Last Day at New Job...

I was so nervous to start working at my new job in a restaurant downtown. Between three jobs I worked really hard and some days were very long. To be honest I liked my jobs, but I felt like all I was doing with my life was sleeping and working. Any time I had off of work I was sleeping. I came to the realization that I was not enjoying my days and was working every minute of my life away. After some strong encouragement from Brian I made the decision to go back to school.

In January it is my plan to start the Master's program in Hospitality & Tourism Management. I would be doing this with the goal of teaching in some capacity. I believe that every single one of us are teachers and I personally find extreme joy teaching others. My last day was this Friday. It has been so nice to have a day off with time to enjoy my day, my house and my family. I have been making dinner and playing with the pups, decorating for the holidays and various other things that I did not have time or energy for.

I made dinner the other day. Have a look:

I decided to make Ina Garten's Lemon & Garlic Roast Chicken . It was easy to make and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I used organic vegetables and an all natural chicken.


A rack is usually used to raise the chicken off of the bottom of the pan and ensure even cooking. A good way to make a side dish and not use a rack is to line the bottom of your dish with veggies. I used carrots, onions and Yukon gold potatoes.


The chicken needed to be washed.


Here is the chicken all rinsed and patted dry.


Here is the poor chicken standing on its neck. The inside cavity is generously salted and peppered and then filled with an entire head of garlic cut in half lengthwise and two lemons.


I then tucked the wings under and tied his little legs with twine. This ensures even cooking.


The chicken was then rubbed with butter and lined with bacon.

I also made mashed potatoes.


Here is the beautifully browned roasted chicken.


I cut it up and put it on a platter with the vegetables.


I also made bread pudding and served it with Haagen-Das Five Brown Sugar ice cream.


And of course Lucy looked interested in the bread pudding. Look at her teeny ears flopped back!


That meal was a few days ago. I am going to miss the creative freedom that I was given at my old job, but I have noticed a desire to cook and bake more at home. Tonight I made eggplant and chicken parmesan, lemony asparagus, pasta and an apple upside cake with homemade caramel mousse. I AM SO FULL! HAVE A LOOK AT THE CAKE:



I know this life decision will be a challenge, but I know it will make me a better person and I know that I can do it. I hope everyone has a happy week... Tomorrow is Monday :(

Happy Birthday Ma!

My mother's birthday is this coming Monday, but the restaurant we wanted to take her to is not open that day so we decided to take her today. I know I had a great time trying to make this day for her as special as possible. Everyone asks her what her secret is to looking young and having nice skin and her response is, "Pond's Cold Cream." I had a great time, I hope she did too. Have a look:

We went to eat at Combine Brothers in Hermitage, PA. The food there is wonderful and they give you tons of it!


Here is my beautiful mother!


Haha! This picture cracks me up! In the photo I was trying to show how huge the rolls are and I was using my mom's head as a comparison! I think she thought I was going to throw it at her and knock her out...


I am a pastry chef and a cake decorator so I have learned a thing or two about decorating cakes fast. Last night Brian took my mom with him to pick up some take out. While they were gone in about an hour I baked a Pineapple Carrot Cake from scratch and cream cheese icing. When they got home I hid the cake to cool and put the frosting in our refrigerator in the basement. I made my mom the same cake that I requested for my birthday. We both love carrot cake. Oh yeah and my mom was quite proud that her sparklers set off the smoke alarms!


My sister Marcie introduced my mom to the world of frothed milk on your coffee. Since then my mom was on a hunt for a milk frother. I found one for her as one of her gifts.


We also gave her a cha-cha apron which looks more like a party dress than an apron. She loved it!


I decorated this cake IN THE BASEMENT after I came home from work. It did not take long and I think it came out great!



I used a beautiful antique cake pedestal, which was given to me by my wonderful friends Steph and Jeff

It was so delicious!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! WE LOVE YOU!!!

