Love: Week 6 Challenge

• I love coffee laced with chocolate.
• I love icee mochas - which are coffee laced with chocolate and blended with ice into perfection.
• I love chocolate.  Like an extra large cut of moist rich chocolate cake topped with fudgy, creamy milk chocolate frosting kind of chocolate.  Otherwise?  Meh.

Chocolate covered strawberry cake on the table Valentine's morning

• I love my husband.

My eyes are teary.  It had been a rough day.

• I love my children.  And my mom.
• I love my friends.  I am so blessed to have old and new friends.  There was a time when I stood in the back yard of our old house in tears because I felt so isolated and alone.  My husband put me to work digging something up in the yard because "Nothing beats sadness better than hard work," he said.  That year God brought me two friends from two mission trips that have been by my side through thick and thin since then.  And my two longest, dearest friends who remain so and can pick up right where we left off in spite of distance.  I tell my kids, you don't need lots of friends, you just need a few good friends.  I am lucky to have a few very good friends.

Me, my BRE, and Crazy Timi

Best Friends

• I love the front of our house.  I drive up and think what a lucky girl I am that God allowed us to have this house.  I like the inside, but I don't love it yet.  There is still a lot of work to be done on the inside and it paralyzes me in the magnitude and the choices and the opportunities and the what ifs, and I just do nothing.  That, and there's never enough time.  John is great at making lists every weekend and working on those projects to completion.  Like the linen closet in the basement.  I pulled some sheets from the bottom of a box last weekend when my brother came to visit and the box and the closet exploded on me.  Yes, a box we had packed two years ago and moved to this house and shoved in the bottom of a basement closet exploded.  A size XL packing box from Storage USA.  I couldn't even push my entire body weight against the door to shove it closed to hide the explosion.  That kind of a blowout.  My sweet guy tore the closet apart and built new shelves for me yesterday afternoon.  All I have to do is place the sheets and blankets on the new shelves as soon as I get a few minutes.  I love that man.  Once, I made a list of things that would help me begin to love the inside of this house.   It included updating the pantry and the laundry room.  Both are done.  I'm still a little wishy washy about the inside of the house, though.  Weird, I know.  But I do love it.  Just not all the way.  We lived in our old house 17 years and built it from the ground up aesthetically.  I think I'm sentimental about it.  A lot sentimental about it.  I do love this neighborhood, though.  I love that the kids have friends across the street, and they are either all here or all over there all the time.  Even the adults go visiting, often with their 6-packs.  When Jerry's garage door is up, we all know the bar is open.  It's a cul-de-sac and the littles down the street are coming out more and soon they will be one big pack of kids.  Sara is rarely without a playmate between her own siblings, the next door neighbors' granddaughters and CeCe across the street.  Luckiest girl on the planet.  I can't keep snacks stocked.  In the summer, it's ice cream bars.  These kids can eat.  I love it (even though I complain about the grocery bill).

Snow on Valentine's Day

• I don't love the back of our house nor the yard.  I really miss our old pool.  But I do love the land behind us.  Someday I fear it won't be there like it is today - it will be sold off into a subdivision with too many houses and not enough yard.  I would love to buy the tract right behind us when that time comes.  Or the whole thing.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I like the yard and I love watching the kids play there and there is plenty of space, so I really should love it.  It's OK.  :p

I love the view out my bedroom door,
that I have a bedroom door out to the back
and that to the left in this picture is a glowing fireplace.  In my bedroom.
And snow is falling.  Love.

• I love studying the Bible.  I love Bible studies that help me understand the intricacies and the stories and give application to life in this season.  We are in the middle of a good one right now called Rooted written by Tim Wesemann, who is a friend of ours.  We're in the final stretches, and it has been interesting how this Bible study has been there for me in the middle of some difficult moments of processing life these last few weeks.  God is good like that.  Very good.
• I love this cat that just climbed into my lap.  He may be my favorite of all time.  The dog I love but I kind of just "like" him because I hate it when he runs off.  Or gets skunked.  HE *loves* the neighbors' bird feedings.  He can be found there licking the ground at least twice a day.  They live four houses behind us.  Some day he won't come home.  I know for sure he will get skunked again, and that I hate.  I need to add peroxide to my grocery list.
• I love the pictures my brother brought down last weekend.  I love that he came and that bonds were re-established and there is good and there is bad and there is family.  No matter what.

Me and my brother.  His hair is crazy.
These are his bunnies.  They were all albino after the first litter.

• I love seasons.  I especially love snow.  And new flower blossoms.  And canon balls.  And dramatic foliage.  I kind of just love it all in its time.
• I love spanish.  I love that my husband is taking me to Spain for our anniversary because I once told him I'm not the girl who gets to go to Spain.  He told me I am.  Our community ed spanish class we are taking this semester is kicking my butt.  I love it.
• I love mornings when the house is quiet and the coffee is hot - or cold - and the day is ahead with opportunity and I haven't lost my patience or yelled at anyone yet.  Not even once.  I'm a great mom in the morning before everyone else wakes up.
  

Guess it's time to get everyone up.

Week 3: Simplicity

Simplicity is beginning to mean back to basics.   Simplicity this week meant homemade chocolate chip cookies on a surprise snow day.

Sweet helpers in the kitchen

Everyone is willing to help EAT the cookies!

When the kids were younger and I stayed home full time, we baked a lot.  Back then we didn't eat a ton of sweets except for what I baked in my own kitchen.  Today, with everyone running hither and yon and kids making choices at school for lunch that include cookies and sugary snacks every day, we just don't have time nor caloric back space to fill with sweets at home.  On Wednesday, though, when I came home from work and most of the kids were out playing in the snow, I decided to grab cookie ingredients from the cabinet and throw together a batch of goodness like I did when the kids were smaller and times just seem to have been simpler.

It may sound small, but this act was a simple one of love, of tugging out memories that are fading so quickly from the brain spaces.  I am so grateful that this week we were able to slow down on a snowy day to enjoy an afternoon at home at a slow enough pace that we could enjoy the sights, smells, and tastes of this childhood treasure: warm chocolate chip cookies dunked in a glass of creamy cold milk.

Yum - oh.

SOMEone turned FIVE this weekend!

A little bit of cuteness celebrated a milestone birthday Sunday!  I remember my fifth birthday!  I wonder if she will remember hers...

The night before her birthday, I waited and waited for Sashi to finally fall asleep so I could dec out her room in the style the kids have become accustomed!  Two of the sibs were still awake and helped blow up and distribute the balloons!  I sure appreciated the help!

I left the doorway unfettered since the last time I paper~taped one shut Mr. T busted through it instead of the intended recipient (Meiners!)!  I also didn't want little Sashi to get scared or have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and have no way out of her room!  Taping the doorway shut may be an older kid fun-omena!  Taping up the bed with a distinct escape route was top notch for this five year-old!

Sash insisted we not do Bread Co in spite of our long-standing Sunday morning ritual.  She wanted pancakes.  What Momma could say no to that face?  Pancakes for a princess indeed!  And they always get their number, so I of course had to oblige!

Saturday Dad and the boys built this stellar playhouse ~ so that was the primary entertainment while Sashi waited for her cake I mean party! 

I've wanted one of these for the kids for a decade! How cool would it be to be little again and have this house in the backyard for hours upon hours of imaginative play?! Three of them played all afternoon in there, taking orders and answering phone calls!   Loved it!

Between playing and cleaning up for the family party, the kids decorated Sashi's birthday cake.  She wanted a cake with her face on it.  My friend Christi made a stellar RAINBOW cake last week for her daughter, so when I suggested this one to Sash, she was all smiles, and a birthday cake concept was born!

Oh man ~ I may complain about the details along the way (and I use the term 'concept cake' loosely!  Rosie sure makes it look easy on her blog!), but I loved the anticipation of eating this fun cake!  I have a few lessons to learn about fondant, but when you're five, do you really care if your cake has extra cracks and pleats?  Wouldn't Fancy Nancy just call that "unique enhancements?"  I think absolutely.  :)

Everyone had a chance to put something meaningful on the cake!  From her love of flowers and all things watering them, to her desired 'face picture' alongside siblings...to maybe even a few of those siblings' favorte things...Using the edible markers was a challenge, but we got the hang of it, and I really love how it turned out!  Wrinkles in fondant and all!

Sunday was a busy and fun-filled day for our five year-old super star!  Here are five of the top reasons why I truly think she is a super star!

1.  She is very responsible.  (It may not be fair to say the most responsible sibling, but it's true and life isn't fair!)  When you tell Sashi to do something, you can turn around, and she'll have it done!

2.  She is a hard worker!  This goes with number one, but not only that, she said yesterday, "I love to work hard Dad" and that is Truth.  She desires to vacuum like the big kids.  I vote we let her!

3.  She colors constantly and has a great eye for putting colors together in unexpected ways that turn out beautifully!  She loves to color with me, too!  (Except my color combinations are not as fun as hers!)

4.  She has a sweet tooth that just won't end, but she'll eat any combo of fruit, vegetable, or other to get her hands on a piece of the sweet stuff!  She's one of my best eaters!  (As long as I don't let her snack all day!)

5.  She is just the most adorable, squeezy, sweet, little cuddler and baby girl around and I love her to pieces!

Love you Sashi~girl!  To the moon and beyond!  Can't believe you're five!  I'm so proud to continue to watch you grow and mature and develop while being your momma!  God's got the greatest of plans for you! 

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!  And yes, you'll always be my baby!

Yup. Cupcakes.

My friend invited me back to make cupcakes for her a second time!  I sure had fun with them!  She gave me poetic license, so I tried my hand at fondant.  Although they sure looked cute, her girls called it "fondue" and told the guests they could pull it off!  (Oops!)

These cupcakes were chocolate covered cherry - two way - per request of the 5 year-old birthday girl.  Yum!

This design, engineered originally by Sweetopolita, was a 'blonde' version with white girardhelli chocolate chunks sharing a presence with cherries in the white cake, topped with girardhelli white chocolate frosting.  I used sour cherries candies for the "cherry on top."

The devil's food cake showed off dark chocolate girardhelli chunks with chopped cherries inside.  The frosting was this fellow-St. Louisan's maraschino cherry buttercream recipe!  {And I don't even like soda anymore (since falling in love with icee mochas), but I'm pretty sure I'll be buying that Kool Kola extract she recommends here!}

Thanks, KF, for letting me try my hand at baking again!  ;)

Professional Baker?

A few weeks ago, my friend asked me to bake a large order of cupcakes for her daughter's post-wedding reception.   Oh my goodness was I excited! 

We knew immediately that one cupcake would be the strawberry with strawberry buttercream and chocolate butterflies.  From a list of about a dozen flavor choices, my friend also requested amaretto and snickerdoodle.  What a fun trio!  I spent the two weeks prior to the event baking up a storm.  Literally.  And loving every minute!

I took the amaretto cupcake and frosting recipe from The Primrose Bakery and filled them for fun with a white chocolate creme filling that I actually also used in Sashi's strawberry-flavored ballerina cake.  (Yum-oH!)  I highly recommend Ghirardelli white chocolate chips - even over Callebaut white chocolate (which I actually didn't like at all!) if you try this recipe.  I also added coursely chopped, roasted almonds to the chocolate cream to accentuate the almond flavor and to add texture. 

:)



The Snickerdoodle cupcake proved a little persnickety and required a couple of trials.  My first attempt came from Martha's Cupcake cookbook - and this time the taste tester (my husband) gave me a big thumbs down.   

In the end, I used this muffin recipe.  I researched (yes I did!) whether a muffin could be used as a cupcake and officially decided that, because the line between the two is blurry, if you top it with frosting and call it cake, then it is cake.  :)  (Cupcake wisdom by Karin.  Amen.)

The morning of the party, I finally settled on a frosting - my bloggy friend Daiana's vanilla bean buttercream - and through the help of my friends on Facebook, went with a rich cinnamon cream in the middle of these.  Pookie helped me with the decorating - a Pirouette cookie and cinnamon sugar sprinkles. 

It took a village, but it sure was fun!

Later that weekend, I made margarita cupcakes for Father's Day.

And then I retired from my professional baking career. 

...unless someone else wants me to try a recipe?
;)

A Ballerina Birthday Cake

For Sashi's birthday cake, I really wanted to do something special.

For the better part of the last six months, every time I put her down for a nap, Sash would ask, "Why do I have to take a nap?"

"Because you are three," I consistently answered.
This always initiated a sweet exchange of ideas about what one does when one is three, versus, say, when one is four. So, when Sash turned four, she was under the misguided impression that she no longer needed to take naps.
She also knew that four meant taking ballet.

Now, when Pooks was 2 or 3, she took ballet. But, agree with me here - the baby of the family doesn't always get what the bigger kid got {and vice versa} and we (I) just never signed Sashi up for dance lessons. {Bad Mommy.}

But, for her birthday, we gave her (hand-me-down) ballet slippers and dance gear, ...along with some really cool photo albums of all her previous birthdays.
Here...Li'l Roo is perusing one said birthday book at the family party:

So, back to the ballet story. And cake.

I knew I wanted to do something special for Sashi's birthday cake, so I decided to make her a ballerina. My friend Melissa at A Little Loveliness once said that every girl deserves at least one Barbie cake.

This was Sashi's year.

And my very first attempt.

After perusing the web, I felt ridiculously incompetent to make a Ballerina Barbie cake.

And my first attempt failed. Yes, after baking my bowl for over an hour, when I went to flip the cake out, cake batter came pouring out of the center. At 1AM.

Fail.

Here's what we bought the next morning:

Pretty.

Here's what their faces looked like when they ate that totally-healthy-and-surely-good-for-you-flourescent frosting:

Second attempts at the ballerina cake went a little better. Mostly. And just to prove it, here's Sashi's face when she saw her Ballerina cake in the fridge:

And here it is in all it's purple ballerina-esque glory:

Not tooooo bad for a first attempt. And frosting that wasn't supposed to be refrigerated before piping it.

I learned a lot. And Sashi loved it.

That's all that matters.

~Karin

Ode to the Cupcake

The cottage has been replete with the smells of baking recently.  I guess I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted to make every cupcake in Martha Stewart's Cupcake cookbook! 

I'm dividing my baking time between the splendid tastes of Martha and the decorating marvels of Hello, Cupcake (Hello).  This week, I even got to combine the two to create a whimsical butterfly garden of strawberry cupcakes for a dear friend whose daughter turned 5 today!  (Thanks, Christine, for my first real live order for cupcakes :) !!!)

So, without further adieu, enjoy the baking whims of   Me : : Part-time Baker Extra~ordinaire!  ...??



Don'chu toucha my centipede cupcake  (inspired by Hello, Cupcake!)

 

Salted Caramel Chocolate Mini Cupcakes = Y.U.M.!!!  Inspired by Martha's Cupcakes. 
I gave these away to Sashi's preschool.



Happy Birthday LucieLu!   Enjoy your strawberry cupcakes (Martha) and chocolate butterflies (Hello)!!!
The extras went to the teachers at the big kids' school.





My mom's cupcakes are the best!



I baked roasted banana cupcakes with honey-cinnamon buttercream frosting this week.  I think they may go to church...

BUGS!

We spent the afternoon today at Spring Advancement for the boys.  Meiners finished his first year as a Cub Scout and MrT is moving up to Webelos. 

I've never been to advancement before - usually it has been cold or Sashi was too little.  I'm glad we were able to go today as a family and watch the kids play in forts and a babbling brook.  Pooks is lucky that two of her good friends have brothers her own brothers' ages - so even she skipped off to unearth 'sea snails' from the river, earth worms, and beetles.

Yesterday, to prepare our part of the meal to be served to all the Boy Scouts and their families at today's ceremony, we unearthed some of our very own bugs here at home.  In chocolate.  Cupcake form.

The three big kids helped along the bug path.  We decided chocolate bugs were a bit of hard work.  But they persevered and ate their fair share of creepy crawlies today.  Chocolate creepy crawlies that is.

Yum?

Re: a red-headed clown house & strawberry cupcakes

On April 1st, Heart 2 Heart, a local support group for families walking the path of congenital heart defects, came together to serve dinner at the Ronald McDonald House in West County.  We prepared dinner for 60 house guests [there's no vacancy at the inn over there right now :( ] and served it up buffet-style for a few hours while gabbing amongst ourselves and chatting with some parents whose children are hospital-bound.  For the first time in my life, I planned ahead and actually prepared my part of the chili and cornbread the day before.  Thank God.  Because Friday I baked 40 Martha Stewart cupcakes to take along, made a total frosting flop and had to start over from scratch (and borrowed butter from B/F/F.  TWICE!  LOVE her!!), decorated 4 plates of chicken dinners (cupcakes), and baked/frosted 24 cupcakes (mini meatloaf and potato-toppers).  *breathe*

The cupcakes turned out swell - in spite of the frosting debacle.  (I still don't know what happened.)  So, I thought I would share the recipe.

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour, (not self-rising)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 large egg white
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups finely chopped strawberries, plus small strawberries for garnish

Whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.  In a separate bowl, blend sugar and butter together until light and fluffy.  Gradually add eggs, one at a time, mixing each well before adding the next.  Add vanilla.  Finally, mix in dry ingredients to egg mixture, alternating with milk and ending with dry ingredients.  Fold in strawberries.  Bake in lined cupcake pans at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.
Source:  Martha Stewart Cupcakes

What I liked best about these cupcakes was the authentic strawberry flavor.  The taste was not overwhelming and not too sweet.  Keep in mind, I usually make the Southern Living version of strawberry cake found here which uses a box of Duncan Hines strawberry cake mix.  I have to say I preferred the subtler flavor in Martha's.  As for the buttercream frosting, I'm no Martha.  I made the cooked egg white version found here and it was a flop.  I seriously do not know what happened.  It was perfect until I added the strawberries.  But anyway, this strawberry buttercream is to die for (Source:  Southern Living)!   So take your pick.  (Strawberries.  Pick.  Get it?  Get it?  Ok, nevermind...)

1 cup butter, softened
1-ish (16-ounce) package powdered sugar, sifted
1 cup finely chopped fresh strawberries

The original recipe calls for 2 bags of powdered sugar.  WHOA!!!  Too much for me.  And too stiff to pipe.  But this frosting combined perfectly with the not-too-sweet cupcakes and just melted in your mouth (my mouth.  YUM!).

I left 40 of my cupcakes at RMH (I sure hope they were eaten!).  Anyone else looking for free cupcakes if I make 'em??  Anyone?  Please?  (Soon I'll tell you about the batch of triple chocolate ones I made recently that I ate all by myself!  *groan!*)

 
How cute is this kid?  Think he'd eat one of my cupcakes??

Cake War :: Boy Scout Edition

You all know I love to bake.  I also love watching Cupcake Wars and Cake Boss.  For someone who really doesn't watch a whole lot of tv, I love love love those two shows!  Fortunately for me, my oldest daughter is becoming quite a fan of baking and of watching baking shows on tv, too.  We watch them together.  :) 

I've also started a collection of cupcake books, a list of favorite baking blogs, and have made a fair share of both cupcakes and {birthday} cakes alike.  Whereas I used to be the girl who bought boxed cakes and canned frostings, I have come to appreciate melting chocolate for homemade cakes and creating a nice homemade butter cream.  I would call us - me and The Pooks - amateur oficionados.  We know good cake when we see it.

You can imagine, then, that when the call came from the boys' Scout Pack leader that there was to be a cake baking contest, I believe but will not verify that I did a little happy hippy dance, flung my hands in the air, and shouted "Yahoo!"  May or may not have been me.  But I was stoked.

First rule in Boy Scout Cake Baking is that the boy perfoms 80% of the work.  In my book, that includes coming up with the theme of the cake.  T immediately decided "Camping" without hesitation.  He baked a two layer cake.  Dyed vanilla frosting a perfect shade of emerald green.  Frosted the sides and top in an un-uniform 'grassy' forest bed.  He piped stars along the top and bottom of the cake.  He frosted ice cream cones to look like conifers.  T arranged poptarts to mimic a tent, pretzels and M&M bits for a fire, and - using a technique from Hello, Cupcake - formed marshmallows, Starburst, and mini Vanilla Wafers into sleeping campers.  His creation?  Divine.  His persistence and patience and ultimately perseverance? Inmitable. 

He did not win.

Meiners chose to look through my cake books.  I guided him to Hello, Cupcake - knowing cupcakes would be slightly easier for his 6 year-old hands to manage.  Much to my excitement, he chose "Popcorn" cupcakes, using mini marshmallows to create the kernels of popcorn.  I cut the mini marshmallows into three pieces for each popcorn kernel (mini marshmallows, a pair of scissors, and a 6 year-old middle child did not seem like a good equation).  Meiners dolloped frosting on a whole mini marshmallow and smooshed it into the center of each 3 piece clover-shaped cut mallow.  Over 200 times.  He baked 24 cupcakes with his grammie and frosted each.  He and I positioned each of the 'popcorn kernels' onto the cupcake - at least 4 white clusters and 3 yellow clusters apiece.  On 8 of them, he sprinkled powdered cheese from a package of mac&cheese.  On another 8, he drizzled melted chocolate and melted caramels.  He left the final 8 plain - or 'buttered.'  Then we filled an old BoyScout popcorn tin with newspapers and piled his 3 'flavors' into the tin and titled the creation "Boy Scout Popcorn: YUM!"

He did not win.

When we arrived home, their sister stealthily disappeared into her room.  Ten minutes later, she emerged and presented the boys with their award. 

We then celebrated their hardwork and creativity by cutting into and enjoying their fabulous, award-winning, clever, tasty, and absolutely perfect Boy Scout cakes.

Win or lose, I have the best kids.