Addicted to cake

The universe is toying with me, mocking me, taunting me.  


Knock it off, universe.


I made another cake because I have been obsessing about what I could have done differently and how I could have improved upon my last cake-making foray (that's the universe talking, not me.  I don't use words like 'foray.')


It's just that I feel like I'm so close!  I feel like I can actually pull this off with just a few tweaks and I get all inspired to try just one more time.


And then the universe knocks me down.  The universe can be kind of a jerk sometimes.  


...


This weekend we hung out at my girlfriend Kristin's house for St. Patrick's Day.

Sofia and her bff Dagny on their first St. Patrick's Day

This is Sofia's signature look

Like I did the last time, I got started the night before - but I was smarter from the beginning!

HaHA!  No mess this time!

Everything is easier with wine - it's my motto.

I bought food coloring this time and decided to do shades of green.

The last time, I poured the cake mix and puree directly in the pans.  The problem with that was I had sprayed the pans, so when I mixed the puree, I was mixing the no-stick spray in with my cake.  So I got smart!

Put your cake mix in separate bowls first!  Revolutionary!

I was terrified of using too much food coloring 

so I was ultra-conservative on my first pass.

Slowly, I mixed the coloring in, praying I didn't use too much and drop by drop, I continued to add coloring until I got the variation I was looking for.  I could have gone for more dramatic shading but I was up to like 12 drops in the darkest layer and I kept hearing "bitter cake! bitter cake!" in the back of my mind like a warning bell so I quit while I was ahead.  

Varying shades of pistachio.  Not quite the kelly green I had in mind but we'll go with it.

Once again, everything went in the oven and I crossed my fingers.

WOP WOP.

Universe - 1, Desiree - 0.

Technically, I guess it would be Desiree - 4 because now it's going to be four layer cake

instead of five.  Ah well.

Flipping them over one more time.

See how one side is higher than the other?  To the best of my knowledge,

that's a natural thing and that's why you have to cut the tops off so your layers will be level.

I still love knives, even if they don't love me back.

Time for assembly!

This time around, I wanted to try and stack the layers without filling between each one, so it looked more like my inspiration photo.

After consulting with Pinterest, I settled on brushing each layer with simple syrup because when it comes from a site like I Am Baker, how can you go wrong?

She did a billion-layer cake AND tinted it with fruit instead of food coloring.

*sigh* I'm going to have to try that, probably.

from here via my Pinterest

So, I dutifully mixed up a batch of simple syrup and brushed that on each layer before stacking them.

Left side brushed.  The syrup kind of seals up the crumbs so your frosting is smooth.

Stacked and ready for Cool Whip-ing

Whipped.  Not bad, if I do say so myself!

Cool Whip is infinitely easier than frosting.  It's light and super forgiving and it looks pretty without even trying!  It took me about ten seconds to ice my cake.  But the real test was the taste and we'd have to wait until we got to Kristin's for that. 

*drivedrivedrive. stop. get out of the car. "Hey girl! Awww, look at the baby in her green! Aw, thanks!  Yes, I made a cake! I hope it doesn't suck!"*

(that was my awesome narration of the time passing so we can get back to the cake)

You guys!  It didn't suck!  It was actually really good!  

I could have made the Cool Whip thicker but other than that, it wasn't bad!

Now, here's where I have to question Ms. I Am Baker.  When I cut my cake, all the layers fell apart into little cake triangles.  The simple syrup didn't hold them together at all!  I have no idea how she got her billion-layer cake to stay together and the next time I make this I'm going to have to put something between the layers to keep them together.

Because, yes I'm making the cake again tomorrow.  My playgroup is having a party and you guessed it, I volunteered to make the cake.  Thanks to I Am Baker and this little article, I'm going to attempt organic food coloring.

It would be really cool if the universe would cooperate with me on this one. 

Suffering for my art

You guys, it's a miracle I'm able to type this with all my fingers because a few days ago, I nearly chopped one of them off.  Do I have a story to tell complete with pictures?  Of course I do!


As you know, we're trying to sell our house and not being able to really live in it because it always has to be staged is annoying at times, nearly impossible at others.  Naturally, Sofia's new game is to take everything off of shelves one at a time.  She'll stand at her bookshelf and one by one take off all the books and throw them on the floor.  Only when the bookshelf is empty will she laugh, drop to her little butt and crawl away.  

Because she is my first child and I think her methodical mess-making

is cute, I put all the books right back on the shelf so she can take them off again.

We do this several times a day.

