wassonc's Journal

That weekend went by way, way too quickly!

Because I am sure everyone is dying to know whether or not my cake turned out.... it did!

So I used everyone's suggestions (THANK YOU!!), and the cake only sank a little- I think I may have actually left it in the oven too long the last time as well. At any rate, the cake came out more or less perfectly.



My definition of "perfect" is most likely very different from your definition. But it was in one piece and not completely sunk in the middle.

Oh, and since we don't have any metal baking pans I wound up using our skillet that is all metal. Don't laugh, it worked. And it is way easier getting stuff out of an oven when it has a freaking handle!

So then I did the dirty frosting, fondant, and this time I did polka dots (I didn't want another lame-bow fiasco like the last time)



And then, because my friend let me borrow her tool to squeeze frosting, I did some fancy-pants outlining on the cake



Yeah- I am so ready to open my own bakery. Or not. Either way I got polka dots.

Does anyone think the cake looks like a dinosaur egg? If not, look again- it will come to you. And that would be on purpose, because I got a fun idea (from Pinterest, the place where craft addicts get their fix)I convinced the hubs that we needed these for our cake:



Honestly, once I told him he could be the T-Rex he was down with it.

Once we brought those bad boys home, I spray painted them yellow, and then we started painting them with gold glitter paint!

Hubby was actually silly enough to ask me "Do you really want glitter?". I just looked at him until he came to his senses and asked a more resonable question "Do you think one bottle will be enough?"

It's ok, he was just tired.

He even requested to help paint them!



And I think they turned out fabulous!



Oh yeah, prior to the painting I had hubby drill a hole in each one's back so we could stick a candle in there.

The final result looked like this:



For some reason I couldn't get a non-blurry picture of the whole cake, I guess my phone camera couldn't handle the pure awesome that was this birthday cake.



The T-Rex makes me giggle.

So that was the adventure of the birthday cake. It was something new, and I get to say that I had a cake with freaking glittery and gold dinosaurs on top. That is pretty cool.

And everyone loved, loved, loved the cake.

I am pretty sure the mojitos didn't have anything to do with their opinion. Like about 65% sure.

So the cake recipes were amazing and I whole-heartily recommend them.
Here is the Orange Pound Cake and Marshmellow Fondant recipe

I also would recommend the Guacamole recipe. I would also recommend tripling the batch.

I had a cook who said that my guacamole was in the top five/three that he has ever had- which is actually a really impressive feat (he loves his food). So I was thrilled. Of course I was banking on a ton of leftovers and the ability of grown men to knock back what must have been a pound of guacamole was staggering. There was only a little bit left over.

Jerks.

The Mojito drink was more or less a dud. The limeaid was awful- way too sugary. Luckily the hubs knows more about mixing drinks that I do so he took what we had an made something that was passable as a mojito. And it turns out that after a few pitchers no one cared how much like a mojito it tasted like.

Oh- quick thank you to Lindsay for the suggestion of Bacardi so there would be no hang over the next day. It worked- thank you!!!

The "Copycat Applebee's Spinach and Artichoke Dip" wasn't what I would call completely successful (it did not taste like Applebee's dip) but it wasn't terrible either. I think with some tweeking it could be a yummy recipe and it works if you have no other recipe so it was still a good dip- but it paled in comparison to the guacamole dip.

Oh, and for decorations- the pom-poms I was going to do would have taken too much tissue. Instead we bought a cheap $5 pack of scrap booking paper and made these flowers (the instructions are in Chinese but the images are good enough to follow along)



So that was my Saturday.

Yesterday I worked on stuff for my Etsy store (I swear it will open eventually).

I also ran 3.12 miles, with an average of 8 minutes 16 seconds per mile (I think it was all the sugar in my system).

And I started weight lifting.

That's right- I kept saying I would and I finally grabbed a pair of 5 lb weights and starting doing it. For about thirty minutes. Googling the exercises as I went along because I have zero clue what I am doing.

