Blue-Eyed Baker: Graduation Cake

So if you read Summer is HERE you know about the graduation cake I made and if you didn't read it don't worry, a) you still can and b) I'm going to tell you all about the cake anyways.

Last Saturday an old friend of mine had her college graduation party and I volunteered to make her cake.  It was a half sheet cake and the biggest cake I've made to date.  I tried to make it the day of the party and that was mistake number one.

Mistake #1

Try to make the biggest cake you've ever made in approximately four hours.

It was dumb and I'll never do it again.  I should have made the cake the night before so it could have cooled completely and the icing wouldn't have been a fiasco.

Mistake #2

Underestimate how much you'll need of each ingredient.  

Okay, so at first I thought I was only going to make a one layer cake.  Well I didn't have enough batter to fill the pan up as much as I wanted and the first cake came out a little small so I made a second layer because I didn't want to give someone that was paying me a chincy cake.  So in short I barely had enough ingredients for both cakes and definitely didn't have enough ingredients for the icing so I had to make a few trips.

Mistake #3

Try to work with warm cake.

Just don't do it, ever.  It was the main reason everything went down hill.

It may seem like I'm being hard on myself but I'm really not.  I needed to make these mistakes in order for me to learn.  I ended up finishing the cake and admitting to myself that it wasn't my best work.  I ended up having to free-hand the design on the cake and I learned with some practice I really could become good at that.  I also learned that it's a good idea to bake for people you know because when you mess up and the cake falls apart in transit they will be understanding and still eat the cake.  The best part was later when I was told the cake was delicious and they would order from me again.  So all-in-all it wasn't that bad.

I'm not posting any recipes today because I used the Guiness cake from the Irish Car-Bomb cupcakes which you can find on my blog and a basic butter-cream icing that isn't my favorite to use but I was in a jam.

The result.  I did pipe some bad-ass shell bordering.

Happy Thursday and Happy Baking!

Summer is HERE

After the crappiest start to "summer" ever, from going back to State College alone to the rainy, yucky weather, summer is finally (and officially) here and I personally think that I started it off in just the right way.  I had an excellent weekend.

Friday

I had Friday off (well I had the whole week off but whatever) so Kyle and I went to Ohiopyle.  Yes, I finally made it.  We didn't have a picnic or take the dog but just getting to Ohiopyle for the first time this summer was enough.  It wasn't too busy and the water wasn't too cold nor was it too hot.  It was perfect.

The natural water slide.  I didn't take this picture and we didn't go on it but next time...

Saturday

On Saturday an old friend from high school had her graduation party.  Also, her mom asked me to make the cake for the part but more on that in another post.  Anywho, it was really nice to see her and her mom and some other people that I haven't seen in a while.  There was also beer and great food so that makes for a good time.  It was fun and just the kind of party I like to go to, not too big, not too small and nothing formal.

The cake, not my best work but I was told it was delicious.

Sunday

We were supposed to go see Alice Cooper but we didn't.  In all honesty I'm not a huge Alice Cooper fan so it didn't bother me all that much.  We spent the afternoon canoeing on the Yough with my family which was a blast and then in the evening after deciding to forgo the concert Kyle took me to dinner and out for ice cream and it was just the perfect night. 

The captain and first mate

Mom and Ed could not keep up

Don't rock the boat

If this past weekend was any indication of how the summer is going to go I'll be pleased.  It was so much fun and it was nice to get out and do stuff.  Happy Monday!

Blue-Eyed Baker: Cupcake-palooza

So last night I was invited to a "Ladies' Night" event at our local chiropractor's office.  I was asked to bring samples and/or a portfolio to show off my work. I, the ever overachiever, brought both.  I prepared myself for a crowd and took 72 mini-cupcakes, three different flavors.

My set-up

I was really excited because I thought I was going to get my name out to a lot of people and maybe have some projects to do over the summer.  Not the case.  I don't think this was their most successful Ladies' Night because the turnout for the vendor show portion was like 4 people.  I left with about 64 of the 72 cupcakes that I took.  Not to mention there were a ton of extras that I left at home.  So now at my house we have stacks on stacks on stacks of cupcakes in the kitchen.  I don't really know what to do with them all.

So here's the Blue-Eyed Baker portion.  I made three flavors, chocolate with peanut butter icing which are the same recipes I used for my Mother's Day Cake, a vanilla cupcake with chocolate frosting that wasn't so great so I won't post the recipe (I think for vanilla stuff I will stick to this recipe), and finally a red-velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing.  The red-velvet recipe is from Brown-Eyed Baker.  Like I said I love her stuff.

