Flower Birthday Cake

esNormally I try to make things more healthy than they already are, but I have a huge weakness for cake. This is the one food that I will not mess with. So here is the full fat, sugar and chocolate (yes chocolate!) version of the flower birthday cake I created for my daughter's 4th birthday. I got lots of inspiration as always from

Bakerella, and then changed a few details to fit my needs.

First we started with 3 boxes of the funfetti cake mix. This is for 4 year old after all :) We prepared the mix as the package said then put half of it in a 9X13 pan, and the other half in a Wilton Heart Tasty-Fill Cake Pan. http://www.wilton.com/store/site/product.cfm?id=9349557A-423B-522D-F223D89DFC184E85&killnav=1 I was a little worried that the pan would overflow, but it did not, and the result was exactly what I had hoped for. I wanted the cake to stand taller than just two 9" rounds stacked together, and it did.
This is the bottom of the cake before I filled it with the pudding.

Once baked and cooled I filled the cake with chocolate pudding and frosted it with one of my favorite cream cheese frosting recipes. The recipe was originally for a carrot cake, but goes well with just about everything and is easy to use in a decorating bag.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 block cream cheese at room temperature
1 stick of butter also at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
1 box confectioner sugar (3 3/4 c)

Now the fun part: The Cake Balls! Here is a link to the original that inspired my take on these balls:
http://www.bakerella.com/mom-pops/

Because it is not the season for Easter candy corns I used pink marshmallows that I cut in quarters to make the petals, and M&Ms for the center of the flower. All glued together with white chocolate melt aways.  I found it easier to set the dipped pops onto the petals that I laid out on some foil, rather than place petals onto the cake ball upright. I also found that the colder the balls were the easier it was to do, but this created a little cracking problem at the end. When the balls warmed up some of them cracked, but not bad enough that I would do anything different.

Also on a side note, thanks to ShopKo for the Styrofoam. I am chronically cheap and did not like the idea of buying some Styrofoam so I asked a nice worker at ShopKo if they had some they were throwing away and he gave me as much as I needed!

When I was all done I placed some of the flower cake balls on top of the cake and displayed the rest in the Styrofoam. It was also tons easier to serve each little kid a cake ball rather than a slice if cake. Perfect size for little kids :) Plus it left the yummy cake for the moms.

Look how pretty it turned out!

Snow!

Hopefully the last snow of the year! It is almost June after all. Good thing I elected to cover the garden. I am still not sure if the cold weather will have stunted the growth of the tomatoes. I guess only time will tell.
This pic was taken on Monday, and today I looked out there and sure enough I have seeds starting to poke out of the ground. The rest of the garden seems unaffected.

Congo Bars

Oooh, I found something fantastic today. Well, actually I found it the other night, but tried it today. The idea is not at all mine, but I found it on one of my favorite sites, Bakerella.com. This little piece of heaven is called the Congo Bar, and wow! Bakerella refers to it as a cross between a brownie and a chocolate chip cookie, and I refer to it as a cross between the best thing I have ever tasted, and well the best thing I have ever tasted. For what it lacks in nutritional value it more than makes up for in taste!
http://www.bakerella.com/i-hope-you-have-chocolate-chips-handy/
I should mention that while making this I found out that 1 lb of brown sugar is equal to 2 1/3 c - 2 1/2 c brown sugar. Which you will need if you decide to make this yummy recipe.  So I actually learned something while cooking today, bonus!

Cold Spring

 Well, last week I planted my garden. It was 80 degrees and a week later in the year than I normally plant. I thought my plants would be safe. Then March returned with nightly lows in the 40's and this is just too cold for my precious little tomato and pepper plants. It has not been cold enough to freeze, but I am concerned that it has been cold enough to stunt their growth through the season.

This is the my solution to the cold weather, haha. I only have 3 walls of water. So I rounded up every trash can, Homer Bucket, and old ice cream bucket I could find, and I have been covering them all every night. All twenty-four of them! Very aesthetically pleasing right? Well I hope it does the job.

This is the first year that I have started my tomatoes from seed. So needless to say I am a little overprotective of these little plants. I mean after all the time I spent moving them into the sun and protecting them from dogs and kids; I really want these plants to live. Not to mention the cheap side of me dreads the thought of the wasted  money if I let them die at this point, and the running around to find the varieties that I want to plant. Yikes!
Funny to think of the things that scare me these days!

Why wait?

I spent the evening reading through other blogs, and I came to the conclusion that I really want to write. Also that there is really no reason not to. Somewhere I read that you should not wait for conditions to be perfect to write, you should just do it. That is how I am feeling today. I am just going to write. As with most things getting started is the hard part, right? So here goes!