I Heart CupCAKES!

Since I have a whole mouth full of sweet teeth (not just a single sweet tooth, like most people) when we were discussing plans for the baby shower I suggested we have the theme “How Sweet it is”. I then decided it would be the perfect excuse for me to get this giant cupcake pan I’ve had my eye on. (I’m also semi-obsessed with all things big and small). Handy Andy & I are going to make  a small version of our Giant Cupcake Stand, which will be the perfect display. (It’s all about presentation!) I got the idea from a bride who used our tutorial to make her own stand and it was super cute!

 

 

I also thought it would be a good idea to test it out a few times before the shower, just in case. We hosted Mother’s Day lunch and I thought that was a perfect excuse for my first attempt. The directions on the pan weren’t very specific so I searched online to find out more about using the cake pan. I ran across this site that had the most amazing tutorial to make this cupcake cake even better. What could possibly make a giant cupcake better you ask? How about a chocolate shell “cupcake liner”!!! SQUEAL!!

How cute is that?! I used the leftover red melting chips I had from a dish I made for Kim’s Twilight Party. I wasn’t sure I had enough, but it worked out fabulously! What do you think?

I did, however, learn in this experience that the bottom cake needs to bake quite a bit longer than the top. I only had one cake mix on hand so I just used it and baked it all at the same time, deciding I would try something different next time. It was good, but the top was a little over-baked. So, my advice would be to either bake the pieces separately or put the bottom in the oven for awhile first, then add the mix to the top after the bottom has baked awhile.

The cake was a hit at lunch so when my company sent out an e-mail asking for contributions for a bake sale we were having to raise money for the City of Hope of course I thought I had to try this again, with two cake mixes! I had already bought pink melting chips for the baby shower so I used them. I got strawberry cake for the top and devil’s food for the bottom. YUM! I also baked the pieces separately, first the bottom and then the top. I should mention that I also learned you need to level the pieces by cutting off the bulging top that cakes usually get. Not a big deal. Although, as I mentioned when I made a barrel cake I never let the cake cool long enough. Same deal here, a chunk of the top got stuck to the pan. What do you do? Simply fix it with frosting and nobody will ever know. This baby scored a $20 donation for our bake sale:

I can’t wait to make another for the baby shower. I love making cakes. (Especially when I don’t have to eat it all myself!) And just think of the other things you can do with this pan – you can make the candy shell to fill with candy or other goodies. I decided I love using the melting chips because the colors are so vibrant, and there’s no mess like when trying to use food coloring. (People thought the chocolate shell was a plastic container!)

Have you used this Giant Cupcake Pan? Do you have any fun tips or tricks to share?

Happy Memorial Day

I hope everyone is able to enjoy a nice long holiday weekend and take a moment to remember what the holiday is all about. A big thanks to the men and women who continue to fight for us every day and those who have given their lives for our freedom.

 

Photo by DMC43

* * * *

My family traditionally makes the rounds to decorate graves around this time of year. We most recently lost my Dad last August and my Mom didn’t have it in the budget to get a headstone up this year. (Let me take this opportunity to get on my soapbox and encourage everyone to get some sort of life insurance policy, no matter how small, believe me, every little bit helps!) I felt bad he’s in an unmarked grave not knowing how long it will be before the headstone will be put up (hoping by this time next year) so I made a temporary grave marker for him but didn’t have a solid frame or anything to keep it from just being set on the ground.

I scoured the internet looking for some sort of sign frame, thinking there MUST be something out there. Well, a couple hours of searching resulted in nothing that would suit my needs. I mentioned this to my handy husband who promptly said, “No big deal…I can make you one.” Have I told you how much I love this guy?! So we took a trip to Lowe’s, bought some steel, and here is our creation:

Hopefully that will suffice until we get a real headstone up.

My thoughts go out to everyone who is remembering lost loved ones this weekend.

Aha!

Call it a fluke, call it coincidence, whatever you like but I went to check my Google Reader today and guess what I found…the link to the blog where I got the idea for Drew’s Barrel cake! It’s called Texas Monkey and you REALLY need to check out her post and multiple awesome looking variations on this cake!

