Soo, I'm a total jerk...

If you take the C-A-K-E-S out of Cakesass, all you have is A-S-S... which is what I am apparently. I just looked at the pics I took off my phone the other day, and I haven't posted since MAY! Oh dear! so this is a catch up for everyone who's not on my Facebook.... 

Waaaay back in May, we had the special triple birthday extravaganza for Husband, Other Husband and Friend. Three birthdays in three days USUALLY means 1 party and at least 2 cakes. Sadly though, I was feeling exceptionally uninspired so I decided my 7 year old should come up with a design, and I would make it into a cake. The Husbands go sailing every year, so Pirate Theme is always popular. The kiddo did a nice stick figure picture for me to go with and I translated it into this baby. 2 layer sheet cake with buttercream frosting...

and of course I jazzed it up a bit :)

OMG A KRAKEN!!

Then I decided Husband needed his favorite cake, so a few days later I made him his Black Forest cake anyway

June brought a belated celebration for one of the nieces, and more on time for her sister. Rapunzel is the hottest, and most fought over commodity in their house nowadays, so having an extra doll show up IN the cake was a bonus...

July... well, I just felt like having cake. I took some flak from a  jerk friend for the decorating job....

below the pic is the Facebook conversation that followed...how foolish indeed!

Minden  Lish....you failed Canada....our flag is not pink.....pink is for sissies!!!!

Elisheba  Minden, you are a jerky jerk. YOU try making actual RED icing from scratch! You know how much food coloring that takes?!

Minden lol I was not denying your talent...it is a beautiful cake....I am just saying....you have potrayed Canada as a sissy lol

Elisheba  ‎...And your point is?

Minden CANADA IS NOT MADE OF SISSIES!!!!!!!!

Elisheba  No its made of mad hatters and dead indians but I couldn't figger out how to get felted beaver pelt and scalps on such short notice

Minden  really!? you really didnt know where to find such items on short notice!? Why do I find that hard to believe Lish? oh thats right...I KNOW YOU!!!!! lol

Elisheba  Well its hard to get my usual supplies here. Our walmart just doesn't work right

Minden  tis a sad sad day when you cant get scalps and beaver pelt at your local wal mart!

Elisheba  A sad day indeed.

Elisheba  And you thought a sissy flag was the worst of our country's worries... Silly girl

Minden  how foolish I have been!

**********

Uhh... yeah, we tend to get carried away sometimes :)

Then September rolled around, and with that E and Child's birthdays... We usually do a combination celebration for them too. Since Child's friends are usually out of town on the long weekend, we then invite his classmates later in the month. So, the first planned day rolls around and suddenly I realize "I have to make the cake TODAY! TODAY!!!!". This here was one slick "oh crap" cake. 

And yet MORE September shenanigans... Again, with the elusive RED color- We were going for a "Circus" look, and, well... it was really pretty...

.really PINK...

Oh hey, it's still September! What a busy month! I'm surprised I can find my kitchen at all at this point! I had to make Child's "party" cake the next day, so I offered my brother a Meat Cake for his birthday. He thought that was a pretty awesome Idea, and it was a pretty awesome "cake". Really. There were NO leftovers.

MEAT CAKE FOR EVERYONE!

Finally... On to the latest, and I must say, one of my FAVORITE creations so far.... The Club Penguin Igloo cake. I took my inspiration from this picture here- a CP toy....

And managed to come up with THIS!

I'd say it was a hit :)

And these 15 kids seemed to think so too... I'll take them over my inner critic any day 

Tricky Business

The Ugliest Rabbit Ella's Magical Bunny Cake

So, Fondant has proven to be a major challenge to my skills and patience. I still had fun with this one, and learned a thing or two, and it at least mostly cooperated with my "vision" of what I wanted to make. One of the things I discovered, was that I either need to make a "denser" cake and/or to go a little heavier on the frosting coating before covering it with fondant. I noticed that in spite of my efforts this time, that the cake looked kind of "lumpy", and that's not what I want. 

Now that I have some experience with the Cricut though, the stars I cut out were super easy and turned out great. I'm so glad I had help with the last cake, I would have DIED of frustration!

