Cooking

First off- this is so. fun!

I am really, really enjoying making new recipes, improving my all over in-the-kitchen mojo, and becoming more of a wanna-be foodie. Especially when the recipe turns out. :) Patrick says he's really enjoying it, too. :D

Last night I made up Rachel Ray's Buffalo Popcorn Chicken Bites.
There wasn't a picture (nuts. I love pictures. In my amateur state, I need to know if my end product is remotely what it's supposed to be... :) ) - so the end result was not what I was expecting. I was expecting the sticky, gooey, saucy chicken bites. Granted, has I thoroughly read through the recipe (something you're supposed to do...) I would have noticed the major lack of anything saucy. Oh well. :)

Point is- they turned out wonderfully. The spice was sometimes hardly noticeable, but that may be a good thing seeing as how our kids gobbled them up.


So- in form with past recipe posts:
FN:Buffalo Popcorn Chicken Bites
Rating: execution of recipe 8/10, recipe itself 9/10.
Notes: not very spicy. May want to kick it up a notch with the hot sauce next time. Do smaller 'batches' of the chicken in the batter- eliminating big batter clumps that were sometimes a little doughy.

Definitely a repeater. Yay!
One more pic b/c they turned out so pretty :

Fondant #2

Fondant try #2.

This Cutie Q had a birthday. An Owl birthday. And mama made her a stinkin' cute party outfit (if I may say so myself :P ) - and decided to make the cake to match.

By the time I got around to taking pictures, the cake had been frozen and defrosted one too many times. The fondant started sagging and drooping along the sides. And- it was sweating like crazy.
Lesson learned. :)

Note to Self: Use 1/2 butter 1/2 shortening with the buttercream frosting. And don't add white chocolate chips! The frosting hardened right after I spread it on the frozen cake- and I couldn't get a perfectly smooth base. Hence, the lumpiness under the fondant.


I thoroughly enjoy doing this and I have a feeling we'll be eating a LOT of cake around here.
Anybody need a cute cake?

Next up- Star Wars Cake? (P's request...)

Fondant

I have wanted to get into cake decorating for some time now, esp. after witnessing (and helping with the first cake ever) my dear friend start up a successful cake business. I really enjoy decorating cakes for my kids' birthdays and thought Christian's Buzz Birthday would be as good a time as any to try my hand at fondant.

I made Marshmallow Fondant- And coated the cake with it in plain white. It looked practically perfect. Yay!
But...then I remembered I was going to color the fondant (since buzz is white...)
Boo.

So- I took it all off, worked in food coloring and put it back on. Eh. Not so good. There were cracks and bumps that I could not get rid of. blah.
Oh well.

For the flesh of Buzz's face, I used a mixture of green-tinted molasses (the molasses jar leaked all over the bin that had the food coloring..), yellow, and red food coloring. I was pretty dang happy with how perfectly fleshy it turned out.

Christian was very excited about his buzz cake. And with all that boy has been through- and how highly anticipated this birthday was- the 3 decorating attempts and staying up till 2am were totally worth it. :)

1 down, 9 to go. :)