Wes' Chocolate Guinness Birthday Cake

This year for Wes' birthday, I decided to try out a chocolate Guinness cake.  Wes likes beer, and it sounds manly right?  

I found this recipe online, and decided to give it a try.  

The result was delicious.  One of the moistest chocolate cakes I've ever made.  A slightly bitter hint of Guiness, but was evevened out nicely by the sweet cream cheese frosting.  

This recipe was giant.  I didn't want one giant cake, so I made 12 cupcakes and 4 six inch rounds.  We ate one of them to sample, then I froze the rest for our different celebrations.  We took the cupcakes to the beach for Wes' dinner and bonfire, and then I made a small 3 layer cake for our Halloween family dinner.  I forgot to take a picture of the cupcakes, but they were simply decorated and delicious.  For the cake, I tried out a "naked" cake for the first time.  Easy and beautiful.  Here are the pics!

Derek's Birthday Cake

We were lucky enough to be the destination spot for Jenn and Derek's vacation spot this summer.  And Derek's birthday was a few days before, so we took the oppurtunity to make a nice dinner and a birthday cake for him.  Per his request he got yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

I got to try out my new favorite yellow cake recipe, from Bakerella, combined with the Hershey's' chocolate frosting number two.   I did a simple swirl with the icing, instructions found here, but I did not do the ombre color.  I still need to try that out, but I'm nervous cause you will only have one shot at the swirl.  I did this one a couple times to get it right, which works fine with one color.

So here was the delicious and beautiful result.  Simple, but great.

And we were lucky enough to have a few extra cupcakes for a snack.  

Yum!  And Happy Birthday Derek!

Chicka chicka boom boom cake

This year, Emeline had a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom party.  It was lots of fun to decorate the house with letters, have a coconut hunt, and have a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom story time.  But I had the most fun and worked the hardest on the cake.

I decided to cover a cake with fondant, and then put some fondant cutouts on top to match the book cover. I hadn't covered a cake in fondant since my fondant class, so I needed some practice.  I also decided to try my hand at marshmallow fondant and try out a new chocolate cake recipe.

My first try at the marshmallow fondant was a big sticky mess.  The following you tube video was super helpful.  I should have watched it first.

So to practice, I made a couple of little cakes.  I covered one with fondant, and made some really quick and ugly cutouts and a border.

Then I just frosted one plain and put cut outs on that.  I wanted to test out a back up plan in case my fondant covering skills didn't cut it.

As you can see, the fondant one looks much smoother, so I decided to go with that technique.  Please disregard the ugly cutouts.  I basically just slopped those on there to test it out, but most of this was to practice the fondant covering and doing a nice smooth butter cream base and compare the two.

A few things I learned....

• The border looked kinda funky with just the holes poked, so I planned to do them with inlays to better match the book.
• When I covered the cake with fondant, I cut it a little above the bottom thinking the border would cover this.  With the holes, it looked kinda silly.
• The border was hard to place without cutting, so I needed to come up with a better method for this.  Wes suggested putting in on parchment and using that to carry it and press it on.  This worked really well on the final cake.
• The fondant cutouts were too thick and sticky, so I made sure they were not as moist and rolled thinner for the final version.
• And finally, like all the marshmallow fondant tutorials say, it is MUCH easier to dye the fondant when the marshmallows are still melted.  I did this for the big piece that covered the cake, but I dyed the smaller pieces individually so I didn't have to make each color its own batch.

Ok, so here is how the actual cake assembly went.  Here is my chocolate cake dirty iced with chocolate frosting.  I made it as smooth as possible so the fondant would be smooth.  I worked really hard on this!

Here are the cut outs ready to go.  Much thinner this time and more carefully cut.

Because I have so little time during the day to do these kinds of projects, did everything in steps in the evening after bed time.  Fondant making one night.  Fondant dying one night.  Baking one night, and one final night for assembly.  By the time I was ready to put on the fondant it had dried out and was really hard to roll out.  It would be much better done the day after.  So I had to get Wes and his brute strength involved to help me roll it smooth. I also should have made a larger batch for a tall 3 layer cake.

Here is is all covered with some of the cut outs.

And finally with the last of the cutouts and the border.

Here's a side view.  Not completely smooth, I think mostly because the fondant had to be stretched really thin to make it big enough.  More fondant next time.  The border looks good, but hard to get perfectly straight.  Inlays much better than the practice run.

And here is the final picture with the cake displayed next to the book.  I was very happy with how it turned out, and it was a hit!