Red-Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Yield: 12 regular cupcakes or 36 mini-cupcakes

Ingredients:

  For the cupcakes:

•   4 T. unsalted, room temperature butter
• 3/4 c. granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 1/2 T. cocoa powder
• 3 T. red food coloring
• 1/2 t. vanilla
• 1/2 c. buttermilk
• 1 c. + 2 T. flour
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1 1/2 t. distilled white vinegar

  For the icing:

• 4 oz. cream cheese
• 4 T. butter
• 2 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 1 T. vanilla

How to:

  Cupcakes:

•   Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and line your cupcake pans.  
• In a bowl cream together the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes and then add the egg and beat on high until well incorporated.
•   In a separate small bowl mix together the food coloring, vanilla and cocoa powder to form a paste.   Add this mixture to the larger bowl. Make sure all of the batter is incorporated with the red food coloring.
•   With your mixer on low add half of the buttermilk and then half of the flour.  Repeat this step.  Mix on high for an additional minute or so to make sure the batter is smooth.
•   Pour the batter into your cupcake tins and bake for about 20 minutes for regular cupcakes and 11 minutes for mini-cupcakes.
•   Let cupcakes cool for 5-10 minutes in pans and then transfer to a cooling rack.

  Frosting:

•   Cream the butter and cream cheese together.
•   Add the vanilla.
•   Add powdered sugar until you reach your desired consistency.
•   Ice cupcakes when cool as desired.

Your final product should be pretty delicious.  I hope you enjoy! Happy Baking and Happy Thursday!

The red-velvets are on the bottom

 

Woman Crush Wednesday: Mindy Kaling

I just finished Mindy Kaling's book, "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)".  It was great.

To be honest, I've been a Mindy fan for a while now.  I loved her character Kelly Kapoor on "The Office".  Even though she had a small part, I loved her and after reading her book I realize she stuck to the small part because she was also writing for the show.  When her new show, "The Mindy Project", started this past fall I knew I had to watch it.  I did and I loved every minute of it.  I'm now patiently waiting for September.

So I was already a fan of Mindy.  Her book made me even more of a fan.  I love that Mindy isn't a size 0 actress.  She's the size of an average American woman and from what her book says she's okay with that.  I love seeing that attitude.  I'm no size 0 either and most days I struggle with being okay with my weight so it's nice to have a role model that's not going to conform to the size 0 that most of Hollywood is.

I also enjoyed that in her book she talks about the less glamorous side of being famous and how she got there.  I have no real want or need to be famous all I really want is to own a business that sells baked goods that I have made but when you look at someone successful sometimes all you can think about is how they are successful and then you get a bit jealous (and when I say you I mean me).  You (I) tend to forget that they probably did go through a few hardships before they got to where they wanted to be.  I needed Mindy's book to do that for me.  A lot of times, especially recently, I've been pretty down on myself because I feel like I'm never going to get to where I want but after finishing Mindy's book I see that the road to success isn't all hearts and rainbows.  There are going to be times where I feel like giving up.

So to conclude, Mindy's book really gave me a confidence boost but further than that it's a great read and she's a pretty funny gal so I'd recommend it to anyone.

Happy Wednesday!

Father's Day

If you've read my family post you know approximately three things about me:

1. I love my family,
2. My dad passed away in 2005,
3. I'm a total sap.

If you haven't read my family post now you know those three things but to recap the second point...in 2005 my dad passed away.  We lost him in a boating accident and life has been different ever since.

But today is Father's Day and what better way to honor my dad than a blog post?  I'm sure he'd be proud...actually he probably wouldn't even know how to access my blog with out a well drawn or written set of instructions.

So here we go, when my dad first passed I thought that the best days to be sad about how he wasn't with us anymore were holidays, especially his birthday and Father's Day and the anniversary of the accident.  Well, I don't really think that anymore.  I miss my dad everyday but I try not to be too sad about it because I don't think he would want that.  And usually the days that I miss him the most are random days that may or may not be close to his birthday or Father's Day or any thing of the sort.  But mostly I miss him everyday.

So here's a little bit about the man that contributed to the reason I'm here, John Jay Bodnar.

He was the hardest worker I've ever known.
He worked all the time when I was a kid, I mean he did own a business but I always kind of hated how often he worked.  I'm glad he did though because I have a pretty good work ethic and I attribute that to him.

But he also made time for his family. 
 I fondly remember patiently waiting after returning from church on Sunday mornings for dad to get home in the summer time because we always went out on the boat and my mom would make the best lunch meat sandwiches with what I thought of as "special cheese", it was Munster but it wasn't something we always had in the house.  When we got older we got a pool and the boat outings weren't as frequent but he still came home early and we would hang out by the pool.

