Ruins Cake

We live in an area with lots of Indian Ruins. So, for my husband's birthday, I thought it would be fun to make a cake depicting such ruins. {I know he doesn't care much about a birthday cake, but it was just an excuse for me to try something out.} And it went pretty well. As far as the picture in my head and what I was able to actually make. It's not exactly what I had in my head, but I also don't have the equipment to air-brush the frosting....

I just used a basic 9 X13 cake for this.

I cut it length-wise not quite centered and even- probably a 5 inch piece and a 4 inch piece. Then I made some little hollows.Crumb layer with the ruin "walls".

Orange layer of frosting. My technique (which may be tweaked if I try this again) was to layer (like paint faux finishing-sort of) white, then orange, then brown. I think it worked pretty well, considering tinting frosting is where I always mess up.

Here's the final. With some sage brush/cacti added. It might could have used a little more of that, but I didn't want to overdo it. And we will add candles since it's for a birthday ;)

Donuts!

Do these look good?

The texture of this dough was absolutely beautiful!!

I have tried about four different recipes for homemade yeast donuts and hated every one of them. My sister emailed me this cookbook with famous recipes in it. I am anxious to try the candy bar ones, but I also figured I'd give this Krispy Kreme one a try.

The worst that could happen is yucky donuts; right?
I decided I would stick strictly to the recipe. Lately, I have problems doing that. And this is the first thing I've made without any wheat flour in it in about 10 months....man that dough looked WHITE!!
I made some that I filled with jelly. I haven't tasted any of the filled ones yet though. These are, by far, the best homemade donuts I've done.

Mardi Gras: Half Done

We had our own little "Mardi Gras" today. I know, it's a week early. But, I figured nobody around here would know-or care. And I really needed something fun to do in this never-ending winter season. Anyway, the top picture is of yam biscuits. I was quite pleased with these. The texture was fabulous...as far as biscuits are concerned.

Above you see my first "King Cake." I don't know how the taste compares to the traditional cakes. And I don't think it's baked in a bundt pan usually, but again; nobody around here could correct me. It was pretty fun. We've eaten some of it, but haven't found the "baby" yet. {And ours is really a princess from my daughter's mini-castle set}.

A couple of new things

I tried out using puff pastry. I have not used it for anything before. These are peanut butter cups and the kids love them! The marshmallows were a little brown for my tasting, but you know how kids are about black and burned marshmallows!! These weren't nearly that bad.

I also made bagels for the first time.

I was overly pleased because I have always been intimidated by them. I was too afraid to try them. But they turned out really yummy. It put cheese on half of them. I really liked that and so did one of my boys.

Love Muffins

These are what I'm calling Love Muffins.
It's a Banana/Chocolate Muffin of sorts, but I did make it up myself.
they taste rather yummy.

These are the free-hand hearts I made for the muffins. I don't have a heart mold, but I think these look okay. Not fabulous, but I only plan on sharing them with 1st graders. I know I could have stuck any old valentine candy on top, but I wanted to try this.This is what they look like.