Wedding Cake

I decided on trying a different homemade cake for the wedding. This was Martha Stewart's Devil's Food Cake. It made about 8 cups of batter. I think I ended up making three batches for my three their (10, 8 & 6") 2", double layered cake. (Which I made with imported extra fatty butter!-which, if you are losing weight…I found it! I had been sampling this cake far too much.)

This recipe was from Martha Stewart's Wedding Cakes book.

Firstly, get your pans and your oven ready. (I either spay or butter my pans, parchment paper them and spray or butter them again. Then dust with cocoa powder since it's a chocolate cake. Remember not to leave your cake in the pan once it's baked for more than 10 minutes or you could have trouble getting them out!) Preheat oven to 350'.

You'll need:
1 1/2 cups  (3 sticks- shown below is 2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature. (Plus some extra for your pans)
3 cups of cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
3/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, (plus more for dusting your pans)
1/2 cup boiling water
2 1/4 cup regular white sugar
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup Homogenized or 3 %  (or whole) milk

This is the PEI butter. YUM!  & the Dutch processed cocoa from Costco. You can see in the back ground that I've already melted my chocolate into a paste. 

Stir together cocoa powder and boiling water to make a paste. I used my measuring cup for this.

Mix butter and sugar together in mixer with paddle attachment. (cut cubes are easier to work with). She says about 4 minutes to make the mixture pale and fluffy. Mine took bit longer.

Hopefully you can notice a change in the colour. It did get nice, white and fluffy. Next, I added the beaten eggs. Nice and slow.

Keep mixing until it is no longer "slick". Shiny and slimy, more like.

Sift together your flour, baking soda and salt into a separate bowl. In your mixer, gradually add your cocoa mix, then add (mixer on low speed) flour mixture. Then pour batter into prepared pans. 

This is the yummiest batter I had ever tasted. 

My pans were 2" deep.

10" - ~ 6 cups of batter, 50 minutes

8" - ~4 cups of batter, 40 minutes

6" - ~ 2 cups of batter, 35 minutes

* Remember to turn your cake pans halfway through the baking process.

This is the cake straight out of the oven. I still had to trim off the top. Once cakes are removed from pans, set on a wire rack. Then once they were completely cooled I wrapped my cakes up with plastic wrap and set them in the freezer for about a week,  I then iced them frozen and set them back in the freezer until I was ready for the fondant. 

Next time I will post icing tips and my pics. 

**I'm still trying to be happy in my journey? Are you?**

Science Birthday Party

Well, my daughter was a little apprehensive at first- about her party. She wasn't sure how well kids would enjoy doing science at a birthday party. But let me tell you, we had a blast!

Here are some pics. We got our science experiments from Steve Spangler online. The invitations  and open with caution "stickers" came from a free print out @ livinglocurto.com, the periodic table idea for my daughter's "elements" was from princessandthefrogblogspot.com.

My Hubbie whipped this up at work. Saved me a bunch of time, what with the rest of the party plans, the wedding cake and all.

Kids ate the worms but alas, they were too soggy...

Plus, I made homemade magic sand! First bake the sand for about an hour @~350' to remove any moisture. Then spray and dry, spray and dry etc….(takes longer with more sand) with Scotch Guard.

My daughter made (with little help from her sisters, as she wanted to do it all by herself) this fantastic volcano. We took it out to the crescent and let it rupture there.

These are the polymer jelly marbles. What a treat! They grow as they soak in water, but if you spread them out onto the counter they will shrink and you can, apparently use them again. We used different colours, and even stuck some colour in the tap to surprise the children with green water!

(Man, I love my apple phone!Just look at this picture!) 

Cake pops are not my forte, but as you will see later, I do much better with decorating cakes. (Which, I am still not a pro but had so much fun with my sister in law doing it)

Vintage Window Ideas

This one is for my friend…(you know who you are!) I found some very cute, vintage ideas for windows…

This is such a great site,  and a very beautiful home.  (Our Vintage Home Love)

This one is from Addicted Donkey. She shows an old glass door knob as the curtain tie back. Fabulous!

(Dexknows) What romantic tulips and lovely lace curtains. 

This one from visual photos is very unique. 

Or are you more into the ruffles as shown at minas decor and fashion site.

Or there is the option of not doing curtains, shades etc. and just hanging a beautiful old church window…interestingly unique, soft, artistic and yup, romantic…hee hee. 

Pottery Barn has these roman shades on sale too. I love this vintage fabric. 

We have just had shutters installed in the little girls' rooms. We are awaiting our fabric choices. (shades and a scarf) then I shall post some of our own pictures. Good luck!