This is Geraldine's small fondant mat. It's the perfect size for this project!

Today is a great day for playing with one of the fondant molds I bought. I’m excited about it & quickly gather everything needed. Not sure what colors I want or what colors I already have, I grab some unopened fondant & the bags of leftover fondant. (Good fondant is very expensive & way too expensive to waste. Save any pieces you don’t use on a project. When you have time, you can make flowers, leaves or geometric shapes to use on a future project. Those are words of wisdom Norman Davis gave us at ICES.

Rolling out the fondant to use in the mold.

I have a wad of yellow fondant a little bit smaller than a half dollar & a wad of orange fondant about the size of a quarter. That looks to me like a good place to start! Place both pieces of fondant in the microwave & heat them just a few seconds. Even after being carefully wrapped in several layers of Saran Wrap & placed in Ziploc bags, fondant will get stiff to rock hard. A few seconds in the microwave will soften it enough to knead. Be careful though not to heat for anything but very short bursts. It is sugar dough & will get too hot to safely handle. Heated long enough it will even start to melt.

Gently place the fondant over the mold. Be careful to cover all sections of the mold!

Butterflies are not a solid color so I knead both pieces of fondant together until they are soft & pliable but not completely blended. I then take my 6-inch fondant roller out & proceed to roll the dough out on my mat. (I will do another post on the mat. It’s that good.) Once the fondant is rolled out to 1/8 thickness, I pick it up & gently lay it on the bottom part of the mold. Previously, I had taken my finger & dipped it in powdered sugar & rubbed it on the inside of the mold. Then I shook the mold so almost all of the powdered sugar was shaken out. With my fingers I gently pat the fondant into the crevices of the mold. Once I have a pretty decent impression, I pick up the top 2 pieces & lay them on top of the fondant lining them up on the indented fondant. Then I take the roller & firmly roll the top pieces into the fondant & bottom piece of the mold. If this is done properly, you get an almost clean cut of the butterfly pieces. Pull the top pieces of the mold off & you’re ready to gently push the fondant out of the mold. Now you have two beautifully impressed butterfly wings. I’ll use them in the future on a cake or some cupcakes.

In this photo, the top of the mold has had gentle pressure applied to force the fondant into all crevices of the mold. Excess fondant was carefully peeled away.

You can see the impressions from the mold once you removed the top portions of the mold. Then turn the mold over & gently tap to remove the butterfly pieces.

After removing the butterfly half from the mold, use a tapered spatula to do detailed removal of small bits of excess fondant. Do NOT use a knife as there is too much danger of nicking your mat.

After making a few of these, I pull out a small piece of blue & a small piece of green fondant. Knead both of these into the leftover fondant from making butterflies & make some more butterflies. The mold only needs to be rubbed down with powdered sugar after the fifth set of butterfly wings. That’s how well this mold works. It’s been a good afternoon. Played with one of my new molds until I’m very comfortable using it. As a result of using the mold, I have several beautiful fondant butterflies to use.

A pair of orange & yellow butterflies drying on a wire rack.

A multi-colored butterfly half ready to have the excess fondant gently removed.

Sarah cooking bacon

If you haven’t fixed it before, you need to do so. It’s one of the super easy things you can fix. Like fixing scrambled eggs, there’s no need to measure things. You want a good quality bread to fix French Toast. Something like French bread, a good bakery bread or the Pepperridge Farm sourdough will make an excellent dish. A bread of substance is needed. If you use your normal sandwich quality bread, the bread will get too soggy as it has too much air & will soak up too much of the egg mixture. Then the end result will be a piece of bread that is toasted on the outside & soggy inside–not an attractive or tasty dish.

Turn your stove on to medium heat & heat your iron skillet while mixing your eggs. Usually when I’m fixing it, I’ll fix a larger batch than necessary to have French toast mixture handy for another morning. There’s 3 of us in my family living at home so if I crack 4-6 eggs, I’ll have extra egg mix leftover. How many eggs I use is based on how many times I figure we’ll have French toast in the next few days. Lightly whip the eggs & add some milk, approximately a tablespoon and a half for every 2 eggs is how much I usually pour in the bowl of eggs. This is a guess as I eyeball it. Then I add around a half teaspoon of cinnamon & half as much nutmeg. Some people add a dash of salt. I prefer to leave it out & nobody has ever complained. Lightly whip the ingredients until the spices are evenly distributed.

Whisking egg & milk mixture for French toast.

