Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Adventures in Cooking - First Birthday Cake

As I mentioned on Monday, it was our daughter's first birthday last week. First of all, I cannot BELIEVE how fast that year went. Second of all, she is still completely adorable. 

We had a party for her at the park with friends and family, and since starting my cupcake decorating endeavours a few months ago, obviously I wanted to make her birthday cake. I was going to do cupcakes, but the logistics of transporting them to a park was a bit crazy, since I would have had to bake 60 or so so that everyone had one. Instead, I decided to do a square slab cake. The results were pretty good!



It was a simple eleven inch chocolate mud cake, decorated with white and coloured fondant, and it was much easier than I thought! I hired the cake tin for $7, and the cake took about three hours to bake in my oven, but the decorating only took about an hour and a half. The most time consuming part was kneading and rolling out the white fondant, which had to be one big sheet big enough to cover the entire cake, and I trimmed off the excess. I would have preferred the cake to be a little bit more moist - it was moist, but I think it could have been even more moist, so next time I'll experiment a bit more. I used a commercial cake mix so that the cake would keep longer, and it was delicious! That size cake served about 60 people with some left over, which was perfect.

I'm looking forward to creating something different and trying new designs when I hopefully make another few cakes for some functions in a couple of months. Pin It

Monday, April 22, 2013

Monday Morning Melody - Rihanna

Hello! I've been AWOL lately. My daughter was sick for nearly three weeks, then I caught it and was sick for two weeks, then we had her FIRST BIRTHDAY, and now here we are. So, it's a Monday, which is a good a time as any to kickstart things again with a Monday Morning Melody.

Disclaimer: I am not a Rihanna fan. When I think of her, the term "oversaturation" comes to mind, and if I hear her on the radio I usually change the station within about a second. But her new single, Stay is different. It's heartbreaking and full of angst, but there's something in her voice that just nails the song.


 
When she gets it right, she really gets it right, Pin It