Teal Ombre Cake

I'm not superstitious but I could become that way as I think there is cloud of jinx hovering over me lately.  Things that I have made or done the same way for years, decades even, are suddenly not producing the expected results.

My great-niece's favorite color is currently teal. I had seen many ombre cakes on Pinterest and decided to make a four layer cake for the family birthday celebration. One Pinterest source used white layer cake mix and baked five thin 8" layers but didn't mention how long she baked them. I decided to go with four shades of teal and use two boxes of white cake mix. My plan was to trim off as much of each layer as I felt was necessary to create flat layers and not have a giant cake that might have layers slide in transporting the cake to the party.

When it comes to cake mixes, I am a fan of Duncan Hines but when I shopped, the store didn't have Duncan Hines white, I bought Betty Crocker mixes instead. Here are the tinted batters in the pans. Easy peasy so far....

I have had concerns lately that my oven may not be working properly. Chocolate chips cookies, a recipe I've been using since I was 15, are suddenly not coming out routinely with the same quality. Is it me? The oven? Changes in the make up of ingredients ?

I used an oven thermometer and made certain that 350* was truly 350* when I put the pans in. I should have photographed the layers on the cooling racks but I was too dismayed to think of that. I have never had such flat layers in all my years of baking. I had been expecting to trim almost half of each layer, but there really wasn't much to trim, just the slight crowning that is typical. Here are the trimmed parts on a plate, showing the baked colors.

The cake tasted ok, but before I trimmed and tasted, I decided that I needed a backup cake. I would make a Snickers cake, chopped Snickers being a garnish on the frosted cake.

I know for a fact that I have made a cake by that name before, but I couldn't find the original source. I printed one that I assumed was the same and began to add ingredients to the bowl. The following mistake was completely my fault. I am accustomed to recipes putting the ingredients in a list followed by paragraphs of mixing and baking directions. This recipe had everything in paragraph form. I goofed and added 1 cup of oil instead of 1/2 cup. Since you can't take oil out of the mix, I dumped that, went to the store for another chocolate cake mix and pudding mix. Worried about success and time running out, I bought canned frosting too.

A few minutes before the minimum baking time on the chocolate cake, I looked in the oven window and said Holy Expletive! Bill said uh-oh and came to see what was wrong now. The cake layers were huge! I'm surprised they hadn't spilled over the sides of the pans. They took longer to bake than expected, but eventually the toothpick test showed them to be done and they went to the cooling rack for ten minutes.

I began making buttercream icing for the first cake, another recipe I've been using forever. The process wasn't going smoothly but it would be good between the layers and with the remainder of this batch thinned, it would be good for a crumb coat. The timer signaled it was time to take the chocolate cakes out of their pans. Holy Expletive again...the layers now had craters instead of mountains!

This photo doesn't do justice to the depth of the craters

Ready to cry and announcing that I was D.O.N.E. making cakes for family parties, I asked Bill to go the bakery for me. He bought this cake while I soldiered on with icing the ombre cake.

By now I was mentally using language I rarely utter out loud and decided that the look I was going to attempt on the first cake was out of the question. I opened up the cans of frosting and began tinting in four bowls. Canned frosting doesn't pipe well so I just painted bands of color on with a small spatula and blended the lines of color to achieve this:

Not what I had in mind, but not atrocious. How's that for a rousing endorsement?

I wish I could show you the birthday candles that I bought and used but Picasa is another thing not working as expected. I used to be able to capture a still shot from a video but Picasa isn't showing the videos from my camera. The candles were each a different color and they flame they produced matched the color of the wax. Really cool, especially on the bakery's colorful cake!

Here is the cut view of the ombre cake which the birthday girl loved.

All's well that ends well for the birthday event, but I am still left wondering why the layers baked so flat, what went wrong with the chocolate cake (I'll look for another version of the recipe and compare ingredients and instructions) and why Picasa is giving me fits.

If you've experienced any of these problems and have suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Come on over for coffee and we'll see what a sunken Snicker-less cake tastes like. If it is awful, we can eat the unopened bag of candy.

Floundering in February

What a fishy post title, eh?

I seem to be floundering (Definition: Struggle mentally; show or feel great confusion: "she floundered, not knowing quite what to say") when it comes to blogging lately.

I've had spurts of being incredibly busy amid bouts of lethargy, with an occasional whopper of a headache waylaying plans to do much of anything that wasn't vital to surviving the day. The headaches are barometer related. I live in a house, not out in the elements, but barometric pressure seeps in through the keyholes I guess.