Cracked eggs in bowl

Pour the mix into a shallow container. Place a slice of the bread in the egg mixture & gently push it down until the mix flows over the top. Using a fork, I lift the bread up & turn it over so both sides are well coated. Lift it up using the fork & let the excess mix drip back into the container. Gently drop the coated bread into the hot skillet. After it has cooked for 3-4 minutes & is toasted on the bottom, use a pancake turner to flip it over. Let the other side cook until it is grilled to your satisfaction. Using the pancake turner, slip the piece of French toast onto a plate.

French toast cooking in iron skillet.

Depending on your family’s taste, the French toast can be served with a sprinkling of powdered sugar, syrup, applesauce or a warm fruit puree. After fixing however many pieces I need, I store the leftover mix in the refrigerator. I would not suggest keeping it more than a couple of days before using it.

Finished French toast with an egg

It’s not a difficult cake to bake & isn’t very time consuming. However, be forewarned if you’ve never fixed one before, that the batter will be a  red to reddish-brown color depending on the recipe you use. Once the cake is baked it will be a bright red color when cut. The color is where the cake gets it’s name so be prepared.

Red Velvet Cake Batter

The recipe makes 3 8-inch layers, but that won’t suit my needs. This cake is going to be traveling in the car for approximately 1 1/2 hours. I do not want to take a chance on the top layer sliding or tumbling off. I’m also not quite sure how many people will be there. I have a vague number I’m pretty sure or sure will be there & I want to make sure there is leftover cake for Daddy to enjoy on other days. I pour the batter into 2 10-inch cake pans & that works good without having to make another batch or half batch of the batter.

While the cake bakes, I pull out a 12-inch cake board & some leftover fondant I have. Sprinkle a bit of red powdered food color in the middle of the fondant & proceed to knead the fondant. I knead until the powder is no longer dry but is only partially incorporated into the fondant. I do this because I want the fondant to have a marbled effect not be solid-colored.

Cake board covered in marbled fondant.

Next I pull out a medium-sized piece of vinyl I keep for this purpose & begin rolling out the fondant. I roll it out until it is large enough to cover the cake board. Then I place it on the cake board & smooth it down & cut it to size. This will dry & be ready when I need it.

After the cake layers have baked, I put them on wire racks to cool. When they’re completely cooled, I wrap them in SaranWrap as I’m not going to ice the cake until tomorrow. That’s it for the day.

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The finished coconut cake. Have a knife?

Thursday we’re celebrating Zoey’s (my oldest granddaughter) birthday. So today I’m baking a cake. A coconut cake that will have an orange filling. Here’s where you can find the recipe I used http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Six-Layer-Coconut-Cake/Detail.aspx. It makes an awesome cake.

Pull out the flour, butter, eggs & other ingredients and get started. In a very short time, I have cake batter ready to pour into 3 8-inch cake pans. Carefully place the pans into the preheated oven & bake the cake layers. While my coconut cake bakes, I work on cooking the filling. As soon as the filling is finished, I put it in the refrigerator to cool.

Coconut cake cooling in pans.

In a short time, the coconut cake layers are ready to come out of the oven. I place them on the wire racks to cool before removing them from the pans. After the layers are removed from the cake pans, I let them cool completely. In the meantime, I clean a spot on the counter.

I had lots of oranges so used fresh orange juice.

Once the coconut cake is completely cooled, I pull the layers over to the newly cleaned spot on the counter. I dig out my cake leveler & set it for cutting the 3 layers in half. Once the initial cut into the crust is made, it’s easy going. Just have to be careful & watch what you’re doing. Go too fast & the cake will move on you.

The cake leveler sits on top of the cake layer that is now 2 tiers.

Now that cake is cut is cut into the proper number of tiers, I start filling the cake. Place the bottom tier on a cake board & a third of a cup of the filling on top of it. Gently spread it until it covers the cake. Take the top of that layer & gently place it on top. Spread a third of a cup of the orange filling on top of it. The bottom tier of a layer goes on it. Continue stacking cake tiers & filling until the last tier is in place.

Stacked & filled layers of coconut cake with orange filling.

Now it’s time to make the frosting. Pull out the candy thermometer as it will be a necessary tool for making the frosting. Combine all the ingredients but the vanilla in a large pot & start cooking. I use the directly over low heat method; if you prefer, you can use a double boiler. Very carefully beat on low speed with an electric mixer. It’s a bit of a pain because you have to be careful to stay away from the candy thermometer. Don’t want a diaster!

