Dr. Seuss in Clay and Cake

I'm much more of a Dr Seuss fan than I use to be. (Aside from the classic Grinch Christmas special. I've always loved that.) When I was younger, I really didn't have much exposure to his books. I mostly just remember a big stack of them at the doctor's office and reading "Green Eggs and Ham" there. To be honest, I wasn't super fond of it. I just never liked books that repeated lines over and over again like that. And I hate to admit it but all those silly made up Seuss-words kind of irked me when I was a kid. (Which doesn't make any sense at all. I was a weirdo. :P)

The Grinch's leg broke off  :(

Steve, on the other hand, has always been a big Dr. Seuss fan.  He also happens to be fantastic at reading his books aloud.  The summer before we were dating, I sat on my porch swing one warm night and listened to Steve read me "The Lorax" over the phone, and ever since then I've realized just how lovely "those silly made up Seuss-words" are. :) 

So, for a late V-Day/early 1.5 year anniversary gift, I decided to try my first attempt at modeling clay.  (Yeah, I know. It's not edible.  But hang in there! I'm tossing a cake in at the end of this. :P)  I figured if anything, it would be good practice for fondant figures.   Overall, it was a really time consuming fun project, and a neat gift.  The Lorax seemed to approve of his miniature-self as well.  Grinch, on the other hand, just looked as devious as always :P.

As far as cake goes, I figured I'd post my first fondant cake, which  I made for Steve's birthday last summer.  It's subject-related obviously, but also, I'm desperately searching for the best fondant recipe out there.  The batch I made for this cake came from the funkiest fondant recipe I've every seen.  It even had a small amount of glycerin in it. (At the time, I didn't realize how strange that was.)  Since then I've tried simpler recipes and marshmallow fondant, and I've yet to be satisfied.  Then again, I've had professionally made cakes with fondant, and I still think the stuff is unappetizing..  Either way, if you have a good fondant recipe, drop it this way.

  On a quick side note, I've been adding a few things to the blog.  I've had it set so you don't need a Blogger account to comment for awhile, but now you can subscribe via email by using the box to the right of my posts. (Or find the button for subscribing through my RSS feed if that floats your boat instead.)  Also, if you use Stumble Upon, it would be just awesome if you could click on the Stumble Upon badge, or even click the link to share any posts on Facebook.  See, lots of fancy stuff here. :P

Alright, I'm done shamelessly self-promoting now.  Toodles! ;)

<3 Rachel

Flower Cake: How To Transfer Simple Designs

Sometimes I get really frustrated with having baking for a hobby.   Not because the occasional recipe tastes mysteriously wrong or because some projects can leave me 8+ hours in the kitchen straight.  Nope.  Well..okay, maybe a little.  But the real frustrating reason is the fact that baking can get a bit costly.  There's been quite a few cakes that I would have loved to make in the last month or so, but simply couldn't due to lack of funds.

So why am I pulling the "Boo-hoo, pity me because I'm poor" card right now?  Well, it has to do with this cake:

I made this back in August last year.  I was still really new to cake baking/decorating at the time. ( Heh, I'd still say I'm new actually.)  According to another blog I had at the time, this cake began like this:

"So I was laying around on my computer with Cake Boss playing on the TV in the background. (I kinda sorta hate the Cake Boss. He drives me insane.) And I got the urge to do some baking. I usually just do a boxed cake mix, but since I didn't have one yesterday, I looked up a super simple recipe."

 

Well, to cut the story short ....

Valentine's Day Heart Cookies

I've been baking more than it seems, seeing as my last entry was over a month ago.  The biggest reason for my absence is the fact that all the pictures I've been taking for this blog have been sitting in my roommates camera forever, despite the many times I've asked her to upload them for me. (Shame on you, Holly! :P)

However!  I baked the other day at my boyfriends house and used his dad's camera, thus enabling me to write this to say both "I'm not dead after all!" and "Look! I made cookies!" :)

Steve's dad has had a box of white cake mix and a container of frosting sitting in his cupboard for months now, so when I woke up on the morning of February 13th with an urge to make heart-shaped sugar cookies, I decided to use Monster Mama's "Incredibly Easy [Cake Mix] Sugar Cookies" recipe again.