Not having much to say doesn't make me feel guilty as it once did. Obviously I can say a lot about nothing...and I'm doing that right now! I do feel badly that I've neglected some of my favorite bloggers though. I hope to rectify that this week but today seems to be slipping away from me.

The only thing blog-worthy that I have to share is that I made a cake and mini cupcakes for a great nephew's birthday party yesterday. Josh is 8 now. Every birthday I get the honor of making birthday cakes for him and his sister. They tell me what they'd like and I try to accommodate them. Some times I think they are purposely challenging me but I've managed so far.

What would an 8 year old boy want on his cake this year? I've done football themes twice, a bicycle and a skateboard in recent years. Would it be another sports theme? Yes, sort of. He wanted the Under Armour logo.

Huh?

If you aren't aware, Under Armour is the name of a line of athletic clothing. I don't think I am infringing on any copyrights because the cake was made for personal use.

I wasn't sure how much cake would be needed so I made a chocolate 13x9 cake and yellow mini cupcakes.

Packed and ready to be transported to the party

 

Cupcakes in place and the cake ablaze while we all sang

 

If anyone is wondering how I accomplished this, I found the U A logo online, placed it into a Word document, narrowed the page margins as far as I could go and enlarged the image as much as I could to fit and print in landscape orientation. 

With a crumb coat of frosting on the cake, I placed the cut out logo and traced it with a toothpick, then began filling in the background and sides of the cake with plain butter cream stars. I tinted icing brown for the logo and used a slightly smaller tip. Brown isn't my favorite color to tint icing, but I thought going for the opposite of the cupcakes was a good idea.

The white letters on the cupcakes were done with white candy melts and an alphabet candy mold. The small logos were the same image scaled down to an inch wide and repeated multiple times in Word. I printed the page, placed wax paper over it and piped the logos with the same white candy melts and a small decorator tip.

I've had that alphabet candy mold for decades and it is the most used mold I own. Kids love seeing their name on a cake and being able to eat it. I need to remember to make a few extra letters the next time as siblings and cousins like to at least find the first letter of their name and claim it. There are no E's in Happy Birthday Joshua but he does have a cousin whose name begins with an E, and how could I forget C for my favorite redhead, Colton?

Actually, I didn't forget my grandson. I had plenty of yellow cake batter so I used an old Wilton singles pan in the shape of Winnie the Pooh's head. Colton got this as surprise. Size-wise, I'd say this is about 6" at the widest point, maybe two cupcakes worth of batter.

I don't want to leave you with baited breath, waiting for me to perch my bass on my computer chair and compose another post so I will tell you that I am clamming up for today. Just for the halibut though, tuna in tomorrow and see if I'm still floundering.

 

Nuts!

Are the holidays making you nuts yet?

Did shopping on Black Friday drive you nuts or were you like me and didn't venture out among them (them, being those...you know...nuts)?

Has decorating for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever your December holiday is started yet and either made you crazy with tangled light strands or crazed because it past Black Friday Thanksgiving and you haven't decorated yet? You slackers!

Did your dryer stop working the day before the holiday, leaving you with a load of wet towels? That would have made me nuts but fortunately both sons live nearby and the one who was here when I had my conniption fit stated the problem took the load home to dry at his house.

I haven't done any shopping yet, the projects that will become gifts aren't complete yet, the dryer has been repaired, and you know what? If you don't listen to advertisers, it isn't time to panic yet. Ahhhh.....

Take a breather and watch this

It has nothing to do with holiday madness but might make you smile. If nothing else, it is a short trip down movie (and some TV) memory lane.

If you still feel nuts, or want to hint to someone else that they are nuts, or just need an easy, edible nutty treat, make these as I did for Black Friday Eve, a.k.a. Thanksgiving.

They are cute by themselves, a tasty bite sized combo of peanut butter and chocolate.

And they looked cute surrounding a chocolate Bundt cake.

If you don't follow Pinterest and therefore haven't seen them 173 times, they are made with Nutter Butter Bites (cookies that come in a bag), Hershey Kisses and mini chocolate chips and a bit of melted chocolate to hold the Kiss and chip onto the cookie.

 

Hubby is talking about getting the Christmas stuff down from the attic this afternoon. Maybe I spoke too early about not feeling nuts yet. I need to turn on some tunes and get into the spirit, Gangnam style...talk about nuts!!!

My daughter-in-law (Kim) and I had our second and last class with the instructor from the gourmet apple class.  Click here for that blog entry Eighteen people in one crowded room and only one microwave for melting chocolate was not a good set up.

Here we have a snowman and a chocolate spoon for your coffee.

