Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July everyone!  Today we headed to a friend's house for an Independence Day BBQ and it was a lot of fun!  I made a special cake to take over... I assure you, it tasted as good as it looked :)

I first made this cake three years ago.  I only used one box of cake mix that year, dividing the batter into three portions.  It worked but it was a short cake.  This year I used three boxes of cake mix (and obviously a lot less food coloring) and the cake was high and beautiful!

Making a cake to look like a flag is all about assembly.  You bake three cakes (red, white, and blue), do some slicing and cutting, and then arrange the layers with a thin layer of icing in between.  If you want to learn how to do the cutting and arranging, visit this post at sugarturntable.com

This year I used a Zenker Layer Cake Slicing Kit to slice my layers.  It was easy to use and allowed me to cut thin, even layers.  It was perfect for this cake!

I used RecipeGirl's White Wedding Cake Cupcakes recipe for the cakes which makes a seriously delicious semi-homemade cake using a boxed cake mix.  I also used her Wedding Cupcake Buttercream recipe which tasted great and was super easy to work with!  I made a double batch of the icing and that was just enough for this cake.

Of all the times I've made this cake, the inside looked great but the outside did not.  That first year, I covered the sides with shredded coconut because the icing looked so bad!  This year I was determined to make the outside pretty so I found some great instructional videos at zoebakes.com.  Part one: How to cut and fill a cake.  Part two: How to crumb coat your cake (so important!).  Part three: How to smoothly buttercream a cake

Thanks to RecipeGirl's recipes and Zoe's videos, I created a delicious and pretty cake!

I put buttercream icing into an icing bag and piped on small dots to stick on M&M's.  I had people ask about that at the party... I simply eyeballed the dots, no measuring, and luckily it came out well.  And yes, I actually went through a bag of M&M's and picked out all of the red and blue ones :)

I found this sprinkle shape trick via Pinterest and it works great!  You set a cookie cutter on top of the icing, pour enough sprinkles to cover the area, and then gently remove the cookie cutter.  It's such a simple and cute cake decoration!

I wasn't planning on making Cameron a patriotic outfit for today but she doesn't have anything red or (dark) blue and I had some extra time before our party.  I saw a this picture of a dress (no pattern) on Pinterest that looked like it would be super quick and easy to make... and it was!  This is so simple and it will have two lives.  This is a dress for a baby but it is also a skirt for an older girl!  Cameron can wear this again on another 4th of July a few years from now!

This is simply a rectangle of fabric (15" x 38"), hemmed along the top and bottom.  I sewed a contrasting fabric strip across the top, stitching along the top and bottom of the strip so that there was an opening big enough for a piece of wide (1") elastic.  I threaded the elastic through, sewed together the short sides of the rectangle, and added two shoulder straps.  The straps can later be removed, turning this dress into a skirt!  Dual purpose and cute... I love it!

So I baked a cool cake, made a cute little dress, and wrote a blog post about it all... I'm looking at this and wondering how I possibly managed to do all of that so I'm sure that some of you are probably wondering the same thing, right?  It might make you feel better to know that our dining room table is currently covered with sewing supplies, the sink is still full of dirty dishes, and there are piles of unwashed laundry in front of the washer.  Priorities :)

There were no fireworks on base this year due to budget cuts.  We could have gone over to the base beach to see the fireworks in Honolulu from a distance but Cameron was soundly sleeping in her crib at that point.  I took this fireworks photo three years ago... it's good to reuse for this occasion.

*******

"O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain, 

For purple mountain majesties 

Above the fruited plain! 

America! America! 

God shed his grace on thee 

And crown thy good with brotherhood 

From sea to shining sea!"

~Katharine Lee Bates

Shared on Inklings & Yarns: Inky Linky 22 - visit that page to see more great DIY projects!

Cookie Crunch

Johnnie and I are lucky to be here in Korea together, but there are many airmen stationed on the peninsula that are here alone.  They are either single or they had to leave their families in the States.  Every year, the Officers' Spouses Club holds a "Cookie Crunch" holiday cheer project to give a homemade treat to every unaccompanied Air Force member in Korea for the holidays.  Over a span of two weeks, dozens of volunteers baked and packaged about 80,000 cookies.

