Lemon Crisps - FAIL

A few weeks back, Chris had a food day at work. Of course, he didn't remember this until 9:00 PM the night before. I just can't bear the thought of taking in baked goods from the grocery store, so I was determined to whip something up with ingredients that I have on hand. It was slim pickins from my baking pantry, but I did happen to have some lemon cake mix and Rice Krispies that I got for close to free with coupons (yippee!). I've read some delicious-sounding recipes using cake mixes, so I decided to go on the hunt for a recipe which used a lemon-flavored one. I came across a recipe which only used four ingredients:

1. Lemon Cake Mix....check!

2. Rice Krispies....check!

3. Eggs....check!

4. Butter....check!

Lemon Crisps

From: AllRecipes.com

1 package lemon cake mix with pudding

1 cup crisp rice cereal

1/2 cup butter

1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter; stir in all ingredients and mix well. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place them about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Press flat with thumb. Bake for 9 minutes or until edges are golden. Cool on cookie sheets one minute, then remove to wire racks to cool.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, let's play "Guess What Kylee Did Wrong." Perhaps you've already caught my mistake from the picture above. I wish I would have! The batter seemed pretty greasy, especially seeing a pool of oil around the cookies after I placed them on the sheet.

Even though they didn't look right, I proceeded to bake them "until the edges were golden." It only took a few minutes until I smelled burning. Out came these beauties:

Sadly, the whole batch got tossed in the trash can. I tried to sample just the center of the cookies, but they weren't cooked at all. In case you didn't notice from above, 1/2 cup butter is ONE stick! Grrrr! Although the recipe sounds weird even if it were to come out right, I might give these another try only because it got such great reviews. Let me know if you test these out and get better results!

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!