Yesterday my son turned 8 years old! So my boyfriend and I wanted to surprise him with a special evening. We took him out to dinner at a local place called Bogey Macaws in York PA.
Let me just say that if you live in the area you must go to Bogey's! The food was amazing and so was the service that we recieved. I had never been there before and was not sure what to expect. I was able to make reservations the day before and we were sat as soon as we arrived. After going over the 4 page menu and ordering our food I sent my son and our friend's daughter into the arcade to have some fun. The arcade was far enough away from the dining room that we didnt' hear it at all, and it was big enough that the kids were not bored at all. It was refreshing in a way because so many arcades are loud and obnoxious! The kids had a blast. Once the food came we all sat down to eat.
The next surprise I had in store for him was a special birthday cake. One of our all time favorite movies is Despicable Me! We just love the minions hehe and my son loves Oreos. So I spent all day while he was in school baking and decorating the cake. The finished product was a 10 inch round 4 layer Cookies n Cream cake with Cookies n Cream frosting for the minion and a Deep Chocolate cake with Cookies n Cream frosting for the minion's birthday cake. Both of the cakes were covered with my homemade Marshmallow Fondant. And while I didn't have time to do exactly what I wanted (yet again) I was able to finish it on time and make it look great. So good in fact that patrons and employees at Bogey Macaws would stop to look at and admire my cake. A few of them even walked away with my business card.
The cake in the picture above is what I was aiming for. But as I said I did not have enough time to do all of the details that I would have liked. So the product below is what I accomplished.
This is what was left of the cake after everyone had a piece.
Anyone who is lives near Hershey PA has heard about Chocolatefest. It is an event centered around...you guessed it, Chocolate! Students and Professionals have the opportunity to enter a cake into the competition. This year I was able to enter a cake into the student competition, so I made the time to do just that. It took me days to complete my cake and I grant you I was ambitious and my
finished product was not exactly what I had in mind but I was still proud of it!
Every year Chocolatefest has a theme. Two years ago the theme was Jamaica, this year the theme was Winter Wonderland. So I got to thinking about what I wanted to do. First was to plan the flavor of the cake. So the first thing that came to mind was Starbucks Peppermint Mocha. I made an experimental cake and to my dissapointment I could barely taste the mocha. After that I changed my flavor to a Peppermint Hot Chocolate cake. I used Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe (can be found online) and added some peppermint extract. The cake tasted phenomenal!
Next step was the design of my cake. When you think winter what do you think of?? I think of snow, skiing, penguins, polar bears etc. So I came up with a Penguin Playground for my cake. One of my elements that I didn't get to make was a gum paste slide for the penguins. But overall I was very happy with my finished cake.
Below are just some of the other cakes that were at Chocolatefest 2013. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
WooHoo! Classes are finally over for the semester! So you may ask what have I been doing that I was so busy that I wouldn’t post anything new to my blog? Well, I’ll tell you. I was spending my days catching up on house work that I had neglected while in classes. But yesterday I took a day off of cleaning and spent it baking and playing with different cake ball ideas.
I made Orange cake balls that I am hoping to create Orange Dream Cake balls with. I finally got the cake perfect! Next is to create the sweet whipped frosting to inject, yes inject, into the center of the cake ball. I also made French Toast donut holes, mmm they were so yummy. I couldn’t believe that they actually tasted like French toast, I even injected a few with syrup.
I also experimented with something called an Ebelskiver, it is a Danish pancake. I made Lemon Blueberry and Milk & Cinnamon Ebelskivers. The
Milk & Cinnamon tasted a lot like the French toast cake balls but didn’t maintain their round shop like the French toast balls. I was less than happy with the Lemon Blueberry, they flattened in shape and smelled way to much like sour cream for my taste. I think I will try them again but with the lemon cake
pop recipe. I’m sorry that I don’t have pictures of the Ebelskivers, my boyfriend took them into work today.
Now back to cleaning for a few days and then more baking.
Okay, so years ago before I saw the light of cooking from scratch and healthy eating I used to buy box mixes for both baking and dinners. Sad, I know. But I have had a few pretty delicious things like that. One of which I continue to make today, only now I make it from scratch and not a box. It was called Taco Bake, which I still call it.
What is Taco Bake you ask? It’s fairly simple. First you must gather your ingredients. A minimum of one pound ground beef, I prefer two pounds, velveeta or any cheese that you prefer, soft tortilla shells and salsa if desired. First step is to cook the ground beef. Once the ground beef is cooked the whole way through you season it with taco seasoning, which you can find in almost any grocery store with the taco ingredients. After the meat is cooked and seasoned you can mix the salsa in if desired. From this point on it is simply a matter of layering everything.
You start with a flour tortilla on the bottom of an 8x8 or 9x9 square baking dish. Next you scoop some of your taco meat on top and finally finish that layer off with a few slices of cheese. Repeat the layers until you run out of taco meat.
Once finished layering bake the Taco Bake at 400 degree for 20 to 30 minutes. Time to enjoy! Top with sour cream and lettuce or eat it just like it is. The best part about this dish is that you can enjoy it however you like just as you would a taco.
So I had a family picnic on Saturday at a log house with my whole family and a bunch of family friends that my Aunts, Uncles and Dad grew up with.
I always bring a dessert and this time I wanted to make something fun since it was a picnic and the weather was to be 77 degrees and sunny, in other words a gorgeous day!
I chose to bake a cake and decorate it to resemble a watermelon, which also happens to be my son’s favorite summer snack, the watermelon not the
cake. Anyway I wanted to make it different and not the usual. So I opted to make a 3 layer half circle cake with vanilla cake on the bottom and top and chocolate cake in the middle. I did a marble type effect for the three additional slices of 'watermelon.’
Once baked I let the cakes cool before cutting them, while they were cooling I tinted the vanilla whipped frosting three different colors. Red, Dark Green and Light Green, I left some white to dirty ice the cake. Once ready I piped the colors on to the cake and slices to make it look like watermelon. After it was frosted I used raisinets for the seeds. I was so happy that it turned out as nice as it did and it was a hit at the party!
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