Lemon Delights

I can't believe how long it has been since I have posted anything. I am so sorry! Sometimes life gets away from me and I can't keep all the balls in the air. I will try to do better in the future.

Well, it has starting to heat up and I for one don't enjoy heavy desserts during the summer. I do enjoy the coolness of watermelon and peaches. Today I would like to share with you a few lemon delights that I have been enjoying.


The first one is a yummy Lemon Poppy Seed cake. My family loves this favorite because it can be eaten at breakfast or just about anytime. We recently took it with us while camping and it didn't last very long.



For a recipe that is almost the same as mine follow this link: http://www.recipelink.com/cookbooks/2000/0761117199_3.html

The second yummy delight is Summertime Lemon Cookies. These are super easy and super yummy. I grew up enjoying the old fashioned lemon cookies that you could buy in a country general store. These cookies taste just like those cookies and bring back memories of seating on the front porch at my grandmother's eating cookies and drinking sun-brewed sweet tea.

Here is the recipe for these yummy cookies:
Summertime Lemon Cookies
18 oz. box lemon cake mix
8 oz. container whipped topping
2 eggs
1 cup powdered sugar
Combine cake mix, whipped topping and eggs. Mix thoroughly. Shape into balls and roll in powdered sugar. Place 2″ apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 until lightly golden.

Enjoy making these yummy summertime favorites! Maybe next time I'll share some of my favorite blueberry delights. Until next time...

Strawberries and All the Fixings

It is strawberry season! If you haven't already enjoyed these yummy berries this season, now is the time to go to a you-pick farm and get some. I am thrilled it's strawberry season and have been enjoying creating desserts with strawberries. My first new attempt was with angel food. I have always made a full angel food cake, but decided to make cupcakes this time. It worked and they tasted just as good as the full cake. I used a recipe, but the box mix works great as cupcakes too. Just top the cupcakes with strawberries and whipping cream...Can there be anything better?

My second new dessert was a strawberry crisp. This has got to be the easiest dessert I have made in a while. Here is the recipe in case you want to give it a try:

Strawberry Crisp

2 bags (16 ounces each) frozen whole unsweetened strawberries, thawed, or 6 cups fresh whole strawberries, rinsed, drained and capped

1 package (18.25 ounces) plain yellow cake mix (I use the yellow butter cake mix)

1 cup butter

Vanilla ice cream, for serving

Preheat oven to 350. Place the strawberries in the bottom of an ungreased 13x9 baking pan. Cover the strawberries with half of the dry cake mix. Cut the butter into 1/2 inch pieces and scatter half of these over the cake mix. Cover with remaining cake mix, then scatter the remaining butter pieces over the top. Place the pan in the oven. Bake the crisp until it is golden brown and crisp on top, about 60 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool about 10 minutes. Spoon the crisp into bowls and top with ice cream. Enjoy!

I have also made a strawberry cake, but it got eaten so quickly that I didn't even get a picture of it. Guess that means I need to bake another one. As the strawberry season continues I am sure that I will try more desserts and will try to share them here. Until next time...

Cake Cookies

My sister and I were in need of some chocolate the other day and came across a recipe for cookies where you use a cake mix as the base. I had never had them before, but decided to give them a try since we NEEDED chocolate :) The following pictures are the result of our labors.





They really were great cookies! We served a few cookies to some men working on our house and they loved them as well. If you would like the recipe, it can be found at the following website under the Cake Mix Cookies: http://www.stayathomedaughters.com/
Until next time...

Happy Birthday, Mom!!!

My mom wanted her favorite, a coconut cake for her birthday. As the wonderful daughter, I took on the challenge. I have made this cake before, but didn't remember that the icing was a little tricky. The inside of the cake is white layer cake. The icing is a seven minute icing that is so glossy and yummy. It tastes like marshmellow cream. Even though the icing is yummy, it is very messy and ran all over the place. I eventually got the coconut on the icing and these pictures show the end result. Oh, I almost forgot...the roses are made of pink fondant.

We enjoyed this yummy cake! Most of all, my mom enjoyed having her favorite cake with some of her favorite people, her kids! Until next time...

Easter Cupcakes, Miniature Sized

My sister and I decided that we needed to have some kind of Easter surprise for our family. So, as I was looking for ideas on the internet I came across a great idea at Bakerella's blog. Click here to see her ideas: http://bakerella.blogspot.com/

As much as I liked her cupcakes, they seemed a bit more involved then I wanted to get. The following pictures are of the miniature Easter cupcakes that my sister and I made. They are chocolate cake with cream cheese icing tinted green. We used green sugar sprinkles to make the icing look more like grass and then added SweeTarts: Chicks, Ducks and Bunnies. The little candies were the perfect size for our mini cupcakes.

