In Like A Lion

This is the sight that greeted us this morning. We're expecting even more this afternoon. I'd say this would be a great day to stay in and do minis, but I'm having trouble focusing this weekend. My dad had a stroke on Friday and is in the hospital...200 miles away through crummy weather. My mom was snowed in at the hospital last night.

I did get a few things done during the week that I am happy to share.

More paper doilies! I think I'm done with these until I need a specific color, or I find more colored envelopes that I stashed for the purpose.

I auditioned three shades of green Gallery Glass for my thumbprint cookies. [Bellow, center] Two made the cut... one for St. Patrick's Day and the other for Christmas. I also tried a new-to-me icing recipe for minis. It's from Angie Scarr's Masterclass book. It's smoother and runnier than the way I usually do my frosting.

I really like the way it looks on the iced cookies [Below left], but not so much for this type of cake. [Below, right] It's much easier to mix and tint than the way I usually make frosting, which is a definite plus. And there are many, many more things I can use this type of frosting for in the future so it is a winner... just not for these cakes. Perhaps with some additional tweaking I can find a happy medium.

 Finally I went out and found some more bead organizers to neaten things up around here. This one is just for St. Patrick's Day themed foods/canes. Time to try and get busy filling it up the rest of the way.

That's all for this week. Stay warm!

Cakes and More

Lots of mini baking was happening this past week!

The mini Green Velvet cake samples are done for starters.

Along with some un-cut cakes.

But I also had a go at making some shamrock cookies,

put sticks in lollipops,

and punched paper doilies out of some papers and envelops I had laying around.

I'm quite pleased with how the cookies turned out. I will probably make more once I finish frosting the other sliced cake pieces that are waiting on me to make more "frosting." I did make some plain old round cookies too, but I forgot to get their picture. They aren't decorated yet, so you're not missing out. Hopefully I get back to them in the coming week.

That's all for now. I need to get back to some real world work around the house. See you next week!

An Early Start

Not on the day, but for a workshop/project I'm teaching next month. The local mini group will be making 1:12 scale green velvet cakes for the March project. I spent time this past week getting a few things ready for them. [Oh and I hope everyone had a nice St. Valentine's Day!]

What took up most of my time was the cane of candy I designed for them to decorate the cake with. In fact I haven't even gotten the cake part started beyond deciding on colors and making notes for the handout.

But the cane is finished and I've gotten half of it rolled out and baked!

I still have about 3 inches of the unbaked cane to roll out and bake. I will probably try to come up with a few other things to do with it.

I've already made lollipops and stick candy.

And of course there are some teapots made from bits trimmed off the cane ends after stretching.

For fun, I tried out a cookie jar type thing with a chunk of cane end, just to see how it would look. The bit I used was at the first end I trimmed off when I started stretching the cane, so the shamrock design isn't quite all there, but I'm actually quite taken with it and will try doing another one or two.

I'm not going to have the mini group members actually make the cane at the meeting. It takes way too long. But they are getting the instructions and design in their handout in case they'd like to make more at a later date. They're also each getting a piece of finished cane to use for their project.

I'm also planning on putting the finished project instructions up on my Etsy page as a download for a couple of dollars at some point. There may be someone out there who would like the instructions.

That's all for this week. I need to get working on the little cakes so I can get pictures and finish writing up the handout.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

...in responsible amounts.

Where I went to university there is a week-long party attached to St. Pat's. We even got some days off of school in lieu of having any time off around Easter. That party just celebrated it's 101st year.

There are occurrences of blatant drunkenness throughout campus, even in classrooms. This is not restricted to only students. A handful of professors I encountered in my time there also succumbed to the temptation.

This is what happens when a small school in the midwest figures out that Saint Patrick is the patron saint of engineers. There is even a large bronze statue of the saint in the university library.

I think a Guinness sounds really good right now. Too bad there are none in the house.