Time flies...

When I first started this blog I wondered how it would go. I wasn't sure if I'd be posting a lot or a little and so far, it looks like I'm posting a little. What can I say? It's hard to find time to blog when you're busy trying to keep life balanced. Though I'm pretty sure a "balanced life" is a myth. Or at least it's something I need to stop searching for and hope it finds me one day. Really. If you have a balanced life, please let me in on your secret.

It's February 25th and I've done more baking and decorating this month than any month before. It helps that Elizabeth (my 4 year old) and I had a Valentine bake sale in our home. We created an event on facebook, posted pictures of what we would be selling, invited our friends and family,  took some pre-orders and then 2 days before we were "open" I started baking. I wanted everything to be fresh. NEVER start baking and decorating over 200 cookies just 2 days before your bake sale when you also need to bake and decorate a cake that's due the day before the sale and also bake and decorate cupcakes and cake balls for the bake sale too. I didn't get to go to bed Saturday night. I spent it decorating cookies. All in all, with the help of my amazing husband, my Mom, my brother David and David's friend Michael, we were ready enough when our "customers" started coming over.

Why did we have a bake sale? Well, Elizabeth has been wanting to have one for quite some time now. She is great at coming up with ideas for her and I to make some money. "I can sell your cakes for you mommy! I can put up posters, I'll tell all my friends at school, and I'll make signs to put up at the store". I love her enthusiasm. Gerrit asked me what Elizabeth wants to make money for. I told him that she has a list of things she'd like to save up for. She'd like us to buy a house so she can have her own room again with a little rocking chair like the one she had at our old home. And like most kids, she also wants to go to Disneyland.

Thanks to my lack of sleep on Saturday night, I forgot to take pictures of everything that we hd ready for our bake sale until it was almost over. Here is the table with some of the cupcakes we had ready for our customers

We had 15 of these personalized mini cookie bouquets wrapped and ready to go by the time our customers arrived :)

And the cake balls were a big hit too. I continued making them even as our bake sale was going on and there really weren't too many left over after. Thanks to my cousin Marie we even had someone phone and ask for 4 boxes of them for later on that day. 

Cake balls. Soooo much better than the cake pops. At least I think they're better and it probably has a lot to do with the fact that the first cake balls I made (which were inspired by Margo) were made with chocolate cake crumbs that I had poured a couple shots of bailey's over and bailey's buttercream and once they were shaped  they were dipped in chocolate. That's more my style than anything vanilla. I also made some mocha cake balls and they were oh so yummy too. I was hoping to play with some new cake ball flavors this week but haven't found the time to yet... hopefully I'll get to it next week :)

  

Okay, that's all for now. It's taken me three days to get this post ready. When I first started it was February 22nd. I couldn't get the pictures to line up the way I wanted so I had to walk away for a day. I came back and found that I was still frustrated. Yesterday I was just about to post this but was interupted by a phone call and forgot what I was working on. It happens. Life happens. I love it.

~Rachel

Cake Pops!

Cake Pops. As a cake decorating enthusiast, I tend to pay attention to what's new and exciting the the cake, cupcake and cookie world. Cake Pops are the "in thing" these days and I finally gave in and made some today.

"What the heck is a cake pop?" you might ask. Well, you start off by baking a cake. Once that cake has cooled, you crumble it up into little pieces. This step alone goes against what I normally work for which is to keep my cake together so it looks nice and even when it's all decorated up. I didn't enjoy crumbling up my cake. Once you have a bowl full of crumbs, you add your icing and mix it all together with a wooden spoon til you have a bowl of cake mush. Then you take a bit of cake mush and roll it into a ball, or if you want to get creative, you can make it into a hamburger patty and use a cookie cutter to get a heart, star or whatever shape you'd like to work with. Once you have your cake ball or shape, place it on some wax or parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Then some say you should stick this in the fridge for a few hours but I put mine in the freezer just because it made more sense to me for some reason. They only need about 15 minutes in the freezer. While your cake shapes are getting nice and firm in the freezer, you need to melt your candy melts or chocolate coating. I melted my candy melts in the microwave in mugs so there was plenty of depth for when I was ready to dip my cake hearts. With your candy coating melted and your cake pops by your side, you need to take your lollipop sticks and dip the tip into the melted candy before inserting them into your cake balls or cake shapes. Then place them back on the cookie sheet til they're held firmly in place. If you've frozen your cake balls, this won't take long at all... just a couple minutes really.  Now you're ready to dip your cake balls into the candy coating. Be sure to have some floral foam ready to stick your cake pops in so they can harden. One thing that many cake pop instuctors haven't mentioned is that candy melts are quite thick even when melted, so one lady (I can't remember who... probably Bakerella) suggested adding some vegetable oil to the candy melts which I did and it made quite a difference in the consistency of the melted candy. So... now that you know how what's in a cake pop and really, how to make them, here's a picture of my very first cake pops:

I didn't really like the looks of them so I added a little royal icing to try and make them prettier.

