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.

Cinnamon Spice Cupcakes and The Best Burgers Ever

This past weekend I made Cinnamon Spice Cupcakes with Sweet Cream Cheese filling and Greg made Beef and Turkey Bacon Cheese Burgers. It was kinda a long weekend and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with school starting and stuff, so I didn't want to make something to terribly complicated but I still needed to make something good. I found a box of spice cake mix in the cupboard I bought a couple weeks ago and decided to do something with that. So it went something like this:

Cupcakes:

• 1 box Spice cake mix (made as directed)


• maybe a little less than 1 Tbl cinnamon (I love cinn. so you may want a bit less or even a bit more, the point was to make it just a bit over spiced so that the filling can play it down a bit)


• 1/4 or a bit less ground nutmeg

Prepare cake mix as directed and add the spices. Set off on the side until the filling is ready.

Filling

• I used a larger tub of plain cream cheese


• maybe about 1 cup of sugar

Mix it together, but you may need to taste a bit to make sure that there is enough sugar so it's sweet enough for you.

I filled each the pan a little less than normal than I would if I was making plain cupcakes and then put a small scoop (apx 1 Tbl) of the cream cheese filling then top off with a little more batter.

Bake as normal, let cool and ta-dah!

I used a mini bunt cupcake pan so mine came out extra big, I used the remaining batter in normal cupcake pans.

When I took them out they looked a little blank so I made a powdered sugar glaze and poured that over. It soaked in right away so you really couldn't tell and it really didn't do much. If you want a glaze I might recommend warming up some of the left over filling and pouring that over each cupcake since the filling tends to get absorbed a little.

They turned out so good, I really liked the spice of the cake with the sweetness of the filling. It really makes a wonderful treat to start the school year with. the boys really liked it, I told Zack it was kinda like Cinnamon toast. He said it was good and Johnathan gave me a thumbs up and said it was good also.

For dinner we wanted to grill, and Greg wanted hamburgers and since I don't eat a whole lot of red meat (it's not that I don't like it, cause I do love me a pink in the middle burger or steak, I just didn't want beef this night, plus turkey is a bit leaner) Greg got some bacon and cheese. I think he just used a bit of salt and pepper to season, grilled the bacon as well and slapped them on a wheat bun with a slice of cheese, and that's about it. There wasn't any special trick or ingredient, but damn those burgers were so good.

I would have to say that this meal was probably one of my favorites.

Did anyone else grill this weekend? What did you grill? Any special recipes or meals?