We borrowed a kitchen in a base restaurant for 6 hours a day for the cookie baking.

Some ingredients for the cookies were purchased but much of it was donated for this good cause.

We made two kinds of cookies: sugar and chocolate chip 

I volunteered for five days and had a great time scooping dough, bagging cookies, and chatting with everyone else there.  It was a great way to get my cookie-making fix for the year!

A man in uniform baking cookies... as if it wasn't hot enough in the kitchen already ;)

Happiness is the smell of freshly baked cookies :)

We saved all of the box tops from the Ziploc bag boxes to send to the base elementary school. 

Eight cookies were sealed in each bag, boxed, and frozen until delivery.  

*******

"Teamwork allows common people to attain uncommon results."

~Anonymous

Peanut Butter Blossoms

I 've said it before... I love to bake.  I especially love to bake cookies.  In fact, one of my favorite things about Christmas isn't the presents, it's the excuse to bake a ridiculous amount of cookies :)

Last week, there was a need for baked goodies for a special project.  I was sure that someone would already be making chocolate chip cookies so I opted for an old favorite... peanut butter blossoms.  They taste amazing and look pretty good too :)  I can't give anyone credit for the recipe because it's a random one that's been in my collection for years.  Many cookies I've made are crisp once baked but these cookies stay soft and moist.  The dough is really easy to work with and they come out perfect every time.  The recipe is at the end of this post for any cookie lovers who are interested.

I'll admit, I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things I create.  But with cookies, this quality helps with appearance and consistency.  I use a measuring tablespoon and make sure that each cookie is the same size with the exact same amount of dough.  When the dough balls are all the exact same size, then they bake at the same rate and all look the same when they're done.

The dough doesn't have to be rolled in sugar but I love the added sparkle and sweet crunch.  This time I used washed raw sugar which has the taste and color of brown sugar but the dry consistency of white granulated sugar.

As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, press a chocolate kiss into the middle of each one.

Once the cookies were cool and the chocolate kisses hardened, I packaged them up for our special project.  The pilots' wives get together for many things and on this day we put together treat bags for all of the men and women in our squadron who are here in Korea without their families or spouses.  It's a little gesture to let them know that they are appreciated and not alone :)

Once the treat bags were filled to the top with goodies, we snuck around the dorms and quietly left a bag and a little sign on their door :)

Peanut Butter Blossoms

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 packages of Hershey Kisses
• extra sugar for rolling (optional)

Directions:

• Cream together the sugars and butter
• Blend in eggs and wet ingredients
• Combine the dry ingredients and blend into the wet mixture
• Roll 1 tbsp of dough into a ball and then roll in the extra sugar
• Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes, until light golden brown on the bottom
• Press a chocolate kiss into the center of each cookie as soon as they come out of the oven
• Move to a cooling rack and cool completely

*******

"This is my invariable advice to people:

Learn how to cook - try new recipes, learn from

your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!"

~Julia Child

Mexican Flag Cake

Last week some of the pilots' wives got together for a potluck taco dinner.  The evening was full of good company, good conversation, and great food :)  I love to bake so I made a festive Mexican flag cake to take along.

Nothing made from scratch this time but it still turned out great :)

Rockin' my Air Force apron (thanks mom!) and using a power converter box for the mixer.  Dulce was unimpressed by this process; notice her reflection in the cabinet :)

A layered cake cutter is essential for making flat, uniformly cut layers.  I bought this at Michael's Craft Store for less than $5 last year - it does the job.

I bought this "Mega Lifter" at a Pampered Chef party a few months ago and I LOVE it!  It's essentially a giant spatula (roughly 10" x 10") that is perfect for lifting and moving pizzas, cakes, large pastries, a whole tray of cookies at once, etc.  It made stacking these cake layers so easy!

I didn't bring my cake platter to Korea so my large fiesta dish served the purpose instead :) 

It's always fun to slice into a multi-colored layered cake!  It tasted great too :)

*******

"Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should."

~Julia Child