The Squash Hat

My brother and sister-in-law seem are having another baby which make me fear slightly for the chaos level of the world, but also gives me a reason to crochet super cute things like this squash hat. I got the pattern from crochet-patterns.com and it linked me here. I thought I'd make this one my experiment, so I used some yellow yarn I had laying around. I think I like it better in yellow than orange though, it's like a weird, mutant pumpkin.

It was easy (45 min?) and kind of fun, so I'm going to make more. I also have to work on sizing, because this one fit really well on an apple, which makes me curious about the size of a newborn's head.


Here George models the hat for me, which was nice. It makes him look a bit more like a "hood" than I was going for with the color scheme, but it at least secured my thinking on the size being off.

The Apple Bread

Well, it's been a while. I've been on cake-hiatus. I might be done with cakes all together, but my nephew's birthday is next month, so it's doubtful. Of course, he wants to be a cockatoo for Halloween and if that at all reflects what kind of cake he's going to want for his birthday, he's on his own.

Moving on. I went apple picking today and then came home and went on a mission to create a yeast apple bread. Last year I thought I was making a yeast apple bread, but it turned out it was an apple bread like a pumpkin bread or zucchini bread. You might have thought the lack of yeast and/or rising time in the recipe would have tipped me off.

For this recipe, I followed my father's bread-maker Challah recipe, but before the second rise, I rolled out the dough and spread out a mixture of chopped apples, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. The result is like a piece of heaven melting slowly in your mouth while simultaneously making the whole house smell of freshly cooked bread. It was truly something to behold.

I'm not sure the pictures really do it justice, but alright...

Then, to add to the amazingness, we slathered it in the cinnamon and sugar rubbed butter I got at the Cabot creamery last month. No words describe this.

The Baby Boy Cakes

My friend Kim (pregnant wife of the afformentioned Rob) is due in a few weeks (eek!) so I threw her a baby shower. At this shower, we discovered that the largest baby ever delivered was 23lb 12oz (ouch) and that it takes 500 years for a disposable diaper to decompose (ew).

We also had cupcakes.

The Hendrick's Cake

My friend Rob and I share a natural affinity for a certain gin called Hendrick's. Actually, it's made me pretty snobby and now it's the only gin I'll drink. It's cucumber-y and full of goodness.

Anyway, it was his birthday and as I might have stated before, schoolteachers can have a little time on their hands in the summer, so I made him a cake that looked like a Hendrick's bottle. I wasn't super enthusiastic with the way it turned out, but I, like most other crafty-people, am never satisfied with my results. That and I had no #2 tip so my writing and detailing all had to come out the same.

For the record, I couldn't think of a good way to make it an actual Hendrick's-flavored cake. This was partially because Rob's wife is pregnant and that seemed mean, partially because there are lots of extremely uncultured people out there who don't like gin and partially because combining gin with powdered sugar and butter just sounded plain disgusting (as opposed to tequila, with which it matches nicely).

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The First Birthday Cake

My niece turned one on July 11th. I originally planned a purple monkey face cake but then ran out of energy and skill (I think it leaves me during the summer). Instead she got a purple cake with fun candy animals. This was her own cake by the way, the rest of us got cupcakes. Of course, the most amusing part of this was the frosting. The frosting was a mish-mosh of about eight different frostings I had made in the past month or two. There was coconut, lime, vanilla, who knows what else... It was VERY sweet. The animals were made with melted mint chocolate candy pieces and candy molds.

The 4th of July Pies

I almost never see things in catalogs that I HAVE to have, but this was one of those times. I saw these pocket pie molds in the Williams-Sonoma catalog and wanted them, no, needed them. So I bought them. (I hardly ever actually buy the things I see in catalogs and want either, so it was quite a feat all over.)

They're very cute. The little contraption cuts out the shape (one with a hole for steam in the oven) and then you open it up, put the bottom on the mold, fill it with a tablespoon or two of filling, put the top on and close it to get a nice sealed, fluted edge. Does it work as well as it looked like it would in the catalog? Of course not- but it was fun nonetheless.

We used the star shaped one to make mini pies for our guests in red (cherry), white (apple) and blue (blueberry). They came out very well and were patriotically adorable.




ready to be baked

The Tape Measure Cake

It's my father's 65th birthday today. Leading up to this event, there was a lot of discussion about what to get him as a gift. My father, unlike most fathers, doesn't fish, doesn't golf, doesn't watch sports, doesn't drink coffee, does't drink booze, does't grill and doesn't particularly care for cars assuming the one he owns gets him where he needs to go. So, what does he like? He likes tools. And thank goodness, because when a man doesn't like any of the things a man is supposed to like, it gets a little rough.

How do you make a cake for a guy who likes tools? Easy, type in "tool cake" to Google image search and you gets lots of results. My dad loves the color orange and after half a bottle of orange food coloring went into the frosting, I gave up, I think it's orange-y enough though. I stuck with the tape measure because I thought it was cuter than tools. Besides, the gift has a tool theme. Below is the cake I made. Here is the cake it was based off of. It's a yellow cake (from scratch- I ran out of cake mixes) I subbed the milk with margarita mix, lemon juice and tequila and the frosting is the meringue buttercream from the CIA cookbook I got for my birthday (easiest recipe ever). The lemon juice, etc. definitely makes the cake more dense, but I think it makes it tastier too.

Check back for pictures of the stromboli I'm making for his birthday dinner.