Around the House: Halloween Edition

Oh my God is all I can say about the past few weeks. I wrote a blog post back in July of 2008 titled Hello Life, How I've Missed You. I feel like another one of those blog posts is necessary. For those of you who do not know I have 2.5 jobs. I work at a supermarket as a cake decorator, I also work as a Pastry Chef for a posh restaurant downtown creating desserts and confections. In the past four days I worked close to 40 hours. I worked at the supermarket in the morning and in the evening I had to make desserts for parties and buffets at the restaurant. Brownies for 150 with only one day notice and desserts for over 600. There were some days that my feet hurt so bad that I wanted to cry and there were times that I was so stressed that I wanted to cry some more. I made it through that and I have learned a lot and have made some good life decisions (which I will discuss later).

In all of the craziness we still found time to decorate the house for Halloween. Have a look at some of the events and pictures from around here.

Here is Lucy posing by the Cinderella pumpkin trying to stay warm wearing her skeleton Halloween shirt.


She was nice enough to let her brother and sister join in her Fall photo shoot!


It is true that buying pumpkins for Halloween is addicting and this year is no exception.


Here is our dining room table. Of course there is no where to eat, but there is plenty of glittered items including two Halloween trees, glittered skulls and pumpkins.


Last year I made one of these Halloween trees and it sold at a craft show. I was so sad because I wanted it for me. Ma and I each made one.


Here is another view of the dining room. Look at the creepy claw in the window, which is of course from Martha Stewart.



A pair of gargoyles waiting to be glittered.


Here is our fireplace and mantle looking the same as it did last year.



Here is a better picture of my Jack-o-clock.


My Ma carved this pumpkin, which is getting spookier as it gets older.


I will never get tired of the glittered skull centerpiece on the dining room table.


An eerie green fleshed pumpkin on the table. It looks like zombie skin!


That Bakerella is quite a lifesaver. I needed to make mini desserts for the buffet at work. I found a recipe for mini cheesecakes on her blog and I used those which were simple and delicious. I garnished them with various items including whipped cream, chocolate mousse, pecans, cherries, toasted coconut and caramel.


I had to make about 7 of these platters.


I did a few trays of brownies with whipped cream, mousse and caramel.


And pumpkin pie squares too!


I must apologize for such a long absence from posting. Lately I have just had energy to work and sleep. I am hopeful that it will change soon!

A Good Day...

I just wanted to post some quick pictures from our pumpkin picking excursion today. My friend Connie told us about a pumpkin patch in Cortland by her house. She said that the lady who grows the pumpkin had all kinds of pumpkins and warty ones too! Anyone who knows me should know that I am a big Martha Stewart fan. A few years ago Martha proclaimed her love for warty and nubbly pumpkins so of course I love them too!

There were so many varieties and sizes of pumpkins to choose from.


Here was the largest field of pumpkins, but don't be fooled they had hundreds more.


We were provided with a wagon to collect pumpkins with. Here is the gang.


Brian was assigned to wagon pulling and pumpkin heaving.


Now these are the kind of pumpkins that I was interested in.


My mom walked the rows looking for the perfect pumpkin.


This monster pumpkin was only 7 dollars!


I told my mom that I was going to buy a warty pumpkin and she said NOOOOOO. She said she would not come out of her room if it was in the house or she would put a handkerchief over it when we were not home so she would not have to see it. I took a picture to remind her of it!


Here are all of the pumpkins we chose, THEY ARE ADDICTING! Fellow blogger and friend Bridgette said today, "I need more pumkins!!"


I had such a nice time today, I hope everyone else did too!

Sugar Cookies...

Today was a good day. My Ma and I shopped, stopped for coffee and then came home and created some lovely sweets. I was fortunate to have a full day off today, unlike most days I am either at one job or the other. We stopped by a cake decorating shop suggested to me by my co-worker and friend Connie. The place was called the Sugar Shack in Niles, OH and it was great. The woman working there was very friendly and they carried items that I have not been able to find locally.

After we returned home we began baking and decorating sugar cookies. Have a look:

I purchased a few different Halloween cookie cutters including a tombstone, pumpkin and extra large pumpkin.


I used the sugar cookie recipe off of Martha's website. Whenever this recipe is featured on The Martha Stewart Show, Martha staff member Dani Fiori uses. Her cookies are so cute!

