Jeep 3D Cake

I decided to attempt making a Jeep birthday cake for my brother who is a big fan of Jeeps. After browsing a few photos of other cakes online,  I decided to just look at the actual Jeep pictures instead of modeling after an inspiration cake. It certainly wasn't perfect, but you get the idea, and I learn more every time I design a cake.

Inside of the cake - white cake with raspberry filling and white chocolate frosting.

For this cake I used 2 boxes of white cake mix to save time, but instead of following box directions, I mixed the following ingredients with each box of mix:

- 3 eggs

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 1 cup milk (I used 2%)

- 1/4 cup water

- about 1/3 package of white chocolate pudding mix

- 1/4 cup butter, softened

- 2 tbsp oil

I made one smaller rectangular pan (I think it is 7"x11") and 6 cupcakes with one box, and two 8"x8" cakes with the other box. I saved the cake scraps leftover from cutting the cakes to use for cake balls later.

For the filling, I used 1 container of fresh raspberries and added about 1/2 cup of water mixed with a couple of spoons of corn starch, a little more than 1/2 cup of sugar, and a dash of lemon juice, and cooked it down until the berries broke up and the sauce was thickened. Then I pushed it all through a strainer to remove the seeds. The filling ended up being exactly the right amount, and I only ended up with about a spoonful leftover.

The frosting was mostly based on Wilton's White Chocolate Buttercream recipe, which I modified slightly and cut down by 2/3, which was exactly the amount I needed for this cake.

Buttercream Frosting 

Ingredients

• 6 ounces white baking chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 cup whipping cream
• 1/3 cup solid vegetable shortening
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar

Makes: Icing serves 2 cups.

Directions:
Add the whipping cream to chopped white chocolate and microwave on 50% power until mostly melted. Stir until the chocolate is completely blended into the cream, and put it in fridge to chill while you mix other ingredients. Beat together the shortening and butter with the paddle of stand mixer.  Add the vanilla and powdered sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Slowly add the slightly cooled but still melted chocolate and cream mixture while beating until fully incorporated.

I softened 1/3 cup of Cool Whip in the microwave and folded it into the frosting to lighten it up, since my brother prefers whipped frosting.

Here's the cake after trimming and assembling.

The side view of the cake. I cut out the shapes for the tires, running boards, and bumpers from the larger cake. Then I figured out how much I needed to build the body. I cut down the 8x8 to fit on top of the larger sized cake, and I used some of the trimmings to make the hood taller.

The cake after frosting, squished in my fridge.

Beginnings of tires, which were cut down cupcakes, lightly frosted and covered with chocolate (dyed black) fondant.

The one major thing I missed was the side mirrors, oops! I remembered the gas cap and wipers, but did not realize the mirrors were missing until I delivered the cake. Next time, I will definitely add them.

Lemon Triple Berry Cake

This was a simple cake I made at the last minute for a friend's birthday. I asked another friend what flavors the birthday girl might like, and she said anything fruity, so I decided to go with berries and a light lemon flavor.

Cooking the berry sauce.

Straining out the berry seeds.

The finished cake, with triple berry decorations.

The recipe was very similar to this Lemon Raspberry Layer Cake except I used strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries for the sauce instead of just raspberries. If I make it again, I will leave out the strawberries from the sauce, as I didn't think they went very well with the other flavors in the cake.

I also used my standard buttercream frosting with a little lemon extract and lemon juice. At the last minute, I decided to do a light glaze over each layer, because I thought the cake looked a little dry, and it wasn't very lemony. The glaze probably made the whole cake a bit too sweet though. Oh well, I am learning!

Simple White Fondant Covered White Cake

This was the 6" trial cake I made before attempting the farm cake. It was my first time making marshmallow fondant and covering a cake with fondant. This little cake certainly wasn't perfect looking, but I am still amazed by how easy fondant is when you get the hang of it.

This cake used the same white cake recipe, frosting recipe, and fondant recipe as the farm cake.