The mess-making really isn't that big a deal but because I can't live in my house, my creativity is stifled and that *is* a big deal.  I need to nest!  I need to decorate, to organize, to craft!  I have rearranged the living room which helped a little but I needed more.  I've been doing a tiny bit of sewing and that has helped too but I'm not good enough at it for it to be satisfying.  So, I brainstormed small things I could do to satisfy my crafty itch.  Naturally, I turned to Pinterest and found this little beauty.

from here via my Pinterest

It was perfect!  Drew and I are big winos so we have tons of corks.  Plus, it was even a sentimental craft as we were in Sonoma when I got pregnant.  I got all excited Googling around looking for the letters and was positively giddy when I found one.  It came a few days later, and because I have a baby, it sat in the box for several weeks.

One night, I finally pulled it out, got my corks, found my glue gun and got started!

These aren't even all the corks we have!

Setting up shop.  Please take note of the giant knife.

I have no clue how you're actually supposed to cut cork.  I rarely approach things with all the necessary information, I realize that now.  I should have looked up exactly how you cut corks safely, but I didn't.  Instead, I went to our knife drawer in the kitchen, pulled the biggest, sharpest looking one and said, "this oughta do it."

It's amazing I didn't chop my finger off because that knife didn't work very well on the round fricking cork.  I would go to cut the cork in half and it would slip away from me.  I even thought to myself I should be careful using this knife.  So what did I do?

Why, get a hacksaw, of course!

Isn't that what you would do?

I commenced to trying to saw that damn cork in half, holding it between my fingers to keep it steady.  After all, I had to make sure that I only had the cool part of the cork!  Except the hacksaw wasn't working that well, but it was getting late and I needed to get some sleep.

A few days later, Drew was out of town, the baby was taking her nap, and I decided that it was a perfect time to chop my finger off get back to my craft.  The big knife didn't work and neither did the hacksaw so I probably should have just gone ahead and glued the whole cork on the board.  But that's not what my inspiration photo looked like!  It was all cool and piecey, so that's how I had to do it too!  I went back to the knife drawer to look for something a little more substantial.

A meat cleaver!  It's thick and heavy, this has GOT to cut through cork!

PS, stop reading now if you don't do blood 

because we all know where this is going, right?

I used the cleaver to slice the tips off some of the corks so I just had small discs.  Then I re-attempted to cut one of them in half the long way.  I held the cork with my left thumb and middle finger and got about halfway through successfully.

Then the damn cork slipped out of my fingers and rolled just as I heard a dull *thunk*.

I didn't even realize what I'd done until I started bleeding.  I wasn't even surprised - I knew in the back of my mind that I was probably going to cut myself.  I just didn't count on it being so serious.  

It was one of those cuts that's so deep it doesn't bleed right away, kind of like when a baby falls and they don't immediately cry and you stop, frozen, wondering if they're going to scream or not, and you think maybe the fall wasn't that bad until WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!

It was like that, except with blood.

I even went to the living room to get my camera out of my purse so I could document this but it started bleeding so badly that I had to run back to the kitchen so I could hold it over the sink.

And take a picture with my phone, of course.

I knew it was a pretty bad cut when I ran it under water to rinse the blood away and it stung like hell!  I'd cut it so deep you could see the white part.  My brown people know what I'm talking about - when you scrape the color off your skin?  That.

I started to get a little worried when it wouldn't stop bleeding.  Like, for real.  I mean come on, I have clotting disorders!  Doesn't that mean I should stop bleeding like instantly?  But I wasn't and by this time the baby was awake.  Of course.

Which was why I didn't realize I'd cut my thumb too!  And it too was bleeding!  Are you kidding me right now?  Crap!  Now the baby was crying and I was bleeding into the bathroom sink and I was like *shit! What do I do?*

I grabbed a towel, squeezed it as best I could and went to get the baby.  I brought her in the bathroom and starting singing to her so she wouldn't get worried.

Ooooohhhh Sofiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaa, your mommy is a dork!  Sheeeeeeee cut her fingers oh yes she did!  And noooooooowww she's bleeding all over the place!  All over the place!

There was no way I was going to the emergency room by myself with the baby so I had to suck it up and do the best I could with what we had at the house.  I squeezed the heck out of my middle finger; my thumb was bad but the bleeding was slowing down so I put bandaids on both fingers.  

I soaked three bandaids on my middle finger before it slowed down.

You guys, my finger bled for like three days!  I seriously probably should have gotten stitches!  Thank God it stopped bleeding on the third day because I was really starting to get nervous.

I'm not going to be able to get a manicure for at least a month, if not longer!

