Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Fruit Salad

We went to the beach not too long ago. I was in the process of making a fruit roll-up recipe, from Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals show - one that aired about 4 year ago! It involved making a fruit mixture and rolling it into some flour tortillas. I made this recipe 4 years ago and it was really handy - but this time I forgot the detail about warming up the tortilla so that it would roll up easy. Since I forgot and I was in a hurry, my tortilla kept breaking and I got frustrated. Therefore, I scrapped that idea and made it into a fruit salad. It was yummy and the kids liked it. When my family came to visit, I made that salad again for our trip to the beach.

This is what I did, I mixed up a bunch of fruit -peaches, apples, grapes, bananas, strawberries - with lemon juice and strawberry jam (mine was homemade freezer jam). It was a perfect salad for a day at the beach. Next time I will post Racheal Ray's Fruit Roll-Up recipe - it is yummy too.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Decorating Cakes

I enjoy TRYING to decorate a special cake for my kids' birthday. I have always admired others creations. For my daughter's 1st birthday, I made a simple small chocolate cake. Her second birthday, I bought a Dora cake from the supermarket. For her 3rd birthday and my son's first birthday we had a bug party, so I made caterpillar cakes out of cupcakes. For my daughter's 4th and my son's 2nd birthday I made a Dora cake from nickjr.com. It was super easy. Those pictures I might post at a later date, but they are hard copies and not digital, and I don't have a scanner. For my youngest son's first birthday, I took a train recipe off the internet and followed their directions. It was very colorful!


For the next birthday, my daughter's 5th and my son's 3rd, I really wanted to use the special pans and tips. I borrowed the Barbie pan, tips, pastry bags and food coloring from a friend. It is a major investment to get started. The Thomas cake I came up with on my own by tweaking that recipe off the internet. I was pretty proud of it.
I found this Fire Engine cake recipe on the same site as I found the train recipe. I designed it to look like Red from the Race Car movie. That was fun too.


For my daughter's 6th birthday, I made a doll cake. We went to the store and picked out the doll that she wanted to use. I made 2 cakes and baked them in a pyrex bowl. I made two, in order to get it the height I needed so the dress to be able to fit the doll. The Snow Plow Thomas cake I made was a 3-D cake pan that I found.
This is the Happy Birthday Thomas that I made for my youngest son's 3rd birthday. (I also made him a banana cake.) I used that same pan that I used to make snow plow Thomas.


I made a High School Musical cake for my daughter's 7th birthday and the Lightening McQueen for my son's 5th birthday. I looked on the internet for ideas for the HSM cake. I bought the car cake pan. (I bought a Cinderella cake pan a couple years ago to make for a friend. I can't find that picture either.) So, now, I own 3 cake pans, several tips and pastry bags, and about dozen different colors in food coloring gel. It has been an investment, but I have enjoyed doing it. The main reason I wanted to post my pictures is that I wanted to show that anyone can do it and I wanted to encourage you to do it too. It does take me a couple hours to decorate it, but I like the challenge.What is the most important is that even though it might not look as great as I wanted it, the kids think it is the best. Isn't that the most important thing anyway?
These are my monogrammed cupcakes. Pretty cute.