Cake Updates!!

Today, I want to give an update about my cake-making.  This weekend, I made a Twilight cake.  This was mostly for fun/practice.  I used fondant and gumpaste for the first time and it was quite an adventure.  Here's the first picture - finished product with the Twilight books in the background (for those of you not on the Twilight bandwagon) so you can see what I was going for.

This is what I found out:  1.  Despite what I read about it online, fondant is very super easy to work with.  It makes the cakes look soooo smooth and I didn't have to spend so much time smoothing frosting to perfection (or obsessing over cake crumbs that made their way to the outside).  Mind you, I don't really care for how it tastes, but DH doesn't seem to mind.  2.  See those chess pieces?  They are made of gumpaste and it took me forever to make those!  And I'm sure you can tell they're leaning over.  It was sooo difficult to get them to stand upright - I finally stuck a piece of spaghetti all the way through to get it to stay.  I'm not sure if the leaning was due to the fact that I don't know how to work with the gumpaste, or that I didn't have the consistency quite right.  3.  My apple looks a bit like a red pumpkin.  It was much taller and skinnier (like an apple) but gravity took its toll on my gumpaste and it settled.  Again, maybe this is an incorrect consistency thing.  4.  That parrot tulip was the biggest pain in the rear.  The petals were made individually, with a wire stuck inside and dried.  That was the easy part and they looked pretty awesome.  The next step, however, was to tape the wires together to make a flower.  I tried every which way of taping and it just wansn't happening.  The petals were flipping around and definitely not making a flower.  I have NO clue why that is.  Maybe my wires were too small for the tape to hold onto?  I finally resorted to sticking them into the cake as individual petals rather than one flower.  It looks okay but it isn't what I was trying to do.  Here are some other pictures:

I think this was a pretty good first try with new materials.  Coming up the first week in May, I get to make a cake for my sister's birthday - also a Twilight cake, but she doesn't read the books.  She's crazy about the movies so it will be a bit different.  I'll report back with a design update on this at a later time.  Also, at the end of May, I will be making a poker table cake for DH's birthday.  Should be fun!  :)  Happy Monday, readers!

Controlling Miss Pip's Messiness!

For those of you who don't already know, I have a little sugar glider named Miss Pip.  A sugar glider is a small marsupial native to Australia and New Guinea that can glide through the air like a flying squirrel. 

Meet Miss Pip

I love my little girl, but she's very messy and throws food everywhere!  This is characteristic of a sugar glider and, yes, I knew this before I bought her.  I put a cloth over the carpet below her cage and hung a sheet behind her cage on the wall.  I thought that would keep most of the messiness under control.  It didn't.  On Monday, since I had the day off, I did a thorough cleaning of her cage (which I do every couple of weeks or so) and decided to clean all around her.  I spent over an hour cleaning dried up food off of my husband's TV, stereo, the Wii, my desk, etc.  I realize she's not in an ideal location being in the living room, but with our living arrangement, there's not much other place to put her.  The bathroom would be ideal, except that there's no window in there and it is crucial for sugar gliders to have daylight cycles.  When we get a bigger place, she will have a home in a spare room/office. 

Anyway, the point of this post was to introduce the (hopeful) solution.  The Glider Kitchen.  I did not come up with this idea, but read about it online and I'm hoping it will help.  All I did was take a little plastic storage tub from Wal-Mart ($1.50) that's about the size of a shoebox and cut a hole in it.  Then I put it inside her cage, and put her food bowls underneath it each night.  Now all I have to do is wait a week or so and see if the messiness is contained.  Hopefully she will be throwing her food at the plastic storage container instead of our TV.  It should work unless she decides to bring the food out of the "kitchen" and still throw it.

Here's her cage with the sheet on the wall and the cloth underneath

And here is an up-close picture of the Glider Kitchen!

Duty calls at work.  Thanks for reading!

New Cookbook - Saving Dinner (Week 1)

I just picked up this cookbook a couple of weeks ago called Saving Dinner. The great thing about this book is that it's divided into seasons and for each season, those recipes use produce that is in season at that time (so they're fresher and cost less!). The other great thing is that at the beginning of each week, there is a shopping list of everything you need to buy for that week's meals. And you can go online and print them so you don't have to carry around the book at the grocery store. And, it gives you suggestions for side dishes that go well with the meal (and that are also in season).

It gives you 6 recipes for each week, but we can't eat that many meals in a week once we go to church, I do some babysitting, we eat leftovers, etc. so I'll buy enough for 4-5 depending. Anyway, the first week, we ate Pan Roasted Chicken and Potatoes, Pasta Beef Satay, Black and White checkered Chili, and Blackened Salmon (some photos are below).

Most of these came out really delicious! When I made the Pan Roasted Chicken following the recipe, the chicken finished cooking before the potatoes. Next time, I think the potatoes should be smaller pieces. The Pasta Beef Satay had a little too much peanut butter for my taste; the noodles tasted a little dry because of it. Overall, so far, so good. I've always liked to cook, but I was stuck cooking the same things repeatedly. I like learning how to cook some things that are more outside of my comfort zone but not too over the top.

Black and White Chili









Pan Roasted Chicken and Potatoes









Blackened Salmon Over Rice