Baby Steps

These were for my supervisor's baby shower.  I used the medium-sized Wilton paisley-shaped pan and carved the edges to make the cakes appear more foot-shaped.  I forgot to line the cake boards with foil wrap and regretted it very quickly.  The cake on the left was chocolate with liquid fudge filling and the one on the right was white with raspberry vanilla filling.  Both cakes were iced in buttercream frosting. The footprints were made using frozen buttercream transfers.  It was my first time using this technique and it was pretty simple, probably because there was only one color.  But I thought the cakes turned out pretty cute.

Happy Feet

I think this cake looks much worse from this angle.  It really wasn't lopsided or out-of-square, but it certainly looks very "wrecky" here.  (Thank goodness I am not a professional who turned out a cake like this one.)  This was for a baby shower at work.  The bottom layer was half-white and half-chocolate and the top layer was yellow.  Both layers were torted and filled with a chocolate fudge filling. The frosting was a chocolate butter cream and the baby feet were made of white fondant.  Due to a time crunch, the fondant was sprayed with a food-safe dye to get the proper color.  The lettering and edging were "frosting in a can", not my first choice - ever - but again, due to a time crunch I worked with what I could get.  The cake tasted much better than it looked.

Chocolate Sinful Surprise

I named these cupcakes "Chocolate Sinful Surprise", as each chocolate cupcake had a small Rolo (chocolate & caramel) or Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in the middle.  The frosting was chocolate buttercream made with Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Cocoa and they were dusted with the Special Dark Cocoa powder.  You can't tell here, but oddly enough, the cocoa powder looks green up close...

There was no story behind these cupcakes, other than a friend at work gave me the box of Special Dark Cocoa and I wanted to try it.

It's my Birthday! :D

Okay, today isn't really my birthday, tomorrow is (December 7th).  I am a Pearl Harbor Day baby.  The nurse wanted my mother to name me Pearl.  Thank goodness my mother refused.  (No offense to any "Pearls" out there.)

One of my goals for the past 17 years has been to get my husband to remember when my birthday is.  He knows it's on Pearl Harbor Day, but he cannot remember when that is.  Never mind that every media outlet around floods the air waves with reminders every year... 

And this pie wasn't baked for my birthday, but for Christmas last year (obviously, from the date).  It is a coconut cream pie with meringue.  I used a recipe I found in one of my mother's old cookbooks back when I was in high school (many years ago).  In fact, the book was so old then that the front and back covers were gone and I have no idea what it was called.  I'm sure she still has it, though.  I have made the pie numerous times and the only change I have ever made to it was to add more coconut to the filling.  I love lots of coconut in there.  :)  The meringue is true egg white meringue, not the meringue you can make using Meringue Powder, although that works well, too.  I like this recipe for meringue because the pie doesn't weep as much as some others I have seen.

This pie dish is one of my favorites, mostly because the unique heart shape lets everyone know that this is not a store-bought pie.

A Christmas Story

These are "A Christmas Story" sugar cookies.  They were made with Fun Dough, a set of four tubs of colored cookie dough in red, green, blue, and yellow.  The dough was purchased through a school fundraiser and was very tasty.  The cookie cutters were in the shapes of a house, a star, a roasted turkey, Ralphie in his pink bunny suit, and the infamous "major award" - the leg lamp.  The cutters only came in the deluxe boxed DVD set, but were worth the extra cost.  Everyone loved these.