I was going to follow the entire workout here but could only get through the first five! I did manage to do two sets of each, and even though I was using really light weights I could barely do the last rep each time. Hubby said that is how it is suppose to be and I think I got a good work out but it is so sad that I couldn't even do a full routine.

Oh well, I wasn't running a mile straight either when I first started. The whole building up your tolerance is annoying.

How was everyone else's weekend?!

Things I am happy about today:
- Finally starting weight training
- donating to charity
- all the suggestions I got from everyone on here to make my party rock!
- Glittery Gold Dinosaurs
- Having everyone tell me I don't look 27 at my party when they asked how old I was (liars! But whatever, I'll take it)
- skirts
- sunny weather
- good hair days

Thank goodness it is Friday!!!

I know, everyone's journal will start with that today- but I am soooo happy that it is Friday. Had a pretty bad headache yesterday but I went home from work early and turned off all the lights and it eased up in a few hours. I also really don't feel like eating, at all. Since I barely ate anything yesterday I decided not to work out- although I did go for a walk later in the evening.

Tonight I am going to start weight lifting! This should be hilarious (and no, no pictures will be taken).

Off topic, but something amazing that I wanted to share- I found this pin on Pinterest on how to clean out the shower with no scrubbing using only vinager and the blue Dawn dish soap and since our shower needed to be cleaned I was all like "why not?" so I gave it a try.... and it works like freaking magic! We have hard water that has tons of minerals in it so not only do we get soap scum, but the minerals make it hard as heck to scrub- and this stuff cut through it like no body's business!!!

And no scrubbing. And, in case you didn't know folks, vinegar is a natural disinfectant. In one step you can have a clean, sanitary shower. *aaaahhhhh*

Yeah, I am going to clean the whole freaking bathroom with this stuff- it is epic. No more scrubbing in the bathroom for me- woo hooo!!!

Ok, enough of that.

I mentioned that I am going to open up an etsy store- well I am working on some "made to order" items (afghans) that people can order and customize, but of course I need to make a "model" so I am working on the first one. Since you guys are all amazing and looked at my disastrous images of me baking and without make-up(I should have put an R rating on that post)here is a preview of something else my nutty mind is coming up with- and as a bonus there is a cute pup in the pic!!



Sorry about the lousy coloring- I was on my way out the door to meet up with a friend for coffee and I saw him looking all cute so I whipped the phone out real quick.

He was not amused. Whatever, he gets to sleep all day while I am at work- he will get over it.

Tonight I will be baking the cake for the party tomorrow so I don't have too many things to do in order to prepare for the party. I may make the guacamole dip tonight too. We will see. Don't want to strain a muscle with all this baking... that is what the weight lifting will be for.

So tonight I have to buy a few last minute things for the party, bake the cakes, clean the apartment, do some weight lifting, drink some wine, possibly make the dip and possibly even make the decorations so I don't have to worry about that tomorrow either.

This should be fun. Oh well, if I get everything done tonight I will be able to sleep in and relax for a good portion of the day tomorrow- and since I want to go for a nice long run before the party I don't want to feel rushed.



Teehee, love Big Ang. There may be some Mob Wives on while hubs and I are running around trying to get everything ready for tomorrow.

Things I am happy about:
- $1 coffee at our local coffee shop (just found this out this morning)
- Now weekly coffee dates with my friend
- Pinterest and all the helpful cleaning tips
- sunshine
- casual Fridays at work (I love my jeans)
- finally starting to see the vision for my Etsy store taking shape

So, who thought I would be able to make a fantastic cake on the first run?

Don't feel bad- I didn't think I would be able to either. And I didn't.

It was a long day at work, and then I was caught in a pretty bad thunder storm so our first concern was whether or not the electricity was even on at our place (about one third of the town was dark). Once we found out we were ok on that front we just crossed our fingers that the flickering lights wouldn't dim permanently and went for it.