Chanele's Birthday Cake

I'll just share photos this time, since I used about the same process as the farm cake. I combined a few inspiration pics I saw for this bright, fun cake idea. I used biscuit cutters, a canoli form, and the end of a frosting tip to cut the circles in fondant and hand drew the swirls with black dyed frosting.

The inside of the cake was supposed to be pink and white checkerboard, but I've learned now not to use this recipe for any kind of double color pattern. The batter is just too thin, and it runs everywhere until it mixes almost completely. I'll try that pan set again sometime with the recipe on the box and see if it holds up. Also, I am not sure if it was the pans, baking time, or I messed up the recipe, but the texture did not come out so well this time. I may be searching for a new white cake recipe.

Farm Animal First Birthday Cake

My second three tiered cake and first time really working with fondant other than one small practice cake was a success! I made the cake for my friend's daughter's first birthday party, which was farm animal themed, so it was a lot of fun. She showed me some example cakes and explained what she wanted, so all I had to do was execute her vision. I think it came out much cuter than the inspiration cakes, if I do say so myself! :)

The finished cake, at my house before transporting.

The Process

Fondant

This is all the finished fondant after coloring.. it doesn't look like much, but this is really a lot of fondant and took at least 4 batches to make spread over 2 days because of all the work.

Marshmallow Fondant (Basically used this recipe)

Ingredients:

15 oz. mini marshmallows

2 Tblsp water

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp lemon juice and/or a little lemon extract (optional)

1 tsp vanilla (optional)

2 tsp light corn syrup (helps w/ pliability)

2 lbs (approx 7 C) confectioner's sugar

1/2 C Crisco or vegetable shortening

Get a very large bowl ready and grease it lightly with crisco. Pour in some of the powdered sugar to cover the bottom of the bowl.

Double boiler method (can also microwave instead): Spray a large pan (that can sit on top of another pan) with pam. Sit the pan on top of another pan filled halfway with water and heat on high. Add the water and marshmallows to the top pan.

Grease a wooden or heat proof spoon. Stir the marshmallows occasionally, and heat until the marshmallows are melted. Mixture should be soupy.

Add the corn syrup, salt, and any flavorings and stir well.

Dump the melted mixture in the bowl on top of the powdered sugar, then add more powdered sugar.

Grease your hands well with Crisco and knead the mixture in the bowl (be careful of the heat).

Add more of the sugar and continue to knead until it all comes together and is a bit less sticky.
It takes quite a while to work all of the sugar into the marshmallows.

Shape the fondant into a mound and put a light coating of crisco on the outside of the ball.

Wrap the fondant ball in plastic wrap, and store it in a ziplock bag. Press the air out of bag and seal it.

Allow fondant to rest overnight if possible, but it can be used after sitting for a few hours.

I put mine in the refrigerator, but do not refrigerate or put plastic wrap on it after the fondant is on the cake, because it will sweat.

For some batches, I didn't use any lemon, and I couldn't really notice a difference, but it is supposed to cut down on the sweetness.

I'm still not really sure how much of this covers which size cake, because I made so much and ended up with so much leftover.

For the black fondant, I added a lot of cocoa powder before adding the black food coloring. The chocolate also cut the sweetness, and I thought that color tasted really great.

Marshmallow fondant is amazing stuff; it cost about $10 to make all of the huge amounts I made (more than needed for this cake), and a small block of the store bought fondant is that much at Michael's. The best part is that it does not taste like the fondant that the stores sell. I don't even like marshmallows, but I think this stuff tastes pretty good. The texture is still a little weird to eat on cake, and it is very sweet, so often I still pull it off, but I don't mind eating it.

The work and mess required to make it was worth it in the end. I will be doing this again any time I want to use fondant.

Frosting

Next up was making the frosting.

Frosting (originally from Buttercream 1)

Ingredients:

2 sticks (1 cup) butter, room temperature

2 cups Crisco shortening

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon butter flavoring (Wilton’s)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (if using clear, I still add another 1/2 tsp real)

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

2 pounds powdered (confectioners') cane sugar, divided*

1 tablespoon meringue powder (optional but the texture will be smoother)**

milk as necessary for consistency

For frosting, I think I started with 2 batches which I split in 3 groups to have some pink, green, and white frosting.