It's been over a week and it still hurts and it doesn't look much better.  There's a big gash where skin should be and I'm still wearing a bandaid because it hurts so freakin bad if I bump it against anything.

I'm about halfway done with my craft and I'm really hoping I don't lose any more appendages before I'm done.

Because I'm not abandoning my little project!  I'm not going to let a little cut finger (or two) get in the way of my crafting!

I'll just have Drew cut the corks for me.

Birthday prep: The Frankencake

I love it when Drew is home because we get to feel like a real family.  Sofia is getting bigger, interacting more and it's so cool to see them together.  As much as I hate when he's gone, the glimpses I get when he's home remind me of what we have to look forward to once we're in the same city.  He was home all last week and it was so cool to have family time!

Showing Sofia what her blocks can do.  She prefers to just stick them together.  

However, when Drew is home my blogging seriously suffers.  The only time I can really write is at night after the baby is in bed.  But, at night after the baby is in bed is the only chance we have for Couple Time and I always feel guilty when I'm in the living room on my computer and he's in the bedroom on his iPad.  So, when Daddy's home, no blogging for Mommy.


Drew is gone this week so I'm back and I can tell you all about my Frankencake!  And how I nearly cut my finger off!  And how I'm going to attempt to hem my jeans and how I'm so nervous I would be hyperventilating from anxiety but I'm not because I'm on Zoloft now!


But since that would be a ridiculously long post, we'll just start with the cake.


My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I had some of the moms over to hang out and help me celebrate.  It was so much fun and I really enjoyed spending time with them, and no celebration is complete without cake.  I'd been wanting to practice making Sofia's birthday cake so the night before everyone came over, I got started.

Because I am no baker, I bought box mix and canned icing.  Don't judge me.

Seriously, I am no baker.  I can't even open the package without making a mess.

This is my inspiration photo, from here via my Pinterest

PS, follow me already!  I need meal/clothing/crafty/house decorating ideas!

I saw this and laughed.  The best part about making cake is licking the bowl!

I started my cake after the baby went to bed, so that meant I couldn't use the electric mixer which may have been an issue, I'm not sure. Spoiler alert:  My cake did NOT turn out like my inspiration photo.

I got the bright idea to tint the cake using strawberries instead of food coloring because in my Googling, I read that too much food coloring could cause the cake to taste bitter.  Since I am no baker, that scared me away from food coloring because I would most assuredly end up using too much.  I mean, I can't even open a plastic bag properly!

However, the only strawberries we had on hand were frozen ones.  That required blending.  But the baby was asleep.  And I didn't want to wake her.  And I need to make my sentences longer.

I briefly considered taking the blender out to the garage, but that would require going outside at night which I quickly nixed because I'm afraid of the dark.  Nightime is when the werewolves and serial killers come to hide in your bushes and get you when you're taking your blender to the garage to make your baby's birthday cake.  Fact.

So I took the blender to the farthest point from the baby that was still inside the house.

I would have put the blender in the shower but the cord wasn't long enough.

I blended the strawberries, flipping it on and off hastily, holding my breath each time because I was sure the baby would wake up any second but thank the baby Jesus, she didn't.  However, the strawberries didn't blend smoothly because they were frozen, so I had to scrape out the chunky frozen mess and nuke it right quick to soften them.  I am no baker.

It worked though!

So, with my pans out and cake mix properly portioned, I brilliantly poured my strawberry puree into each pan.  I patted myself on the back for my genius.

French vanilla cake with strawberry flavoring - this is going to be so good!

Spoiler alert:  I probably shouldn't have gotten so excited.

Then I noticed that I didn't portion all that well since two of my pans had almost the same amount of filling, which meant they would be too close in color.  I didn't want to blend more strawberries, so I went looking for something else that was red.

Aha!  Raspberries are red!

A quick second in the microwave to liquefy it and in the pan!

I'm inventive!  I'm resourceful!  I'm a baking genius!

I popped them in the oven and briefly daydreamed about the beautiful cake I would present for my baby's birthday.  I'd walk out in my flowing skirt with my perfect hair and they would marvel at my skills!  Marvel!

I tried to find a brown housewife but there weren't any. 

What's up with that?

The timer went off and it was time to marvel at my masterpiece.

Umm, they all kind of look alike.  Crap.

By this time, it was like one in the morning and I was exhausted from all my baking so I shoved them in the fridge and went to sleep.  The next morning I awoke refreshed and unwilling to let a little thing like identical cakes get me down.  I took each cake out of the pan, flipped the pan over and set the cake on top so I could cut each layer to make them level.