He's the reason I love roller coasters.
When I go to an amusement park I head straight for the roller coasters and it's all because of my dad.  I remember going to Cedar Point when I was like 10 and being super upset because I wasn't tall enough for the "big" coasters yet.  I then proceeded to crack my head open and I couldn't ride any rides.  But now I ride them all, my first trip to an amusement park after he passed I bawled my eyes out because he wasn't there to ride them with me but I did take my first ride on the Phantom's Revenge at Kennywood with him and I'll always cherish that.

He was always there to help me with school.
Now my dad wasn't my go to person for homework help (that was mom) but when I had a project that required building something he was there.  I remember him basically building a bird house for me in 2nd grade, I think I hammered in one nail but that was about it.  And in 8th grade he and my mom helped me build a roller coaster at the last minute for science class, I got a 100%.

I could go on and on, I have so many memories of him teaching me things or doing things with me that this post could go on for days but I have to stop somewhere so here I'll recap some of my fondest.

He taught me how to ride a bike with no training wheels.
I'm sure it was a painful process because I was very adamant that I needed to be taught right at that moment because my older friends didn't have training wheels.

We used to ride bikes together on the trail.
To this day when I go there (which isn't often)  I stop for an extra minute at a place that we stopped for a break.  It wasn't meaningful then but it is now.

We used to eat oreos and watch cartoons together.
 My mom always hated the cartoons we watched but that's what probably made it so fun to do.

He taught me how to drive a 4-wheeler.
Then I wrecked and stopped riding 4-wheelers.

He used to put me to sleep on the lawn mower.  
Now I don't really remember this but there are enough pictures and videos for me to know that this happened.

I think I'll stop there.  In short,  I have a lot of memories of my dad that I'll cherish forever. And now as I'm making new memories I sometimes hate that he's not here but I always remind myself that at least I had him for a little while.

I love and miss you Dad!

So to all those dads out there, including my own, Happy Father's Day!

The Weekend is Almost Here!

Hey all, I wanted to shoot you a heads up that Blue-Eyed Baker won't be happening this week because...

I started a new job!

Okay, so it's not that great, but it pays well.  It's just a babysitting gig for a family with 2 little girls that are sometimes adorable and sometimes not.  I won't lie and say they're angels because most kids are not angels. It has been a loooong week.  I've watched them all week 7 am to 3:30 pm and I've still got one day left. Thankfully however, there's another girl that I'm going to alternate with so we don't have to babysit all 5 days of the week.  It's a little much.

Plus I have these classes that these professors are giving a ton of work for.  Sometimes it seems like a little too much work.  Like my marketing professor gives us like 8-10 assignments due over the course of a week.  That's a little excessive but I need the class so I can complain and complain and complain but I still have to do the work.  Whatevs.

But the weekend is almost here, after one more day of babysitting I'm home free.  I can sleep in Saturday morning and do whatever I want (probably homework, meh).  And next week I don't have to babysit so I will definitely be baking.

Welp, Happy Thursday!

Summer Bloggin'

If you haven't noticed I haven't been blogging.  Summer time has proved to be a really bad time to blog, for me.  I'll gladly blame it on lack of time and motivation and things to blog about.  You can clearly see that it is Monday but this is not a "Military Monday" post.  Right now, there's just not too much going on with the whole Navy thing.  Kyle is patiently waiting to hear back from whomever he needs to hear back from and I'm just trying to enjoy our last non-Navy summer together.

So back to the topic at hand, summer blogging is hard.  I have three online classes simultaneously running right now, I have a 7:30 am - 3:30 pm baby sitting gig going on and after watching Nick Jr. for 8 hrs straight and then coming home to bull-shit for three hours about business crap I just don't feel like blogging especially when I'm half way through a book and the sun is shining.  It's been pretty rainy here for awhile.  Plus, I've got friends and family that wants to do stuff with me so sue me if I don't blog too often.

I guess my point is that my blogging habits until otherwise said are going to be very sporadic.  I'm going to try to do a Blue-Eyed Baker every week because I plan on baking a lot and I'll try to keep you all updated on the Kyle Joins the Navy Saga.  Also, if I read or see or hear something really great or really terrible I'll let you know about that too.  And if I'm feeling nostalgic or sad you'll get a whole heaping pile of sappiness that will probably keep you satiated for a few weeks (hint, hint Father's Day is on Sunday).

But until I see you again, Happy Monday and Happy Summer!

