Well, Why Not?!

I'm feeling pretty froggish today, so I'm just gonna leap!  Let me preface this by saying that the snow has me feeling a little boxed in and I'm aching for escapism right now.  Earlier I was thinking, "What's so darn great about snow?  It sucks."  Then it hit me.  Snow is totally awesome in Summer!  When you eat it!  So I searched the great interwebz for how to make Sno-Cone syrup.  It's totally easy.

Take one package of Kool-Aid, mix it with 1/2c sugar and 1/4c warm water inside something with a tightly closing lid, then shake it like crazy.  Then after the syrup is cooled, make a big snowball and pour the stuff over it.  Eat.  Repeat as necessary.  Our snow today was all powdery, so I just scooped a big bowl and patted it down.  This totally hit my sweet craving!
So then I did the dishes.  A friend brought me a whole chicken for dinner last night, and I plopped it in the crockpot with some spices.  I made a gravy out of the drippings, then served it with pretty basic rice and these awesome 40 minute bun/roll things.  SOOO yummy!  Well, anyway.  Then I didn't do the dishes until 8pm the next day, and I hate cleaning the crockpot.

I tossed all the contents into a 5 gallon pot with a few liters of water, and I am boiling it down for the stock.  I was considering making soup or stew, but I have no noodles.  What point is chicken soup without noodles?  No point, that's what.
I'm pretty much completely snowed in here, since our car isn't exactly the most snow worthy vehicle (I love my Volvo though!), so when I got a craving for sodapop I was sad.  Then I decided to make my own.  I've made ginger ale a few times and I love it.

So I made a simple syrup with 2c blueberries (frozen), 1c water, and 2c sugar.  I boiled that for a while, about 20 minutes.  I accidentally forgot about it and it boiled over (see the icky mess on my stove top?!)  I strained it once to get the berries out (saved those for pancake toppings for tomorrow breakfast), then twice through a washcloth to get all the seeds and whatnot.

Then I poured it into two-2 liter soda bottles, added 6 to 7 cups of warm water (think around 90 degrees), and 1/8t dry active yeast.  I just love feeding sugar to yeast.  My heart does a little happy dance for all my little yeast buddies who had to live in the refrigerator for so long, but now get to swim in warm water and gorge themselves on sugar.  I don't know why.  But it makes me happy, so that's cool with me!  Then I put the caps on and shook 'em up.  Now I gotta wait 2 days or so for the carbonation to build up, but I am SO excited, and it gave me something to focus on this cold cold evening!

Spiderman Cake and Cookies!

So I decided to try something new, since I do happen to love every little kind of cooking and baking.  A client asked if I could make a Spiderman cake, and of course I agreed.  Then she asked if I could make cookies for the kiddos, and of course I couldn't refuse!  I had found a super yummy sugar cookie with hard icing on Zaar for Christmas, so I decided to use that.  It's a great recipe by a woman dubbed "Kittencal".  The client dropped off the monies and things, and gave me a paper with a picture of what she was wanting, and I got to work.  But more on that later.

The cake was a Spiderman cake, as I said before.  I decided to try making it 13" by 13"...a size I don't own in bakeware!  So I made 9x13 pans, cut and pieced.  By the time I got the shape right, they were only 11" around anyway...ARGH!  I have 12" cake pans and could have not had to waste the cake!  I ended up making 3 boxes of mix, just to realize that they wouldn't have enough cake for the party!  AH!  So I made another 10" round cake and put on another layer (that's 3 layers for anyone who's counting) and that should make it much more useful.
I was really pleased with the buttercream I made.  It just seemed wonderfully consistent and creamy.  Each batch comes out a little different, even though there's the same ingredients, because of how much you let the mixer work on it.  Anyway.  I was pleased.

Another thing I liked was how the red turned out.  I have had many problems getting a good red frosting color using the Wilton No-Taste Red...it always comes out pink, no matter what I do!  I searched and scoured the interwebz for the answer, and it was...start using the pink coloring, add a little tiny bit of yellow, THEN add the red.  I can't believe it took me this long to just buckle down and research it!  I had been using a TON of the coloring gel and not even getting close.  Now, I can just use two or three big glops on a craft stick and voila!
I've also decided that I love to color frosting yellow.  It's just beautiful.
A few days ago, I got three cake orders in one day.  That's the first time that's happened to me!  As far as this week is concerned, as it stood on Wednesday, I had the Spiderman Cake on Friday, a baby shower cake on Saturday, and my Best Girl's birthday cake on Monday!  Whew!  Talk about full!  We have snow in the forecast, so the Spiderman cake may be on hold due to weather.  The baby shower has been postponed until next weekend (breathing a sigh of relief.  I would have gotten it done just fine, but now I can spend more time on the decor, since it's got moulded flowers and stuff on it).  I am super excited for Doll Baby's cake.  It's going to knock her socks off!

So, back to the cookies.  I found myself very disappointed in them. They are SO messy!  I decided to hold off on doing them so they would be as fresh as possible for the kiddos.  I tried to bake them on popsicle sticks, but the dough just got too warm when I tried to insert the sticks, it mushed the shape out of proportion, and they had to be pretty thick which changed the cookie texture.  I tried securing the sticks  with royal icing, but it just wasn't strong enough to hold up to a kid eating the cookie.  Does anyone have any tips or pointers to do this easily?

I did the red background on Thursday night (the night I baked them) and planned on doing the final decorating on Friday, the pickup date, during nap time.  If I finished them at 3pm, they would have about three or four hours to harden completely before I had to pack them up.  The client emailed to ask when she could get them (the earliest) so I said 3 and went to work, working FURIOUSLY FAST so they would have time to dry.  I didn't wait for a confirmation email...D'oh!  She didn't end up getting off work and coming over until after 7, so I could have taken my time and made these look better.  She liked them, though.  I don't know if I'll do cookies from now on because they are SO labor intensive and I'm not great at mass amounts of freehand (the nerve damage in my hands starts to act up), but they were fun anyway!  There were 31...no, wait, there were 32.  I gave one to a little boy I sit for to share with Stinkie.  They loved them.
Well, it snowed today and it's supposed to snow until tomorrow.  It's beautiful, but it makes me concerned about having all the necessary ingredients for Doll Baby's cake.  I'm not sure if her party will continue as scheduled (Monday morning), but I'm going to make it anyway so she can have a beautiful cake like I promised her.
Long days and pleasant nights, everyone!

Happy New Year!

This is just a little post to memorialize the past year for me.  I have been so thankful for all the changes in my life, and all the obstacles, and all the wonderful times.  I just wanted to take a moment and say that, from the bottom of my heart, I love ALL my family.  Regardless of hard times, personality conflicts, and stressful incidents, you are my support and light.  Thank you!