Happy Birthday, Gracie!

Today is my sister Grace's birthday.  She is turning 16 years old and I can just hardly believe it!  She started out as an adorable baby who took my spot as the youngest child (after 10 years!) and has turned into quite an amazing, beautiful and accomplished young woman.  When Grace was born, it was kind of like she had 4 moms.  Of course she had our real mom, and then she had Sara, Mary and me all telling her what to do.  I guess you could say she had quite a bit of pressure on her to be awesome :)  I think that dealing with all of us is what turned Gracie into the laid back (and slightly zoned out) person that she is today.  Don't get me wrong, she works hard and excels at school, sports, piano and her job at the ice cream shop, but if you know Grace, then you're know the zoned out look I'm talking about.  Of course she's probably just trying to think of new things to Google about One Direction, or planning her dream wedding to one of the band members.

This is pretty much going to be a post of pictures of Gracie through the years.  Believe it or not this is only about a third of the pictures I wanted to post.  There are just so many cute ones!  I hope you don't mind everyone seeing how cute you were, Grace :)  Not that you're not cute anymore...  I'll try and caption most of them with little bits about her.  Happy Birthday, Gracie!  I can't wait to see you in a couple weeks!

Sara and Grace on Grace's first Christmas.

Mary and Grace playing at our house in Indiana.  

Me and Gracie after I'd just finished feeding her.  She kind of looks like the Cheshire cat here.

Grace and Duncan.  He was a good cat.

Mimi and Papa with Grace.  

Grandma and Grace in Indiana.

Her first popsicle!  I had tons of pictures of this and they were all so funny.

Listening to some music on a trip to Montana.  We had to put the pillow on top of her head to make the earphones fit!

Ok, we skip a few years here, but I just couldn't find any toddler pictures on my computer or in my printed pictures.  I'm sure you can just imagine how cute she was :)

Grace's first dance recital.  Cutest teddy bear ever.

Sarah, Amanda, Grace and Mary.  This was the room Grace and I shared in Lake Charles until Sara left for college.

Grace's sense of style has improved immensely, haha!

Grace's first triathlon when she was only 8 years old!

On a trip to Galveston.

Mary and Grace at the Trowbridge cabin in Montana. 

You know she's a cool kid when she requests a Yoda birthday cake!

Grace and Mollie during their first winter in Ohio. 

   

I think we were baking some sort of Christmas treat.  

Christmas in Ohio.

One of her Christmas piano recitals. 

Hey Grace, remember the Jonas Brothers and how much you loved them.  I wonder if they're sad that you've moved on to One Direction?  Just kidding.

Trying out her new skates.

Aaah!  I seriously can't believe how grown up you look in this picture, Gracie!  So pretty.

Grace, Dad and Me after our Easter 5k this year.

In Lake Charles, celebrating Amanda Schram LaGrange's wedding.

Grace even caught the bouquet at our wedding.  One of those One Direction guys better propose soon.  

 Well, once again, happy birthday, Grace!  I hope you're having a great time on your mission trip and I'll see you in a few weeks.  Pizza sisters for life! 

Homemade Marshmallow Fondant

I'm afraid that not much has gone on here since last time I posted.  Joe and I spent this past weekend in St. Louis visiting some friends and family and now we're home and trying to start on a long list of things we want/need to get done sometime soon.  A few of those things might be blog worthy, but I'm afraid that most are home improvement type chores that just have to get done.  In the meantime, I thought I'd write about that marshmallow fondant that I promised.

The first time I made this was for a baby shower cake.  I needed to make some cute little animals and I really didn't want to buy all the different colored fondant from the store.  I'm not sure how I first heard about marshmallow fondant, but I did a little research, watched a few videos and decided that making my own fondant would be the easier, cheaper and it would taste better than the store bought variety.  This recipe is very simple and so far I have used it for sculpting animals, detailing, and covering entire cakes.  There seems to be slightly different results every time I make this, even though I follow the exact same process every time!  I can probably blame that on temperature and humidity variances though.  The fondant has always worked out in the end!

It is also very simple to make chocolate marshmallow fondant, which can be extremely helpful if your end goal is to have black fondant.  Having a brown base means you have to use a lot less black food coloring.

Here's the recipe:

Marshmallow Fondant
16 oz. (1 pound) mini marshmallows
2 pounds powdered sugar
2-4 T water
Crisco (to keep the fondant from sticking to things)
* If you want chocolate fondant, you'll need 1/4 cup of chocolate chips.

1. Sift the powdered sugar into a large bowl and set aside.  The bowl needs to be large enough to hold the powdered sugar and the melted marshmallows.  Place a small amount of Crisco in a bowl to use once you're ready to start mixing the fondant.  This will all help move things along once you get the marshmallows melted.

I use a non-stick mat, but I still spread Crisco, because melted marshmallows are sticky!

