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.