The snowman might be okay for kids, but isn't something we will eat nor is it that attractive.  Using Nerds for the facial features is awkward because they are small and I don't like that they aren't uniform in size. If I were going to make these again, I would use melted dark chocolate and add the features, or use an edible marking pen.

The spoon as is, is just lame in my opinion.

The instructor really thought this was La-di-dah fancy. One Twinkie is cut on an angle and placed on either side of a whole Twinkie. Canned frosting was used and a "Spoon-fork from Taco Bell" (direct quote from her directions) is to be used to make it look like a log.

It would look more like a traditional Yule log with only one limb off the main log, and it needs to be smaller. This almost looks like back to back parentheses to me )(   A friend delicately pointed out that it reminded her of something that happens when she walks her dog. 

I am not a fan of spearmint gum drops because the flavor is over powering so I would not use them for holly leaves, and the red hots she gave us were too big to look nice. I would use red and green frosting to make the holly leaves and berries, but in reality, I won't be making this again. It cannot easily be picked off the wax paper and transferred to a plate. 

Snowball anyone?

Setting a chocolate covered round object on paper to dry results in a flat edge. This was almost unavoidable last night. There was barely enough room to work much less have a rack for the snowballs.  I would have liked these as a kid, but the confectioners sugar-butter-peanut butter center was achingly sweet to me.

How about some mice?

Cute idea, but I don't like the corn flake ears. The original idea with almonds is cuter in my opinion.

She wanted the same holly berry and leaves on the side of the mouse. Kim tried one. It was huge compared to the mouse and just not attractive. Here is that idea done with piping gel.

The Oreos are were soft the following morning. They were in a covered container with the Twinkie log. I don't know if splitting the Oreo open caused that or if the frosting on the Twinkie was too much moisture in the container. If I felt that had to go on a cookie platform, a chocolate covered graham cracker might hold up better, but I think they are cuter just by themselves.

I may sound overly critical but for what we paid on the class, not to mention supplies, this was disappointing. We were each told to bring 15 Oreos, 15 Hershey Kisses, 15 Maraschino cherries and  3 T. of butter. I bought supplies for both Kim and myself, therefore doubled everything. We used a total of 16 items between the two of us and only half of the butter. Do I sound irritated that the supply list was incorrect? I am.

Last month, in the caramel and chocolate apple class, she told us that chocolate would not adhere to an apple without the caramel. I took her word for it. Kim made 15 apples this week for her co-workers without the caramel and they turned out just great. They were much easier to slice and eat, and were pleasantly sweet as opposed to the caramel ones which were too much.

She told us last night to sift confectioners sugar on the Twinkie logs to look like snow. Not a good idea.... You can do that just before serving, but not in advance. The sugar will be absorbed into the frosting. When I asked her about this happening, she said she didn't think that would happen. Huh? Oh yeah, she's a real professional... Not.

Kim and I did have fun just being together, but there is no way we would take another class at this location or from this instructor.

Gourmet apples and pears

My daughter-in-law and I went to a class last night called "Gourmet apples and pears". We learned why caramel wraps are not only easier but work better than unwrapping individual caramels, why to use products called candy melts, and what to do if melting chocolate or peanut butter chips instead of the melts. Some of this I knew, but I wasn't aware of the caramel wraps.

I can't recall the name of one of the all the sources for gourmet apples, but one that I know from QVC features large apples that come with a bow on the stick and are attractively packaged, but at $22.95 per apple (price from the company's website) before shipping ($10.95 to my area, not express delivery), the apples should feed a family and the stick should gold!

 

No offense to this company. I know there are employees to pay, overhead, insurance and so on. The business isn't to blame because someone would pay $33.90 for ONE apple.

 

Apples are expensive this year because the crop was hit hard by odd weather here in Michigan. Even with a variety of toppings and the non-food supplies needed for this class already on hand, and not counting the cost of the class itself, the apples and pears came to around $5 each. 

I've never been good at figuring out what to charge to make a profit versus what I am willing to pay for something. This is why I don't make and sell anything.

 

Enough on that, here are Kim's and my results. She completely covered her fruit in chocolate, I left the upper parts bare, exposing the caramel. That look is a choice, but it was also laziness on my part. There were only 2 microwaves for the whole class to use, and they weren't in the room we used. If I make them again, I will take more time and care at home.

 

 

Here are views of some of the other student's results. Wow!

 

Now that hubby, grandson and I have shared one apple, I will say that even the medium size apple that I bought became too much for one person to eat. I like all the ingredients involved, but it really is too much and the caramel is sticky-chewy. Hubby commented it would not be good for anyone with dental problems.