Not only do these cupcakes look yummy, they were yummy! Let me put it this way, I made about 80 cupcakes yesterday and only about 10 are left. Until next time...

Grand Finale Cake...Yahoo!!!

Today was my last Wilton class. I have enjoyed my teacher and my classmates and hate that I won't get to see them every week. However, I am thrilled that you get to see my grand finale cake. I am also sharing my classmates cakes so they can enjoy seeing their cakes as well.
My cake is a stacked chocolate cake with blue fondant. I got to use a few of the techniques that we learned in class. Overall, it was a fun cake to make and decorate.


Daisies!!! I love them so much! They remind me of the simplicity of spring.
Mrs. Eleanor's beautiful fondant rose cake. Don't the roses look real? She was generous enough to share a rose with everyone in the class. She is so sweet!

Aren't the colors beautiful? India, you did great by picking the lilies, they are beautiful!

Tiered cakes are hard to transport, but this one almost didn't make it to class. Glad it did, I love the beautiful buttercream roses. I wish mine looked that good.

A great group of ladies made these beautiful cakes. I am so glad that I got to enjoy them and learned how to decorate cakes. By the way, we missed you, Kelly! Until next time...

Rolled Fondant

So, I have entered the wonderful world of rolled fondant. Since many of you are like me and have no idea what fondant is, I will try to explain. Rolled fondant originated from England where they cover fruitcakes in fondant to keep them moist. Fondant is a dough-like covering for a cake that creates a satin, smooth finish. It is edible, but in my opinion it doesn't taste that great. It also is a great medium to make beautiful roses and decorations for a cake. As a matter of fact, I have never been able to make good looking roses with buttercream icing, but my fondant roses ROCK!

The above cake is my first attempt at covering a cake in fondant. Below are some pictures of me preparing for my grand finale cake for my Wilton cake class. The white balls are made out of rolled fondant and the daisies are made out of royal icing. These need to be prepared in advance so that they have time to dry and then can be applied to the cake the day that I put it all together. I can't wait to show you my grand finale cake. It is a tiered cake that I designed myself. I will be putting it together next Monday. Until next time...

A Few Cakes

I would like to share a few of my cakes with you. I consider myself to still be a beginner. However, my friends and family would beg to differ with me. Whichever the case may be, I enjoy baking and then creating fun designs for the cakes. My ultimate goal is to make people smile when they look at one of my cakes.

This is a strawberry cake that I made for Valentine's Day. It has a buttercream icing with rosettes all over the top. It was a fun cake to make and eat!

This cake was one of my first cakes. It looked good until I accidently hit it with my finger. I still like the rainbow, just not the icing job.

This next cake was a white layer cake with chocolate buttercream icing that I made for my brothers 18th birthday. The balloons, stars and numbers are made out of color flow. It was my first time playing with color flow and I really enjoyed it!

This was one of the cakes that I had to make during one of my classes. I made all the flowers ahead of time out of royal icing. Then I used buttercream icing to apply a basketweave to the side and part of the top. I really like to do a basketweave.




















The next cake was a creation for my sisters birthday. I handmade each of the flowers out of royal icing. It was a white layered cake with buttercream icing. I got to work on my basketweave some more. It was kinda hard to cut into this one.





















I like to call the next cake the Polka Dot. I tried a new chocolate cake recipe, which I was told was great. I made this cake for a friend and they enjoyed it! There is a buttercream icing and the polka dots were made out of...well, I have to keep some secrets.

This last cake was a chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. The icing was a little harder to work with, but the quilt that I wanted turned out looking good. I also used a decorators comb and liked the results on the side of the cake.

So, there are a few of the cakes that I have made. I hope that you may get ideas from what I have shared. I am also open to suggestions. Until next time...

Welcome!

I am new to the blogging sphere, so you will need to hang with me as I get this blog up and running. I was encouraged to put together a blog so that I can share with you my many hobbies. Mainly I will post information about cakes that I have been making, but I will occasionally talk about some of my other hobbies.

I have many layers to my personality and because of that my hobbies are varied. I enjoy hiking, but also enjoy curling up with a good book. I also love photography! Every once in a while I may just blog about a few of these other fun things.

Welcome! I am glad that you came to visit my blog. Let me know if there is anything that you think would make this blog better. Until next time...