2. Place all the marshmallows in a microwave safe bowl and add 2 tablespoons of water.  Microwave on high for 1 minute.  Stir marshmallows then heat in 30 second intervals stirring in between until all the marshmallows are melted.  * If you're making chocolate fondant, add the chocolate chips to the marshmallows at the beginning and melt together.

3.  Pour the melted marshmallows into the bowl of powdered sugar and begin mixing with a spatula.  When it becomes to difficult to mix with the spatula, spread a layer of Crisco on to the counter or on a non-stick mat.  Then dump the bowl of sugar/marshmallow mix onto the Crisco.  Coat your hands with Crisco as well and then begin kneading the fondant.

At this point I couldn't really mix it anymore.

Time to start kneading.

I was happy with the consistency, so I didn't worry about mixing in the rest of the powdered sugar.

4.  Continue kneading the fondant, trying to make it smooth and pliable.  It should end up feeling kind of like play-doh.  If it feels like it's a nice consistency but there's still a lot of powdered sugar that isn't mixed in, that's ok.  It doesn't all have to get incorporated.  If it is too sticky, you could add more powdered sugar, or if it is a little dry, sprinkle in a little water.  The fondant will firm up quite a bit once it is allowed to cool so don't worry if it is a little soft.

5.  Once you've got it smooth and pliable, form the fondant into a ball and wrap in two layers of plastic wrap.

All done!

If you want to dye the fondant, I would recommend using gel food colors such as Ameri Color or Wilton (my favorite is Ameri Color).  Start with small amounts of color and knead it into the fondant until the color is even.  Then add a little at a time until you get the color you want.  When you color the fondant, coat your hands with Crisco again or you could have multi colored skin.  It's also a good idea to put a thin layer of Crisco down on the counter or non-stick mat anytime you deal with the fondant.  

When rolling out the fondant to cover a cake or make cut-outs, it helps to sprinkle a little cornstarch on the counter first to keep it from sticking.

I guess that's about it!  This recipe makes a 3 pound ball of fondant which can cover a lot of area.  One batch of fondant was enough for a cake like the chili pot or football helmet.  You can also half this recipe easily if you only need to make a couple small accents out of fondant.

I hope you all have a great week and keep cool if you're experiencing the heat like we have here in Kansas City.  Let me know if you make anything out of marshmallow fondant!

Louisiana Wedding Fun - Part 2!

Ever since the first Louisiana Wedding Fun post, I've been counting down the days until I got to return to Lake Charles to celebrate the second Schram wedding of the year!  Well I finally headed down there this past weekend to be there with Sarah and her family as she said "I do!" to Rhett Edwards.  I've known Sarah and her twin sister, Amanda since we were in 5th grade and even though I have lived far away from them for the past seven years, they're still two of my best friends.  (Oh, and Sarah is the one to thank for coming up with the name for this blog!)  I had such a blast this weekend catching up with old friends and I already miss all those crazy girls in the bridal party :)  The wedding was amazing and we danced the night away to the awesome band!  Everything went smoothly and even though it rained the morning of the wedding, we had clear skies by the end of the day.  Overall it was an awesome weekend!

I flew into Houston on Friday morning and Mom met me at the airport since she'd been spending the week in Houston with Mimi.  We drove to Lake Charles and spent some time with family friends before I had to head to the rehearsal dinner.  Saturday consisted of hair appointments, last minute errands, and a little relaxing before the wedding.  The wedding and reception flew by and I couldn't believe that it was over so soon!  Sarah and Rhett left the reception in a vintage black Cadillac while fireworks and sparklers lit the path.  Sarah looked beautiful and I was just so happy to be there on her special day!  Thank you to the Schrams for hosting such a beautiful wedding, and also to Mary and Alex for letting us stay at their apartment! 

On Sunday, Mom and I drove back to Houston and had lunch with Mimi and Mom's friend Katie.  Lunch was great and I'm hoping to make a couple of Mimi's recipes soon, so you'll probably see them up here :)

I don't have too many pictures from the wedding since the person I left my camera with (*cough* Mary *cough*) dropped it and the batteries didn't want to stay in.  But I still got a few good ones. 

 

This is the only one I had with both Sarah and Rhett.  But Rhett isn't the one with his arm around Sarah haha!  He's the next one to the right.

 

Congrats, Sarah and Rhett!  I hope you're having an amazing time in wine country!

Chocolate Rehearsal Dinner Cake

This whole 'holiday in the middle of the week' thing really throws off my schedule!  Tuesday felt like Friday, Wednesday felt like Saturday, today felt like Monday, but it also kind of feels like Friday again because I don't have to work tomorrow.  It has made for quite an abnormal work week!  The good thing about the holiday in the middle of the week was that it gave me time to work on a cake order for a rehearsal dinner that I had to deliver tonight.

