This Makes Me Happy

 

Found this on Dude Craft (who found it via You Might Like This via NotCot). It makes me happy, too. Something about flowcharts.

I made the perfect cake

I'm not 100% sure about the claim of the title, as I haven't actually tasted this cake yet. I have tasted the components, though, and I must say, it's going to be pretty difficult to taste anything but delicious with the tastiness of the various components.

If you weren't planning to come to our church Superbowl party (or if you didn't get an invite, let me know and I'll get you the details), then you might want to rethink your decision, since this cake will be there for dessert. If I've changed your mind about coming to the party, you need to bring an appetizer or dessert to share with everyone. I recommend appetizer, since you're going to want some of this cake.

Of course, I've already mentioned this recipe just last week. After a couple of my friends made it, I decided I just couldn't wait until my birthday to try it, so the Superbowl party was the perfect opportunity.

ETA
I should add that I modified the recipe a little bit. The cake recipe, I omitted 1/2 cup of the sugar (does any cake need 2 1/2 cups of sugar for 2 cups of flour?) and 1/2 cup of the water. The smitten kitchen recipe says that the cake is really soft and she had to freeze it to make it easier to work with. That's just not my idea of a great cake. Looking at the recipe, I had no doubt that the cake would be plenty moist without the last 1/2 cup of water and I hoped it would make it a little easier to work with. I was totally right. It was just as easy to work with as my go-to chocolate cake (I can't seem to access the epicurious recipe link right now: try searching old fashioned chocolate cake). I also let it sit on the counter cooling for the evening and covered it with a tea towel over night, so that made it easier to work with, too.

Also, I made a mistake on the glaze (the chocolate peanut butter ganache on the top)... I accidentally added 1 cup of half & half instead of just 1/2 cup. Aaaaaaaaaaagh! I found all the chocolate I had left in the house (about 1/2 cup chocolate chips & 2 oz of Baker's unsweetened chocolate), melted it in the microwave (I should have done this in my glass bowl over hot water on the stove but I was panicking a little), added some more peanut butter and icing sugar to the soupy mess I had and then the melted chocolate. The microwave melted chocolate was kind of lumpy and gritty and it was really difficult to get the glaze as smooth as I would have liked to, but it tasted DIVINE.  And bonus of bonuses, there is a significant amount of leftover chocolate peanut butter ganache in my fridge. Mistakes are rough, eh?

The cake is REALLY rich, almost too much to bear. Everyone said it was wonderful, but you had to take a break part way through. And I should have brought a gallon of milk to go along. That would have been perfect.

How I Patch & Hem Jeans

My children inherited my husband's long torso and short-ish legs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly the tall, slender type myself, but proportionately my legs are pretty long for my size. So I can wear regular pants without usually having to undergo a lot of hemming. But even for me, jeans can be the exception to that. So, with short legs running in our family (and nice round bums) we have to size up in the jeans department (for the kids) and hem (a LOT).

I was so happy to find this fabulous way of hemming jeans from Just Something I Made. Fast and easy and it keeps the original hem look that we all love about jeans. It's has it's drawbacks, but overall, it's pretty great. I'll show you on my son's jeans.

This picture was taken after I ripped out the seam, but you can get a good idea from the wear lines, how it worked. I didn't cut the leftover fabric off, I just hand-tacked it up on the inside so it would stay there.

 

This is how it looks after ripping them hem out. You can see that I took about 3 inches out in hemming them. They'll be a little long on him and might look a tad goofy with the wear lines (and darker portion there), but I hope they'll be acceptable enough for my husband to put them on him (he dresses the kids most days).

These jeans needed letting down for a little while, but they also began to sport a small wear tear in the knee (the joy of boys!), so I took care of the whole job in one go. I patched up the hole in the jeans like this. I first saw this here on CRAFT (complete tutorial in that link).

