FAIL - Cake

I am no CAKE-BOSS but anyone who knows me, knows I love my cake, cookies, and candies. It's no wonder I've become a member of Weight Watchers.

With baking as one of my favorite past time hobbies, unfortunately my scale shows the results of my cooking efforts... But, that doesn't mean my cakes always turn out perfectly.

Quite the opposite. Some times I envision the most wonderful tasty temptations and they turn out...terribly.

Like my recent endeavor: trying to sculpt rice crispy treats into a little-sized replica of my brother-in-law: Bo. It didn't turn out the way I pictured it in my head and it looked nothing like Bo.

Oh well...it's the thought that counts...right?

I certainly hope so because this cake was not my best baking attempt. It was an absolute FAIL.

A flop, but I had to take it to the party anyway. I figured it was good for a laugh--or at least a smile.

Here are some of the pictures from my attempt to bake a themed bee-day surprise for my brother-in-law Bo.


You see, Bo has become a recent beekeeping enthusiast and, since it was his birthday, I made him a couple of cakes. One was a bee, the other was the hive, and the third was supposed to be a mini-me Bo.

F A I L

But, it was still fun putting the pieces together. It might not have turned out the way I'd hoped but I think Bo had a happy Bee-Day anyway :)

Here's how I made the cakes.

First I baked a regular cake and a couple cupcakes.

Of course, when I got up the next morning, only one cupcake was left. I'd been hoping to use two for the eyes of the bee, b...ut I cut the only one I had left in two and used half-moon eyes for my bee.

I frosted the cake with coconut - yellow - frosting and cut black fondant strips for his little stripes.

I covered his eyes in white fondant and cut out round pupils from black fondant.

Next, I shaped his stinger out of rice crispy treats and covered it with the left-over black fondant. Then, I cut out a couple of white fondant wings and put the pieces together.

I had to add antenna and transfer him to a prettier plate with pretty paper. It's easy to lift the cake, if you have wax paper beneath the cake while you decorate.

I made the hive out of my barbie doll cake pan, frosted in brown icing and wrapped it with black licorice.


I obviously need a crispy carving class. I had no idea how to do it. But I rolled the rice crispy treats in wax paper to shape the body parts.


Then I put them together and put Bo on a stick.


And I tried to shape the pieces to look like Bo but there must "bee" a few tricks I'm missing because it didn't turn out the way I'd hoped. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

I used frosting as the glue for my fondant to stick to the little-sized Bo but it didn't turn out so well. . . as you can see above.

The good thing about having a CAKE FAIL or a CAKE WRECK is it's not so bad eating my mistakes ;)

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2

We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of . . . Hogwarts.

That's right, Saturday we all went to see the movie of the year...yep, the new Wizard of Oz...only better. Better graphics, better animated settings. I loved it.

But of course it's hard to close a book, finish a chapter, end a story. This was a great story tho' and we had a fabulous time.

My husband and sons talked about it like it was the new Star Wars for this generation. I thought of it like the new Wizard of Oz. I guess it was everything to everyone and maybe even a little bit more.

If you saw it, what did you think?

Earth-Friendly Friday

What way is more energy efficient to produce paper...

1) Recycling paper and producing new paper

2) Making new paper from trees?

Turning recycled paper into paper requires 58 percent less water and 64 percent less energy per ton than making paper from trees.

(According to the Sierra Club)

Word Count for Manuscripts

Here are a few links you can check out to make sure your manuscript is using the right ratio of words, according to agents, and those in-the-know.

Bookends Literary Agency

Editorial Anonymous

Guide to Literary Agents

And one inspirational post by Natalie Fischer

Word for Wednesday - Game for Writers

Word for the day: TOOTLE

Guess what it means...come on play along.

Hint: I used the word recently in my blog.

Now, scroll down to find the answer



Further....


And further....


Tootle is to drive or move along in a leisurely manner

But I bet you already knew that. Write ;) . . . ?

Problems in Paradise

Sunday we went for a boat ride out on the river. It was a beautiful summer Sunday. We loaded up the boat with our wakeboard and were on our way. . . until there was a funny odor coming from the engine.

Oh no, smoke...at the back of the boat and then there was a heavy clunking sound and the boat slowed wayyyyyy down. Boating Bliss and Blips are just another part of life.
And, luckily we were able to tootle back to the dock. Now we've got our fingers crossed that it won't cost too much to repair. :(

How to Make Homemade Pasta Without a Machine in Five Minutes

I wanted to make homemade pasta from scratch. I hate feeding my family unnecessary preservatives. Plus, when I was looking at a package of pasta, I thought, "Wow! It just looks like stale strips of dehydrated flour." And that's all it is.

I figured there had to be a better way. But without a pasta maker, I felt forced to eat store bought stuff. My husband said, "Let's run to Sears and see how much a pasta attachment would be for your Kitchen Aid mixer." But, at $179.00 (on sale) I wasn't going to buy the attachment just to make pasta. Still...I thought, how hard can it be...?

So, I looked up a couple recipes and went to work. I chose a mixture of whole wheat flour and regular unbleached flour.

Here's all you need to make homemade pasta without a pasta machine:

A Mixing bowl, a knife, a rolling pin and a cookie sheet for drying your pasta

Ingredients:

4 cups of flour, (it can be a mixture of any type of flour you like)
1/2 cup of oil olive
4 eggs
1/4 to 1/2 cup water

Here are a few short video clips, plus I've included photos of the process (in case you don't want to watch all the videos).

It's super simple and only took me about 5 minutes from start to finish to make the pasta. Partly because I was getting ready to go out on the river for a couple hours and didn't want to follow the recipe exactly. So my method is super quick.

Here's what I did:


Here's how to slice the dough easily into thin strips

After you've let it dry on a rack, you can cook the dough. Remember it won't need to cook as long as store bought pasta only a minute or two at a full boil - you don't want to overcook it or it will turn out mushy)

After the pasta has been cooked, this is what my whole wheat pasta looked like:


I used a mixer to make my pasta but you could do it by hand too. And this is a picture of all you need to make your pasta.

After you mix up the ingredients, you simply roll out the dough nice and thin

Then you roll the dough up like a jelly roll and slice the dough into long strips

This is what your sliced up strips will look like (they matched the color of my table :(

Then you unroll your strips of pasta and let them dry out for about an hour on a drying rack (or a cookie cooling rack)
I put my pasta on the stove to dry out