 

As pretty as these are for presentation, if I were to make fruit with chocolate and caramel for my family as a dessert, I would slice the apples, pat them dry (chocolate won't adhere to water or fruit juice which is why caramel is used before chocolate), arrange them on a serving plate or individual dessert dishes, and then drizzle melted chocolate and caramel sauce (ice cream topping in a jar) over the slices. Bite per bite, the flavors would all be there and it would be easier to eat.

 

 

Grandson versus the cupcake

Yesterday I left Pinterest alone long enough to make something I saw on Pinterest, these cupcakes:

I used full size Nilla wafers (Nabisco) cut in half for the ears. I think the mini wafers would have been a better choice. Live and learn. The face/snout is a cookie with an edge sliced off. Eyes, nostrils and mouth and black and red decorating gels.

 

Did they please His Highness, the Prince of Sweetness?



Why yes, yes they did. The little cannibal ate the vanilla wafers first, then dug into the chocolate.

Whadya mean I can only have one?!

Did someone say Easter eggs?

Colton was probably trying to see around Mommy while she was taking this picture at their house, but he did enjoy the barely hidden eggs here at Grandma's. Figuring he had lots of candy from E. Bunny at home this morning and another good share at his other grandparents at brunch (yes, he actually does have other grandparents. Quite noble of me to share him, don't you think?), I was practical (not easy to do!) and only put one small candy in each of six plastic eggs.

He hadn't reached this one yet when he spotted the next one. Next year is really going to be fun for me for him!

The Easter Bunny had been in touch with me two weeks ago and asked if I could help out with a trip to Target. Happy to oblige, I picked out monkey themed rubber boots, a matching hat, and a watering can.

(Don't worry, my son's face doesn't always look like it does in this picture)

Here we have Junior Mr GQ meets Junior Backyard Gardener.

After he changed from his business suit to business casual look, Grandpa took him outside to test the boots.

 This is how you water flowers that haven't sprouted yet.

Hey Grandpa! Wait up!

Last year I attempted dyeing eggs with Kool Aid. Click here for those results. This year I used gel food coloring (cake and candy decorator's supplies) and really liked the shades. 

I saw so many cute dessert ideas this year but decided not to bake anything because of having candy in the house and knowing that none of us were going to want dessert after a big meal. I did make these, mainly because I had everything in the house to make them and thought they were cute.

The pretzel creations directions are here and are from The Sugar Buzz Pantry.

The bunny pops directions were found here at The Decorated Cookie.

I hope your Easter (if you celebrate) was as sweet as mine. After seeing the first pictures, you know I'm not talking about chocolate.

Step right up!

First, a bit of seriousness:   Whatever made me sick in Florida reared its ugly head and attacked me again early this week. I knew it wasn't killing me, but it sure got in some hefty kicks even after I was down. Feeling much better today, I pause to consider all who live with pain on a daily basis, or with chronic illness that prevents them from living the life they'd like to live. I was never without compassion but definitely caught up in my own world that usually only has minor bumps in the road. To those who battle discomfort daily, I both salute your courage and strength, and pray for relief and cures.

Now, onto the fun! Are you ready to attend a Big Top Birthday Party? 

Mommy found this invitation in an Etsy shop. She purchased the download and was able to enter pertinent info about the date, time, phone number to RSVP, etc, all in the same font before printing the invitations, two to a page.

Mommy made this cake, based on directions she found online. It was four 9" layers, alternating chocolate and yellow cake. The popcorn on top and on the tray is actually mini marshmallows. Most had a snip or two made to make them look like popped kernels.The yellow was provided by spray on food coloring, lightly sprayed into a bag of the marshmallows and slightly shaken to unevenly distribute the color. It really did look like butter.

Red and white streamers draped from the basement rafters suggested the big top. Grandpa was pretending to adjust chairs down at that end, but the snacks are to his left. We can't see his left hand, can we? Hmmmmm.

Freshly popped popcorn! Mmmmmmm! Besides other party appetizers, bowls of jelly belly candies and bowls of circus peanuts were throughout the basement. 

The party was for family and close family friends. The young guests each got a take home box with a fake mustache, wax lips, and clown nose among other prizes. 

 Grandpa got some one on one time with the guest of honor before the other circus patrons arrived.

Colton didn't want to let go of his new best friend, Buzz Lightyear.

Sort of looks likes Christmas, doesn't it?

Uh-oh Buzz, this plane is pretty cool. You might not be the favorite toy anymore...just ask Woody how that feels!

 Happy Birthday to the light of many lives, our very own Colton! 

With love from the Carny's Strong Man and the Girl on the Flying Trapeze!