After the frosting reaches 160 degrees in temperature, it’s time to pull it off the stove & pour into a large mixing bowl. Add the vanilla & turn your mixer up to high speed. Beat until you get lovely stiff peaks. This will take somewhere around 7 minutes. Your frosting is now ready for the cake!

Another look at the finished coconut cake.

Spread the icing on the top & the sides of the cake generously. Once that’s finished, it’s time to either sprinkle or cover the cake with shredded coconut. Which you do, will depend on how much your family likes coconut. I cover mine because I love coconut. You know the old saying “you eat what the cook likes”. Now all I need is a certain grandchild who’s celebrating her birthday & we’ll have cake.

Peppermint Pound Cake

I was not at all disappointed. The recipe called for a peppermint flavored layer between 2 layers of plain cake. That didn’t suit my plans at all. I added more crushed peppermint to the recipe & flavored the entire cake.

The results were just what I hoped for–a very Christmasy type dessert. The crushed candy canes gave a delightful peppermint taste to the pound cake. It was also very festive looking with the bits of candy cane all throughout the cake. While the glaze was still wet, I sprinkled bits of crushed candy cane on it to add to the festive appearance of the cake.

Whether it’s baked as a poundcake or mini pound cakes, this cake is a real winner for the holiday baking. Jim was delighted with the taste & loved the look of it.

While the peppermint pound cake was baking, I mixed up a batch of orange sugar cookies. Orange peel, vanilla, and orange extract give these cookies their flavor. Between the orange extract & the candy canes, my kitchen smelled just like Christmas should smell.

Orange Sugar Cookies as presents.

The dough for the orange sugar cookies rolled out very nicely. I used the present cookie cutter for them and had them cut out in no time at all. They baked very evenly and were soon on the racks cooling. Buttercream icing with a touch of orange extract to play up the orange flavor in the cookies was what I used to “giftwrap” the presents. Not bad. Another recipe that definitely a keeper.

Spiced Eggnog here I come! Doesn’t that have a nice Christmas feel to it? I can’t list the recipe here due to copyright issues; however, if you go to allrecipes.com, you will find the recipe. Not being sure about the reaction to liquor in the cake, I did leave out the optional brandy. Personally, I would think rum would be the liquor to add to an eggnog cake if I was adding one.

It took a bit longer than most pound cakes to mix, but was an easy recipe to follow. The spices in the eggnog and the additional spices added to the cake, gave it a terrific aroma while baking.

One of the mini Spiced Eggnog Pound Cakes after being glazed.

While it’s a nice moist & flavorful cake, I’m not at all sure I would have guessed that eggnog was one of the ingredients. Not quite sure if the eggnog was a subtle flavor or if I just thought I could taste it because I knew it was one of the ingredients. Either way, it was a tasty pound cake & I’m sure I will bake it again.

As you can see, it made adorable little individual cakes. I can hardly wait to hear the reaction of my family to this pound cake.

Yes, the batter is really that yellow.

The first orange pound cake is ready for the oven.

Thanksgiving & pumpkin pies are too close for me to be very interested in cake. The not so pretty cake made its way to a Zip-loc freezer bag. What will I do with it? I don’t know. Depends on what I want or need when I pull it out of the freezer. My family might just eat it as it is. After all, even though it’s not beautiful, it’s still a marvelous tasting cake. It might end up being torn in pieces and used as an ingredient in trifle. It might be torn up into very small pieces, mixed with a mixture of orange marmalade & buttercream icing and become cake truffles. So as you can tell, there are several possiblities for yummy but ugly cake. Waste no cake!

The Good Orange Pound Cake

The second orange pound cake  came out of the pan very nicely. Glazed it & Monday it’ll be off to its destination. This is a great moist cake with intense orange flavor. Makes a fantastic cake for summer.

Had a response from Food Lion today about my sour cream issue. It was a quite unsatisfactory response. She was sorry I was unhappy about their response, but Food Lion did care about the quality of their product & the satisfaction of their customers. So why am I out a container of sour cream? Is it asking too much to get what I thought I had bought?

Cupcakes with orange icing ready for MNO (Mother

Used all the cinnamon icing I had left on pumpkin cupcakes until it was gone. Add the black & yellow icing to the decorating bag to do a swirl design. Iced all of the butter vanilla cupcakes with it. Then I used the rest of it on chocolate cupcakes until I ran out. Then I mixed up a batch of orange buttercream icing. Figured it would go good with all the flavors I had so I would only need to make one batch of icing. So I have fig cupcakes with orange icing, pumpkin cupcakes with orange icing, lemon-orange cupcakes with orange icing & chocolate cupcakes with orange icing.

