Fun with Fondant

I have always wanted to try my hand at making fondant frosting. I stumbled across a pretty great online tutorial, so I thought that I'd finally give it a shot as my sister's birthday was fast approaching.

Kelsey loves red velvet cake, but I'm not a huge fan of the massive amounts of food coloring needed. I would've loved to use beets for the coloring, but being the picky eater she is, I know that she wouldn't have gone for it. Has anyone tried this? I wonder how cakes colored with beets taste? I tried a recipe from my new bargain book ($1 from Half Price Books!), Little Cakes: Classic Recipes for Any Occasion. It was so delicious and can't wait to try all of the recipes!

My cakes came out beautiful and delicious. By the way, I learned a rather neat trick to get a cake to come out of the pan without sticking to the bottom: After removing from the oven, set the pan on a damp towel while the cake cools. Once it's time to remove the cake from the pan --- Voila!! No huge chunks stuck to the bottom!

I made my fondant in advance (it keeps in the fridge for a few weeks), which really helped out on time because the fondant took for-ev-er to roll out! You definitely need some muscles for that project!

I'm super proud of how smooth I got it to lay on the cake, but not so happy about the color. It's a little too reminiscent of the Nickelodeon green slime.

I had fondant left over and time to spare, so I decided to throw a little embellishment on the cake. It definitely made it look even more ugly than before! :) Is it just me, or does it seem like Kelsey is laughing at how horrendous it looks?

All in all, it was a fun project with yummy results. Since I made the fondant out of marshmallow, it came out more sweet than yucky like store-bought fondant. I think if I fine-tune my decorating skills, that it could actually make for a pretty nice looking cake since I like the smoothness of fondant.

If you want to see something even more ugly, stay tuned for my failed attempt at a cake mix cookie. I promise that you won't want to make these yourself!

Freezer Paper Fabric Stencils

I can finally cross another craft project off of my summer to-do list! I've been wanting to make some cute onesies for Azra for some time now. When I ran across this freezer paper stencil tutorial, I knew that I had to try it. Sure enough, it was a super simple project with super cute results!

To begin, I drew my design on the paper side of a piece of freezer paper. Make sure to recognize which pieces you actually want to cut out to paint the inside, or you'll be drawing/cutting twice as I did. Place the stencils wax side down on your fabric. To give the fabric some added stiffness, I placed a sheet of paper on the underside of the fabric as well. With your iron set on medium, iron over the freezer paper for a few minutes. It should begin sticking immediately.

Once it has set, you can begin painting. I used some acrylic paint that I had lying around, but I'm sure that fabric paint would work best. I took care to paint from the outside in, so as to not let the paint bleed under the paper.

I let the paint set for just a few minutes, then I carefully peeled off the paper to view my results!

A perfect little panda for the babe. I love the outcome and can't wait to start making tons of other designs!

Saint Louis

I can't believe that it has been 1 1/2 years since Chris and I last saw our friend Lisa! Although life sometimes gets in the way of friendships (kids, med school, distance), we are lucky that Lisa is one of those great friends who you can not see/talk to much, yet pick right back up where you left off. So, when we were pondering what to do for our Memorial Day weekend a mere four days prior to it, we came up with St Louis and were so excited when Lisa said that she was free! We knew that we would have a great time while we were there, but we were just a little concerned with how the 5 1/2 hour trip would go with our little lady.

Azra did surprisingly well, and thanks to Chris, we have some great photos to document Azra's first vacation:

I do love me an impromptu vacation, and I'm so glad to know that it doesn't have to end once you have kids!