 

Inside pic. If you can't tell what I did here, I cut a small piece of denim (from old jeans; I keep them around for crafting and whatnot... it also occurred to me that I should keep the bottom portion of my daughter's hemmed jeans since there's usually about 4 or 5 inches to lop off those and then I could use them for patches). So I cut a little square, quite a bit bigger than the hole. Usually there's wear around the hole, so it's good to give the whole area some reinforcement. I pin the denim in place and, using my sewing machine, I just sew back (using the reverse button) and forth pulling slightly to kind of zigzag it along the patch. Cover the patch that way, trim the excess patch, if you like... and you're done!

 

Turn them right side out and they look like that. It's a little funky looking, but I think goofy patches are more obvious; this is more like the distressed look. And that patch isn't going ANYWHERE!

The Perfect Cake

This cake looks fabulous.

I love chocolate and peanut butter together and this looks simply lovely.

I'm mostly putting it here, so I don't lose the recipe, but if you wanted, you could make it, too. I might just have to make this for my birthday (What?! Who else is going to make me a cake?)

Images are from smitten kitchen.

Tiny Hearts

I found this great little pattern for crocheted hearts. I made a couple and put them on snappy barrettes for Z's hair. They're so cute and she loves them. I made a couple slight modifications to the pattern. I sized down the yarn & hook and instead of the half double crochet, chain 1, half double crochet to make the point of the heart, I did a little picot (chain 3, slip stitch in the first chain) instead of the chain 1. Makes a pointier end.

Super fast little project.

In My Shoppe

Hopefully this is the start of something good. I have just listed my Washable, Reusable Facial Make Up Removal Pads in my Artfire Shop. Can I call it a shoppe? When I was a teenager, I wanted to run an old fashioned ice cream shoppe (with 2 'p's and an 'e') with stools and floats and stupid hats for the workers. It never materialised.

I personally use these facial pads myself. I'm the whole reason I came up with them in the first place. Believe me, I don't go about dreaming up what other people may want and make that. I solve my own problems. I didn't like the way that disposable cotton pads would disintegrate as I used them and I didn't like the way they'd fill up my bathroom trash can. I also didn't like shopping for them. The best price was always at Walmart or Superstore and I never go there, so it's a special trip just to get cotton facial pads. I'm a little bit of an environmentalist, but when you mix environmentalist with not having to go shopping (think big city + winter + 2 little kids), not having to empty my trash can as often (lazy) and having a better product to use, well, I'm sold. You know you want some.

 They come with a mesh laundry bag to wash them in, which keeps them together and protects them from your machines. I wash and dry mine in the bag right along with my regular laundry and it works wonderfully! They come in a set of 21, which I find is a nice amount to launder every couple weeks and never run out. I only use toner at night, so I use one or maybe 2 every day. If you remembered to wash every week (I'm so forgetful), you could use 3 per day and it would still be enough! They have a soft, fluffy side that's not too absorbent; it holds toner and eye make up remover without absorbing it, so you don't have to use as much. The other side is absorbent cotton flannel, a soft and gentle exfoliant and great for make up removal. Also, the soft cotton is perfect for cleaning fingerprints off DVDs and CDs.

Anyway, I'm really hoping this launches my motivation to fill that shop up with other interesting things I have dreamed up. Let me know what you think, if you have an opinion or suggestion (or encouragement!). Your comments are appreciated!

Little edit to add: I just added an Artfire widget up there in my side bar so you can shop from my Artfire Shoppe right from here. Another great thing about Artfire is that they don't make you sign up for an account if you just want to buy something. It's pretty sweet.

Foundational Cookbooks

I consider cooking a craft. I found this post from Casual Kitchen on Foundational Cookbooks, listing six foundational cookbooks to own that you'll actually use. Embarrassingly, I don't own any of these. I think my first purchase from this list would be the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and then the Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.

My cookbooks are family cookbooks and my own compilation of collected recipes from the internet. What are your foundational cookbooks?

More cakes

I made this cake for my friend's 35th birthday party. It was a surprise party and her husband did a fabulous job of pulling off a terrific surprise party for her with lots of friends and he even brought her parents in from Florida! How exciting! It all seemed to go off without a hitch: she seemed to suspect nothing and enjoy it all.

