Tar and Feathers

Yes it has been a long time since I have posted anything at all. My apologies, you may all take me out back and tar and feather me if you like. :)

Not to much has happened in the last few months. We went trick-or-treating with our very dear friends and the boys got me . . er, I mean got themselves a bunch of candy.

Zackarie was a very scary skelleton warrior.

And Johnathan was a fierce looking ninja.

Our friends' daughter went as a beautiful but scary (of course) devil queen. Our men didn't dress up and neither did I, altho Chryssy had some cool bright blue contacts that I wore, while she went dressed in a full Winnie the Pooh costume. She looked fantastic and the other parents and kids out thought so too. She even gave out some hugs to the smaller kids. Total cuteness. I am so dressing up next year.

As for cooking, I really havn't made anything fun and exciting. Dinner is about it for us lately, and even at that, Greg has been making most of that. Hopefully all that will start changing.

We have a family night with our friends every Thursday. We go over have dinner, dessert, and watch Heros. So for this week I think I will make chocolate-carmel cupcakes. Not to sure how I will construct them yet, I have a few ideas. I will post pics when I am done.

My Vision, it goes something like this . . .

I want a smallish shop, maybe somewhere in Milwaukie or an area that is walker friendly. I think its great to have a shop that when couples are just walking around together (like me and Greg do) can stop in and get a snack and enjoy some time.

I want the walls to be bright and colorful, I love graffiti, so having a local artist come in once a month and do a mural on one wall would be really great, not to mention it would give them a chance to show off their work in a positive way.

I also love the fact that a lot of smaller shops are letting local artists use their store as a gallery, so I would love to showcase local work. So it would be cool for me to see the things they can do artistically and also another outlet for them to show their work off.

I want to use renewable and eco friendly sources for my packaging.

I want a good spot for an out door seating area, so that people can enjoy the sun, or a good outdoor covered area so they can enjoy the sound of the rain, or bring there dogs for a snack.

I want to have some good pet friendly choices available also, as well as vegan, and low sugar.

I want customer input on choices and flavors to offer. I want a monthly contest for a customer creation to be showcased.

I want to help out local schools, and do fund raising.

I want to say that if there are people that love the cupcakes but don't love the weight they add, to meet me after hours and we will walk the neighborhood together.

I want to make special special cupcakes, one pink for breast cancer awareness, and a blue one for prostate cancer awareness, and since i can't make one for every charity, a red one to help children in need, and 75% of each cupcake will go to that charity.

Oh, and since I have kids and seeing them, and well all kids succeed at school is super important to me. Having a time during the week where kids could get together and study would rock. I am not the smartest person out there, but a little encouragement and a delicious snack can go a long way with a child.

I want to help the people that are around as much as I can, I want to make others lives a bit brighter, and offer hope to those that are lacking. I don't expect to be able to change the world of become some great important person for doing it, I want to have a job doing something that I love and be able to help the people that support me.

So if anyone a bunch of money laying around and wants to start me up, just email me koekjecupcakes@yahoo.com. lol

Ah, maybe with tons of hard work and some luck it will happen. If not, then at least I tried.

What-A-Cake!!!

The birthday went really well. The cake was done a little bit a head of time, so that made things so much better. Here are some pics of the finished tree:

I made modeling chocolate out of chocolate chips and corn syrup, then molded it around a wire and wood frame I made earlier. The wood grain of the tree was made just by scraping a tooth pick in various patterns, and to make the 'bark' of the tree a bit deeper and glossy, I mixed some brown food dye paste and water and painted it on, add a hand ties noose, and then ta-duh I have a chocolate tree!!
On the trunk of the tree I carved "Z (heart) MOM" awww . . . .

It turned out really well. I had to make a base so the tree could stand so I found a piece of metal vent at home depot, some plastic tubing, and some epoxy.

As for the rest of the cake, well I made chocolate cake, and half of the cake with filled with chocolate mint mouse and the other half was a tart cherry filling.

The cakes were baked on a cookie sheet so they were a lot thinner than normal layer cakes, but that allowed me to make 4 layers and thus making the cake extra moist.

The cake was topped with plain vanilla whipped cream frosting (tinted to be grey, but later seemed to turn a weird purple-grey color). Tombstones were made from marshmallow fondant and later painted with black dye paste diluted with water (which also turned the same strange grey-purple color, at least it matched).

Dirt was made from finely ground chocolate graham crackers, brown sugar, and coco powder.

Blood was made from strawberry pie filling tinted darker with a bit of black dye and red dye.

Lastly, the bone (except for the whole body) were formed from fondant.

It was a lot of work, but the end product was really nice, and tasted amazing.