Then I made another 1/4 batch because I turned too much of it pink and needed more to make green for the grass detail. I ended up with extra of all the colors, but not too much.

Cake Baking

All the ingredients required, in my tiny kitchen. Yes, this is basically all the counter space I have.

Milk, egg, extracts, and coloring waiting to go in the batter.

The batter after adding butter and oil, but before the really wet stuff.

I looked at so many white cake recipes, I can't seem to find the link to the one that is closest to what I ended up doing. It was on a blog where the blogger tested 2 white cake recipes and then made a third that was a combo of the 2. I ended up doing the combo, except I used 2 eggs and 2 egg whites rather than all egg white.

White Cake

Ingredients:

2 1/4 c. cake flour

1 c. + 2 tbsp whole milk, room temp

2 eggs and 2 egg whites, room temp

1/2 tsp almond extract

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

1½ c + 2tbsp granulated sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1/4 c canola oil

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare two 9-inch cake pans (I line the bottom of the pans with parchment paper).

-In a medium bowl, combine milk, eggs and extracts. Stir, and set aside.

-In the bowl of stand mixer, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, and stir.

-With mixer on slow speed, add pieces of butter and then slowly add oil,

beating just until mixture resembles moist crumbs.

-Add a little over half of the milk mixture and beat to combine.

-Turn mixer speed to high and beat for one full minute.

-Slow the mixer down, add remaining milk mixture and beat on high for an additional 30 seconds.

-Pour the batter into cake pans and bake 20-25 minutes

I used 1/2 a recipe split between the two 6" layers (baked for 22 minutes, but these pans were heavier weight than the others), the whole recipe split between two 9" layers (baked for 22 minutes), and the whole recipe for each 12" layer (baked for 29 minutes). It turned out that the 6" layer was a bit taller than the others, so a little less than half a recipe would be better for uniformity.

Also, for the 9" tier, I added more vanilla extract instead of adding any almond extract, and I scooped out a cup of batter and winged it on making it dark brown for a "marble that wasn't supposed to really marble" layer. I added cocoa powder, black food coloring, powdered sugar, and then some more milk, flour, and baking powder I didn't measure, because I was afraid the cocoa was throwing things off, plus I wanted the layers to be as full as possible (and they definitely were for my pans!). I tried dropping the chocolate batter into large blobs, so it would not be "marbly" but more like cow spots, but it blended way too much and mostly ended up looking like a chocolate cake. I should have used less chocolate batter. But I thought this tier tasted really good and was super moist.

To make the pink cake, I added 20 drops of neon pink liquid food coloring, and for the green, each batch had 25 drops of regular green and 20 drops of neon green.

I also used wet cake wraps for all the cakes to help them cook evenly. All my cakes were very level except for the marble, because the consistency of the 2 types of batter was different, but it came out ok after the frosting (I didn't level them because this tier was already the shortest one).

Green cake after it's baked (before taking off parchment paper).

Cake Decorating

Each cake after frosting.

Minor disaster I noticed right as I was putting on the fondant on the bottom layer.. .my brand new Wilton cake plate had cracked in 2 spots from just the weight of this one cake. I hadn't even picked it up!! I could not believe that, but we managed to support it with another plate that my mom went out to buy.

Cakes after fondant.

Decorated pig!

Cow spotted layer.

The bottom was my favorite, because it was fun making the fence. For the heck of it, I cut out the happy birthday letters by hand from all the excess pink fondant. This kind of worked out because I was a little off when I flipped the green cake onto the plate, and it was offset to one side. More room for letters! LOL.

Closeup! I wasn't sure what to do for trim on the top 2 layers, and I started with just white dots on the cow before I thought of alternating with black. I think that turned out really cute! I went with all pink on the pig, so it didn't distract from the face.

The cake at the party, with random farm animals I made out of fondant at the last minute, and the 1 cake topper.