Blue-Eyed Baker: Gobs

Yesterday my little brother asked for Oreos and my mom said no, mostly because she was going to a smaller grocery store and they charge like $5 for a package of Oreos.  He got upset and then she told him to ask me to make him some.  I didn't want to try to make Oreos and I was in a cookie making mood so I made gobs (or whoopie pies) instead.  They kind of look like Oreos.

I stole the recipe from Brown-Eyed Baker because it was the first one to pop up and like I've said before all of her recipes that I've tried so far have been really, really good.

So here you go,

Gobs
Yield: 18-24 Gobs

What You'll Need:

Cakes:
2 c. Flour
1/2 c. Cocoa Powder
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/4 tsp. Salt
1 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Shortening
1 Egg + 1 Egg Yolk
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 c. Buttermilk (I used 2% milk because I had no buttermilk and didn't feel like buying it for just one recipe)
1 c. Hot Water

Frosting:
1 1/4 c. Shortening
1 1/2 c. Marshmallow Fluff
1 c. Powdered Sugar
1 Tbsp. Vanilla

How To:

For the Cakes:

1. Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Sift together flour, salt, cocoa powder and baking soda.  Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar.
4. Add the egg, yolk and vanilla to the sugar-shortening mixture and mix until incorporated.
5. Alternating the flour mixture and liquids, add 1/3 flour mix, milk, 1/3 flour, water, 1/3 flour.  Mix well (3-5 minutes).
6. Here's the tricky part, originally the recipe I used said to drop about a tablespoon and a half of the batter/dough/whatever onto parchment paper lined cookie sheets.  I did that and it didn't turn out well.  If you look at Brown-Eyed Baker you'll see that her cakes are nice and fluffy, mine were not, maybe because of the substitution of the 2%, maybe not.  Anyhow, I didn't like how my cakes looked so I filled cupcake tins about a quarter of the way full and when I took them out of the oven I smushed down the tops.  That method worked well for me and I liked the outcome.  They also make whoopie-pie pans so if you have those I'm sure you can use them. So, if you use the Brown-Eyed Baker's method bake time is 5-6 minutes, if you use the cupcake tin method bake time is 7-8 minutes.  If you use whoopie-pie pans, well good luck!

For the Frosting:

1. Add the marshmallow fluff and shortening to your bowl, mix well.
2. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla. Mix on high for about 3-5 minutes.  Your final result will be a nice and fluffy frosting.

Finally, assemble the gobs as you would a sandwich, cake-frosting-cake.  I used an icing spatula but you can really use whatever tool you want.

My results,

I have yet to perfect my dessert photo-taking skills.

That's all for today! Happy Friday and Happy Baking!

Kennywood!

Today we're going to Kennywood.  I'm 22-years-old and I've been there at least 75 times but I'm still excited.  Kennywood rarely changes but it never gets old.


This is also one of the things I put on my summer to do list so I can check something off.  It should also be a pretty nice trip because it's not supposed to be too hot today.   I really can't tell you how excited I am.

Potato Patch fries, funnel cakes, Jack Rabbit and Phantom Here I Come!
That is all, Happy Tuesday!

Military Monday: For now I know more than you

Today I want to gloat about how I know more than Kyle.  I got upset yesterday because we were talking about the future and whenever anything about my/our future plans come up I get upset.  I've learned that this is just how it's going to be for a while.

Anywho, so we were talking about future plans and Kyle said that he probably wouldn't be assigned anywhere for like 2.5 years or so because of training and therefore I would have like 2.5 years to do what I want in PA because I "don't get to go with him through training".  WRONG! He was wrong.  I never get to say that but today I do.  He was partially correct in that I don't get to live with him while he's at OCS but I can live with him through the various stages of flight school which I am still unsure about.  When say unsure about I mean I don't know about all the various stages of flight training but I do know I can live with him if I so choose and that makes me happy because A. we can live together and B. he was wrong and I got to tell him that.  So for the time being I can say that I know more than him.  Ha-ha!  Thank goodness for small victories.

In other news, I don't think I'm going back to the bakery job.  My boss basically called me an idiot multiple times on Friday and other times earlier in the week and I'm not going to put up with that.  I don't think she's going to stop either or that this is some kind of new hire ritual because she constantly puts down the other girl that works there and she's been there for 8 months.  I don't know how you can put up with a person like that for so long but more power to you.  I however am not going to deal with her because I don't have to and I'm not going to let her ruin my enjoyment of baking by her verbally abusing me.  So I'm back on the job hunt hopefully it's short lived.

Happy Monday!