My early birthday presents!

Although my birthday isn't until Wed, Matt couldn't stand not giving me some of my birthday presents early! He wanted to give me all of my presents, but I wanted to have something for Wed. He ordered these from CafePress.com
I absolutely love them! I can't wait until I feel up to baking again to try out my new apron!

While discussing me not feeling up to baking, I wanted to see if everyone would please keep me in their thoughts and prayers this week. I' m having some extensive test done on Tues and Thurs, hopefully they'll be helpful and they'll be able to figure out what's wrong with me!

Matt Ezell's Birthday Cupcakes

Sorry it's been so long since my last post, I've been feeling a little under the weather. Matt and I went up to Birmingham to see the Ezell's for Eze's birthday a few weeks back. We had a great steak and baked potato, prepared by the birthday boy himself, and I made peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate and white chocolate ganache for dessert. I attempted to make Diamond and Zadie cupcakes, which are the Ezell's adorable babies! I don't think they turned out too bad, but they definitely could've used a bit more work.This is Zadie, the Ezell's min-pin

And this is Diamond, a.k.a. Piggy, the Ezell's chihuahua

Pumpkin this and pumpkin that...

Last year for Thanksgiving I made a Pumpkin Roll that was absolutely wonderful! (Well, aside from the crack down the middle that I tried to "hide" with the filling. Matt said it looked like Santa bent over with his pants down!) I was thinking about it/craving it the other day, but I didn't feel like making a roll so I decided to try pumpkin cupcakes. I looked around online and found a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes that I thought looked interesting. They turned out great!!! I used pumpkin pie filling instead of just plain pumpkin (it's what I had on hand) and I added a little freshly grated cinnamon and nutmeg. I covered them with spiced cream cheese frosting, which some of them were also filled with. I will definitely be making more of these, they are my favorite so far! I could eat two or three every morning (and a few more throughout the day too)!

First Real Order!

My sister Steph wanted to know if I was interested in doing a baby shower cake for a lady at her church a while back, and of course, I jumped at the opportunity. Of course, I didn't realize what I was getting myself into! All they said is that they wanted a strawberry cake with cream cheese icing big enough to feed 50 for a baby girl. I had no idea what to do, but I knew i wanted to try something new. I found a really cute silicone mold with baby items on it, and decided to do a tiered cake instead of a sheet cake, something I've never tried before. I started Thurs. night baking my cakes. I was able to bake my 2 small layers and 1 of the large layers before I finally had to call it a night. I finished up my last layer Fri. night and worked on my fondant and gum paste decorations (I worked on these for over a week!). Sat. I crumb coated, iced and assembled the cake, I even doweled it to make sure it stayed up! I checked it first thing Sun. to make sure it had survived the night in the fridge and was still standing straight, it looked great! I added my feet and flowers, which I finally decided upon as my design on Sat., and then loaded it into the vehicle! I was so nervous, but I think it turned out pretty good. Everything on the cake is edible except for the balloons on the top. And most importantly, everyone said it tasted great!!!

Not a cake, but still good!

I am completely addicted to sushi, I would eat it every day if I could! But living in the middle of nowhere like we do, it's not that easy to come by, so I've had to learn to make my own. Matt got me a sushi kit for Christmas last year, and I have to say I've really enjoyed it. I haven't used it near as much as I'd have liked, but our kitchen isn't that great for space. I do most of my cakes at a friends, thanks Dee, you're the best! I've made it a few times and would like to try some different ingredients. This one is a teriyaki chicken roll with cream cheese and green onions. Not near as good as Street Cafe (my favorite place in Montgomery), but good enough.

My monkey's favorite!

Matt loves Reese's cups. Well, he really loves anything with peanut butter and chocolate. I wanted to make him a cupcake similar to a Reese's cup and I thought why not put the cup in the cupcake. These are peanut butter cupcakes with a Reese's cup center and a chocolate ganache icing. They were absolutely amazing. The chocolate around the cup dissolved into the cupcake and left you with this creamy peanut butter center. Let me know if you want the recipe! Matt said it's his favorite by far!!!

Fondant, the edible play-doh

I had never used fondant before, so I decided to buy a box from Wal-Mart and give it a try. I absolutely love it! It's just like play-doh, except you can color it any way you want and eat it when your design doesn't come out how you wanted it to! Where has this been all of my life!?! I haven't made anything too difficult yet, mainly just cutting things with cooking cutters and doing some molds (I'll show more of this later!). The fondant doesn't have much of a taste to it, it reminds me off that bubble tape gum we use to buy as kids. I'm wanting to cover a whole cake with it, but I haven't had a reason to yet! Anyways, I made these cupcakes for our church homecoming in the middle of Sept. Most of them are made from those candy fruit jelly slices (ex: http://www.candywarehouse.com/brachsslices.html). I just rolled them out with sugar, to keep them from sticking, and cut them into shapes.

I also wanted to try out a purse cake. Some of my nieces have birthdays coming up, so I thought I would give it a try in case I decided to do it for one of them. Next time I'd like to cover the whole thing with fondant and give it some cool details. It's butter cream icing with fondant dots and a twizler handle.

My first attempts...

These are my first cupcakes! Matt, or Monkey as I sometimes refer to him, got me a cake decorating set last Christmas and I finally broke it out. These were done around the end of August, practice for the monkey cake in Sept.. They're a basic cake mix, just done to practice with the tips and a butter cream icing recipe.

And this...


...this is the monkey cake. I wish I would have outlined him in a darker brown so that the feet, arms, and tail would have shown up better. This was done for my monkey for our first anniversary. It's a peanut butter cake with butter cream icing. It's not that bad for my first cake, but I still have so much to learn!