Amy's Rose Cake

Congrats to my cousin Amy on graduating from SFSU this weekend.  I had the honor of baking her graduation cake.

I chose a carrot cake since this is one of her, and my family's favorites.  When I was prepping for Emeline's first birthday, I experimented with a variety of carrot cake recipes, and I found my favorite was this one.  Now that is my go to carrot cake recipe whenever it is requested.  It is rich, moist, and has simple flavors.

Amy's middle name is Rose, and she loves oranges and roses, and she's a designer, so I had to something artsy and fun for her.  I thought I'd try an orange rose ombre design.   I watched these two you tube videos, chatted with my baker friend Debbie, and then after a little practicing before hand, I gave it a try.

Here is my filled cake:

Then I dirty iced it with the ombre colors.

Here are the two orange layers.

And then the final white/cream top.

I sprinkled it with pearl dust, but I'm not sure if you can tell from these photos.

I was very happy with the result.  I wasn't sure if I should use a 1M tip or a 2D.  I did my practice with the 1M and it was kinda sloppy, so I just went for it with the 2D on the cake, and it was so much better.  Since I had to make the plain white icing first to fill the cake with, it was getting soft, so I put it in the fridge then whipped it up again before I did the top layer, but that made the consistency kind of funny so the roses on top don't look as smooth as the orange layers.  But overall I was really happy with my first attempt at this technique!  I should have used the real camera for some better photos :)

Thanks Amy for letting me make your cake!

Reflections

Views from a retreat to remember my time to reflect.

A day in the life & some reflections

I've been reading a few mom bloggers who have done this "day in the life" thing.  You basically write down every little thing you do for the day, whenever you can remember.  It seems like it's validating for stay at home moms to realize exactly why they feel so busy and worn out all the time.  But one blogger mentioned she did it to remember what life is like at this time.  I realize how I can barely remember what my life was like when E was a baby, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I think it will also be cool to try to do this every month or so (we'll see if that actually happens...) to help give me perspective about how things change and get easier.  My problems now will be gone and new ones will be here next month.

So here goes.  I hope it's not TMI.  And I have some reflections at the end.

*****
7:00am - Hear "It's green papa!!" shout/cried from E's room.  She just got a new toddler clock to help her stay in bed til it turns green.  Day one, she still woke up the night before, but she did stay in bed til 7.  Too bad she was an alarm clock for the whole house, waking K (who was up a bunch at night and hardly napped yesterday).  Ugh.  Wes gets up with E, I lay with K hoping she will go back to sleep.  She doesn't.  I text Wes something sad/angry about wanting to sleep more, and he comes to get K so I can sleep.

8:15  Have tossed alone in bed for while.  Decide to get up.  E is eating breakfast, Wes hands me the baby food he just prepped for K.  My turn to take over and he goes to work.

8:20 - Get myself some cereal and coffee and try to get kids fed.  K is already exhausted from being up so early.  But I doubt she'll nap.

9:00 - Took 40 min to get everyone pooped, pottied, and changed, now time for a shower.  Emeline is refusing to join me in the shower, so I whip up some soap bath paint to lure her to join me in the shower, rather than turn on the TV.

9:20 - I get out of the shower, and let E keep painting.  K is freaking out, hungry, and exhausted.  I get dressed quickly and attempt to let K nurse and nap.  No dice, as usual, asleep nursing, but wont be put in crib.

9:30 - I decide to leave K in the crib so I can tidy up before our playdate arrives. I buzz around pick up random unsightliness.  I know our friends wont care, but it makes me feel better.

9:45 - Get E out of the shower, get her rinsed, dried, and dressed.  K still not sleeping, get her up and set her with some toys.  Friends text and tell us they are on their way.  I continue to buzz about picking up stuff, doing a few dishes.

10:00 - Friends arrive!  Yay! Adults talk, kids play, Kate is tired and unhappy.  After a while we make lunch to go and walk to the park so K can nap in the ergo.  Takes a while to do all this, no idea what time we actually make it to the park. K takes a very short nap while we walk.

11:45 - Kids are getting whiny.  They need lunch.  Feed kids the packed food. Nurse K.  Big kids eat and finish, wipe them all down.  Big kids go play, try to feed K some apple sauce.  Takes a while.  E needs to potty.  Ask friend to watch K, while I run the 100 yards with E to the potty.  We make it!  Potty success.  More park play.

