What the girl wants, the girl gets

Today was Olivia's last day of vacation before summer session. She stayed home with Daddy and generally insisted that they go nowhere and watch loads of t.v. He did, however, convince her that it would be a good idea to make cupcakes. And when is it not a good idea, really? She immediately specified yellow cake with chocolate frosting and cherries on top. These little jewel-like goodies were the result.

I didn't realize until just now that there is something vaguely sexual about them. We paraded around our neighborhood with the platter of them and delivered one to each of our neighbors. We have good neighbors. We weren't too worried about giving away all our cupcakes because we knew we had the matching cake waiting for us at home.

I bet you might be able to guess by now that my daughter has a semi-permanent ring of chocolate around her mouth most days?
Olivia claimed it was my birthday cake and she set to work drawing up some elaborate birthday cards for me. She even went to the trouble of making sure all of my friends "signed" the card by having Daddy write everyone's name for her. The list she gave him was surprisingly comprehensive. She hit all the grandmas, grandpas and even some of my older friends who hadn't visited in some time.

Finally, for those who have expressed concern over the spider bite, I may have panicked just a little bit. The bite isn't sore or painful anymore and it seems to be fading and moving on into healing mode.

Two tarts making tarts

This is Olivia's week off from school before summer session. As activities director for today and tomorrow, I've arranged for absolutely no clowns, visits to museums, or folk concerts. Instead, we checked out a few kiddie flicks from the library, slept in, ate whatever we wanted, and made some little cute tartlets with a basic pastry dough and some berry jams.
Olivia is a natural with her little pink rolling pin. She wasn't much interested in the final results until after her nap when she licked the jam out of most of them.

Scary Yoda Cake

Baking geeks beware, I too can flood the Internet with images of scary Yoda cakes. As on every May 23rd, we celebrated the birth of my youngest stepson. Bryce is the happy recipient of several Babycakes. Over the years he's seen some of my finest work. Licensed characters are the usual fodder. We've had Bob the Builder (building things out of Little Debbie Cakes and scooping crushed chocolate cookie crumbs), a super-hero camp out (The Flash, Superman, and Batman sitting on Twix logs, toasting mini-marshmallows on toothpicks over a candy-corn fire), SpongeBob Squarepants, Star Wars (Return of the Jedi sandworm scene with the world's ugliest sandworm), and finally Yoda. Ya ya ya ya yoda.

As you can see, I ended up using a hell of a lot of green fondant. The cake itself was peanut butter flavored with chocolate buttercream frosting. I cut a 9 inch round cake to roughly yoda-shaped proportions and used leftover cake bits and fondant balls to build a framework that would form the contours of Yoda's face when draped with a sheet of fondant. I spent about 12 hours trying to figure out how to work with the fondant in sculptural manner. Eventually, I developed a stylized means of depicting the green Jedi master using some handbuilding techniques I'd learned years ago from husband number two, the ceramist.

The birthday boy was pretty pleased. We ate Yoda while listening to the Weird Al "Yoda" (to the tune of the Kinks "Lola"). And fun was had by all.

Anticipation...

I rarely get excited about ebay acquisitions, or purchases of any kind, but I cannot wait to get my stinkin' stand mixer. After I killed the avocado green Hamilton Beach (a $9 bargain) while making my last few batches of marshmallows, I moved on to the relatively new handmixer we had laying around the house. It was pretty hard work, getting that thing to whip up gelatin and syrup into another batch of marshmallows, and the whole experiment was ill-fated after untold amounts of marshmallow goo got sucked inside the holes on the bottom of the mixer. A colony of ants quickly took up residence inside the mixer afterward. Michael discovered the ants and became disgusted enough to trash the whole thing on the spot.

So, after a little hemming and hawing on my part, we finally bid on a mixer online. I feel crippled without a mixer. I just know my daughter is going to want to toast marshmallows any day now and we won't have enough for the whole crew. Lord knows we can never go back to store-bought marshmallows. That simply wouldn't do. Homemade marshmallows toasted on a stick over a campfire is the closest thing this gal has had to a religious experience in such a very long time. One of those close your eyes and purr with pleasure kinds of foods. You wouldn't normally attribute a marshmallow with such power, but hey, life is full of surprises.

New look, actual purpose

Babycakes is the name of my fictional business. I have a history of baking and fiddling around in the kitchen, as many of you know. I've decided to blog about it because I'm sure my husband gets a little tired of hearing about whether or not marzipan can be an adequate substitute for nutella in a recipe. If anyone finds what I write interesting, maybe I can one day put together something other than a fictional biz.

Today I supplied a cake for my library's monthly birthday celebration. I would post a photo if there were any left. I didn't think to photograph it this morning before the vultures moved in.

I synthesized two different recipes, one a Marcella Hazan almond cake recipe and the other a Nigella Lawson chocolate hazelnut recipe. I used marzipan rather than the almonds called for in the Hazan recipe and it also substitued for the Nutella. Amaretto really nailed home the almond perfume for this cake, but it was balanced out by some semi-sweet chocolate. Chocolate amaretto ganache served as the icing and toasted almond slivers sprinkled over the top distracted viewers from the fact that this cake was quite misshapen and ugly. No matter how ugly, the taste was divine. I may have to refine this one and post the recipe once I get predictable results.