Candy + Cake = YUM!

My friend Drew turns 30 this month and his lovely wife has planned a surprise dinner for him. At this age what do you get someone for their birthday? A card? A gift? I figured a good fall back plan for Drew would be beer. But being the DIY-obsessed person that I am I always want to MAKE something. So what do you make a 30 year old man? Certainly not any of my cutesy or random crafts. I decided food would be a good choice. And, being a birthday, why not a cake?!

At first I thought it would be funny to do some kind of boob cake (Drew hearts boobs) but then I decided to go PG rated. I somehow fell upon a blog that had a basic tutorial on barrel cakes. (Wouldn’t you know I cannot for the life of me find the link now!) I was immediately drawn to the fact that this blogger pointed out how easy it is to make a fantastic looking cake even if the cake has lots of flaws. Perfect.

I bought a regular Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake mix and tried to find peanut butter frosting to go with my Kit Kats and Reece’s Pieces I planned to use with the cake.

I couldn’t find PB frosting so I bought cream cheese frosting instead. But then, when I got home and started making the cake I thought, “What would Alton do?” And I made my own peanut butter icing – delicious!

1 Cup Creamy Peanut Butter (I used Skippy Natural)
2 Cups Powdered Sugar
1 Stick Butter
3+ Tablespoons Milk as needed

Cream together the PB & butter. Gradually add the powdered sugar and milk as necessary to keep it thinned out, then beat the heck out of it for 3+ minutes. I kept adding milk (maybe up to 1/4 cup??) to make it really creamy so it wouldn’t tear the cake.

So, I baked my two round cakes (even though I think one is an 8″ pan and on is a 9″ pan – I figured this would be a flaw I could cover with frosting!). I hate letting cakes cool, but I suppose it’s pretty important when trying to layer cakes nicely, and, by the way, this is my first attempt at doing a layered cake.

Yes, my layers were slightly flawed because I didn’t let the cakes cool long enough. Oh well! If that happens simply place the chunk back on the cake if you can, or leave it off and fill the void with frosting. I frosted the cake with the (delicous) peanut butter frosting and you can’t even tell the layers are not exact!

Then I placed the Kit Kats around the edge. NOTE: Six Kit Kats is NOT enough for a 8-9″ round cake.

Off I ran to the grocery store to buy more candy. This particular cake took 9.5 Kit Kat bars. (Baby Kayden had the other .5 Kit Kat bar.) Then I tied a ribbon around the cake.

Finally, I dumped the bag of Reece’s Pieces over the top!

 To better transport the cake I got a plain cake box and dressed it up a bit with some scrapbooking paper. Voila!

Healthy Living

I often hear about husbands that gain “sympathy weight” during a pregnancy. I’m guilty of sort of hoping that would be the case with us but boy was I wrong!  Andy the Giant got back on his health kick quite awhile ago; he’s been going to the gym since last August and nearly every single day in 2010. He started a new eating plan – not diet, but more of a lifestyle change – about three months ago. He’s down about 20lbs and I’m up about 17lbs.

Andy’s body has been growing more lean and muscular while mine has been growing large, round, and squishy – See evidence below:

I would show you Andy’s photos but I don’t think that would make him very happy. =) Maybe when he’s all ripped he’ll let me post some.

Andy keeps telling me “It’s okay…you’re growing a person, don’t worry about it. When you have the baby and you’re ready to get back in shape I’ll be right here with all the tools and motivation you need.” Easier said than done…I already know I have no desire to spend 2-3 hours a day at the gym like he does. But, I have no problem eating healthier and making a fair effort to get more physical activity in my daily routine.

Although I could go to the gym and stuff now I’m going to play the pregnancy card and bow out for now; I’m too swamped at work and putting in long hours so when I get home I just want to have dinner and relax.  That being said, what I CAN do is get my eating in check. I’ve been lucky to not have any seriously bad cravings, and although I’ve hit the drive-thrus a little more frequently since being pregnant, I can’t say my eating is out of control.