12:45pm - Chat with Wes on phone.  He's arranged for gardeners to come today and clean up.  They say they will have lunch and they come back to get started.  We've been trying to schedule this for weeks! The yard has been out of control for too long, and there's no way we can do it ourselves at this point. Victory is ours!

1:00 - Kids are cranky.  Finish swinging, load up and walk home.

1:30 - Arrive home.  Let kids play, chat with friend some more. Then say goodbye to attempt nap.

1:45 - I'm starving.  Have not eaten lunch myself.  E is hungry, give her another snack (she's eaten a TON today) and then eat some lunch.  Try to keep K from eating my food, but keep her happy bouncing on my leg.  She's exhausted.

2:00 - The dreaded nap time attempt starts.  Cajole E into putting on her pullup.  Tell her to have quiet time while I get K to sleep.  Take K to our bedroom to lay with her feed her and nap.  She will not sleep under any other conditions.  I hear E trying to put on her PJs and crying needing help.  Leave K to help E.  Tell E I will be back.  Keep nursing K til alseep.  Leave her and go to E.

2:15 - Read stories with E and lay with her til she's alseep.

2:45 - I make my exit from E's room.  Throw some clothes in the dryer and put the diapers in the wash.  Get a small snack.  K wakes again.  Text Wes, weren't the gardeners to supposed to be here after lunch? Go back to nurse K again.

3:16 - Just finished nursing K to sleep for the second time.  While doing so I had read a blog with day in the life and get inspired.  Spend some time recapping the day.

3:25 - Still writing while texting BIL about concert tickets.

3:32 - Still writing this, hear gardeners start!  Finally have arrived!  Woohoo.  Hopefully they will not wake sleeping children.

3:39 - Have just finished this recap.  Now to decide what to do with the rest of nap time.
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3:45 - Go to check on K, she is wide awake.  Won't nurse, I guess we're getting up.  So much for nap time.
Try to make some coffee.  K cries if she can't see me.  Man this girl is tired.  Play with K. Try to give her some snacks to keep her happy.

4:15 - E wakes, short nap day is confirmed.  Potties, but refuses to take off naptime pull up and put on undies.  Oh well.  Try to get things together to make high protein energy balls for E (and me too, they are delicious!).  Try to keep E from eating K's snacks. Put in more laundry.

4:45 - Sip coffee when I can.  Yes it's late, but I need it.  It's just a quarter cup with lots of soy milk.  We made the energy balls.  E loves to use the food processor.  It's a great activity for her.  Dump in the ingredients then pulse away.  I roll the dough into balls and she eats them.  Too many for before dinner, but oh well, at least they are semi healthy and we are occupied.  K is not so happy in the exersaucer.

5:10 - Wes says he will be late.  Might be doing dinner alone.  Bummer.  Gardeners leave, not done, will be back tomorrow.  K is hungry and upset.  Change her and nurse her.

5:45 - Everyone is crying (not me though :)).  E refusing timeout for throwing large dangerous blocks in vicinity of K.  In her room to "calm down", but really she's just playing.  K ready for dinner.  Start to heat things up.

6:40 - Dinner done, Wes didn't have to work late.  K playing happily with Wes while E in her room to calm down after biting me.  I love the witching hour.

7:00 - Kids in bath with Papa, time for "me" time, which I fill with more laundry and dishes.

7:30 - Done with laundry and dishes, I hear Wes get K out of bath, signaling my "me" time is almost done.  I rush to the computer to download the instruction manual for my mom's sewing machine.  I just found out today from Singer that it was made in 1952 and they sent me the correct model number so I can get the instruction manual and try to trouble shoot why it's not working.  Wish mom was here to show me.

7:33 - K out of bath.  Tired baby.  Looked at manual for a minute and saw some diagrams.  Now to get this tired baby to bed.

7:45 - Nursing K to sleep. Check email, FB, words with friends on phone.
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8:21 - Finish putting K to bed. Come out to write that down and notice everything I wrote on my phone since 3:39 is deleted.  Hmm.  Are the details of my day better left unsaid?

8:34 - Managed to write up a recap of everything that was deleted.  K is crying.

8:39 - Comforting K. Wes emerges from getting E to sleep and graciously takes K to get her back to sleep. A few min to myself again.

8:55 - Wes gets K to sleep and we finally get to hang out. Stop playing noble nuttlings.

9:27 - Wes calls his mom.

9:42 - As if she was waiting, as soon as Wes hangs up the phone, K wakes shrieking again. Wes generously heads to her room. I put in the next cycle of laundry.

