Princess & the Pea Play Set

I'm headed to a baby shower this afternoon. When I am back, I will post the gifts I made. I doubt the mom-to-be will be hanging out on the internet reading my blog, but just in case: I like surprises. In the mean time, I want to show you this sweet play set I saw on Stitch/Craft today. She has a tutorial on how to make mini-mattresses that are an important part of the play set.

I'm sure my Z would love something like this, but I feel so overrun with toys lately, I'm not sure I can handle adding to the mess. The kids have been trashing Z's room in the hour before they're allowed to wake us, by pulling every book off her shelf, emptying her box of small toys (Little People & such), and throwing all her bedding on the floor. Not to mention that someone climbed on the dresser and one drawer (that has be repaired before) has broken again and another one is a little wonky.

(ok, little rant:) You know what comes with children's furniture? Anchors to attach it to the wall so that in case they climb on it, it won't tip over and fall on them. Not really something they need to do, since the drawers can't support the weight of a toddler without breaking to pieces. I'm just saying'. So, if you haven't purchased your children's furniture yet, don't bother with Storkcraft (obviously, with all the recalls, is anyone buying Storkcraft anymore?) and just about anything from their Sears line. Go to Ikea instead. Honestly, I can't say enough good things about the quality of furniture that comes out of Ikea. Our family is kind of rough on furniture, and everything we've bought from there has held up beautifully. It's a brilliant company. Go to Ikea.

Cute Crocheted Hats

A friend of mine on Facebook suggested I become a fan of her (I'm presuming) friend's  shop, Sparkleberry Crafts. She makes super cute crocheted hats. They're great, but I don't pay for crochet. I must say I did a pretty good job of figuring out a pattern and coming up with some knock-offs on my own. I feel a bit copy cat-ish, but whatever. I haven't been selling them... and they're my patterns anyways, even if they were inspired by someone else's work. I've made two for my daughter's friends' birthdays and two for my friends' newborn/soon to be born daughters. Soo cute. Z and her friend love their hats (we have yet to give the other hat to the other friend: party on Tuesday).

I had to look up how to make crocheted flowers. I could have figured out my own by trial and error, but why do that when there's Ravelry? I found this easy pattern on Ravelry by searching "crochet flowers." I just made up the leaf pattern myself.

Rolled Sugar Cookies

Remember last Halloween when I made these cookies? It was mostly about trying out this recipe for icing, which was nice, smooth, shiny and professional-looking. I'm a big fan. I made it again this morning, substituting honey for corn syrup. I hope that doesn't turn out to be a mistake. I worried the honey wouldn't allow the icing to set properly. I did drop a bit on the counter and a couple minutes later it was starting to crust up, so that's a good thing.

In the Halloween cookies post, I mentioned I was going to try this cookie recipe since I found my dough a little difficult to work with. I did try it out and it is a pretty lovely recipe. The flavour could stand some enhancing, as many of the commenters noted, but I'm sure once the icing is on, it won't matter much.

I'm planning to decorate the cookies up all fancy-like for a baby shower I'm headed to on Sunday. I bought this set of cookie cutters by Wilton and I plan to decorate the cookies similarly. We'll see how it goes. I'll keep you posted.

Quilled Monogram

I think this quilled monogram is sweet. I actually bought a quilling tool on Artfire a few months ago, but I have yet to do anything with it. Now I need a paper cutter. Anyway, once I get a craft room set up in our new house (that's what I've been doing while I've been away: making yogurt, selling our condo and buying a house), I would love to explore quilling and make some of these quilled monograms... maybe for the kids' bedrooms.

Check out the tutorial here on Craftastical.

Make Your Own Yogurt

So, I can make my own yogurt. I know, the crafty-ness and the cake decorating-ness, it's all blowing you away, and now I make my own yogurt? Yeah. I go off and on with the yogurt thing. It's a little more work to make the yogurt kid-friendly, since all I can make is the plain stuff, so if it's an ok price at the grocery store, I'll still buy the commercial, fruity, sweetened, thickened, ingredients-I-can't-pronounce stuff off the shelves, but then I start to get worried about all that extra crap the kids and I are eating in our yogurt (D doesn't really eat yogurt) and I make some of my own again. I'm doing that today.

I make it in my crockpot, using this handy little recipe/tutorial. It's not a simple crockpot recipe (as in leave it and fuggetaboutit), but it does only require coming back to a few times a few hours apart and then overnight. It's best to make it on a day when you're going to be home.

I've never been able to get store-bought consistency out of my homemade yogurt, it's usually a fair bit thinner, but excellent for use in smoothies and other recipes. Speaking of other recipes, I finally read the ingredients on my canned soups... and Campbell's mushroom soup has MSG in it. I'm not terribly surprised, I suppose, but I don't like it. Anyway, apparently yogurt can be used (along with some other flavourful ingredients) and a nice substitute in recipes that call for creamy soups. You can also use this recipe (at the end of the post).

