Baking fun - Birthday cake for my favorite Geek!

... by favorite geek, I mean Js - not you, Nick. His birthday was back in September so forgive me once again if it's a bit outdated!

Geeky Goodness - Vanilla, Raspberry and Skor pieces

So the icing wasn't quite as I wanted it to be but I had about 2 hours to come up with something that would be easy to execute, would look good on a 9in round cake and didn't require too many colors. Behold, the Green Lantern birthday cake!

I used my grand-pa's plain white cake recipe as a base and threw in about half a bag of frozen raspberries. Mixed those in and poured the batter in two 9in round cake pans. When stacking time came around, I leveled the bottom cake and covered it with raspberry jam *mmm* and then covered that with Skor pieces. The plain white cake worked out very well with the uber-sweet filling and the raspberries added a bit of extra delicious. Then I slapped the second layer on top and went on with the icing.

I didn't have a pattern, mold or anything like that so I just had to wing it. I started by covering the entire thing with white icing then colored everything I had left in green. I used the handle of a long wooden spoon to press a straight line into the white icing along 2 of the sides where I wanted the 2 bars to be. Then I found a bowl that would fit well between the 2 lines and pressed that to the white icing lightly to create a round mark. I used those lines to follow along and create the Green Lantern logo - who needs a mold!!

I piped and piped away at trying to make a perfect circle and eventually had to give up as guests were arriving and I had to put things away. Js was very happy with the end result so it was all well worth it! :)

Baking Fun - Hallowe'en Cake

I said I'd back track and blog about my past-cake'strordinaire baking, here's my first attempt at it so sorry if it's a bit outdated! :)

Chocolate and Pumpkin Hallowe'en Cake

I made this cake using this recipe and it was to die for! The pumpkin kept the cake super moist and really brought out the chocolate flavor.

The icing wasn't as wonderful as I had hoped but it still tasted great! It took me an INSANE amount of food coloring to get it this light orange color so I think the picture on the website is a lie. It did get a bit darker when it set but not by much. Also, the icing was very soft and wouldn't be good for decorations or any other form of fancyness. Worked wonderfully as a base though and the taste was very well balanced with the cake filling. I wouldn't ice this cake with butter cream icing unless I wanted to go into a sugar coma.

The glaze totally bombed but I was able to make it look droopy with some careful pouring and a lot of patience. I used little decorative skulls, gummy worms and some red gel for some festive decor. I shaved some chocolate and sprinkled that around the cake and topped it all with a real mini-pumpkin.

Wasn't the easiest cake I've ever baked but most definitely one of the tastiest!!

The tax man cometh... and we payeth.

Well, I'm actually getting a refund but after all's said and done and we put both our tax reports together, we only get about half of what we were expecting so it kinda sucks but it's better than a kick in the head, I say.

It's the first time we've ever filed our taxes together since last year, we weren't Common Law for the entire year and we decided to file them separately instead. My income was significantly higher last year too so it would have taken us in another tax bracket or something like that and it we would have had to pay more. I'm not quite sure and put all my trust in the hands of professionals just because I can't be bothered to remember this stuff from year to year.

I nearly died when I saw my net income from last year. Like I said, I took a massive income drop last year after leaving my job at TBS, being unemployed for 3 months and then making a lot less at my new job out here in Saskatchewan. I know it's all part of the deal and it kinda comes with the lifestyle - I have no job security but he's got the ultimate job security so it sorta compensates.

It's just a slight punch in the sides to see how little I've been able to contribute to our financial situation. I have to suck it up, get used to it and I promise I'll get over it but for now, I'll keep playing my teeny violin.

Nick made a funny, toot!

Another of Nick's famous :

What do you call a gassy gay?

Tooty-fruity!




Bahaha! :)

Unfortunate Shitty Day

No, not me. My friend Janny had a shitty day and posted so as her Facebook status. Read something like this :

Janny A Shit ass day on so many levels :(

To which I replied :

Marie L At first glace I read : Shit my ass today. ...I'm glad to see I was wrong. Sorry your day sucked so much but at least you didn't really do as above. :)

My reply seemed to have gotten a couple chuckles so I decided to share in case anyone else shat their ass today... I mean... ;)

I hate Mondays!

... and I'm slowly building a solid foundation of hate towards Sundays. I used to LOVE Sundays because I'd usually have the day off, I'd go shopping with Jf or just sloth around the apartment doing absolutely nothing at all.

This past Sunday, I spent the entire day in a sort of trans repeating to myself "Gotta go back to work tomorrow..." and wanting to hurl projectile vomit across the living room. Pretty picture, ain't it?

My hate for Mondays has bled into Sundays and it's only a matter of days until it reaches to Saturday and all hell breaks loose.

I'm seriously considering new career venues but I'm quite limited out here so I'm facing some difficulties - to say the least. I have to make a decision and I have to think about the different outcomes and possible solutions.

More on that later, my lunch break is almost over. Ugh.

200 posts! Woot!

I can't believe I'm at 200 blog posts already! Oh my!

I have severe commitment issues and I think this blog has thought me a thing or two about life so it's quite exciting (for me, anyways!) to reach this little milestone.

These last 200 posts have given me an opportunity to speak my mind, share stories, ideas and accomplishments and allowed me to see things with a bit more distance. Thanks for putting up with my nonsense! :)