9:52 - K asleep again. We haven't done much with our evening. Not even time for a tv show between the wake ups and phone calls. Both feeling tired. I feel like I'm getting a cold. By how much K has been up, might be a long night so we start to get ready for bed.

10:25 - Finish talking, praying, and go to sleep.

3:30am - K wakes. I get up to use the bathroom and go to her. When I come out of the bathroom, Wes has gone to her. I try to go to sleep.

3:45 - Wes brings k to me to nurse. She wouldn't calm down otherwise.

5:00 - I wake up realizing I should take k back to bed. As I wake, she does too and wants to nurse again. Ugh.

5:15 - Take K back to her room.

5:30 - Back to bed myself

6:30 - K wakes. Wes goes to comfort her.

6:45 - Wes brings K to bed. Cuddles with her.

7:00 - "It's green Papa!" First time E has slept all night without incident in weeks. Praise God. Too bad I haven't slept properly since 3:30.

****************
Well, this was really a pretty typical day. Alternate between laundry for cooking and dishes, playdates and preschool, and most of my days look a lot like this.  Sometimes naps, sometimes not. When I decided to do this, I did so wanting to remember what this phase of life was like when its is long gone, but when I was done, I felt more like I was dwelling on the details of the day. It really was a pretty good day. The kids had meltdowns, but I did not.  Even though it was a good day, writing down all the nitty gritty about it left me feeling more exhausted and able to enumerate all the difficulties.  Perhaps it is more healthy for me to just let the days difficulties fade from my memory?

But stopping to notice and reflect can be helpful and important.  A practice I've found helpful is the prayer of examen. You look back at your day hour by hour, or the whole thing, to notice where you felt God's presence and where you didn't. You can also do this with little kids talking about happy moments of the day and sad moments. My understanding of the goal of this practice is that with practice reflecting, you then have a better ability to notice in the moments of the day when you feel God's presence. I think when I just wrote out all the details of the day, I was more naturally inclined to focus on the difficulties.  It was easy to write down the hard things of the day, but I didn't write much about the good.  So, now I'll try to write some reflections on both the good and bad, that I didn't include in the moment.

Highlights of the day...where I know God was with me.
K in the swing at the park. (It happened to be when E was in a time out at the park for running off) I felt guilty enjoying Kate's joy while E cried in the stroller.
Kate's rosy cheeks and smiles in the morning, despite not having slept much.
I notice when I hug E, my frustration with her disobedience melts away. So I tried to just hug her a while in the morning when she wasn't listening to me. It helped me calm down. Her hair smells sweet.
Wes really helps a lot. So willing to go to the girls at night. Tries to come home eon time when he can.

Lowlights of the day...hard to know God was there.
Harldy any downtime for myself.  Feeling exhausted and depleted.  It's depressing how little time for my own thoughts.
Sad how much of my day I spend thinking about getting kids to sleep.  I wish it was not so anxiety provoking.

************
So that is that!  I hope those of you who actually read this found something for yourself as well.  This was about a Tuesday. By contrast, Wednesday, the girls both had naps.  I got a good 2 hours of both of them asleep at the same time.  It was glorious!  Hallelujah!  Certainly a rarity, but it allowed me to almost finish this post :). Today is Thursday...took a while to actually get this post finished.  Hopefully what remains of this nap time will be restful.

Cranberry cake

I bought a lot of cranberries when they were onsale.  Without a plan for what to do with them.  I made a pork roast with one bag, and this is what I did with the next one.  Cranberry cake!

Beautiful and shimmering before baking.

Baked!

Wine glass on a car carpet with cake.  This is my life.

Coffee cake mug cake

Ok, so I have to admit that when I first tried a mug cake, I felt like I was involved in some sort of blasphemy.  Personally, I almost never use a cake mix, and if I do, I feel I MUST confess it to the recipient of the cake.  So at first, I felt like mug cakes sort of fell into this weird category of cake.

But now, I have seen the light.  Ok, a mug cake is not baked in the oven, so it has the tendency to be a bit more rubbery, however...you mix up all the ingredients from scratch in a mug.  It's basically the same process as a cake, so why am I beating myself up over this?  It's actually the perfect kind of cake for me.  I can do something fun and new and all in 5 minutes after the kids are in bed.  A quick cake fix!

