Happy Birthday, Baby!

April 25th was my mom's 56th birthday!

Without anyone else at home, I've never been able to celebrate without her knowing the surprise.

This year, I got to. 

I texted her fiance asking for his help in smuggling in a Jewel Osco cake, rice krispies, marshmallows, and a decorating kit.

While they went out for dinner, I attempted this cake...My mom LOVES Westie dogs.

It came out okay for a kid, I guess...but I have much work to do.

Here's my cake...the cake is from Jewel Osco, but the dog is rice krispies and royal icing and fondant.

My mom was pleased, though!

I got up early that morning and decorated while she slept!

Then we celebrated when I got home! 

Love you Mom!

Happy Easter!

My mom and I love Spring. It's filled with pretty colors, bright beginnings of summer, and I love the sound of spring rain and thunderstorms.

Also, there's easter.

We celebrated with Church, Brunch, Eggs, and Presents!

Brunch included omelettes, apple slices, and carrot cake petit fours.

Mmm...cake...Used Martha Stewart's Carrot Tea Cake recipe and Wilton's Poured Fondant.

Then I decorated it (rather messily...) to resemble a basket of flowers.

Easter Egg time!

I love glitter. It really makes everything better.

My mom rocks. My Easter Basket was more like Christmas! Three luxury chocolate bars, each one having a higher percent cacao than the previous; I'm a DARK chocolate fan (we're talking 80% cacao here). Then there were dance sweats from my last competition, a Barbie Tote (!) and some eggs with a few dollar bills.

Love you, Mom.

PS: Tomorrow's her birthday!

First Cake - No Recipe!

Today was a Mad Scientist sort of day in the kitchen.

I've been reading BakeWise - probably should be the new Food Science textbook.

So I took lots of notes and decided to try my hand at recipe inventing.

I attempted a basic yellow cake.

It came out alright! Pretty proud of myself, actually.

Cons, however, are that it's a bit crumbly and flat...hey, it could be worse.

I was going to make another layer, so there was a filling...

The other layer sort of broke.

So I combined the buttercream with the filling for a raspberry buttercream and piped it with Royal icing.

It's for the guy at school who has fixed my computer twice now.

MILESTONES! First cake recipe invited from my own head - scrapbook. 

Hours of Donuts & A Guilty Pleasure

My two biggest guilty pleasures in life: Baking and watching TLC. Say Yes To The Dress is having a Friday night marathon - I love having a life...

On the plus side, I can cross Donuts off of my List! 

 Pretty simple recipe - I got it from another blog :)

 

The dough was tasty - but sticky...lots of flour!  

 

Frying it was actually really fun. Boiling oil is an adventure- and no burns! Yay! 

Here they are, undecorated...

 And hooray for donut clothing! Some are covered in a simple glaze; the others are more of a butter cream glaze with frosting. I didn't like the look of the nicer donuts just being in a clear glaze.

I can't wait for my mom to come home so we can taste them!

It's all for you...

My best friend comes home from vacation tomorrow.

I miss her.

She has a huge sweet tooth, so I wanted to make her a Welcome Home treat for school tomorrow.

 I started with the idea of simple truffles, piped to spell Miss You or Love You or Welcome Home or something like that.

I forgot that I'm not patient enough to wait until the batter would be firm enough to do this... 

 So plan B became a mini pie bite or tart filled with the truffle batter.

I used my grandma's amazing short pie dough recipe.  

 And made the icing... 

 The chocolate was too much and not right for this. 

So I found strawberries and made mini shortbread tarts. 

 I turned the royal icing into a whipped cream copy cat.

I don't know how...I just added ingredients. 

I think they came out very sweet :)

Can't wait to see my best friend tomorrow!