Aftermath and inside the cake!

Cost

This cake cost about $30 to make. It was hard to know exactly because some of the ingredients like extracts and food coloring I already had and/or only used part of, etc. If you had to buy everything required, the starting cost would be a lot more, but you would also have a lot of things leftover for future use.

But the breakdown was roughly even with frosting, fondant, and cake all about $10 each. I did price check between Publix, Walmart, and Target and found the best prices for the big ingredients, and I used store brand for sugar, powdered sugar, butter, oil, eggs, and milk.

Things learned from making a 3 tiered fondant covered cake

- It's definitely worth it to make your own marshmallow fondant instead of store bought, but give yourself another hour per batch to make it, kneed it, and clean up the mess.

- I discovered my oven is about 20 degrees hotter than it says and that lowering the rack a level helped things out.

- Working with fondant is much easier if you have super short finger nails because nail marks do not come out of fondant unless you re-kneed the whole mess.

- Trying to use fondant smashed on your fingertips, inside some gloves will help for a minute, but then it will become a watery, melted mess.

- There's no need to go to the gym that week, because your forearms will get an amazing workout from all the fondant kneeding and rolling, as well as carrying the super heavy cake.

- Not as much fondant will be needed as you'd think.

- Smoothing fondant over a 12 inch cake is really not difficult; I was intimidated about it for nothing.

- A pizza cutter works great for trimming excess fondant after covering cake, but make sure you don't cut too much. I ended up a little short on some spots.

- If you're making a cake topper, buy Gum-Tex to add to the fondant, and make it more than 2 days ahead of time and/or use a fan to help dry it.

- Watch out with chocolate fondant, as it leaves more residue on your hands, so if you are putting it on a white base, be careful not to touch the white after the black, or you will leave smudges.

- When making small fondant animals, use one piece to mold all parts if they are the same color, and try to avoid sticking on ears/tails because they will come off, even when you try to use frosting to hold them on.

- Cake Boss is a liar - rice krispy treats will not solve your problems.

- Do not trust a Wilton 16" separator plate to hold even one tier of cake without cracking.

- Use a (gripping) shelf liner under the cake plate, then put the cake plate in a box, and use more liner under the box for car travel to save your sanity.

I guess that's about it!

Labor Day weekend means lots of baking!

So, I haven't posted in a while, but mostly because I haven't made anything interesting. I am working on it though! I have a big weekend ahead of lots of baking... cake, pies, cookies, who knows what else? I'm a little stressed, at least about one of the new things I'm going to attempt, but I am ready to tackle things, and I think it should be fun. Hopefully I'll have a few posts lined up soon!

Frito Pie

I'm taking a break from the sweets, so this one's a dinner post. Nothing too creative or anything, but it was new to me.

While on vacation last weekend, husband randomly mentions we should make a frito pie. I don't recall ever having one before. We decided to make it, and I wanted to try it from scratch. I'd never made chili before, so this was new too, but I thought it came out pretty well, and I preferred it to the canned stuff.

I started with this recipe as a base for the meat seasonings: Easy Taco Salad Frito Pie

I also looked at a few other chili recipes and decided to add cayenne pepper, paprika, basil, and a little sugar. This is about what I ended up with, but again, I didn't quite measure everything. I may have ended up with a bit more of some spices, but just taste as you go along and add more as needed.

Frito Pie

Ingredients:

1 can dark red kidney beans, drained

1 can spicy chili beans, drained

1 lb ground beef (my pack was 1.18 lbs)

1 tablespoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon oregano

1/4 teaspoon basil

1/4 teaspoon paprika

cayenne pepper to taste

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

8 oz can tomato sauce

8 oz can tomato paste with a few spoons of water

1 can chili style diced tomatoes, drained

1 regular size bag original Fritos

1-2 cups shredded cheddar

green onions or onions for topping pie

jalapeño slices (fresh or jarred) - optional

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Brown your meat in a skillet, breaking it up into fine chunks as you go. When completely cooked, drain off grease. Add in all the other ingredients except Fritos, cheese, and toppings.