I’m game for trying to eat more lean proteins and less carbs and fat, and watch my sugar intake. (I don’t just have a sweet tooth, I’ve got a mouthfull!) I’m not going to be as strict on myself as Andy is on himself, but it’s not so bad. He’s big on eating meals consisting of some kind of meat with a bunch of veggies and salsa. Tastes much better than it sounds.

He’s really good about preparing stuff for me to eat so I don’t have to whine about how I don’t want to make something “good” to eat and it’s much easier to have a frozen pizza or something. And, our new routine is to plan our meals and do most all the prep work on Sunday so we’re packed and ready to go for the week. We bought a bunch of single serve containers and stocked the refrigerator:

Lots of fat free cottage cheese, Greek yogurt with fruit, eggs, beans, lentils, and nuts (in the other yogurt containers). I’m not a big meat fan, but I am a huge fan of Smart Dogs soy hot dogs.

The thought of real hot dogs grosses me out but these babies are delicious and pack in 15 grams of protein in one jumbo dog! The downside is they are expensive. And that’s what we’ve found with healthy food, which is unfortunate. However, I think we can get by on less food since a lot of what we eat is full of fiber and filling.

Andy says our kids are going to have the best brown bag lunches ever. I said they are going to be begging their friends to trade their soy dogs for cookies. Maybe not. I was into eating healthy when I was younger but at that age you deal with what your family gets and my family was all about convenience and sweets. At least we’ll be setting a good example and starting early.

I Agree; Everyone DOES Need an Alice!

The other day while discussing how we could probably reduce our monthly spending by limiting our trips to the store (because how many times do you buy more than what you went after?) I discovered Alice, an online shopping sensation!

It’s free to setup an account and they offer FREE SHIPPING!! You can buy many of the items you would at your normal brick-and-mortar at discounted prices and some food items. Plus, Alice will show you competitor prices too! And, oftentimes there are coupons in effect so you save even more!

No, this is not a sponsored post. (But, hey Alice – I’d be happy to do one for you!)

I’ve been wanting to do more online shopping for our random things – toiletries, paper goods, etc. and Alice even has a reminder thing that allows you to set how often you typically buy these products and it will remind you. You can also choose to add your favorite regularly purchased items to “My Products” so you don’t have to search the next time you need to order.

Sometimes the prices are not a TON less, or possibly not at all less than say WalMart, but many times it is and the convenience is definitely worth something. Plus, I figure if I order more things this way it will keep me from lurking around the aisles in person and grabbing random things we don’t actually need, and that can really add up.

I placed my order on Sunday night and came home today to find my box of goodies

nicely packaged

with some freebies!

Here’s what I bought:

• Crest Fresh Mint Toothpaste (6.2oz) $3.06 – $1.00 Coupon = $2.06
• Crest Fluoride Toothpaste (8.2oz) $3.19 – $1.00 Coupon = $2.19
• Secret Deodorant (2.6oz) $3.95 – $0.50 Coupon = $3.45
• Quaker Instant Hot Cereal (8 pack) $4.39 – $1.00 Coupon = $3.39
• Lever 2000 Bar Soap (2 pack) $1.95
• Fiber One Toaster Pastry (6 pack) $2.39 – $0.51 Coupon = $1.88
• Alpo Dog Treats (16oz) $2.15
• Tax $0.82
• Shipping – FREE!

I had $4.01 in coupons and ended up spending $17.89 for these 7 items. I don’t recall specific prices in the local stores, but doesn’t seem to bad to me so far! I just don’t have time to clip coupons, read the paper and plan my trips around town to get the best price on stuff so this works out pretty well for my lifestyle.

I think the website could be a little better to navigate (part of it I think is due to the settings on our monitor?), but other than that my experience has been very positive and I look forward to doing more shopping this way. I want to start paying closer attention to prices on items in the store so I have a better idea of how much I’m really saving.

Oh, AND one of my favorite things…Yep! There’s an app for that! It needs some work as it was crashing for me a bit. But, not only can I do my shopping from my phone but they have a scanner where you can take a photo of a sku on a product and instantly see if they stock it! Fabulous! I’ve been going around the house scanning everything in sight like I am registering for a wedding!