In leu of using flour to prevent the dough from sticking to the counter the recipe suggests rolling the dough out between two sheets of plastic wrap. The plastic wrap trick worked beautifully.


Here I am cutting out sugary tombstones.


After baking the cookies they needed to cool for a while.


Brian has a meeting at work tomorrow and he requested some type of sweet to take. I made him applesauce cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese frosting. I found these cute little orange cupcake liners.


The cupcakes call for unsweetened applesauce. We did not have any applesauce at home so we made our own out of Honeycrisp apples from White House Fruit Farm. After the cupcakes cooled I frosted them and sprinkled them with various orange and black sprinkles and sugars.


Here are all of the cupcakes ready to be devoured tomorrow. I hope they like them.


Back to sugar cookies, we used royal icing tinted in various colors to decorate the sugar cookies. They came out so cute and were fun to decorate.

These black cats were iced black and then dipped in black sanding sugar.


Here are a few of my favorite sugar cookies. I think they came out so cute and delicious too!


I love how the tombstone cookies came out. We bought sugar eyeballs at Sugar Shack and used them. They were so cute on the spider cookie, but they make the cat look like it had way too much coffee.


These cookies were delicious and so fun to make. I can not wait to make some for Christmas.

Rock Out with Your Cake Out: Claribel's Guitar Cake

Our former tenant Rachel messaged me the other day asking if I could make a cake for her girlfriend Claribel's birthday. Claribel loves guitars and also plays. Rachel wanted a guitar cake made out of chocolate cake and chocolate buttercream. This cake was so much fun to construct. Have a look:

I had to make a template so I could carve the cake into a guitar shape.


The cake was double layered. My mom and I had to do some construction to cut out the cake board to hold the the pieces of the guitar together. Once I had the cake trimmed we had to cut out some squares in the middle which would have wooden pieces. These wooden pieces were there to enable us to screw guitar strings into the cake.


The cake was then covered with homemade chocolate buttercream and put onto the cake board.


We made black marshmallow fondant and covered the cake. After we added the black layer we were then able to start adding the details.


We used different food colorings to paint the various knobs and switches. I absolutely loved how it was coming together.


Here is the guitar painted with a wood grain and ready to be strung with wire.


We then added guitar strings from eye hooks on the body of the guitar to eye hooks on the neck.


Here is an aerial shot of the guitar.



I think Claribel liked the cake and was surprised.


After working so hard on this cake it was hard to watch it get sliced and devoured.




Here are Rachel and John getting a piece of cake.


This cake was so fun to make. My mom and I kept on commenting how we loved making it and how it just came together very well, unlike the Statue of Liberty Cake.

It has been a long day and I have to work early tomorrow so I am keeping the text portion of this post short, but please enjoy the pictures and leave comments of your opinions of the cake!

Plotting My Death...

I just had to post these pictures of the pups in their favorite Halloween costumes. Okay they hated them, were deathly afraid of them and were plotting my death the entire time I was taking these pictures. Have a look:

Now here is our hound dog Charlie. These devil horns should be a permanent part of Charlie's head because he is awful. If there is something to get into then he will get into it. If there is something that you value then he will shred it to bits. Here is Charlie as the Devil otherwise known as Charlie.


Since Lucy is a mini Dachshund I figured this hotdog costume would be appropriate. It looked so big in the store, but when I got it home it fit her more like a saddle than a costume. She was petrified after I put this on her and she would not move. I think she just went to her happy place in her head.


Sofia wanted in on the action too. Once I put this costume on her she immediately gave me hardcore side eye.


Fall is quickly approaching and it has been pretty exciting prepping the house for Halloween. The Fall wreath is on the front door, Ma and I made Halloween trees and the weather is getting much cooler. Here is a photo of the Martha Halloween Jack-o-Lantern clock. I used a styrofoam pumpkin which I found at target for $10.00. I also used a real clock movement inside so the clock actually works. I had it on the mantle until a gust of wind came and blew it off so I will have to fix it tomorrow.


Happy Fall!