Stir it all up and let it simmer about 10 minutes to blend flavors, or cook longer if you have time. Add your fritos to the bottom of a large glass baking dish. Top fritos with your chili mixture, then add desired toppings like onions and cheese.

Bake just until cheese is melted to desired rate, about 10 minutes. Serve immediately, before your fritos get too soggy.

We served this meal with a salad, which I forgot to take a picture of. These pics are also pretty lame since I just grabbed my small camera for a quick shot instead of dragging out the Rebel. I never manage to make casseroles look pretty in pictures anyways.

I pretty much liked the recipe as is (with green onions instead of regular and no jalapeños), but husband thought the amount of beans could be lowered some (and of course, he added more cayenne and habanero pepper flakes to his side in addition to the onions and jalapeños). Also, we would make a smaller amount next time or just reserve some of the chips and chili separately, since this was a huge amount for 2 people and this is not a great meal for leftovers.

Christi's Coconut Macaroons

I don't make coconut macaroons very often, but when I do, I pretty much go crazy over them. I really really like them. Unfortunately, it had been so long since I made them, I misplaced the recipe I had come up with, so I sort of winged it this time, although I think I remembered it for the most part. I didn't measure everything, so these are estimates.. mostly I think coconut macaroons are so good, they are hard to mess up! There are simpler recipes out there, but as usual, I started out combining some and then made my own changes.

I made 3 varieties this time. Plain, with chocolate chips and slivered almonds, and with chocolate chips and caramel bits. All 3 were yummy!

Christi's Coconut Macaroons

Ingredients

1 bag sweetened shredded coconut (14oz)

4 egg whites

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 can sweetened condensed milk (about 7 oz)

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp sugar free coconut syrup (optional)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup coconut cake mix

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

If you only have one mixing bowl for your mixer, use another large bowl to mix together all of the ingredients except for egg whites and salt.

Once that is thoroughly mixed, put the egg whites and salt in another bowl and beat until stiff peaks form. Then fold egg white mixture gently into the coconut mixture.

Once everything is held together fairly well, scoop out small spoons of batter and drop an inch apart onto cookie sheet. If you like, add nuts, chocolate chips, caramel bits, or other ingredients to the batter.

Bake for about 15-18 minutes until coconut is lightly toasted on top.

It's a cowboy cookie.. no it's a spice cake.. it's a cowboy cake?

Ahh, more cakes! Yes, lately I'll take any opportunity to bake. My brother-in-law's birthday was earlier this month, but as he's been working a project job out of the state for the past 2 months, we will be celebrating it late, tomorrow. He's a tough one, because he says he's "not a cake person".. so it's hard to know what to do with that. My husband reminded me that he ate up all of my cowboy cookies I made for Christmas, so I went on the search for creating a similar flavor in a cake. I found something really close, and just added coconut, pecans, and chocolate to it, and I think it came out pretty well, but next time I would add more sugar, as it really wasn't sweet enough for me, especially without any frosting. It would be great to eat for breakfast as is though.

Brother in law is really into fishing, boats, and even fish painting (where you use an actual fish dipped in paint..), so I went with that theme. It was a lot of fun, and I think it came out really cute, although certainly not as realistic as some I found online. But hey, it didn't take long at all, and I think he will like it. I also bought a cutting board for a serving plate, an idea I borrowed from someone else.

To decorate this cake, I frosted it and let it sit up in the fridge until it was slightly stiff to the touch. Then I just used a toothpick for the fins, and the small end of a frosting coupler to make the scales, since it was on hand. It worked out pretty well. Oh, and I tried out Betty Crocker's Decorating Spray which is how I got the 2 colors (all the frosting was the light green color). Never used this before, but got some for Christmas that was sitting around, and I thought it was pretty cool.

The basic recipe was Oatmeal Cake with Broiled Topping, but here is my version, as I made it.