Do you do this type of shopping online? What are your favorite sites from which to shop?

 

 

Dare to Give Homemade Gifts

 

It’s another edition of Kim’s Dare to DIY Blog Party and this week is about DIY gifts, which I :::heart::: tremendously. I’ve got a few things in the works this year but I realized I had better not post them yet so I won’t spoil the surprise. I will try to post on this year’s gifts after Christmas though. I will, however, share a couple things I did last year, hope you enjoy!

 

 Rice Krispy Treat Bags

 

  

Gifts in a Jar: Sand Art Brownies and Smores

Dare to Eat Cookies!

 

This is probably my favorite challenge from Kim’s Dare to DIY Blog Party. I have been waiting to do this since I read “Eat Cookies”!

So, ladies and gentlemen, (do men really read this blog? If not, they probably should, right?! Especially THIS post.) Anywho…I give you Alton Brown’s Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Wait…You’ve never heard of Alton Brown? Seriously? The Mastermind behind Good Eats? You must be kidding me. Surely the Meckleys aren’t the only household that has Good Eats on 24/7 and DVRs every single episode?

Oh. Okay. Perhaps we are. You might have found humor in my exageration but I’m only slightly ashamed to tell you that is the God honest truth; Andy has Good Eats on every single day. I nearly broke his heart when I accidentally erased everything on our DVR, which included the Good Eats 10th Anniversary show. Oops. Luckily he has forgiven me. For the most part.

Regardless, let me tell you, as usual, Alton is on to something with this recipe! While watching this episode I realized the reason my chocolate chip cookies were often flat is probably because I used too much baking soda. Baking is not like cooking, you must be very precise in your measuring.

Andy & I made these babies a few weeks ago and he insistedwe go out and buy not onlly the proper ingredients, but a large scoop so we could make giant cookies. As it turns out,  we should’ve bought a Pampered Chef scoop because the $11 scoop from the Kitchens store was junk so I made Andy return it. The PC scoop is on my Christmas List if any of you wants to send us a gift.

But I digress…we made the giant cookies and they were everything I had hoped for and more!

Here’s what you need:

• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• #20 ice cream scooper (or Large Pampered Chef Scoop!)

I agree that buying the proper ingredients makes all the difference; these cookies are amazing! I’ve decided these are the difference-makers:

• REAL vanilla extract
• DARK brown sugar
• BREAD flour

Believe me, you will taste a difference! This is what you need to do:

• Melt butter. Set aside.
• Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda. I think this is the first time I’ve ever sifted ingredients since my 7th grade home ec class, but I do it because Alton said to do it!
• Cream butter and sugars on medium speed.
• Add the eggs, milk and vanilla until well mixed.
• Slowly incorporate the flour mix until thoroughly combined.
• Stir in chocolate chips.
• Chill the dough (Another difference maker!!)
• Scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets.
• Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown.

Recipe from the Food Network.

Mmmm….these are my absolute favorite! Andy’s too!

 

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Ever since we got this house it has been Andy’s dream to get a giant tree to put in front of the window in the great room. Last year we got a “normal” sized tree for the dining room but I told him we needed to hold off on the giant tree, $500+ just wasn’t in the budget for another tree. While out shopping last weekend we decided to check Craigslist and we found a 13′ tree that was a much better fit for our budget!

We decided to put it up the other night and I must admit, it does look pretty nice!

 

 

Even the boys were pretty tired by the time we got it up and running.

 

Who Has Spoiled Dogs??

I do! I do!

Although, I don’t know if I’m more spoiled, or the dogs with Handy Andy’s new contraption. He decided that since neither one of us enjoys going out in the snow to let the boys in and out, he would put a little door in their fence so we could put them out through the window in the basement.

Most people would stop there. Not Handy Andy. Nope. He thought we needed a ramp so the boys could walk up and out themselves so we don’t have to pick up their chubby butts and toss them out. So, now we’ve got this in the basement: 

 

 

 

 

It works pretty well!

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