Hey Guys,
     Sorry for my procrastination with the blog but everything around here has been extra busy with Christmas and 2011 right around the corner. I haven't gotten a nice chance to sit down and write something and go hunting for the pictures. But, I promise you that the first week of 2011 there WILL be a new one up. It'll be a nice way to bring in the new year. So, have a happy holidays and here's an early happy new years since we are leaving for lake arrowhead this afternoon and won't get back till...Sunday the 2nd. So HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!!! and I'll talk to ya'll next week with a new cake! :) Until next week!

Cake/Cookie #5 : Mexican Wedding Balls

      Hey Guys, Meghan Here! Well, we are certainly still in the fall season. Any of you feel that strong wind this morning? My mom had to sit through that from 8am-11:30am for script(a.k.a. our school's selling of gift cards). So, as you may have noticed by the title, we will be taking a break from cakes and be venturing into the land of COOKIES!!!!!!! Also, we'll be keeping up with the present instead of going back to the past. As some of you may know, mostly the ones that come over for Christmas, that my mom makes these powder sugar covered pecan(with all the dough) cookies and they are TO DIE FOR!

      But, they're just so good, how do we not get tired of them? SHE ONLY MAKES THEM DURING THE CHRISTMAS SEASON! Yes, we know that it's only...what? three days after Thanksgiving? But, we (as in Shannon, Kyle, and I) beg and plead ON OUR KNEES for these cookies as soon as possible :) . This is one of my mom's original recipes. Start off by turning whole pecans into finely copped pecans with a food processor by adding them to powdered sugar, vanilla, salt, and flour. Then, leave the dough in the fridge for half an hour so it hardens or when you try and roll them into balls, they'll just fall apart. So, now roll the slightly hardened dough into balls and cook 'em. Then immediately after they're out of the oven roll them in powdered sugar and then again after five minutes.

     The effect of rolling them in the powdered sugar twice is that when you do it immediately, the sugar melts along with the heated butter and gives a melt-in-your-mouth effect and then the extra rolling is just for adding some more flavor!

     Hope you are all enjoying this peek into my mom's cooking life.And I've seen the comments on my mom's Facebook and I really appreciate them and so does my mom!  Have a great week and good luck with the Christmas decorations. Until next week!

Cake #4: Shannon's Birthday Movie Cake

     Sorry guys for my procrastination. Our Internet service over here is : p so, it wouldn't upload my pics from last week and it also wouldn't publish it. So, here is what I wrote last week and there (hopefully) will be another one this weekend as well for the next cake.

     Hey, week...whatever of this blog and we are going to stop from going back to the past for a little while and focus on the present. Today, Shannon had her birthday party and mom made an awesome cake. For Shannon's Birthday she took 8 of her friends, rented a limo, and went to go see Megamind and have a b-day party at the movie theatre. Since her birthday was a movie party, mom made a movie theme cake with popcorn and movie reel.

     So, we were going to do it with fondant but we ended up not doing that because it looked fine without the fondant. So it's a two tier cake and for those of you who don't know what that means, it means a two layer cake. It's kind of elegant. It's frosted in mom's butter cream...and well I just say now, it's all mom's butter cream. So, mom has her little decorations around the bottom of each layer.

     Then we have the writing "Happy 12th Birthday Shannon"  on the top of the bottom tier and let me just say ... not all great artists are perfect :).  OK, now the decorations. The cake reel is actually just a roll of ribbon that looks like the photo reel and then mom made the top and bottom of it with fondant. The popcorn container was made out of a container from Michael's and then Shannon drew the popcorn container designs on it. Then mom, bought the little marshmallows and cut them but not all the way and then painted them yellow with food coloring. Came out quite nicely.

     So, we all enjoyed the cake along with the movie and the movie birthday party goers left the place in a limo and happy as can be.

P.S. Mom bought all the kids $2.00 in quarters to use in those little
vending machines and they all bought fake mustaches. : )

Cake #3: Birthday Bowling Ball

     Hello there, I realize now that there may be a lot of birthday cakes or ball cakes. Since we've already had a "birthday" "baseball" cake and this is a "Birthday" "Bowling ball" cake". So, let's start with what's going on. It's Friday night, and we didn't have school today, so i spent the whole day looking for, and trying to get the pics of this cake. My mom's pic program kept freezing, most of the pics were blurry, and I couldn't find them on our computer that we keep pics on. I'm telling you, the further back we go, the harder it is to find these pics.

     So, this cake was the birthday cake for David's 1st birthday party in May of 2009. Yes, that is the next cake after Kyle's 5th birthday in 2010. Well, it's the next documented one. This cake, was another one of those over-night cakes. We were up all night making this thing. It's, as you can see, two bowling pins and a bowling ball. Mom made an all vanilla cake and then cut it in half and then shaped it into a bowling pin. No, outline and no already-made pans. She did it all herself with a knife. The bowling ball was chocolate and used the same pan that she used for the baseball cake.

     The vanilla and chocolate frosting was...-_- store bought but the yellow frosting was mom's butter cream. Yes, she does make butter cream a lot! The setting of this cake was the Concourse bowling alley in Anaheim. I don't think...actually I'm pretty sure that David couldn't walk yet but he was sure enjoying the bowling ball, don't ya think?  