Cowboy Cookie Inspired Cake

Ingredients

1½ cups water

1 cup quick cooking oats (uncooked)

1½ cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

1 stick butter — softened

½ cup granulated sugar (I would suggest increasing by 1/4 cup)

½ cup packed light brown sugar (I would suggest increasing by 1/4 cup)

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup coconut (I used 2 tbsp unsweetened fine coconut, and 2 tbsp sweetened shredded)

2 tbsp pecan flour (finely ground pecans)

2 tsbp chopped pecans

3 oz chopped dark chocolate (or semisweet chips)

Buttercream Icing I

Directions

Bring water to a boil in a lidded saucepan. Remove from heat, stir in the oats, cover and let sit for 20 minutes. Remove cover and let sit for another 10.

Meanwhile, stir flour, pecan flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together in a medium bowl; set aside.

In a large mixing bowl and using an electric mixer, cream the butter and both sugars for about 2 minutes.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after each egg. Beat in the vanilla and oatmeal. By hand, stir in the flour mixture, then stir in the coconut, pecans, and the chocolate.

Pour mixture into a greased cake pan (I used a 7x11 pan and 2 small heart shaped pans) and bake on center rack at 350 F for about 20-25 minutes (my small hearts took 18 minutes, the larger pan took about 25).

I used my new standby buttercream recipe, but I think this cake probably would go better with some other flavor added to the frosting.. just not sure what. Maybe coconut, or cream cheese frosting. Brother in law hates cream cheese though, so I didn't go that route. It still went ok with this frosting, and definitely needed the sweetness.

This is just a scrap piece I had cut off to shape the fish, but I figured I'd post a pic of it anyway so you can get some idea what it looks like inside.

Project Wedding Cake

Well, almost a wedding cake. Actually, it was a three tiered anniversary cake, but the point was because my parents didn't get to have a big wedding with a fancy cake, and they are celebrating 30 years of marriage tomorrow, so I wanted to give them something.

This was quite a process! It was fun, but definitely would have been easier with a larger kitchen and empty freezer space. The hardest thing was trying to get the frosting smooth, and I didn't really do a good job. I think I needed to thin the frosting more, but I was afraid doing so would make it melt too easily on the drive to deliver the cake, so I didn't. Luckily, it survived the drive in my small, too warm car in 90+ degree weather. I've never accelerated so slowly in my life (for fear of sliding cake layers)!

The roses also needed work, but it was only my second time trying to make them, so I wasn't expecting perfection. And it would have been better if I had pans that were a greater variation in size, so I could have had room on the top of the bottom layers for more roses. I was working with what I had, or I would have probably gone with round or square instead of heart shaped too.

I didn't take any pics of the baking process, but here's one from before it was completely assembled and decorated. I only had time to snap a few shots before I left, because I wanted it to still be as cold as possible for transport. I also wish I had a pic of a slice of the cake, but it hasn't even been cut yet, and I probably won't see it when it is.

I looked around for a millions ideas before I began, and decided to go with 2 flavors.

For the bottom tier, I basically made a white chocolate almond with raspberry filling cake. I modified this recipe from Good Things Catered.

I almost followed it, except I added half a pack of white chocolate pudding mix, and used 1 tsp almond extract instead of 1 tbsp because I didn't want it to be overwhelmingly almond flavored. I also used a little less water for the raspberry sauce, but it was still too weakly flavored. I think I'd skip the water altogether next time. I really liked this cake though, although it was hard to time it right.

For the middle, I wanted strong chocolate. Then I got the idea of adding Bailey's flavor to it, but I couldn't find one recipe I liked, so I kinda combined these three:

Bailey's Irish Cream Cake

Dark Chocolate Wedding Cake

and

Double Chocolate Layer Cake

I ended up adding 1/4 cup Baileys and 1/4 cup chocolate liqueur to the cake mix and following the orange ganache recipe from the second link, except using Baileys instead of the orange flavorings.

I thought the chocolate cake was a little dry, but maybe I just overcooked it.