Well, this is what I crossed off my list of "things to try" today.  I know a lot of people love cake pops, and I might like them one day too. For now, I can take them or leave them. Maybe if they were covered in chocolate I'd like them better. The candy melts taste like cheap white chocolate and I don't like white chocolate. It's not chocolate. I don't know why "chocolate" is even in the name.

That's all for now! I'm looking forward to tomorrow's projects... they involve cupcakes and I like working with cupcakes :)

~Rachel

Oh yeah! For all my baking friends, if you haven't heard of Bakerella, she's the one who invented cake pops. At least that seems to be the argument that's going on on a few cake community boards. Here's the link http://www.bakerella.com/

Saying goodbye to my clutterbug lifestyle

Where oh where did January go? With February's arrival, I'm met with new goals when I haven't quite reached the ones from last month! It's a good thing I've adopted the "let it go" motto with my new age.  It's not really "new" anymore, but on December 28th I turned 30. I took it a lot better than I had expected. Lucky for me, 30 meant something good. It meant that I was ready to start becomming more organized, which it turn helped me become more relaxed and now I find that a relaxed mommy has in turn helped my children's behaviour improve. Who knew? I'm not saying they were bad. I'm just saying there's not as much fighting when it's time to pick up their toys. I love it. I also love how the clutter in my home is slowly disapearing. I love the extra time I have now that I don't procrastinate as much as I did before and I get things done rather than just feeling bogged down by the list of things to do. What's a girl to do with extra time?  Well,  if she's me, she is gonna finally try all those projects she's been adding to the "Must try this" list. It's a long list, but I've managed to cross a few things off it lately! YAY!

COOKIE BOUQUETS! I've been wanting to play around with these for over a year now but just never took the time to do it. That must sound funny to those of you out there who haven't been living the life of  a clutterbug. It's not a fun life. Not only was my house cluttered, but my mind was cluttered too and anyone who has a cluttered life knows what I'm talking about. Here's hoping I never go back to that way of living because I'm loving the projects that are coming out of my declutterd kitchen :)

Here is my very first cookie bouquet. Would you believe the most frustrating part was the tissue paper? I found that to be a little funny. After baking and decorating the cookies, waiting for them to dry, and carefully inserting the cookie sticks into the floral foam, I was getting frustrated with tissue paper. Oh well. I'm happy with the results. The reason these bouquets finally came to be crossed of the list is because Paula from Balloons 'N' More Party Shop suggested we work on a cross promotion. A cookie bouquet with some balloons. What kid wouldn't like that? We even got into the talk about why we feel the need to buy gifts for our children on Valentines day. I don't know. I think it's because it's fun. It's fun for me and it's fun for them, so why not?

After e-mailing a picture of the first bouquet, Paula suggested I try using a different vessel for the bouquet since the target receivers of these bouquets with balloons are kids and kids don't really need coffee mugs. I had picked the coffee mug while at the dollar store so I wouldn't have to paint another big flower pot. I just didn't feel like painting. These cute little valentine boxes were readily available at her store so I took the box home and worked my magic. I think it's cute. I like it with the little bit of toule around it as well.

 

After finishing the sample bouquet, I went home to work on the next one that was on my list. A mini cookie bouquet! So cute! I just love it! And I took a picture of my little model holding it to show how small it is. Both my girls are now asking me to make them cookie bouquets for Valentines day, Easter and their birthdays. I bet birthday bouquets will be brite and fun! Yep, I've added them to the list.

I'm keeping both my girls home today for a day of rest since they each have a slight fever and a stuffed up nose. I just don't think it'd be fair to send Miss Elizabeth to school or dance to share her germs with all her friends. 

 This means I get a catch up day! I get to spend the day in my jammies and catch up on some household paper work and a few other little things I haven't gotten to yet while making sure my girls get rid of their icky colds. YAY! 

~Rachel