Lily's Big Cake

I had my own Pinterest challenge for Lily's birthday.  I had pinned this gorgeous cake a few weeks ago.  Well actually, Ashley pinned it and I repinned it from her.  I just did that really fun flower and butterfly cake for Chloe, so when my best friend, D, asked me to make Lily's cake I wanted to do something different, but just as special.  My mind kept going back to that Pinterest cake, and since Lily's not old enough to be into any special themes, I thought the Pinterest cake would be fun and classy for a First Birthday party.

I basically followed the directions Glory provided with a couple of tweaks.  I used a tried and true vanilla cake recipe that I knew would stand up to being thinly stacked 5 layers high (I made an 10" cake and one "smash" cupcake rather than a 6" cake like Glory did).  I had used it to make Randy's 3-tiered graduation cake from USC last July.  I multiplied the recipe by 1.5 to make the 10" cake and Lily's little cupcake-sized smash cake.  I also used my kid-friendly buttercream recipe, which is sweet enough for kids, but not too sweet for adults.

I divided my cake batter into 5 bowls.  I left the first one its natural color, then I dyed each bowl a progressively deeper shade of pink, and then the last two progressively a little purpler.  Since I only had 3 10" cake pans, I had to bake them in two batches.  Here's my very pink middle layer.

I then stacked them up with buttercream and tried unsuccessfully to keep it flat on top.

Then I did a crumb coat of buttercream and started my swirls.  Glory did her whole top a light pink then moved progressively down the sides of the cake, getting pinker and pinker as she went.  I don't know what I was thinking, that would have been the sane way of doing it.  No, I started with white icing in the middle and progressively dyed the icing deeper and deeper with each row.  Not very ombre, and very time consuming.

It did turn out kind of cool, though.

Then when I got down to the last two rows, I added a little purple like Glory suggested.

I made Lily's little smash cake just the lighter icings so she wouldn't stain her clothes ...as much.

Here's D holding Lily as she eats her birthday crown.  What a cutie!

Her big brother helped her blow out the candle on the cake.

As luck would have it, the colors on the inside of the cake matched up pretty well with the colors on the outside.  Yay for happy accidents!

If you missed Lily's demonstration on how to eat cake, you can see it here.  Very informative.

Valentine's Day

So, I have a little cold.  It stinks.  But I get to sit in bed and sip tea and cuddle with the kitties, so it's not all bad.  And I have all day to write a really long post.  Ha ha, sorry you tuned in, huh?

I'm not one of those people who takes medicine at the first sign of a cold and pushes on.  I used to be, but I'm a baby and a hermit when I'm sick.  I like to stay at home and hibernate.  I hate the idea of spreading germs to anyone, including my co-workers, or worse, my family, friends, and Randy.  I stopped off at the vet yesterday to pick up Keller's special low-calorie cat food (we don't call him Chunky for nothing) and apologized for subjecting them to my germs.  It was the lesser of the two evils since the other errand was to go to the grocery store and I'm pretty sure the vet hospital is used to disinfecting everything.

So poor Randy braved the store and brought me home everything my sick body needed to feel better.  I totally recommend the following:

Puffs Plus

Ginger Tea

Wolfgang Puck's organic free range chicken and rice soup

I also asked for fresh ginger root, but Randy said they were sold out!  Apparently there are enough people with colds in the greater Philadelphia area that Wegmans was fresh out of ginger.  The secret must be out!  My co-worker had told me the last time I was sick to grate one inch of ginger, mix in 1 tsp of honey and a sprinkle of fresh black pepper.  I know, sounds gross, but when you're sick, you can't taste anything anyway, right?  I usually swallow it down in small spoonfuls like a pill so I don't have to taste it, and it clears your nose and helps with coughs.  But none for me today.  I've been sprinkling a little fresh black pepper into my tea with the honey.  Randy also brought me ginger candy since he couldn't get fresh ginger, and I did have a little of that this morning.  I do feel better, thanks to my thoughtful guy.

Anyone who has hung out with me recently...  I hope your store has ginger in stock!

So, this post is supposed to be about Valentine's Day and how sweet my husband is, not how disgusting I feel.  We celebrated V Day a little late because it fell in the middle of the week.  Like most people, we have stuff going on during the week.  Busy lives!  So we postponed it to the following weekend.