For the frosting, I started with Buttercream Icing I and also added a little more real vanilla extract instead of just wilton's clear. Then, I added melted white chocolate and a little O'reilly's white chocolate irish cream. I really like this frosting both with and without the white chocolate additions. I am going to stick with this over pure buttercream, because it totally reminds me of the frosting from my wedding cake.

This is kind of inspiring me to really consider taking a Wilton's cake decorating class at Michael's. I will have to see what day/time they are and see if I can fit it in, maybe in August or October.

Happy 30th Anniversary to my parents!

Patriotic Blueberry Pie

Publix had an awesome sale on blueberries the week before July 4th.. they were $1.50/pint, plus they had a $1.50/off one pack coupon online, so I actually got one pack free. Anyway, I bought a bunch of them, and had to think of something to do with them... so, I decided on pie.

I'm not really a pie maker. Actually, I've only made a few, ever. I think I made a pumpkin one, banana cream, and frozen peanut butter chocolate before, and that's probably it. And I don't think any of those had a homemade pastry crust. Well, this one doesn't either. I did cheat and go the frozen ready made crust route, but someday, when I have counter space, I'll try out a real one.

I looked around at many recipes online, and this is probably the closest to what I actually did: Allrecipes Blueberry Pie

The stars weren't my idea either, I saw that from a different recipe, although I did use 3 different size stars instead of all uniform.

Here goes the recipe.

Ingredients

4 cups fresh blueberries

3-4 tablespoons cornstarch

a little water to mix the cornstarch with

3/4 cup sugar

Dash salt

1 squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Pie crust, ready and chilled

Directions

- Preheat oven to 375 degrees

- Mix cornstarch with water, then add sugar, salt, cinnamon, and the blueberries to a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat until the sauce begins to thicken. Let cool while you work with the crust.

- Line pie dish with one pie crust. If you're going to do any design with the top, keep the bottom crust in the fridge, and cut out your designs from the top crust. You can use cookie cutters for shapes (I used a 3 pack of different sized star shaped fondant cutters), a knife to cut stripes, etc.

- Pour berry mixture into the crust and lay out your top crust (if not using a design, cut a few slits for steam vents). Crimp and flute edges if desired.

- Bake pie for 30-45 minutes, or until crust is golden

brown. Store bought thinner pie crusts take the lower amount of time and may need foil tented around it to keep from burning. If your crust is thick, you probably don't need to precook the filling, just bake the pie longer.

- Let pie sit a few hours before cutting.

Notes: Initially I used a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg as well, because many recipes did that, but I left it out of this recipe because I think it would be better without it. You can also do an egg wash on the crust, but I was too lazy.

This pie was amazing heated up and topped with Blue Bell white chocolate almond ice cream. It was also pretty good cold.

New Food Blog

Hi everyone! A friend suggested this weekend that I should start a food blog, and I've been tempted in the past, so here goes nothing. I can't promise I'm going to update this a lot, but I'll try. This first post is just going to be a mix of somewhat relevant comments about me and baking.

As most people who know me can tell you, I enjoy baking and trying to be creative in general. I would do it more often if I had a kitchen with enough space to do anything in. My KitchenAid mixer (named The Monster) lives on top of my refrigerator in the only empty semi-accessible space I could find, so I get a workout hauling it around whenever I want to bake something.

Many things I do stem from ideas I've seen online, so I'll try to credit where I originally saw things on here when I can remember. I browse through quite a list of food and party planning blogs on a weekly basis and have a ton of things saved that I'd like to try sometime. I rarely follow a recipe exactly, and usually I end up finding several and sort of combining and making up my own as I go along. The bad part of that is I usually end up with recipes with far too many ingredients.

I'm also not one of those people who does everything from scratch. I take shortcuts when I can, if I think it's worth it to do so. My cake pops, for instance, usually start from a box mix, which I sometimes add other ingredients to before baking. I make my own frosting about half the time, and use the store bought stuff the rest of the time. My cake pops also do not look nearly as professional as the queen herself, bakerella (you should see her stuff if you haven't yet, everything is amazing!), but I try to make them look cute anyway.

Well, that's about all I have to say for now. Stay tuned for future goodies!