better stencil and then I realized that duh, I can just get heat transfer vinyl and then I wouldn't have to deal with paint at all! I got white, black and 2 glitter vinyls in blue and copper. I'm not a glitter person but I figured that it would be good for making stuff for the cousins. 

Anyway, here is my trial run. We call baby E the billy goat baby because he tries to eat anything that he can get his mouth on. He specifically likes to suck on our jeans which is pretty gross. At thanksgiving the cousins were showing off their turkey shirts and they were pretty surprised and confused when I unzipped the babies jacket and he had a goat on his shirt. It was pretty funny. The image is fairly detailed and worked out great! It's been through the wash half a dozen times and still has held up. Success! 

Diaper bag

I knew it would happen, but I fought it for a long time. Having kids means becoming a pack mule and hauling around your entire house in a bag. I was using a Vera Bradley bag but the handles are too short for me so it never stayed on my shoulder. Then I started using a reusable fabric shopping bag that I got in Japan but it was just one giant bag where it was impossible to find anything.  Eventually I got to the point where I was carrying my wallet (wristlet actually), had a binky in my front pocket and a burper tucked into the band of my pants, phone and car keys in the back pockets. Pretty ridiculous.

For my birthday my sister gave me some fabric that I've been lusting over. I put them in my craft room and would just lovingly gaze at them. I wanted to just cherish and pet the fabric until the end of time but that was just silly so I decided to make myself a "diaper" bag. The blue fabric is from Joanns and it's a heavier almost canvas and the lining is a mustard yellow that I got from Hobby Lobby.
I used the below pattern. Overall I'm pretty happy with the bag with the exception that the back pocket is too big and I'm going to put a snap on the top so it doesn't flop open all the time and you sew the handles directly to the inside of the bag which seems a little tacky after going through all of the effort of making a lining and everything. I also extended the straps by maybe 2-3" and they're a tad too thick, it makes it easier to turn them inside when making the bag but overall the thick bands feel a little "homemade" in my mind. The bag is large and in charge and organized.
http://www.make-baby-stuff.com/free-diaper-bag-pattern.html

Front

Back

The flower fabric is below. It's a medium weight, between a quilting cotton and a canvas. If you love it, buy it, it's discontinued. 

http://www.hawthornethreads.com/fabric/designer/joel_dewberry/notting_hill_sateen/primrose_in_midnight

The pinterest trap

Before attempting to make cupcakes for a friend (see below), I had pinned a recipe for lemon pull apart bread that looked AMAZING. I decided to give it a go. First I nearly left out the eggs which means that I added them later in the game and while it wasn't a deal killer, it was pretty annoying. Secondly, I didn't roll out the dough thin enough. I have a habit of going too thin and making life difficult for myself so I went the opposite direction. I feared that the pieces were too thick and would be dry so I decided not to give it to the friend, I have a reputation to protect after all. I "sampled" the loaf and it really wasn't bad. In fact I had to toss it in order to keep myself from "sampling" the entire thing. It is quite pretty and doesn't taste bad but I just don't think it's worth all the effort.
http://www.barbarabakes.com/2012/10/lemon-pull-apart-bread-a-giveaway/

It was the husbands birthday this week. His favorite thing is breakfast, french toast specifically. There is a french bakery downtown that makes the most amazing cinnamon bread but I didn't want to bother with it since it was around Halloween and all so I decided that I would bake some myself. Bread is a huge pain in the butt. Mixing it is nothing but I started at 6:15pm and didn't pull the loaf out of the oven until 9:30pm and that was with a cheat in the rising process! It turned out well, it was beautiful and tasty but didn't touch the bread from the bakery. Wahhh wahhhh. If you're in the mood to spend the day watching bread rise, this might be a good recipe for you.
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/08/homemade-cinnamon-bread/

Imperfection

I would hate to present the image that everything I do turns out well so I'm proud to share some of my recent failures. This is a shirt I thought of; get it....Utah..beehive..all things bee. I had intended to put the name of our furniture blog on it but it turned out so crappy that I don't want to associate the two. The paint bled under the freezer paper and getting a bright color on top of a dark color was also a poor decision. I was able to touch it up that it's not an outright embarrassment but yeah, a few lessons learned on this one. 

While visiting a friend he presented a box of baby clothes to go through. It was odd because he has no kids but once I got to it, I noticed that it was all 80's clothing. Sweeeet! As a form of payment I offered to make him cupcakes. Wanting to try something new and knowing that he loves coffee, I fiddled with my chocolate cake recipe and replace the water with espresso. Obviously something went wrong. I was using a new setting on the oven, I overfilled the cups and I think that the coffee messed up the chemistry of the batter. As if it's not annoying enough to toss out 2 dozen cupcakes but I also had to scrape the overflow off the cupcake tins. Today I made a recipe specifically for coffee cupcakes and they turned out lovely.