Anyway, Ella loved her cake, everyone else thought it was super cute, and of course, it tasted awesome :)

There's a First Time for Everything.

Oh, the mess. The horrible, unbelievable, unholy bloody MESS.
I made Marshmallow Fondant today. It turned out...okay. But now I understand why most people just go out and buy the icky tasting Wilton stuff!

It seemed simple enough to make- first coat every last square inch of surface in your kitchen with a generous layer of vegetable shortening. Every. last. square. inch. Then you melt the marshmallows in a greased bowl in the microwave, and transfer using a greased spoon to your pre-greased mixer bowl with the pre-greased dough hook, and add icing sugar. . . and DO NOT TOUCH THE MARSHMALLOW STUFF! Oh, oh, ohhh.... whatever you do, don't touch the marshmallow stuff. sigh.

Then you mix it until it starts to do this-

No, I'm not showing you what's in the bowl. You don't want to see that.

Next time I do this, (like, when I forget what this time was like to clean up) I will not add all of the sugar at once. I measured everything out by weight, but there was clearly too much sugar. It all crumbled up except for the giant angry glob of Marshmallow Demon that had chemically bonded itself to the dough hook and was refusing to let go. Not enough shortening apparently!

Eventually, after I stopped panicking and running around the kitchen quacking like a rabid duck, I got something that looked like this.

And a whole bunch of crap that looked like this.

I messed around for awhile kneading in more shortening, and warming it in the microwave until it was at least sort of manageable... then threw it back in my poor mixer to add color. Next time (haha), I will add the color to the marshmallow demon before I add it to the sugar.

and then... after some more epic struggle against the beast... we have this. 

Ok, so definitely not Cake Boss material, but for Cake Sass- and a first try- It's bloody magnificent. 

Now. About the Cricut...

After about 2 hours of jacking around and swearing and smoking and experimenting, Tara, Sue and I successfully managed our first USABLE cut. It seems the secret to clean cuts on this beast, is roll it THIN, then FREEZE it solid, then start the cut AWAY from the edge with MEDIUM pressure on SLOW speed. I can understand how so many people got frustrated and returned these things, but I happened to have done enough homework about the CC, to know that only the patient survive. We survived :)

As far as first times go, I think it's great. And I'm sure it will be more fun next time now we have a bloody clue what we're working with!

Happy New Year from Hillbilly Grill and the Cake Sass crew :)

A few of my favorite things...

No packages tied in string, but I thought I'd share some of my likes with everyone... in the food category that is...

To Drink-

• Coffee. Always coffee. In it I like cream and sugar, sometimes I like Carolan's (Like Baileys but not as sweet and not as expensive), sometimes I like rye.
• Tea. Earl Grey, Red Rose, Orange Spice and homemade Chai (One of these days I'll post Saravjeet's recipe for that... mmmmm.) I'm not big on all those sissy greens and whites though, they taste kinda like piss to me- at least how I think piss would taste if I ever had to taste it, which I hope I never do.
• Water is good too
• Beer
• Carolan's and milk... mmmmmmm... I could drink that by the gallon.
  
• Eggnog- I would give up food for chicken-milk, oh yeah, the chicken-milk!

To Eat-

• Rice
• Fish
• Broccoli
• Peanut Butter
• Cheerios
• Ritz Crackers with cream cheese
• Cheese- I like cheddar, mozza, gouda, havarti, provolone, jack, oh I like pretty much any cheese, hard or soft- except any kind with the emmental process... makes me throw up.
• Pie
• Chicken
• Since red meat doesn't agree with me, I generally avoid it, but I can put away my share of prime rib if it's there!
  
• My ultimate weakness is CAKE. Yes, it is Kryptonite. I cannot resist it. mmmmm CAAAAKe......

Oh there's alot of stuff that I eat, and a surprising number of those things are things I didn't enjoy anyway. It's no wonder so many people are fat these days- we're programmed to stuff ourselves whether we're hungry or not- hmm, I guess we might have to explore that further sometime!