Other than smoothies, my favorite thing to make with my homemade yogurt is healthy homemade orange "creamsicles." They're perfect in summer when you're looking for a frozen treat. I often use leftover smoothie to make smoothie popsicles for the kids. We all love them and they're way better for us than storebought popsicles.

Orange Yogurt Creamsicles

Homemade (or store-bought) plain yogurt - I don't know how much, maybe 2 cups?
Orange juice concentrate - a couple of icecream scoops
1 ripe or overripe banana

If you don't like the banana taste in your creamsicle, you could sweeten with honey or sugar instead. Blend it all up in your blender, pour it into popsicle molds and freeze.

Cheesy Veggie Biscuits

So last night I made this veggie chowder recipe from Passionate Homemaking. I just found her blog a couple weeks ago, but I think I read about 2 years worth of archives! Lots of great stuff there. It's a yummy recipe, though I would follow her advice and take it easy on the cheese. I think I used 2 cups, but it's a little too cheesy for me. Z isn't really touching anything with multiple ingredients lately, but S was a big fan. Even D ate it and he's not a big veggie fan.

 image source: Passionate Homemaking

I was planning to make biscuits to go along with the chowder and when I saw the bits of chopped veggies left on the chopping board, it inspired me to modify my mom's biscuit recipe. Here is the result:

Cheesy Veggie Biscuits

2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vegetable seasoning (I had some that looked like Montreal Steak Spice, but I'm sure Mrs Dash would work too)
1/3 cup cold butter
1/2 cup mixed minced veggies (I used cauliflower, broccoli and carrots)
3 oz shredded cheddar cheese (about 1/2 cup? I just threw some in)
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp buttermilk (or use milk and substitute one of the tbsp of milk for lemon juice/vinegar, let it stand 5 minutes before using)

Preheat oven to 400 F. Mix dry ingredients together. Cut in butter. Mix in veggies and cheese. Add buttermilk and stir together just until combined (too much mixing = tough biscuits). Roll out dough onto a lightly floured surface. Cut into 16-20 squares. Transfer to an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

I made these during the 20 minutes of simmering to cook the vegetables in the chowder recipe. While they were baking, I finished up the chowder recipe. It worked well as far as timing goes. Z liked these a lot and made up for not eating the chowder by eating three biscuits.

Coffee Cake Recipe

I found this recipe through CRAFT Magazine online, but it seems like they haven't kept the links working for this recipe. I'm not sure if that's some way of try to get you pay for archives or print versions or something, but I printed this one out when it was first posted and I'm glad I did. Another smart blogger, Yasmine of Love Live Survive Home saved a jpeg so you can access the recipe on her blog. I had to show you this original recipe because this recipe is what I would call an illuminated recipe: beautifully illustrated. So, I picked up the jpeg from Yasmine's blog and if you click on the picture below, you can print out the beautiful recipe from Elena Nazzaro of frenchtoastgirl.com.

And you're going to want to not just print this beautiful recipe out, but you're going to want to make it and eat it because it is TASTY! I made it for church this morning and it was a big hit. Thankfully it made enough for us to take some home, too (yum!).

Here are the modifications I made for this morning's version. This would go in the "OR TRY" section
1/4 cup craisins & 1/4 cup white chocolate chips instead of the 1/2 cup chocolate chips.

And... pretty much that covers it. Oh, except either my loaf pans are really small or she means something totally different than I do when she says "loaf pan." The first time I made this recipe, it was all over my oven because there was waaaaaaay too much batter for my glass loaf pan. So, this time I used a bundt pan and while it didn't rise to the height of the bundt pan, it worked well. Two loaf pans would have worked, too.

If I do say so myself, this was fantastic. The white chocolate melting with the brown sugar in the swirl topping caramelizes and... mmmmmmmmm.....

Cake Decorating Tips #1: Starting Right

I've been sitting on this post for a couple weeks thinking that I must have to make a cake sometime soon, so I can fill it with relevant pictures relating to what I'm talking about, but it just hasn't happened. But since I've had a couple more questions and thought I should just do it even without the perfect pictures.

So, I end up sharing many of my tricks with people in person, in emails or facebook wall posts or whatever after I post cake pictures. I should note that nearly all of these tips and tricks came from the woman who taught me basic cake decorating. I own almost none of them. They could all very well be straight from a Wilton decorating book, but I don't own one and that's not where I learned them.

I'll have to do this in a couple of installments. This first one is super duper important because it gives you the base from which you start. If you start with a broken cake, you're going to be fighting a losing battle through the whole process. Later, I'll give you some tips for working through some of the problems you might encounter, but let's start by doing it right the first time, so we can avoid the problems.

This is the kind of start you want to your decorating. 

No holes, no crumbs, no breakage; just nice crisp edges.

