Fruity Bird Napkins

I have some cool handmade napkins from the farmer's market that I like a lot but they are more like lunch napkins, small and really only fold into squares.  So I set out to make myself some dinner napkins.  I spent a long time staring at all the fabric waiting for one of them to resonate with me and as soon as I pulled out this bird fabric I knew I had a winner.  And it was even on sale!  I then had to find a backing for the bird fabric and, what can I say, I have a thing for polka dots.  I had to look up online what the dimensions of a dinner napkin are supposed to be.  I found a lot of 20" square napkins but when I cut that size it felt too big to me.  So I cut it down to my own liking and ended up with something around 17" square.  First I sewed them together inside then flipped them and did the visible stitching.  And Ta Da!  I love it!  I started by making 4 but have plans to make more.

Ranunculus Gnome Cake

So my second fancy fun cake was for my sister's St. Patrick's Day birthday.  I wanted to put fresh flowers on her cake and she likes cutesy things so I decided on a gnome cake, using David the Gnome for inspiration.  I made the gnome, mushroom, and lady bug cookies ahead of time.  I also made "buttons" from chocolate covered Oreos, but the chocolate I used was thicker than I expected so they don't look as nice as I was hoping (I think they make up for it in deliciousness though.)  She wanted some chocolate in her cake, but not all chocolate so I decided to go with a ganache frosting and, since she loves coconut, a coconut cake.  Well the recipe for the coconut cake is just a the Magnificent Moist Golden Cake and a coconut soaking solution.  This time I used the two stage method recipe with half the sugar for the cake.  The soaking solution had a surprising lack of liquid and thus did not soak into the cake really at all (in retrospect I believe the coconut I was using was shaved finer and thus responded differently than expected.)  But the "solution" made a great filling between layers.  This was my first try with a smooth ganache frosting and I felt like the ganche cooled and hardened before I got a chance to get the texture I wanted, so I think I would benefit from a more room temperature cake, and or an actual cake decorating spatula (I just a regular old rubber one.)  If I had made this cake in the summertime I would probably have used some nasturtiums since they are edible, but in March in MN you take what you can get.  I went to the flower shop by my house and they had some beautiful ranunculi that I just couldn't pass up.  Since the ganache frosting hardens, unlike buttercream, I used some leftover ganache to glue the cookies and flowers to the cake.  Taste reports were super delicious with slight room for improvement in texture and moisture.  The cake was a heavier cake (more pound cake than spongy) and a bit dry (I think the fairly dry coconut actually pulled moisture from the cake.)  So, another win and another lesson!

Super Mario Cake

I have been experimenting with baking and discovered I have a knack for it, or at least I have fun with it.  The first time I made croissants they were actually quite delicious (with plenty of room for improvement, mind you.) So for Christmas I got a book called BakeWise that not only has the recipes for delicious baked goods but it has a lot of information about the chemistry involved in the recipe.  This sciencey outlook really helps me get a handle on what the recipe is doing so I was really excited to try it out.  I have made a number of things from the book but I wanted to share some cakes that I made. 

This one I made for my sister's boyfriend's birthday (on Valentine's Day.)  I had been holding onto an idea for a Super Mario cake and this was the perfect time to use it.  The first step was to get a Super Mario screen grab and make sugar cookies.  The cookies were quite small so cutting them out was a bit tedious but my sister helped and time flew by.  Over the next few days I lazily painted the cookies; yes paint brushes and frosting.  Except for the outlining, that was done with toothpicks.  The cake I chose to make, Magnificent Moist Golden Cake, has three different recipes in the book (different techniques) and, this being my first crack at this cake, I went with the first one (dissolved sugar method.)  I did my best to split up the batter evenly for each color but was a little short when I got down to the purple!  I let the cakes cool overnight and put everything together the next day.  Assembling the cake was really not difficult, I just had to frost it like a typical cake and the cookies just stuck right to frosting.  It looked great.  Reports of taste were that the cake was delicious but incredibly sweet (the whole thing tasted a bit like a sugar cookie) which I think comes from the author's southern sweet tooth.  So next time, less sugar.  Check it out.