A co-worker of mine recommended me to his uncle who was hosting a rehearsal dinner for some family friends.  I was given free reign to do this cake however I wanted.  The only guidelines were that it needed to be all chocolate and feed at least 30 people.  They didn't want a themed or shaped cake, just more of a fancy cake.  I decided to do a two tiered cake, with the bottom tier being completely chocolate, and the top tier was chocolate cake and icing, but with a peanut butter cream filling.  I have quite a bit of the peanut butter filling left over and it is delicious!  I may or may not have eaten several spoonfuls of it today.  For the decorating of the cake, I wanted to do large roses on the bottom tier (just like on the 4th of July cake), and simple smooth icing on the top tier.  My plan was to have 3 shades of chocolate icing, with the darkest being used for the bottom stripe of roses and the top tier, and the other two to be the middle and top stripes of roses.  As you can see in the pictures, I wasn't very successful.  It looks more like everything is one color, with the exception of the top stripe of roses. :(
  
To make matters worse, when I went to deliver it, the cake slid in its box when I turned the first corner and one side of roses got smooshed.  So I turned home, re-situated it and headed back out.  The rest of the ride was as smooth as I could hope for, but when I took the cake out to set it on the table, there was a spot on the top tier where the icing had cracked and drooped a little.  I tried my best to fix it with the tools I brought, but it was definitely still noticeable.  The clients seemed to be happy with it though, so I guess that's what is important.  I just hope it tastes a lot better than I think it looked.  The pictures in this post make it look a lot better than I feel it really looked.  That's my opinion anyway, and I'm probably the most critical of anything I make.

I pretty much failed at the making 3 shades of brown.  Oh well.  

In this picture you can see one of my big mistakes.  I didn't make the cake board big enough to stick out from under the icing... a.k.a. I had nothing to grab on to when I was trying to move the darn thing!  The white thing it's sitting on is a lazy susan.  You can barely see a glimpse of the foil covered cake board under the roses.  

There were a lot of things I did with this cake that I will do different next time.  I also think it's time to put a call in to Grandma for some tips on storing and transporting cakes.  I need all the help I can get!

There are no other cake orders in the near future, so hopefully I can get back to posting about house projects and other non-cake related items.  Next week you can look forward to a "Louisiana Wedding part II".  I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll check back in with you on Monday hopefully.  For now, I'm excited to celebrate this weekend!  Laissez le Bon Temps Rouler!

Patriotic 4th of July Cake

I hope you all had a great weekend!  If your weather was anything like our here in Kansas City, then you spent your weekend just trying to keep cool during the triple digit heat!  We made the most of the hot days by test driving some cars on Saturday morning, then I went out and explored the old downtown area of Overland Park, Kansas.  I had heard about a cool little shop there so I decided to go and ended up finding a bunch of other fun shops and restaurants.  Turns out they also have a big farmer's market there too!  I'll definitely have to go back and bring Joe with me, but maybe we'll wait til this fall.  On Saturday night we hung out with some friends and played games.  Before heading to our friends' house I baked the layers for this cake:

I decided last week to make a 4th of July themed cake that Joe could to bring to work for free advertising for my little cake business.  I knew I wanted a 2-tiered cake that used both piped icing and fondant and of course it had to be red, white, and blue.  I'd seen a really awesome "Patriotic Rose" cake on a blog called I am baker, so that became the design for the bottom tier.  For the top tier I decided to do simple smooth frosting with big fondant stars.  I would have done smaller stars, but I only had on size cookie cutter :)  The roses on the bottom tier were unbelievably simple to do!  If you want to see the video tutorial just click on that "I am baker" link above.  The best part of the roses is that you don't have to do a crumb coat of icing.  Just pipe the roses straight onto the side of the cakes.  I will definitely be using that technique again, possibly very soon.  The cake seemed to be a big hit at Garmin and Joe said that it was gone by about 9:30 this morning.  He said no one wanted to make the first cut though, so he had to go cut the first piece haha!  Here are some process and final pictures of the cake!

The bottom tier (8").  Like I said before, I didn't have to do a full crumb coat, just had to fill in the gaps between layers.

The first row of roses.  The key to making the roses is kind of overlapping them so you don't have to go back and fill in spaces.  

The 2nd row of roses overlapping the blue ones.

All done!  I did one round of roses on top of the cake, but then just filled in the middle since it was going to get covered anyway.  I had a friend say that the roses make it look like a parade float.  I kind of agree!

The top tier (6").  I did a very light crumb coat in blue icing because I was afraid I wouldn't have enough white.  

The red star kind of looks like a floppy starfish.   

Almost done, just have to hide the seam between tiers with fondant balls.

The Stars & Stripes!

This might be my favorite cake so far!  Oh, and I've had lots of people ask me about making the marshmallow fondant, so I took some pictures of it when I made it for this cake, so I'll be doing a post about making that pretty soon.  I'm also getting excited to travel to Louisiana this coming weekend for my friend Sarah's wedding!  This week will fly by and I can't wait!  Have a great week everybody!  Sorry for all the exclamation points!!!! hehe