The wrapping on Randy's gift is a joke.  When I first met Randy, his entire apartment was purple and leopard print.  Really.  Not bad on their own, but this was purple and leopard print overload, not in a good way.  We've managed to keep leopard print in our home in smaller doses.

This is Randy's gift to me.

As you can see, it says, "To Randy, From Bryan and Ashley."  He used leftover wrapping paper from Christmas.  It's really sweet because he knows I like to be eco-friendly, so this wrapping job is not as thrown-together as it seems.  Of course I was not eco-friendly at all and bought new wrapping paper because it made me laugh.

Randy's card was awesome.

My card, not so much, so I'm not going to post it.  Ahh, the benefits of blogging while sick when no one is there to edit you :)

I got:

Randy got:

Randy has been really motivated with going back to the gym and being healthier, so I got him new sneaks.  Randy got me Lady and the Tramp because we're building a blue ray collection of Disney classics.  I know, we're dorks.  But we want to be prepared when we're an aunt and uncle or hopefully parents some day.

Randy also surprised me with signed pictures of Bruce and Lady Gaga...

And I surprised him with chocolate pudding cake with caramel sauce.  It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself!  I mean it tasted a lot better than it looks.  I followed the instructions from here.  I watched the instructional video and wrote down the steps, which are different from the recipe listed.

So what did you guys do for Valentine's Day?  Anyone else have this stupid cold?  Have any good home remedies you can recommend?

How to eat cake

We can all learn something from my best friend's baby girl, Lily.  She eats cake like it was meant to be eaten.

With pure abandon.

 Happy 1st Birthday, Lily Girl!  I'm so honored I got to give you your first cake!

Gettin' Cheeky

So I was at Old Navy last week picking up a Valentine's Day present for Randy, and I found these little gems.  Old Navy is getting a little cheeky, aren't they?  Of course I found them infinitely hilarious, but there were none left in Randy's size.  Too bad, so sad.



For all you Penn Staters out there in the Exton area, the Old Navy in the Exton Market Place has way too many Penn State ladies' T-shirts in all sizes for $3.  $3!  They're marked $9, but they're $3.  And sweatshirts for $10.  It's like when Randy and I found a Pearl Jam Ten CD in an antique store for $1.  We had to buy it on principal.  Sure, we already had a copy, but we couldn't bear to see it all by itself among old tapes from the 80's for only a dollar.  It was, in our minds, an indignity.  Since when is something from 1991 an antique anyways?  But I'm getting off track here.  Go buy those $3 T-shirts and show your Penn State pride!  I've already bought 3 T-shirts and 2 sweatshirts in various sizes for me and the moms.  They're in the men's active wear section.  You can never have too many Penn State T-shirts! Oh yeah, Ashley, let me know if you want one :)

Never Boring...

Jodi:  We take our cats to a large vet hospital that is serendipitously 5 minutes down the road.  You can imagine with four cats, we're there a fair amount, but it's so big I don't assume they know who I am when I call in.  There's about 5 vets, a lot of vet techs, and at least 6 receptionists.  Today I called our vet to get a refill for Camille's thyroid medicine.  I know, so thrilling, but hear me out.  The conversation went like this:

"Hi!   I'm calling today to order a refill for my cat's medication."

"What's the last name?"

So I tell her and she says, "What's the first name on the account?"

"Randy."

"Is this for 'Expensive'?"

"Ha, ha!  Yes, it is!"

"How is your funny husband?"

"Oh...  he's fine."

So in case you missed that, Randy has gotten the receptionists to either remember or write the nicknames he devised for the cats on their charts.  Camille = Expensive, Keller = Chunky, Rocky = Happy (Not sure why, maybe he's happier than most?  Or he's one of Snow White's Seven Dwarves?), and Apollo = Sketchy.  Not only is Camille famous at the vet, but my husband is too.  Famous for what, you ask?

A couple of years ago, we took Camille and Keller to the vet for shots.  Randy can't stand watching them get shots, so I had to play bad cop while he sat in the waiting room.  While 3 vet techs and I were holding Camille down to give her a distemper shot, Randy was outside the door rallying for cats' civil rights.  There are dog treats on the counter, but no cat treats.  Randy insisted there be cat treats as well.  So they opened a bag of cat treats to make Randy happy.

When a little girl came out of one of the other examination rooms with a small crate, he asked her, "Would your cat like a treat?"

"It's a ferret."

Randy turns around to the receptionists, "Where's the ferret treats?"