Of course, I took pictures for everyone so if you need a good laugh just scroll to the bottom and see the final product- LOL!!!

As a reminder- the cake is an orange pound cake recipe that I found online

Lets take this step by step-

Preheat oven: no problems there.

Grease and lightly flour the pan: is there a non-messy way to do this? I had flour everywhere!

Line the bottoms of the pan with parchment paper: I seriously thought the only use for this was to make homemade patterns. No joke. I never wondered why this was sold near the groceries and not the craft section. And we didn't have any anyhow so whatever. This was skipped.

Mixing the eggs and sugar- not too bad. But while my mixer was going to work (yeah, I am a non-baker who has a mixer) I realized that I had no idea how to make orange zest.

So I took a potato peeler to shave off some larger chunks of the peel. Then I took a knife and chopped until the eggs were done beating:



Does that look like zest to you? I have no idea what zest is suppose to look like.

Why do so many ingredients have to be at room temperature? The eggs were not room temperature. And I didn't have extra large- so I added an egg and they came straight from the fridge.

This is what the batter looked like when I was done:



Notice anything goofy? I didn't either.

So I put the batter in the preheated oven, and shared the beaters with hubby. And then the bowl. Yeah- we eat batter with raw eggs over here, pretty bad ass right?

OMG- this batter was YUMMY!!!



Proof that flour was everywhere. Hubby decided not to let me know about the flour on my nose until he was taking the photo. Jerk.

While this was going on I made the fondant. This was what I was expecting to be a disaster. Of course I didn't take any pictures because I was sure that I was going to have to redo it that night anyhow.

It went fine. Messy as all get out while you are waiting for it to firm up, and it took an extra pound of sugar than the recipe called for but it turn out perfectly! I was so happy.... until I took the cake out of the oven.

The middle in all the pans had sunk like the Titanic!!! No joke, it was horrible. I was going to take a picture but the middle managed to rip before I could and so hubby made me step away from it.



All the cake was in pieces.

Apparently me swearing at the cake "wasn't going to help". I prefer the saying "you never know until you try" but the cake needed to cool anyhow.

After an hour or so we went back and tried to salvage the cake.

This is what we came up with.



That is one attractive cake huh?

More importantly, we tried some of the chunks that were (still) falling off... and it was also delish! Just like the batter- it was soooooooo yummy!!!!

The fact that the cake at least tasted awesome gave us the motivation to "dirty frost" so the fondant would stick



And take the fondant out of the fridge



And realize we had enough fondant for our birthday cake. Turns out three pounds of sugar makes a ton of fondant- who knew?

And then I decided I wanted to have not one but two different colors of fondant- because if I am going to make a horrendously ugly cake I am going all out.

I added more red food color gel and looked like I had murdered someone.



And then the cake was finished:


Yeah- I tried to do a bow....


So we cut into it and chowed down!





It was actually really, really good. The fondant had no flavor so the lemon frosting I used to hold the whole darn thing together came through, and the orange flavor of the cake was not overwhelming. And the cake was so moist!! But dense. Neither hubs nor I got more than a few bites in.

I guess we just can't eat cake like we used to.

Then came the dreaded clean-up. Hubby helped a lot so it actually only took a about ten minutes- also sugar dissolves in water so that helped. After attempting to remove the fine layer of powered sugar that engulfed our kitchen we were all beat.

Marlow curled up on the bed with his girlfriend



If you look closely you can see the stitching from where I had to sew the top of her head back on because he ripped an ear off while playing with the hubs.

And since I have bombarded you with gross pictures of me covered in sugar, flour, and who-knows-what; here is a picture of me clean and exhausted, but happy overall.



With no make up- how happy are you that Instagram has filters? LOL

So now I really hope someone out there is a baker because I am not sure what went wrong with the cake... it tasted top notch but the middle sunk so much that I know I did (at least) one thing wrong.

