Cake Tasting Party

*Warning! - This post will make you hungry and jealous and you will get mad at me for not being invited to the cake tasting party so do us both a favor and go eat something... get nice and full, then come back and read this blog.*

Are you back? Ok, read on...

I am making the wedding cake for my friends, Dave and Ellie's wedding in September. It will be my first wedding cake so it won't be super glamorous or anything but I just finished twelve weeks of cake decorating classes so I am feeling somewhat competent. My last cake decorating class was Tuesday night and for the finale we had to make a stacked cake. I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was going to make a couple of cakes and do a cake tasting party so the bride and groom to be can taste a few different flavor options for their cake.

One idea that I got off of Pinterest (my newest addiction) was using a slice of a tree trunk as a wedding cake stand. I love the idea of combining rustic elements with elegant ones and since Dave and Ellie want to get married under an old oak tree I thought it would be fitting. When I went to Idaho last weekend I made the stand. This was something that would be very difficult to do down here but very easy to do up there, so the timing of my bright idea worked out perfectly! Here is what I made:

I figured that if they didn't love it, I could still use it myself for entertaining. It would make a great cheese platter! In fact, I got to use it right away for the party. We had some cheese and crackers and fruit to start off the evening before getting to the grand finale of CAKE! And, I was right, it looked pretty cool.

Dave and Ellie actually do like it though, so it looks like we have a cake stand. As for the cakes, we tried four flavors: chocolate with raspberry mousse, red velvet, lemon with lemon cream filling, and vanilla bean.

The chocolate was the ultimate winner. It is my mom's signature chocolate cake recipe and it is so good. It is dense and fudgy and moist and mmmmmmm... The raspberry mousse was a nice filling as well, I loved the flavor combination of chocolate and raspberry. The red velvet was a close runner up. There is something about red velvet... it doesn't taste like anything in particular, just sweet nothing, but it is good. We eat with our eyes so I think a lot of its appeal is in its beauty, red cake is pretty. The lemon cake was unimpressive, it was a bit dry but I have made it before and thought it was really good, so I think this time I just baked it a bit too long. The vanilla was also kind of a let down. I keep trying to get vanilla to be really good. I scraped a whole vanilla bean and used some gourmet vanilla bean paste and everything! But no matter how much I try to "gourmet" it, at the end of the day, vanilla is just vanilla, plain and boring. Tyler really liked the vanilla cake, though. It wasn't bad, just wasn't anything to write home about. Vanilla got its boring reputation for a reason.

My cake decorating class was focussing on fondant so I covered one of the cakes in fondant and did the other in buttercream. Fondant is known for being kind of disgusting. I decided to make a homemade marshmallow fondant instead of using the pre-made stuff from the store. I hoped that might make it taste better because fondant can make a cake look really pretty. Well, homemade or not, the fondant was gross! I am nixing that idea because I want my cake to be remembered as tasting good, not covered in thick, sweet, play dough that people have to eat around. Anyway, here is my fondant cake with some gum paste roses on the top. I brushed the cake with pearl dust which makes it sparkle which is kind of fun:

The other cake I did square, just for variety. I used buttercream and wrapped a ribbon around each layer. You can do a lot of things with ribbons on cake and it is super easy! I put gum paste calla lilies on the top just because I had them from my class:

So anyway, there you have it, the cake tasting party was a success and I think we have some good flavors picked for the wedding. Now we just have to get together and nail down the design. Now, if you will excuse me, I saved myself a piece of red velvet cake and I think I will go have that for dinner!

Home, home on the range...

I just returned from a whirlwind trip home to Idaho. I went for my niece, Ashton's, fourth birthday. I was only there for two days but it was a wonderful two days! When I flew in to Sun Valley, I wondered why on earth I don't live there. It is SO beautiful. Growing up there I took it for granted but now whenever I go home I am in awe at how pretty it is. Here are a couple of pics of where I am from:

Not only is it beautiful but it actually smells different up there! I took a big breath of fresh mountain air and was in heaven. It was like water to my thirsty soul! I am so glad I got to go. I feel refreshed.
Oh, and I have the cutest four year old niece in the world!

Product review: Degree Motion Sense Deoderant

I bought some deodorant yesterday. I didn't pay too much attention because quite honestly, I don't stress over my deodorant, as long as it keeps me cool and dry, I am good. When I got home I realized that I got the new Motion Sense kind that gets activated by your arm movement. Sounds like a total gimmick, right? Well, all day today, every time I reached to type something on my computer or pick up the phone I definitely got a whiff of "spring fresh" or whatever scent I ended up with. In fact, right now, I just reached to take a sip of my water and *BAM* spring fresh all up in my nose!