State of Liberty Cake challenge

This weekend we had a cake order for a Statue of Liberty Cake. The cake was for a little boy who is in love with Lady Liberty, he refers to her as Lisa. This cake was a challenge to do since it was the first time we tried an upright cake sculpted out of fondant, buttercream and rice krispies. Have a look...

Here is the sketch I came up with for the concept of the cake.


My mom and I at Home Depot looking for pipes and fittings was quite a sight to see. We needed supplies to create the support structure for Lady Liberty. After about 1/2 an hour we found some pvc pipes and elbow joints. We trimmed and cleaned the pipe then started to build the rice krispy treats around the structure. It was sort of like brick laying using buttercream as the mortar.


Here is her internal structure. After we were happy with the shape we coated her with buttercream and let her firm up.


We tinted some marshmallow fondant to match the real Statue of Liberty and used it to cover the rice krispy statue.


I do not know how those cake decorators on Food Network Challenge do it it was so stressful making this! Her left shoulder started to slouch and fall down. It was frustrating and I did get a little upset, but after walking away for a while and coming back we were able to fix her slouching shoulder, oh yeah and a shot of vodka. Here is the Statue after we had her done.



We gave her a coat of green luster dust.


I was told that the little boy loved Lisa. Here she is at his party behind the chocolate cake we made. My mom made little boats to put in the harbor. I think its pretty close to the sketch.

A Day Off....

It has recently become a rare occasion for me to a day off at both of my jobs on the same day. That day is tomorrow and I am so excited to have a ay off of both jobs! Today was a good day I found out at one of my jobs that I do not have to complete a really big task which is a big relief off of my shoulders.

At work I had to make a cake for a party. I wanted to make it look really nice so I put a lot of detail work on it which took my entire shift.
Here is a picture of the side of the cake...


We have a lot of tomatoes ripen at once in our garden so my mom and I had to do something with them. Yesterday we went to Brian's dad Ronnie's house and he let us pick some tomatoes from his garden too. Have a look.

We blanched and peeled the tomatoes to get them ready to preserve.


Seeds are the most bitter part of the tomato so we had to remove them by gently squeezing the peeled tomatoes. While removing the seeds we collected the juice using a strainer in a bowl.


We put the peeled tomatoes in the food processor for a quick pulse.


Viola! We have crushed tomatoes for sauce, salsa or whatever else we can use them for.


Look at all of the juice we collected. My mom is going to use it for soups and/or spanish rice.


Here are all of the tomatoes, we divided them into 28 oz portions of crushed and 2 cup portions of juice. All of these containers went directly into the freezer for later use.

A weekend of Cakes and Welcome Back Internets!

At our house we've not had the internet for over two months and that time has been hell! You really do not know how much you take something for granted until you do not have it anymore. I have missed blogging so much and have missed keeping up with my fellow bloggers and various other friends online. So with that said I just wanted to give a quick explanation of my lack of blogging lately.

As far as cakes go we have been busy here with a few cake orders every weekend. It is so great to have repeat orders and to hear people rave about how the cakes tasted and how they helped make someone's day a little more special. Our friend Tara needed another cake, same flavor, but Dora themed. When the cake is for a child I love to put a toy on so the child has something to play with after the cake is gone. I saw a cake similar to this in a catalog at work so I placed Dora's house on a cute landscape (underneath which is chocolate cake with caramel filling and chocolate buttercream).


Our other friend Kris' daughter is celebrating her birthday today. They requested a tie-dyed orange cake with peace signs on top. I was so excited to do the cake, but being that I am still learning and do not have an airbrush of my own I was facing a challenge. Brian suggested I use multiple flavors of marshmallow fondant and swirl them together. They worked together well and created a neat effect. I hope Miranda has a wonderful birthday and enjoys the cake!


On a more personal note today is my partner Brian's birthday. I had a challenge of making him a cake for his birthday too. Luckily he worked so I was able to run home after I worked and get his cake decorated. Anyone who knows my Brian knows that he loves chicken nuggets and peanut butter. I didn't think a chicken nugget cake would taste too delicious so I opted for peanut butter. I had such fun making this cake, I was aiming for super decadence. We are going to need big glasses of milk to wash it down! HAPPY BIRTHDAY HONEY!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVERYONE!