Yesterday evening Joe and I had Beverly (Joe's mother and my mother-in-law) over with her fiance Matt to celebrate her birthday. We all had a wonderful time visiting and listening to Dean Martin music which brought sweet memories of Beverly's childhood to her mind. :-)
She loved her present full of various goodies; but I think her favorite of all was a hand-crocheted Cookie Monster Scarf that Joe and I got from Hilary's Dreaming in Yarn: The Wonderful World of Crochet...please check out this adorable Etsy shop! Being a Sesame Street fan, crochet creator herself, and lover of the color blue...Beverly loves this scarf! Seeing the happy look of surprise on her face when she opened her birthday gift gave me so much joy!Earlier in the day, I had my sister, Andrea, and her lovable baby boy Bobby over to help me make Beverly's birthday cake. Beverly loves her hometown (Tulsa) and enjoys exploring its history (architecture, people, etc.); so I wanted to make a cake with this theme. I decided to make a Golden Driller Cake to represent the Tulsa Golden Driller (pictured below). This cake was a moist lemon cake with lemon curd (containing fresh squeezed organic lemon juice) filling in between the layers and with organic lemon zest frosting...we naturally colored the frosting of the cake with a little bit of turmeric (could not taste it in the icing at all) and for the outline we added some cocoa (brown) to the yellow frosting which made a beautiful bronze...perfect for a Golden Driller! Ha ha, Andrea said the cake looked like Bob the Builder, I think it looked like Matthew McConaughey with a little gut, and Joe said it looked like George Washington!
Little Baby Bobby helping Mama and Aunty pick out his first Halloween pumpkin!
Joe and I had a delightful time last night at my sister Andrea and her husband Robert's house. Our grandmother and father joined us with sweet baby Bobby, who wore two costumes: a white pajama suit with a hood with black pinstripes "Jail Bird" and "Casper" wearing our father's long white 100% cotton night gown with sleeves that folded over his hands...so cute!
Granddad with little "Casper" Bobby...adorable!
We all had dinner together; something simple: pizza, salad, oysters, chips & salsa, and pickled okra (ha ha, our typical family shmorgishborg)! We had Spicey Orange Punch (spiked with Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum) and my fun little Haunted Grave Yard Cupcakes (made with all-natural ingredients and food colorings of course)! These cupcakes were my favorite dark chocolate cake recipe with a raspberry preserve filling...Mmm, decadent!
I used a mini loaf pan to make the tombstones and a regular cupcake pan to make the ghosts (there is a tombstone for every ghost in this haunted graveyard)! The center cupcake features a smiling bat flying in front of a full moon (colored yellow with turmeric)! I didn't have Andrea's cake decorating kit with piping bag so I improvised and used the "Ziploc bag with tiny hole cut out in the corner" method...and it worked out pretty well I think! Doesn't the center cupcake kind of resemble the batman symbol...ha ha, that wasn't intentional. ;-) Oh, if you want to recreate this cupcake creation, don't forget the googly eyes for the ghosts; also, I used cocoa to color the brown bat and lettering.
After our dinner and while indulging on cupcakes and spicy orange punch, we all sat and watched the Tim Burton film "Coraline"...this movie was awesome; with amazing graphics and a very spooky/creepy story! Although this is a cartoon, I think it might be to scary for children...I could see this encouraging nightmares about freaky dolls with button eyes as well as frightening spider ladies! However, this movie is intriguing and imaginative for adults!
Here is Andrea and I with Daddy and Bobby (I am dressed up like a saloon girl and Andrea is "Suzy Homemaker"...our grandmother "Nana Sharee" dressed up like a geisha).
Also, in celebration of Mickey Mantle's birthday, I am going to share some of my brainstorming ideas for making an all-natural baseball themed birthday cake since I have a few baseball fans in my family...one of these days I might make one of these cute cakes with healthy/organic ingredients of course.
I really like this cake; having a baseball and a bat gives the cake a complete and thorough look. I am not a big fan of the look of the field bases, but I really like the ball and bat cakes. In making the bat I would use a rectangular shaped cake pan and carve out the shape of a baseball bat with a kitchen knife. To achieve the look of real wood for the bat naturally, I am considering using an all-natural yellow food coloring (like turmeric) and maybe making some natural-wood looking dark lines with cocoa powder mixed in the icing.
For the baseball itself, I am thinking about making a round "bowl cake" and coating it with a thick layer of white icing and then using the paper technique (where you take a clean/new piece of paper and rub the edge of it over the entire cake making the frosting have a smooth/flat effect with slight noticeable lines that look very neat); then making a highly concentrated all-natural red dye with maybe beet powder, red cabbage extract, and natural red plant-based food coloring for the red stitch lines on the baseball (this needs to be highly concentrated to avoid the chance of it turning out pink...ha ha, which isn't very "boyish").
I LOVE this cake! To create this baseball mitt cake naturally instead of using chocolate fondant (which was used to create this pristine looking cake), I would use a dark cocoa frosting again and do the paper technique, as mentioned above, to form the smooth surface and then go over the cake with a piping bag and a different shade of brown frosting to make the outline of the mitt and create the weaved effect of the catching section of the glove. The cake pan I would use for this cake would either be square of round and then I could carve out the shape of the mitt with a kitchen knife (if I selected a round pan there probably wouldn't be too much carving to do). The baseball on this cake is perfectly round! That might be a little difficult to create without a specific cake pan in the shape of a ball...I might try using two small round baking bowls and putting the two cakes to form a ball; or I might make this small cake from a cupcake or just one small bowl to create baseball-like cake (either way would be cute). Once again, I would use white icing, the paper technique, and highly concentrated natural red food coloring for the red stitch on the ball.
If you would like to see this paper technique demonstrated on a cake to form a smooth surface on the icing (I think it almost makes the icing look as smooth as fondant), you can view this video for making a barbie doll cake...this video also has some other great cake decorating tips!
However, have no fear there is a healthy, NATURAL solution...All-Natural Food Colorings! You can either purchase them at a health foods store or you can attempt to make your own! My sister, Andrea, and I have made several natural, "from scratch" cakes with our own all natural food colorings. We have used natural ones that we purchased from a health food store, but our favorite ones that we like to use are the natural food colorings that we make ourselves. We have made natural food coloring from red cabbage, spinach juice, and beet powder...however our ultimate favorite natural food coloring ingredient is turmeric because it produces such a vibrant yellow and it is very easy to achieve. Here are some pictures of our natural food coloring cake creations:
Princess and the Frog Cake
Sponge Bob Square Pants Cake
Pac Man Cake
Big Bird Cake
Mario Star Cake
Barbie Cake
...and here is our newest cake creation; for our Nana Sharee's birthday we made her a high heel and martini cake! The beet powder we used made a beautiful pink speckled frosting!
Here are the two sites with information on how you can create your own all-natural food colorings at home! Best of luck to you and happy cake creating! :-D http://hubpages.com/hub/make-food-coloring
Yesterday evening Joe and I had Beverly (Joe's mother and my mother-in-law) over with her fiance Matt to celebrate her birthday. We all had a wonderful time visiting and listening to Dean Martin music which brought sweet memories of Beverly's childhood to her mind. :-)
Earlier in the day, I had my sister, Andrea, and her lovable baby boy Bobby over to help me make Beverly's birthday cake. Beverly loves her hometown (Tulsa) and enjoys exploring its history (architecture, people, etc.); so I wanted to make a cake with this theme. I decided to make a Golden Driller Cake to represent the Tulsa Golden Driller (pictured below). 
This cake was a moist lemon cake with lemon curd (containing fresh squeezed organic lemon juice) filling in between the layers and with organic lemon zest frosting...we naturally colored the frosting of the cake with a little bit of turmeric (could not taste it in the icing at all) and for the outline we added some cocoa (brown) to the yellow frosting which made a beautiful bronze...perfect for a Golden Driller! Ha ha, Andrea said the cake looked like Bob the Builder, I think it looked like Matthew McConaughey with a little gut, and Joe said it looked like George Washington!
