It's a Boy's Life: cakes

Showing posts with label cakes. Show all posts

Saturday

Death by Cake aka Birthday Week

My first 3 boys were all born within 5 days of each other. Cale on August 8, Rylan on August 9 and Cohen on August 12. Three birthdays mean 3 birthday cakes, and my boys have very rich tastes! Over the past few years they have moved away from fancy, carved and decorated cakes and moved on to cakes that are all about flavor. But I think this year....took the cake.

We started the week with Rylan's cake, which accompanied us to Tennessee to celebrate with Paul's family. His choice was a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cake. It was a yellow layer cake with icing and cookie dough balls in between the layers, frosted with butter cream icing and topped with a healthy layer of homemade chocolate chip cookies!

Once that cake was finished off, we had Cale's cake...

It is very similar to his cake from last year- chocolate cake, peanut butter icing, chocolate ganache and peanut butter cups all around. The main difference came on the inside:

See that in the middle? It's not icing between the 2 layers of chocolate cake, it's peanut butter cheesecake! One slice could make some one slip into a sugar coma.

Cohen wanted an ice cream cake this year- with coffee and chocolate ice cream. His was a brownie crust then the coffee ice cream topped with chocolate ganache then the chocolate ice cream topped with a whipped icing and chocolate chips.

We are now taking a short break from anything sweet! Except for the fact that they all bought each other candy as birthday gifts.....

Wednesday

Goings On

Cohen- tracing sharks, drawing whales and all other things fish

Annika with her playdough. All the time.

Rylan mowing. I am wondering when mowing will cease to be fun and something to fight over and become a chore....

Annika in her house. The boys made her a castle out of weeds....she loves it.

Cale's dinosaurs made out of clay. T-rex, Triceratops and Stegosaurus

My mom visited. Rylan made her a cake for her birthday. Black Tie Mousse Cake.

We went to the Arboretum....they have a fiber works show right now. It made me wish it was shearing season. Now.

There was also an exhibit on prehistoric mammals. They got to see all the animals they have watched documentaries about for years.

Annika's mess.

We hatched chicks. 3 Turkens. 2 Americanas. and 3 Top Hat mixes, with out hats so far. We did not hatch out any peachicks though. That egg was a dud.

The goat switch. June in now rooming in with Scooter and Scout and Thor is happily down in the girl's yard, stinking up the place. And so starts breeding season.

Harvesting sweet potatoes.

What's going on in your world?

The Mountain State Fair Round-Up

The kids look forward to entering the fair every year. Last year when we finalized our plans to relocate that was one of the things they asked about- is there a fair? So we searched online and found it- the Mountain State Fair. Close by, tons of categories and pretty similar to the TN Valley Fair they had entered in the previous 2 years. When it came time to submit entries, they went big- Rylan entered close to 20 categories. Cale and Cohen entered around 13. And Lakin qualified to entered the participation group so he entered 3 things.

Drop off day was last Tuesday and Wednesday, so they had been working hard on their entries everyday. Here is what they entered:

Cohen:
Art: Colored pencil, oil pastel, water color and tempera paint
Crafts: Christmas Decoration, recycled craft, any other craft, pottery
Baking: Decorated cupcakes, drop cookies, pie, yeast bread

Cale:
Art: Colored pencil, tempera paint, crayon
Crafts: Christmas decoration, sculpture, recycled, metal craft, pottery and any other
Baking: Decorated cupcakes, rolled cookies, old fashion fudge, any other baked item

Rylan:
Art: Crayon, oil pastel
Photography: Color animal. color plants/flower, B&W plant/flower, B&W animal
Agriculture: Banana peppers (he did sign up for more, but our garden didn't cooperate this year)
Crafts: Christmas ornaments, paper craft
Baking: Decorated cupcakes, yeast rolls, cupcakes, muffins, pie and any other baked item

Lakin had 6 categories to choose from and he entered art, jewelry and crafts.

I must say that the baking portion is the most stressful. With 14 items and one kitchen it got a little hectic. But because of the location, later drop off times and the items the kids chose to make we were able to stretch the baking from Monday afternoon-Wednesday morning and still make the deadline. But there were 3 batches of cupcakes, Rylan's cheesecake and garlic bread sticks, a pumpkin pie, a peanut butter pie, pumpkin muffins, spice cookies, chocolate chip cookies, honey oatmeal bread, 1 batch of botched fudge and another that set, and soft pretzels! And that is a lot. Plus bagging, tagging and printing recipes for each one. And next year Lakin gets to join in on the baking fun!

We did take a trip on Friday to check out the fair- so they did get to see if their entries won. But we didn't see all of them so I will wait to unveil the winning entries until next Monday when we go to pick up their stuff!

Nine Years Old

This boy.

He's 9 years old today.

He is an amazing boy with an amazing heart. He is wild and crazy, never quiet and never sits still.

He is loving and kind.

He's someone you want around in an emergency and can put aside any emotional reactions and do what needs to be done. He's strong and hardworking. He's artistic and creative.

He is also a lover of anything chocolate.

Happy Birthday, Cale!

Monday

32 Years

Today is my 32nd birthday. It was a good day. Well, something bad happened, but I am not going to focus on that. I am going to focus on the happy and good things that happened today.

Like my older boys bringing this inside for me this morning. They've been keeping it hidden for 2 weeks. Strategically placing grass and arranging leaves so I didn't see it...and keeping me away from the plant in general. And here I thought that Cale was just being extra helpful this week- feeding and letting the chickens out first thing in the morning.

This monster is almost 4 lbs. Yesterday we picked what I considered a monster zucchini...here is is next to the huge one and a normal one. You can see Annika off to the side. This thing is almost as big as she is!

Paul brought me home beautiful flowers.

Rylan made me an amazing cake. It's a copy cat recipe of the Olive Garden's Black Tie Mousse Cake. It looked great and tasted wonderful. If you've never heard of or tasted the Black Tie Mousse Cake, here is the inside:

It's 4 layers....chocolate cake on the bottom, then chocolate cheese cake, then Italian Mousse and topped with chocolate ganache. I helped him with the folding in the mousse layer and spreading the ganache on the sides, but the rest was him. Cale and Cohen worked together to make pesto rolls for dinner tonight. It was a good day.

A Fairy, a Princess and a Little Girl's Birthday

My little girl turns one year old this Thursday

It hardly seems like a year has gone by since she joined our family. She is such a wonderful addition. Her personality is coming out so much these days and I can't wait to see who she becomes in the next year.

Since next weekend is Christmas, we celebrated this past Sunday.

A small party with just family...and lots of balloons.

I got to make my first girly cake. I've had this idea for awhile and although it didn't turn out completely like the picture in my head, I still think it's pretty cute. It was also a little experimental- I didn't want to use any food coloring in it so with the exception of the black dots on the princess's eyes it is all naturally dyed. I used avocado for the green, strawberry for the pink, cocoa for the brown and lemon curd for the yellow.