Oh... My... Cake

Winter birthdays, ugh.  My birthday is in February.  I've always thought that having a February birthday sucks.  As a kid I never had the cool parties, the pool parties the BBQ's.  And now my poor second daughter not only doesn't have a summer birthday, she has an early January birthday.  I take full responsibility for this poor birthdate planning, a total oversight on my part... Early January, I must say, is even worse than February.  Everyone (read: mom and dad) is broke, everyone is exhausted, and everyone just saw you two weeks ago at Christmas...  I can only imagine that motivation is scarce for friends and family to venture out in the nastiness to brave a ~gasp~ retail establishment for an obligatory gift, and then to hang out in a crowded house and watch a now three year old spit on a cake.  But... maybe that's just me.

As a parent, trying to muster excitement for birthday festivities while still in the post Christmas funk, was difficult at best.  But I did it.

So, my sweet little chickie wanted herself a Strawberry Shortcake birthday cake.  In retrospect this could have been done quite simply with a store bought cake. But that's totally not my style.  I don't buy cakes.  I make cakes.  So, I set out to find a SSC cake pan or something that would crossover as SSC cake pan.  I searched... and I searched... and I procrastinated... and I searched.  Eventually I realized that the super cute cake pan that I wanted was completely imposable to find in a timely (read:today) manner.  So, I changed gears...  I started digging into baking sites and I found a brilliant idea.  I have no idea what site it was on so I unfortunately, can't give credit where credit is due.  I will say that it wasn't my idea, but whoever figured it out is a genius.

Here's what you do:

•Print out a picture of whatever you want on the cake
•Set a piece of waxed paper over the picture
•Pipe directly onto the waxed paper exactly as you want it on the cake
•Lay the frosted wax paper flat in the freezer, freeze.
•Once frozen, peel the wax paper off the back of the design and set the design directly onto your prepared frosted cake.

Perfecto!!

I must say that I was pretty sure it was all going to go down in sticky pink flames.  No pictures were taken to document the failure that I anticipated.  I so wish I had some pics of the process... oh well, maybe next time.  In the end it turned out pretty good I think.  Super-T thought it was perfect!

Cookie Day!

Again I'm playing catch up.  Here is cookie day!  My favorite domestic holiday of the year.  This year we were very well prepared and everyone showed up with a mixer, some supplies and at least one batch of dough ready to go.  My mother as per usual, was the generous host.  We had a great time with all 5 of the kids running around and intermittently *helping*.  Christmas music playing on the stereo and cheery and cheeky banter throughout the day.  It was great.  We loaded up a big box (thanks to the food saver) and sent it off to Jimmy in the far away desert.  We also sent a little box to Granny and the hounds on her snowy island.  We missed them both this year tremendously. 

  

In the end (from what I remember) we ended up making:

Macaroons

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sugar Cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies

Russian Tea Cakes

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Haystacks

Stained Glass Window Cookies

Cookie Rings

Spritz 

Lemon Sprites

Red Velvet Biscotti

A batch of peppermint fudge was the only loss of the day.  Burnt sugar is never a good thing.

There are a few still lingering around in my kitchen, much to Matty's dismay...  Overall, great fun.