As you can see here, I've been having some trouble lately smoothing my buttercream icing. When I first learned cake decorating, it was something I was pretty good at. Perhaps I've become picky through my years of decorating and since learning to make and use fondant, now I want it nice and smooth like fondant. Well, before I totally switch over to fondant, I think I may try out this handy little trick. And probably try beating my icing a little less (which incorporates more air bubbles into the icing). I know another tip given to us was to let the icing rest a day before using it, but I can't remember if that's to let any icing sugar bumps incorporate into the icing better or if it was to get rid of air bubbles. Regardless, I made this icing the night before I used it and it was still bubbling up all over for me. Very frustrating when you want a nice smooth finish.

The cherry blossoms turned out alright. I don't tend to be too hard on myself with cake decorating, since 90% of the population isn't looking at the mistakes I see. Everyone was very impressed and pleased with the cake. And if I haven't said it before, the woman I "learned to mae fondant from" (or at least her writings on the internet) says, "You're working in a medium that is meant to be eaten." Don't take yourself too seriously. It's a great cure for perfectionism.

This is the cake I made for New Years Eve, even though we just had 2 people come over and we didn't dig in before the kids went to bed. It was way too much cake for 4 people. We ate the rest of it for probably the next week. I made a boxed cherry bits cake mix for this recipe because Z had a friend over and we were making it together. I didn't feel like dragging out all the ingredients for a chocolate cake to make a big mess with them. Turned out cream cheese chocolate icing was not that tasty with the cherry bits cake. I wonder how it would have been with chocolate cake... (seems like cupcakes are in order!)

The decorations are piped white chocolate. It was my first time trying that. I piped them onto parchment (good idea) on the counter (not so good idea). I ended up moving (carefully) the parchment over by the window and opening it a crack so they would set faster. It didn't take long, but it was taking a long time at room temp. I tried to make snowflakes, but my chocolate was too warm for that. These squiggles were the best design I tried. I made some stars, too; they're not bad. I'm keeping them refrigerated in a tupperware container with pieces of parchment between the layers.

I hope you'll forgive me for getting out of the blogging groove over Christmas and the new year. Happy New Year. I hope you all will be seeing a lot more of me soon.

Unrelated: I'm working on making some items for my Artfire shop. It's been unstocked for a while and I haven't been taking advantage of the selling capacity there. I'll post here when I have items available and give you a peek at what they are.

Leap Frog Giveaway at My Organized Chaos

My Organized Chaos has another great giveaway for a Leap Frog Tag.

My reading-loving daughter will love this! I already bought her one for Christmas (ssshh). I suppose if I win we can take it back (but probably my son who wants to do everything his big sister does will be happy to have one too, even if he is a year and a half younger than the recommended age). Go over there and check it out because probably your pre-schooler or 4-8 year old would love this, too.

12 Layer Mocha Cake

I'm a little late posting today because I was very busy preparing for my wonderful husband's birthday party. When your birthday falls on a weekday, it can be an extra bonus because then you can be celebrated on 2 days! Yay!

I had been busy for the past 2 days preparing this cake.

It is the 12 Layer Mocha Cake that I found on Epicurious. It was delicious. It was unbelievably rich. We served 15 people this cake and are only 1/2 way through it. My co-workers may get some after all! I found the buttercream layers to be a bit too rich. I would have preferred a mousse layer in there instead of a couple of the buttercream layers. The hazelnut meringue was so tasty with a bit of crunch that was fun.

Here are some of my prep pictures, just because I like foodie shots...

The cake layers

 Chocolate for the souffle layers

Melting chocolate for the souffle layers

Egg yolks for the souffle layers

Melted chocolate (mmmm... chocolate)

 The souffle layers

Hazelnut meringue layers

More chocolate melting for the mocha buttercream

Layers ready for assembly

Assembled, ready to chill

Edges cleaned  up

Delicious clean up