The icing smells really good; I like the taste of it. Had a fresh palate & STILL don’t care for the butter vanilla cake. Sarah didn’t much care for it either. Jim really liked it. So I will definitely be pushing it at tonight’s MNO (Mother’s Night Out) as I want other opinions before I mark it as “Nope. Don’t think so.” It is disappointing though as I want a good vanilla cake. White cake tends to be so tasteless so I thought it would be good to have a good vanilla cake.

Tomorrow I really must start doing things with the crabapples. Found several recipes on the net & I think I have picked out the ones I want to try. Need to finish them up, because apples are getting ripe & I KNOW I want apples.

I love spaghetti! Usually I don’t much like eating it in the summer when it’s hot. Especially if I’m the one that cooks it. Usually I am. Not much of a fan of eating spaghetti out. For one thing, it’s super messy to eat & I prefer to limit the number of people that can see me eat it. Secondly, too many places don’t cook the noodles properly. I hate overcooked spaghetti noodles. The thing about overcooked noodles is that they completely distract me from the sauce. No matter how good the sauce is, I’m not going to notice if the spaghetti isn’t al dente.

After eating a late lunch, I sat & watched an epidode of House with Jim. (One of the few things, I like better than cooking is kicking back & relaxing with Jim.) As soon as the show was over, I got up to start spaghetti sauce. While I’m sure there are hundreds of recipes out there for spaghetti sauce, for @ 35 years, I have used the recipe in the New York Times Cookbook. Sometimes I make the marina sauce, but usually I make the meat sauce. Today was definitely a meat sauce day. Spaghetti sauce simmering smells wonderful! Spaghetti must have been given to us by the angels. It’s in the top 4 of my comfort foods. Macaroni & cheese, spaghetti, ice cream & chocolate cake are my top four comfort foods. I just can’t decide which one is number one. It tasted heavenly for supper–just like I knew it would. Some cravings should be met.

Then in the evening I pulled out a Butter Vanilla Pound Cake recipe to try. This is the recipe that needed the vanilla bean paste I bought. It smelled wonderful when I was mixing it and when it was cooking. However, I’m a bit disappointed in it at the moment. Made cupcakes out of the batter & have tasted pieces of one of the cupcakes. To my thinking, it’s much too sweet for a pound cake. I shudder at the idea of icing it for any reason or covering it with fondant. I’ll check again tomorrow to see what I think about it. However, unless the other people who taste it tomorrow convince me otherwise I won’t be keeping this recipe.

Pumpkin Cake Cooling

Barely had time to get it out of the pans before we rushed off to meet KaraLea, a partner in crime of mine. (We’re working together on a new business venture.) We met her & her Sara at Amigo’s. If you’re not familiar with them, it’s a Mexican restaurant. Having been driven to the edge by the aroma of the pumpkin cake, my Sarah & I were guilty of eating way too many chips & dip while waiting for our food. If you frequent Amigo & haven’t tried their Amigo salad, I heartily recommend it. Doesn’t matter if you get the chicken, steak or shrimp, it is sooooo good. If you can afford the bucks & the calories, go for the steak & shrimp.

We had a most enjoyable time. Also turned out to be a good thing that my Sarah came with me. KaraLea had not had time to look at the pictures. I emailed her of a potential building. Sarah just happened to have her camera with her & that was the camera that was used to take the pictures. Da dah! Don’t you just love it when your children turn out to be helpful on something?!

I covered the cake layers when we got home as I was too tired to think about icing the cake. Glad I didn’t. Overnight, my brain did some perculating & I remembered reading about a cinnamon icing that went with another cake I’m wanting to try. Cha-ching! Wouldn’t that be wonderful with pumpkin cake! Yes, we have a winner. So I made my ususal buttercream icing, but only used half as much vanilla as usual. Added @ ½ teaspoonful of cinnamon & @ ⅛teaspoonful of nutmeg to the icing mix. Taste test by Jim, Sarah & me confirmed this was a wonderful idea.

Pumpkin Cake with Cinnamon Icing

Did a fast crumb coat on the cake. Debated how I wanted to decorate the cake. Just didn’t feel like going to a lot of trouble. Ok, maybe Jim getting back from out of town had just a smidgen to do with that. Cut me some slack. We’re still very new newlyweds. So all the cake got was a simple dot around the top & the bottom. Worked for me. The cake tastes just as awesome as it smelled. The spiced icing complements it nicely. We have a winner! Time to enter it into the recipe file for Sugary Creations.