Here is what hubs and I came up with:
- I used glass bakeware instead of metal
- The dairy ingredients were not room temp- I took them straight from the fridge
- Not enough flour... I am torn between this because looking back on it, the batter (that I didn't notice anything wrong with) did seem a little runny... but the cake was so yummy and moist and I don't want to mess with that....
- I didn't have buttermilk so I used sour cream instead, sounded like a good idea at the time and it tasted fine so I don't know if I want to change that. Also, I don't know what buttermilk is.
- I did use gluten free all-purpose flour assuming that I wouldn't have to modify the recipe any further. I think I need to do some research and make sure that assumption is correct.

Hubs thinks the problem was we didn't buy the white rum yet so we couldn't test out the mojito recipe while we were making the cake.
I agree with him on this. But I am fairly certain something else is off.

Any thoughts?

Things I am happy for:
- sleep
- showers
- electricity
- second chances on making a birthday cake that looks like cake
- not needing to make more fondant for the party
- skirts with stretchy front bands for that "fun time" of the month
- my sarcasm, there is nothing fun about this time of the month
- my buddies on here who give me advice about rum and cake *hint hint* LOL

Have a fabulous day everyone- hope my misadventure into baking gave you a chuckle!

Remember when it was yesterday and I was all like "I don't know if I want a party?"



Well, that lasted about thirty minutes after I posted it.

Why shouldn't I have a party? Most of our friends have moved away but we don't need a big party to have fun. Besides, since hubs and I share a birthday, we only get one day instead of two a year that we have a legit excuse to celebrate getting old (thanks little brother - when you turn 30 I am going to send you a pair of bifocals and some suspenders). I am only 27, hubs is 29 (already dreading his mid-life, LOL) and our pup Marlow said he wanted to play with new friends.

I think people may like our pup more than us. LOL, not really (I hope).

Thanks to Pinterest I went from "I don't want a party" to "I have the decorations and menu planned out" in about ten minutes.

We are going to keep it simple:
- Guacamole Dip
- Spinach Artichoke Dip
- Tortilla Chips for the dip (hubs requested we mix both white and yellow chips)
- Maija's Mojitos

Oh, and cake.

But not just any cake. You see- I have been watching Cake Boss with the hubs lately.... and I am now delusional enough to think that I can make an amazing and beautiful, gluten free cake...with two levels... that is decorated .... with fondant... that I am making myself.

Yeah- I am completely off my freaking rocker. But here is the game plan:
- make an Orange Pound Cake with this recipe and just sub gluten free all-purpose flour instead of the regular all-purpose flour to make it gluten free
- Use Betty Crocker Lemon frosting as filling between the layers (I wanted to make my own darn lemon filling but hubs really wanted the pre-made stuff)
- Use this recipe for the fondant

And the most important step- wine on hand for when this crazy idea backfires, blows up in my face, and people show up to our party with raw cake batter dripping off the ceiling and Marlow jacked up on the fondant that splattered all over the floor.



In order to maintain some of our sanity (LOL, JK- there is none of that in our household!!!) we are keeping the decorations uber simple with some tissue paper pom-poms that we (read: the hubs) will hang from the ceiling. Hey, if Martha Stewart can do it so can I.

And if all else fails, we have some Halloween and Xmas decorations we can throw up. Hey, I will probably be drunk off wine because of the cake anyhow so what will I care?

This won't be the healthiest birthday, but at least I will be making most of the stuff. With the exception of the icing- hubby really, really loves the Betty Crocker(what a home-wrecker)- and the marshmallows for the fondant the ingredients will largely be natural. And we need this. Both of us are feeling the stress from the trip still.

Both of us trying to find jobs across the country is just not what I would call a fun time.

Things I am happy about:
- testing out the cake and fondant recipe tonight (we will see how this goes)
- coffee, coffee, coffee
- Pinterest
- hubs, pups, friends, and family
- the internet (how did people find out about jobs in other states prior to the internet?)
- crocheting/knitting
- wine

Oh yeah- could someone recommend a good white rum for mojitos?

XOXOXO