Tag: cake decorating

I’m still recovering from the weekend, but this week is off to a really great start. I put together a short list of books for the 5th grade teachers at school, who are getting new class sets of 3 novels next year and asked for my help picking them. The short list I gave them included When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead,Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson. A couple of those are long shots, but they were looking mainly for Newbery books (I threw in TLT because, well, I love it). There are tons of books out there, and tons that I haven’t read, but this was a list of recent books I’ve read and enjoyed, and I think our students would, too. I made up a packet with blurbs and reviews for each book, so that was productive and pretty fun.

I haven’t touched the Rainbow Quilt in at least a week, but that hasn’t stopped me from drooling over the new Riley Blake collection Rainy Days and Mondays by Melinda and Beccabury. I may possibly have ordered some half yards today…in several colorways.

rainy-day-green-5

rainy-day-pink-collage1

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chair

I want this chair.

No idea where I would put it, but I want it. I was looking on the West Elm site for ideas on what to put one of my last Christmas gift cards towards. And I saw this.

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I’m completely exhausted after a full, busy Thanksgiving Day. I had a great time with my family, and it went off without a hitch. Here are some photos.

Thanksgiving place settings

The table set up for everyone.

Thanksgiving Dinner

The spread going out.

Thanksgiving dessert table

The Thanksgiving appetizer and dessert table.

Thanksgiving table closeup

More of the spread. From the left: crudites and cheese, then crackers with 3 kinds of dip (Scallion and Chive from WF, homemade Salmon Mousse, and Roasted Red Pepper from WF). The tray of crostini has an assortment of basil, prosciutto, and mozzarella then bruschetta, then mascarpone, bacon, and apples (a variation from #40 on this list). Chips, pumpkin pie, brownie bites, and down at the end the Thanksgiving fondant cake extravaganza. The layers were too short, so everyone thought it was a hat. It was not supposed to be a hat.

Crostini closeup

Crostini closeup. These went like wildfire.

And then finally, here are some photos of the cake coming together (I finished it around 1 this morning).

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fondant day 1I’ve now started the 3rd class in the Wilton cake decorating series, which focuses on fondant.

I’m extremely excited about this class since I’ve wanted to work with fondant forever and find it kind of daunting. But my concerns so far with this class are how to make the stuff actually taste good (there’s a reason we went with cupcakes instead of a fondant masterpiece for our wedding) and how hard it is to knead food coloring into it. Seriously, unless you want to make white cakes forever there’s a lot of elbow grease that goes into prepping fondant. Which I knew, I just didn’t know how much.

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pacman cupcakesI’m pretty excited about these. Late night cupcakes while Adam is mid-marathon. Actually, he’s more than halfway through. But I promised I would bake him something, and after dinner I baked and decorated these Pac Man cupcakes. I’m especially proud of the cherries, complete with white frosting highlights. I made 4 different colors of frosting, not counting the base white and chocolate. pac man cupcakes 2Then I had to make a milk run because we were out. Our 24 hour convenience store around the corner apparently closes at 11pm, so I made it in with just a few minutes to spare. The frosting is the vanilla flavor I made for the book club cake, the chocolate used for eyes is store bought.The cake recipe is the Dark Chocolate Sheet Cake recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. I’ve posted so many cake recipes lately, this one I just want to enjoy looking at. So no recipe tonight.

pac man cupcakes 2

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