They kept cat treats on the counter for a good few months, but since cats are usually in crates, I guess they weren't as popular as the dog treats.  But at least we know you can get them if you ask!

Anyone else embarrassed every time they call the vet?  Anyone have any crazy husbands?  C'mon, I know I'm not the only one!

Lion Cut

Jodi:  My parents have two Himalayan cats, Tango and Foxtrot.  My brother named them after military alphabet for the letters "T" and "F".  If there was a third cat, its name would be Whiskey.  When Mom and Dad go on vacation, we have six cats, 3 boys and 3 girls.  Like the Brady Bunch, if Jan and Cindy hid behind the washing machine and only came out to eat and poop.

This is Foxtrot below, after she was living with us for a month and actually ventured to the top of the stairs.  As you can see, these girls have a lot of hair.  Hair that is hard to brush and gets matted.  

So Randy and I had to periodically help Mom and Dad by cutting out the matted fur so it didn't pull their skin.  A pile of cat fur + Bryan's high school graduation picture = hilarity.

Anyone else cracking up?  Just us?

So Mom and Dad took them to the groomer, where they got a Lion Cut.  Poor Tango...  She looks embarrassed, and cold.  I want to make them little coats.

They don't seem cold though, just PO'd.  But aren't they cute and pretty funny?  It's the poof at the end of the tail that kills me.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Strawberry cupcakes

Jodi:  I made cupcakes for a co-worker's birthday this past week at work.  She asked for vanilla, but it's not really a surprise if you get just what you asked for, right?  I knew she likes strawberry short cakes and cream cheese icing, so I came up with something a little different.  I pulled out my strawberry cake recipe adapted from here.  

I didn't use the red food coloring because we're trying this whole Mediterranean diet thing at work right now.  Basically you can eat what you want in reasonable quantities, but no preservatives, fake colors, fake sugars, etc.  So real butter (which I always use anyway), full fat milk, etc.  A few of my co-workers are also trying it, so every day we compare notes of where we found bread with no high-fructose corn syrup, etc.  It's awesome because the food is better, but a challenge because foods without weird ingredients are unfortunately harder to find.

  

For the icing I used this recipe, which is the best cream cheese frosting I have ever had in my life.  If you try it, don't skip the almond extract, and let me know what you think!  Totally worth it.  Ina Garten is a genius.   

I then topped them off with a half an organic strawberry, which I drained on some paper towels before I popped them on top to avoid the juice running down the side of the cupcake and making it soggy.

These cupcakes would be perfect for Valentine's Day, wouldn't they?  Speaking of, what do you all have planned for Tuesday?



If you'd like to see more cakes and cupcakes I have made, check out my website, www.sugarwhim.com.

Chloe's 3rd Birthday

Jodi:  As Randy and I said yesterday, we were recently up in State College to celebrate the 3rd birthday of one of our favorite little people, Chloe.  You know how you have some friends who are the family that you choose?  Chloe's parents, Derrick and Hannah, are those kinds of friends.  

Hannah asked me to make Chloe's 3rd birthday cake and I was super excited.  The last time I made a cake for Chloe was when she was born.

Randy totally hogged all the baby time the first time we met her.

A perfectly-timed yawn.  Totally sweet, right?

Well now that she's 3, Chloe wanted a more sophisticated chocolate cake, vanilla icing with purple and yellow flowers and butterflies.  I made the butterflies out of soy paper, so they were edible too.  I just cut them out with kitchen scissors.

Randy went to Michaels and rigged up a great wire structure for the butterflies using some fondant and a flower water tube.  Chloe and Hannah helped me paint the butterflies with purple food coloring.  We just mixed a dab of gel color with some water.

 I used a regular buttercream instead of an italian buttercream so it was a little more sweet for the kids.  The 3 is made out of a mix of home-made marshmallow fondant and gum paste.  This is one of my most favorite cakes I have done.  Kids cakes let you use more imagination and whimsy...  and of course it was extra special because Randy helped.  He's becoming quite the cake guy.  I just ask him what he thinks about how to do something and he makes it happen.

It was a great party!  Great food (Chik-fil-a!), great friends, great weather.  We got there and it was snowing, but the sun came out and it was a beautiful day, as you can see in the picture below.

Happy Birthday, Chloe!

Anyone else make any fun kid cakes lately?  Amy, I know you did for that cute little boy!  Please share!