So I tried one supposed to be made with Biscoff, but instead I used TJs cookie butter.  The cookie butter is awesome, and I was excited to try something flavored with it.  But the mug cake was just a rubbery mess.  Blech!

But the next one I tried...now this was good!  A coffee cake mug cake.  Recipe here.  This actually was the one that sold me on mug cakes not being blasphemy.  It actually has multiple steps resembling creaming of butter and sugar, etc, which made me feel like I was making a mini cake.  And I do love all things mini ;)

Alas, I am rambling, and linking all over the place.  Here is a picture of the mug cake!  But in a glass, cause the mugs were dirty.  And you can see the whole thing too :)

Not too beautiful, but it was yummy.  A tad rubbery, but the topping was delicious, and it hit the spot for an evening cake craving.  I'm excited to start trying some more mug cakes.  Perhaps I'll try making my own!

Birthday Cake for Jesus

This year I wanted to start the tradition of making a birthday cake for Jesus.  I figured this would be a fun way to teach my kids what Christmas is all about, given that Emeline is totally on board with birthday cake.  Ok, maybe she wont completely understand Christmas, but I think it would be a good, fun, and delicious start.

So then I got to thinking...what kind of cake does one make for Jesus' birthday?  Sounds a little daunting to me...  I tried to let go of the pressure of making a birthday cake for God, and I remembered a fun cake I saw online a while back.  Apparently, layers are all the rage right now, and this was an easy way of making a very multiple layered cake.  

Pic and recipe here.

It looked fun, simple enough recipe, and festive for Christmas.  Our small group for church was also going to have a Birthday Party for Jesus, so I decided to do a test run of the cake for this party.  The recipe calls for a white cake mix and a red velvet mix, but I'm not a fan of mixes, so I just made each from scratch and followed the instructions for layering.  Here are some pics of the process.

Sifted flour...(yes that's a beer in the background.  Strawberry or raspberry flavored hefeweizen to be exact.  Just what one needs for an afternoon of baking)

Adding in the red cocoa powder for the red velvet cake.

 

 

Both cake batters ready to be poured into the three pans.  (Still working on my hef.)

First layer of red.  I plopped them down then spread it even.

First layer all baked.

Second layer of white baking on top.  It's hard to spread the batter over hot cake.  

So the layers started to get uneven.

The baking process got kinda messy, and I learned you really need to make sure each layer is quite firm, before putting the next on.  Needless to say some of my layers fell into each other.

Here's all three layers stacked with a crumb coat.

45 min of chilling later, and the rest of the icing on.  I made some squiggles on the side for fun.  I'm happy with how it turned out.

 

I decided to add some red sprinkles for more festivities, but I think I prefer it all white.  Oh well.  The kids will like it.

Ok, now here are some fun pics of Jesus' birthday party.  Candles lit!

Kids, having heard the nativity story, all ready to blow out candles. 

 

 

 

And my favorite photo of all....the kids...devouring the leftovers when left unattended.  LOL.  I bet it was instigated by mine ;).  She loves CAKE!

And here's a slice.  You can see the layers fell into each other and it got kinda marbled looking.  But still festive!

 

So version one...I learned I needed to wait longer to cook the layers, but baking all those layers for so long made the cake quite dry.  So I did some research on getting some super moist cake recipes  to try to combat the dryness.  I settled on two recipes from Bakerella.  Instead of a white cake, I used her yellow cake recipe and substituted egg whites for the whole eggs to get it more white.  Unfortunately, I didn't plan well, so I did have one egg yolk in there.  Here's a pic of her yellow cake and a link to the recipe.

http://www.bakerella.com/finally-i-found-it/

She also touted that she found a very moist red velvet recipe.  It also seemed less labor intensive than my first try, so I gave that a shot also.  Here's a pic from her and the link.

http://www.bakerella.com/red-velvet-cake/

So I mixed that up and followed the same process above.  The white cake was less white, but still looked nice with the red.  And ooooh...the red is really RED.  I love it.  I tried to bake each layer longer to avoid the layers collapsing, and I think it turned out better.  Here are the three finished layers all stacked.

And here it is iced.  I left off the sprinkles this time.

And here it is all sliced!  Better looking layers this time.  

So the recipes from Bakerella turned out great.  I think my version was still more dry than the recipes would be on their own, but it was still much more moist than my original version.  I was very pleased.  It was a super sweet cake though, and a lot of it.  But it was fun to make, and then improve upon.  

Happy Birthday Jesus!

I think maybe next year I'll try the layered idea again, but maybe try this one!