First thing: Prepping the cake pans. This is usually one of the first instructions in any cake recipe. Grease the pan. Grease and flour the pan. Put a layer of parchment on the bottom of the pan, whatever. I no longer obey the instructions on the cake recipe. Because I have a better answer: Dream Cream. It is magic. Here is the recipe:

Dream Cream

1/2 cup shortening*
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup flour

Mix them together thoroughly, until you get a nice smooth, creamy paste. I usually start by creaming the shortening, adding the flour and then the oil slowly. Store in the refrigerator for up to a respectable amount of time (I'm really loosey goosey about this and refuse to reveal how long I might store this in my fridge)... seriously, it's shortening, oil and all purpose unbleached flour. Do these things spoil?

Spread liberally on your pans, especially the corners. Then, when you turn your cake out of the pans onto the cooling racks, you should require no shaking, no knives, no hoping, nothing. You should be careful not to turn them over any distance from the cooling racks, because the cake should fall out of the pan and you don't want it damaged in a fall. In fact, I usually put my cooling rack upside down on top of the cake, hang onto both the cake pan & the cooling rack and turn them over. Lift off pan. Seriously. Dreamy.

The cake recipe. Since taking a little course in, what was it?... 2003? I've mostly just used cake mixes. Our instructor said she couldn't really make a cake for much cheaper than a boxed cake mix. And, well, Betty Crocker knows her cake. In the last year or so, I've ventured out to find cake recipes to make from scratch. This is my go-to chocolate cake recipe (except I omit the chocolate chips**). The frosting is good, too. The cake recipe is vegan (I think; unless there are hidden animal products in those other ingredients that I don't know about); the frosting is not (butter & milk). Something about making the cake from scratch makes me feel good. I like knowing what's in what we eat. That Chocolate Peanut Butter cake was good, too, but you should read my notes about it. The recipe as written is not as conducive to cake decorating because it's quite fragile. So, make a cake mix, make your own, whatever. Bake and learn.

I often bang the air bubbles out of my cake batter before I put it in the oven. If it looks all bubbly on the top, I gently shake and bang the cake pans on the counter to pop some of the air bubbles. I'm sure our basement neighbour loves this (too bad he never gets any cake). It makes a little denser cake, a little easier to work with and then you don't end up with big air pockets in your cake.

Actually baking the cake. Here is another part of the recipe I don't follow. Typical cake mix baking temperature is 350 degrees F. Unless you have a convection oven (which I don't, but I would love to have one. If you do have one, follow your awesome convection oven instructions...), pre-heat your oven to 300 degrees. Bake your cake at 300 degrees for 10 minutes, turn the oven up to 325 and bake for another 10 minutes, and finally turn the oven up to 350 and bake for the rest of the time recommended in the recipe. This helps your cake to bake more evenly and not peak in the centre. You'll have less to level off later.

After the cake is baked (insert a toothpick in the centre of the cake; it should come out clean), remove from the oven and let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes (set a timer). Then turn it out onto a cooling rack. Cool completely at least 1 hour. Turn it over so the top doesn't get too indented by the cooling rack. I like to bake the cake the night before and let it sit overnight. I cover it with a tea towel so it doesn't dry out.

 

As you can see here, I did not level this cake the way I outline below. 

It was practically level when it came out, so I just pressed down it with my hand covered in a tea towel.

I read that tip somewhere on the Internet (sorry source I don't remember you).

Leveling the cake. Here's how you get that nice flat edge to your cakes: you cut the rounded top of the cake off and turn it up side down. If your cake has risen higher than your cake pan, put it back in the pan and run your longest serrated knife along the top of the cake pan to keep it level as you cut off the top of the cake. If it hasn't risen that high, you're going to have to eyeball it, or buy a fancy cake leveller/trifler (which I want to buy anyway, but I don't have one, so it's not like you must have one) to cut the top of the cake off. This is the best part of the cake. Snack on this while you decorate (or feed it to your kids to appease them while you put off making their dinner as you decorate a cake for someone else), ensuring you keep the crumbs far from your precious icing.

Well, that's it for this time. Hopefully the next installment won't take me too long. Happy baking!



*I have no answer for trans fats and cake decorating. ... sorry. That's the best I've got. I guess you could try a non-hydrogenated margarine, butter... or lard, I guess. I have never used those. One day they will ban trans fats altogether and what will all the cake decorators do?
**As much as I like real chocolate, chocolate chips are designed to retain their shape after baking. If you ate the cake warm, it would likely be very tasty and chocolatey, but if you ate it at room temperature or cold, you have cold chocolate chips in your cake. I don't like this. Besides, leveling the cake would remove a lot of the chocolate chips which, while tasty for the decorator's children, kind of defeats the purpose.

Resurrection Eggs

With Easter approaching, I was pleased to find these Resurrection Eggs, which you can easily make from some store-bought plastic eggs and sundries from around your home. Each egg is symbolic of part of the resurrection story.

Having not grown up in a very religious family, I don't have many traditions highlighting the real meaning of Easter, but I think this would be a great way to help tell the story of Easter and form a tradition in anticipation of our most important Christian holiday.

Easter Basket

I saw this on Sew Mama Sew today, and while I agree that it is an adorable flower girl basket, as intended, don't you think it would make a fabulous Easter Basket?

There's a tutorial there on how to make one.