The one farthest away had the preserves in it and apparently preserves will make your cake very dense.  Who knew?  Whatevs, that can be the bottom layer.

I started at 8 in the morning, the girls weren't supposed to be there until noon, I had plenty of time.  HA.  I am no baker.

It took FOREVER to cut the layers, feed the baby, change her diaper, walk around holding her because she was cranky, feed the dog, try and get dressed one-handed, pick up the house, vacuum and clean the bathroom.  That's why I didn't realize that you need two cans of icing if you're going to try and ice a five-layer cake.  

Did I have two cans of icing? Noooooo.  Did I realize that when I'd only iced the layers and still had the outside of the cake to do with fifteen minutes before everyone was supposed to arrive?  Yeeeeeeess.

So I grabbed the baby, put shoes on and ran to the grocery store and grabbed the two more cans of icing, just to be safe.  I thought I'd purchased two extra cans of buttercream icing, but of course I didn't.  I'd gotten one buttercream and one cream cheese icing but I was already home and the girls were coming in like two minutes.  Oh well!  Buttercream and cream cheese it is!

I have the best mom friends.  They ate my Frankencake with a smile on their faces.  It really didn't taste that bad because it was a French vanilla cake flavored with strawberries and buttercream/cream cheese icing.  None of those flavors are really overpowering and they sort of go together so it didn't completely suck.  It just didn't look quite like the picture.

Once again, for comparison.

I'm probably going to have someone else make her birthday cake.

Bautizo

Thanks for all your comments on my last post - don't you love a good discussion?  Plus, I'm glad we all kept it classy - I mean, as classy as you can keep it when talking about Bebe's kids.  PS, I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who knew what that was about!


But we must move on, because I have some more pretty pictures to show you.  They're not as nice as Amy Barry's, but that's because I am not a photographic genius and when I take a good picture, it's purely by accident.  Nonetheless, I'm happy I got some shots and I'd love to share them with you!


Sofia was baptized the same day we took her pictures for her birthday.  It was a big day for her and she was such a champ!  She even had the courtesy to explode her diaper between wardrobe changes and if that's not manners, I don't know what is!  I had taken her out of the pink dress and kept her tights on for her nap - I don't know if I'm thankful or not for that.  When she woke up, she smelled like she'd dropped a bomb in there.  Thank God for cloth diapers because it most certainly would have been up to her neck in a disposable!  It was up to the edge in the front and the back and her tights were helping to hold it in.  Well, when I went to take the tights off, the elastic caught on the diaper and poop flipped in my face.


I would like to say I ruefully laughed and calmly wiped it off but there was poop on my face.  Near my mouth.  I will spray a poopy diaper all day long, I'll scrub poopy clothes, but I draw the line at poop on my face and I sure as HELL don't want it near my mouth.


Drew literally cried from laughing so hard.  Ass.


However, I cleaned us both up with no further incident and we got her dressed for the baptism.  My mom brought the family dress with her and when I put the baby in it, she looked like a little angel!

Angels need to eat too.

We piled in the car and headed to church, talking to Drew's parents and Nate and Julie along the way.  I was so bummed that they couldn't be there, but Nate and Julie sent along the sweetest bracelet for Sofia.  

So sweet and delicate!

I was nervous that she would freak out in church after having such a long day, but I was able to keep her bribed with yogurt melts.  That kid will do anything for yogurt melts!

She was squirmy, but as soon as we got near the water she calmed down.

Baptism hair

This picture is my dream come true.  I've always dreamed of my husband holding a little girl in a pile of ruffles and lace and to see it in real life made me happier than I could have imagined.  There were so many times when I thought I'd never get to this place, yet here I am.  I am so very thankful and so incredibly blessed.

Lemme get that face

So, um, we're good here, right?  I'm ready to bounce.

Grandma and Grandpa are cool and all, but I'm ret ta go!

This was one of those major adult moments for me.  Most times I feel like I'm bumbling and barely muddling my way through things, but sitting there in church with my family really made me feel like a grown-up and I was completely content.  Church is magic like that - I've never not felt good when I've gone to church and it really makes me wonder why I don't do it more often.  

Then again, maybe Sofia and I will turn over a new leaf.  We've already been back to get our ashes - maybe she and I will go to church like I used to with my dad.  I have great memories of getting dressed on Sunday morning and holding his hand as we walked to church.  He used to give me my own quarter to put in the offering plate and I was so proud to drop my big money in the basket when it passed by.

We're so ashy.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.