Wow! Three years old...

And look how smart he is!

Just kidding, Jim built the plane and Joseph is working on it. This was on Joseph's Birthday just after we opened the Keva blocks. We had a great day. Here a picture of the cake that I made for him. He loved the truck on it and insisted that we not eat it (well, for a few days anyway, after which he wanted to eat it himself.) Of course we did eat the cake right away, though.  I had lots of fun making it, but I think I am going to have to break down and get a tilting cake stand so that I can decorate the sides of my cakes. Well, it was my best tasting cake, if not the most artistic. It was a yellow cake with blueberry compote, and the frosting was a variation on the Wilton Buttercream recipe. I made a mistake that turned out to be a happy one. I accidentally used too much shortening, which in effect reduced the sweetness.  I only know how to used shortening for the frosting at the moment.

First Cake

This is a picture of my first cake for my cake decorating class. I had my first class one week ago, in which we learned how to make frosting, about frosting consistency, how to torte a cake (cut it in half in order to add a filling, etc. This week we practiced basic techniques of cake decorating, and we also decorated our first cake for the class. My cake is a raspberry buttermilk cake with raspberry jam filling, and almond flavoured butter cream frosting. I learned a lot with doing this first cake, like how to make stars, zigzags, curving lines, and transferring images. I drew the picture of the raspberries and vines on a piece of paper, and then used piping gel to transfer them to the cake. Mixing the colors was very fun for me. I didn't had enough of the red after doing the raspberries, so I had to mix more in order to be able to make the boarders. It was just like painting!

My Inner June Cleaver

Something about being pregnant turns me into June Cleaver with a heavy dose of granola. When I was pregnant with Joseph I taught myself how to knit and toward the end of my pregnancy I did lots of stuff in the kitchen, particularly baking shortbread cookies and almond doubles (which are a sort of tart with raspberry and apricot jam, and dark chocolate on the bottom.) This time around it seems that baking is taking precedence. About a week before my birthday I decided that I wanted to make a cake with buttercream roses on it. I got rather involved in my research on how to do this and ended up making a cake with marshmallow fondant. The fondant turned out O.K, but then it was time to start making roses. I watched a few videos on you tube, and it really didn't look that hard.

Well, this is my cake in the end. I think that my frosting wasn't stiff enough to make roses because I couldn't get the frosting to stand up on the rose nail. So, I am now taking a cake decorating class at the local hobby store. I just had my first class last night, and I think it is going to be a lot of fun. Next week I will post a picture of my first class cake.