Now, spring fresh isn't a bad smell or anything, but I thought the point of deodorant was... anti-smell. I just want to smell like me, without the B.O. I don't want to feel like someone is spraying Fabreeze in my face every time I move my arms. Honestly, it was quite distracting. But I guess it works, it is about 3:30 in the afternoon and I put it on at 4:00 this morning and my pits are still quite springy and freshy! That is pretty impressive!

And, I have to say the cute cashier at Trader Joe's today was unusually friendly. He asked how my day was going and what I was up to for the rest of the day, then he told me that he was getting off of work in an hour. I don't usually have such conversations with cute cashiers so I can only assume that having "spring fresh" shooting from my armpits while I whipped out my wallet gave me a bit of an edge. I felt a little smug knowing about my secret deodorant power.

So, all in all, I give this product a thumbs up. Yes, it is distracting to have bursts of scent attacking my nostrils every few minutes all day long and I am a little concerned that my sense of smell might be desensitized to the point of losing it all together, but it seems to attracts the men-folk and well, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!

P.S. I Googled the deodorant to make sure I got the name of it right and stumbled upon this blog. It is way funnier than mine and almost made me delete this whole blog post but instead I will just attach this other guy's blog so if you want to read a funnier review on this deodorant, click here.

The things we do for money!

I don't like animals. I really don't. I mean, I don't hate them. I wouldn't kick a puppy or anything but I just don't have the desire to run up and pet a dog or become enamored by it's cuteness. I am usually pretty quiet about that fact. Admitting that you don't like animals is kind of like saying that you think babies are ugly. People are kind of horrified and you come off looking like a terrible, heartless person. But nonetheless, I am letting the world know via blog post that I really don't care for animals. There, I said it.

I do, however, like money. Which brings me to my current situation. I have a reoccurring dog-sitting gig which is pretty lucrative and relatively easy. Well, I take that back. Dog-sitting is easy in theory. If there are one or two dogs that do normal things like eat regular dog food and go on walks and hang out outside, then sure, it is easy. This job is a bit more involved. There are eight (yes, I said EIGHT!) Golden Retrievers here, two of them are puppies. The lady I sit for breeds the dogs and they regularly compete in dog competitions so these dogs eat organic vegetable mush, raw meat, eggs, and yogurt. Meal time twice a day for eight dogs who eat raw, organic, homemade food is a very long, and complicated ordeal.

Know what else is fun? Poop! Eight dogs in two large yards depositing their stuff all over. I spend about an hour a day poop-scooping. Oh, and dog hair is everywhere! When I go home I have to wash everything that I brought with me which is one of the reasons I don't like animals in the first place - they are hairy and smelly and I am a little on the OCD side so hairy and smelly don't go over well with me (which, I just realized, may also be why I am still single).

Hanging out with dogs is definitely not my favorite way to spend my weekend but I have to admit, it is an easier way to make money than putting in 12 hour shifts at work (5 a.m. to 5 p.m.) which is another thing I have been doing lately! In a couple of weeks I am hoping life will settle down a bit. June has been a whirlwind of work. And instead of being an adult and saving all of this extra cash for a rainy day I treated myself to a new love seat and sofa which I will get in about three weeks. That will make all of the overtime worth it! The interior designer in me has been cringing for the last six years at my hand-me-down furniture. So... yay for me! Now off to go make dinner for eight hungry dogs!

S'mores follow up

Homemade marshmallows are great! They taste fresher and fluffier than the store bought version. There are a number of great uses for homemade marshmallows. You can use them to dip in fondue:

You can make homemade Peeps for Easter:

You can cut them into cute shapes and give them as gifts with some homemade hot chocolate mix:

You can dip them in chocolate and make Christmas candy:

But the one thing you should never do to a homemade marshmallow is try to roast it over a campfire! This was a lesson learned last night. Yesterday I was all excited about my Martha Stewartness but I discovered that homemade s'mores were much better in theory. The graham crackers were great. I will definitely make those again. But the marshmallows WOULD NOT ROAST! They just melted and dripped into the fire. It was the weirdest thing. Apparently the chemicals and preservatives are essential for the roasting process. So, I encourage marshmallow making for many things but when it comes to s'mores, cheap and unoriginal seems to be the ticket! Oh well, good to know...