     So, before I close for tonight I'd just like to address that one problem that I heard off of my Mom's Facebook. I am aware that you guys want to upload pics or recipes of things your family has cooked. I did find an upload gadget but, unfortunately, it is not working so please don't try to upload anything and I am working on fixing it. 

     Until next week! 

Cake # 2: Birthday Baseball

     Hey guys, this week's post is going to be short and sweet. In light of recent events, i really haven't had the time to write anything good. Actually, it's Halloween and I'm sitting here with Noelle, my friend from school, and trying to come up with something to write. But, before i start, please keep my great Uncle's soul in your prayers.

     Alrighty, this week's post is about my brother's 5th birthday cake, that i believe was filled with ice cream. Now, let me warn you, the further away from the current date, the less and less I'll probably remember the cakes :). OK, so the most i can tell you is that, Kyle was playing baseball for the ... i can't remember if it's the Oregon Ducks or the As... well, he was playing baseball and we had a party at Tri-City Park, right next door to where he plays, and he invited his school friends and his baseball friends.
     So, my mom made both a cake and cupcakes, both in the shape of baseballs. The frosting was my moms famous butter cream and the lettering was another, colored, version of the same butter cream. It was red and blue. Then mom made a gel frosting and wrote "B-Day" on the cake.
     Now, i don't remember the type of ice cream that was inside of the cake so... but i know that the cakes were both vanilla flavored. So, until next week, please enjoy the other entrys.
     P.S. Just a warning for Christmas, these aren't really cakes but my mom makes these delicious cookies that you're going to want to hear about, so be warned :) :)

Cake #1 : Blue-Velvet

     Had a great time at the baby shower today and can't wait for the new addition to the family. So, the first cake...and cupcakes of this blog; The Blue-Velvet baby carriage cake and the Baby-Blue-Velvet cupcakes. Now, people, these are not made overnight...oh, wait. yes they are. I mean that literally. My mom, my sister, and I stayed up till about 11:30, the night before, to make these desserts.
     I know we've all heard of "Red-Velvet" but have you ever heard of "Blue-Velvet"? That kind of sounds disgusting, doesn't it? Well, once you see these cupcakes, you won't want to stop eating them. The recipe for these desserts can be found online easily, but if you want the ones made right you've got to have my mom's. Why? Because, like anyone, she has her secrets.

     Well, starting from scratch isn't an easy way to go but it's always the best way to go...if you can cook or you're my mom. It requires time, patience, and your three children locked away under the spell of TV. So, after making the first two batches of cupcakes, realizing that we are out of our food coloring since it took the whole container of Sapphire from the "Charm City Cakes: Color Gels" container to make one dozen of the cupcakes(plus a little bit of violet food coloring to even out the blue) we had to run around to Michael's Craft Store to get the two other containers we needed.

     Now, i don't know if anyone that was there at the Baby Shower noticed anything...special about the cupcakes? Maybe, a special surprise hidden inside of the cupcake? Well, if you did, you would've noticed that there was a filling, but WHAT TYPE of filling was it, was the question. Well, the very special, very favorite of my mom's inside the cupcake is her all-famous cream cheese filling. Juliana if you see this, you were right :)



Cake before it was frosted



     After finishing the two batches of cupcakes, its onto the cake. Doesn't that just look like a hard cake to frost. Well, she did it for our other Aunt, Kathleen's baby shower for our little cousin David so she could certainly do it again. The finished work of art was so beautiful that our mother-to-be was feeling guilty that she was the one to cut it. But, like i mentioned before, she does it for the love and fun of doing it, not for a profit, but if you need a cake for any occasion, give her a call.
    So, the cake and cupcakes ended up beautifully. The cupcakes, filled with her favorite cream cheese filling, frosted with her signature butter cream frosting, and topped with little blue ball sprinkled, and miniature bottles and the cake frosted with a dazzling white butter cream frosting and outlined in sapphire blue butter cream frosting.
     For all of you at the shower, we hope you enjoyed the cake and appreciated the effort that went into it. Until next week!


The finished, frosted products



    

The Why

     I've seen the commercials where they talk about the moms that make those BEAUTIFUL cakes. But those are made for the sole purpose of making a profit. But they don't give the time and effort that my mom has ALWAYS puts into her cakes. My mom has made the most beautiful cakes that I have ever seen! My favorite one that she has ever made is a clear plastic cup filled halfway with red-velvet cake and then topped with cream cheese frosting and grapes rolled in egg whites and sugar. She made them for my aunt's wedding shower that had a Wine theme.

     Well, anyways they reason I'm starting this blog is because her cakes are so beautiful that I really would like to share it with my family, friends, or just anyone that's interested and so that maybe in a couple of years my mom can look back and say "my daughter wrote this about me" or "Wow, look at all those cakes." So, starting with my next blog, I'm going to share with you, her cakes. I'll start with the most recent ones and work my way back to the last one I can remember.
     Get ready for cake and cupcakes for my Aunt Margaret's Baby shower.