My First Blogiversary

Today is my last day of summer vacation and also one year since I started recording my thoughts about food and other ramblings. So, because after today I'll be busy getting back into the swing of things at work, I have a couple of posts that I'd love to share. I've been cooking, baking, and decorating up a storm, snapping pictures along the way. I hope you find some of the stuff cool, cute, or maybe even mildly inspirational.

The first thing I'd like to share is the cake (and other fun stuff) I made for my sister's going away to college party.  She's the baby (9 years younger than me) and is the one that keeps things lively around here. So when she decided to go to college 10 hours way, I thought she definitely deserved a special sendoff. I used some things I'd seen on Pinterest as inspiration. (It's awesome and totally addictive btw).

 I started two days before the party by making an 8" round chocolate layer, which I wrapped in plastic and put in the fridge. With the remaining batter, I made chocolate cupcakes. The next day I used vanilla cake batter to make one vanilla and one strawberry layer. I added a tiny bit of pink food coloring gel and some pureed strawberries to make the last layer pink and add some strawberry flavor and texture. I skinned the strawberries first, so the cake wasn't full of seeds.

Then, I had to level and stack all of the layers. This was really nerve racking, because for two days,  I'd been preparing three cake layers with only one 8" pan, so I had to keep juggling the cakes, swapping out, cleaning, and re-greasing the pan once each layer had cooled. The last thing I wanted to do was repeat that whole process again.

By the way, here's where I get the depth and breadth of my baking knowledge. It's cutting edge.

Google says there is a contraption out there that levels cakes easily, but I of course don't have that equipment. So after clicking the next clink, I used the advice from a very smart sounding person (in the ways of cake leveling), which was sliding the knife around the circumference of the cake cutting out even rings until you got to the center. But it didn't come out perfectly.  Finally, I just went for it, (a la what I've seen on the cake boss) sticking my bread knife in the cake horizontally and sawing across the diameter hoping that it turned out even. That worked just as well. Better actually, much easier than the ring method.  I guess I didn't need Chef Google after all.

The top

Oh, and before I forget, before the leveling, there was this small snafu. Come on, you didn't think I'd get away accident-free on my first time, did you?

I (while subduing my inner freak-out-attack) mixed up a "patch" icing and used my finger to coat the inside of the hole and then slid the missing chunk back in (luckily it was already cool and not too crumbly). Then I cement it shut with the patch icing.

After all of that, here are the three layers together ready to be iced and put on my new cake platter $14 at Home Goods. Whoop whoop!

I crumb coated each layer with my homemade strawberry icing, again flavored with juice from pulverized fresh strawberries. No artificial flavor comes close.  I also added just a hint of pink food coloring gel. Insert super smiley proud moment below.

Then, I refrigerated it overnight. I imagined that I was going to do something super cool when I frosted up the final layer, but I just couldn't bring myself to mess with it too much. The super cool (in my world)  surprise was on the inside.

The day of the party, I topped the leftover-batter cupcakes with raspberries and stuck them on my Home Goods platter ($6!). I also set out the cake and a few other sparkly and pink decorations.

 I twisted glimmery silver ribbon around some candles that I had leftover from my wedding and plucked a couple rosebuds from the garden out back. The mini-vase was also left over from my wedding.

 I made these for Sarah's dorm room out of some flat canvases that she can probably hang with command strips. To make them, I placed painters tape in a diagonal pattern and mixed up a shade of pink I thought she might like using acrylic paint.Then I just painted away and pulled off the tape after the two layers were just beginning to dry.

Towards the end of her party, we cut the cake so fast that I didn't get time to snap a good-lighting/crumb-free picture. That's ok, I was just happy it turned out just as I planned. We served up some Neapolitan ice cream on the side. Yummy!

 It was so...darn...good.  I had to use every ounce of decorum in my soul not to grab this slab with my hands and eat it like a ravenous wolf. So moist and melt in your mouth with all of the different flavors. Uh! - Sorry, I just needed a little satisfaction-grunt. 

Anyways, all grunting aside, I hope you like the cake idea. I wish it was mine, but it was something that I tagged on Pinterest a few weeks ago. It did work out well though (besides the small snafu) and I'm notorious for royally messing stuff up the first time. (I confess I deleted the pictures of the first homemade brownies I made from my camera earlier this summer. It was just too humiliating to have to re-live).

I'm not yet ready to start my fall pie-making just yet. I'm still clinging on to the last few weeks of summer! I'm making hamburgers and slicing up watermelon to the very end!! Thanks for still reading my thoughts about food- even one whole year later!

Stay tuned for some before and after pictures of the house in a bit!