A birthday cake disaster

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before, but I love to bake. Cookies, cupcakes, muffins, cakes...anything. For as long as I can remember, I've been making birthday cakes for my immediate family.

This was Scarlett's 1st Birthday cake. (Pablo from the Backyardigans)

Double chocolate and strawberry. This was for my stepMom.

This was for my Mom. The cake inside was rainbow swirled.

So, you see, I can actually bake cakes that do turn out well. I'm (obviously) no professional, but they're yummy and sorta cute. Which leads me to today. The absolute disaster. Today was my brother's 16th birthday. I couldn't afford a gift, so I wanted to make him an awesome cake. I had it all in my mind. 2 square (masculine) tiers of white cake with blue frosting since that's his favorite color. It was going to be great. Except I didn't have room in the freezer to freeze my layers. The cakes stuck to the parchment paper and got super crumbly when I frosted them. (Of course, if I had been able to freeze them it would have been fine). I thought about putting them outside to freeze, since it was below 30 degrees out today, but there were about a million birds in the backyard and the field behind it, so I wasn't going to risk it. I kinda wish I would have at least tried to freeze them outside.

I have to warn you, before you scroll down any further that what you are about to see is horrible. Absolutely ugly. Fugly, even. Did I mention that I ran out of food coloring? It's more of a dingy blue than the sky blue I was going for... and then the icing on the cake (lol-see what I did there?) I thought that I had some red gel piping. I was wrong...

It's an epic fail for me, but rather entertaining. I think we're going to have fun smashing it to pieces tomorrow to make cake balls (inspired by this post from back in November by Pinkapotamus).

Just an update: Over the weekend, my stepgrandpa had his tube out and is breathing on his own and fully conscious. He's still in the ICU, but the doctors are considering stepping him down to an inpatient floor soon. This is good. :)

Also, I'm still finalizing my posting schedule and should post it by the end of the week and I'm going to be adding the parties I link up to in the sidebar, over there =>

Thanks for stopping by!

It’s cold outside!

I know tons of people who get so down when the weather gets cold. I am not one of those people. I do get a little sad that the Princess can’t play outside and I hate having to be in the actual cold, but I love what it brings:Baking cookies! I love to bake! Cakes, pies, cookies, anything. Yesterday, Scarlett helped me bake a ton of chocolate chip cookies (she licked the spoon). It was so much fun. I remember helping my grandma bake when I was little and I love that I can share that with my daughter!  Anyhow, it looks like the family Christmas celebration will be at our house this year and I’ll be needing to make even more cookies. Last year I made some chocolate and peppermint swirl cookies that were a huge hit and I’ll definitely be serving up some more this year. Do you have a special cookie recipe that you like to make? I’d love to hear about it!