Holiday Recap Part Deux-There's Been Another Murder and My 'Boyfriend' Turns 32!

Some of my friends and I planned a low-key dinner party for New Year's Eve (since a few of our friends were out of town and another one of them was 8 months pregnant aka probably not into club/bar hopping).  Then we decided that might be a little boring so we turned it in to another Murder Mystery Party.  You might remember the first one from here.  As long as you can get a group of people together who are willing to participate and dress up it can be a fun/entertaining night.  I purchased our Murder Mystery kit online at Night of Mystery.

So More Holiday Awards.....

Best Hostess-Mrs. Acorn-She entertained.  We will just leave it at that.

Best Sport-Our sweet pregnant friend Beezus5 who was dressed quite fashionable as a teen starlet even though she is 8 months pregnant.  Although she had to wear flip flops due to ankle swellage, she did somehow manage to have the best looking hair of any of the girls.  (No offense to anyone else's wonderful hair.  I myself was rocking a bumpit).

The bumpit is always appropriate.

Best Dance Partner-Curly T refused to let B dance alone in the corner the whole night.

Best Dressed-Everyone, especially the boys.  I wasn't quit sure all the boys would be in to dressing up since most of the male roles were former boy band members or rappers.  But everyone really brought it especially with their faux jewels and berets.  We forgot to take a big group picture so these will have to do.

Most Likely to be Super Late but Actually Showed up Semi-On Time-Shanzles!  Yay, way to go!

Best Champagne Bar-B, for actually looking up champagne cocktails, printing out the recipes and buying all the ingredients.

Best Dessert-ME!  For purchasing this lovely Raspberry Lemon Cake for my New Year's Day birthday boy.  We ate it right after midnight on his actual birthday.

And and just FYI, I won the best acting award for my amazing range of fake accents.  Yeah, go me.

My husband's birthday is on New Year's Day so I think I should also win the Best Birthday Celebrator Award by making sure he drank some water on New Year's Eve before bed so that he'd feel well enough to golf on his birthday.  Success.  I also took him out for a nice January 2nd birthday dinner since many places are closed on New Year's Day.

What did you do for New Year's Eve?

My Homemade Birthday Present Streak Continues...

Curly J was back from her honeymoon just in time to celebrate her 30th birthday this weekend.  Of course I had to attempt to make her present since I made that goal of making all birthday presents this year.  Plus I wrote about that goal on my blog and she reads my blog. 

I kind of took the easy way out and made some earrings.  It's just too hot for any more t-shirt scarves at this time and I was drawing blanks on everything else.  I also gave her a bunch of photos from her wedding shower, bachelorette party and wedding and an album.  I had big plans to make an album but they fell through.  So, earrings it is.

Plus I made her a birthday cake.  It's my go-to chocolate chip poundcake which I have finally mastered over the years.  And by mastered, I mean it actually came all the way out of the pan instead of getting stuck in there and ripping apart.  Yay me!

The evening started with dinner at her favorite Mexican restaurant followed by game night at her house.  B and I were victorious at a game of LCR and scored $7 in prize money.  Have you ever played LCR (left, center, right)?  I was pretty skeptical at first but it ended up being pretty fun.

So in conclusion, Mexican food and cake are good, LCR is fun, and I'm still doing ok on my handmade presents. 

Cake Balls-Part 2: The Successes

And now, the riveting conclusion to Cake Balls-Part 1.............

So the cake ball pops were not a complete failure.  There were just a few bumps a long the way.  We actually ended up with many wonderful and semi-wonderful looking cake pops. 

How we made our cake pops:
2 boxes of cake mix
2 containers of icing
A bunch of Candy Melts from Michael's (we had 5 bags but only used about 3 bags)
Sprinkles
Cake Pop sticks (from Michael's)

1-Bake the cakes according to package (very important)
2-Let the cakes cool
3-Crumble the cake into a bowl and add about 3/4 of a can of icing
4-Mix the icing into the cake to form a dough (add more icing if you need it)
5-Roll the dough into little balls and then refrigerate or freeze them so that they are more firm (makes it easier to dip in the melted chocolate)
6-Melt the Candy Melts (or you can use real chocolate, I think Candy Melts (CM) are easier because they harden faster but real chocolate might taste better)
7-Dip a stick in melted CM then dip the stick in a ball and dip the ball back into the CM until it's coated.  Quickly add sprinkles before the CM hardens.  You can also let it harden and then write on it with more melted CM or draw designs on it with melted CM
8-Stick it in styrofoam to fully dry

T constructed a cake stand for us out of styrofoam and ribbon.  We started with the sprinkles and then B5 did an excellent job of writing letters (and drawing creatures) on some of the balls.  Basically the ones that T and B5 made are much prettier than the ones I made.  I also tended to shriek or yell when my cake balls did not turn out as planned.  It got pretty tense up in there (for me, not for other people).

Our biggest success by far was figuring out how to transport the cake ball pop cake from T's apartment (3rd floor by the way) to the bar later that night.  We sat in contemplation for a few minutes when we realized we would need something to put the cake in, in order to move it.  Then T decided to take action and after searching through her storage closest for a few minutes, T pulled out this drawer which ended up being the perfect thing to transport the cake.  (We cleaned and disinfected it before putting the cake in there by the way.)

So I took the cake to my house and then later was in charge of transporting it to the bar.  I was very freaked out the whole way to the bar and sat in the back seat with the cake to make sure it stayed safe.  I also yelled at B for going over speed bumps.

However, we made it and the cake was a success!

I'm not really sure what she was blowing out here as this cake ball
cake had no candles.  However, M seems to think it's hilarious.



Cake Balls-Part 1: The Failures

How it all started..........
Secret email chain between Me, Curly T, and Beezus5 in regards to Shanzie's Birthday party......
ME: should we make/buy cupakes or a cake or something for saturday night for shanzies bday partay?  what does she like?  will the bar allow that?
T: hey...sorry, for the delay in response...I didn't have to work today.  Yes...I think she would definitely appreciate that....and I would think that the bar would be fine with it since we are bringing like 20 people into their business (but B5 might know the establishment better).
B5:  The Bar would be fine with that. #1 i'm in with the waitresses, #2 i had some cake balls there a few nights ago for another dude's bday.
ME:  ooh maybe we can make cake balls.  i have wanted to try them
T:  my co-worker brought in cake balls for Valentine's day and they were delicious!!!
ME:  yeah i see them on food blogs all the time.  lets do it.  I THINK IT'S PRETTY EASY.  you just bake a box cake and crumble it up and mix it with icing and dip it in something.  we can add some sprinkles to make it birthdayish.  i'll look it up.

Of course I was the one who had to say "i think it's pretty easy."  In my head I should have known it wasn't going to work out as I planned (just like those Martha Stewart glasses).  So after a few more email chains we decided that B5 and I would pre-bake some cakes and take them over to T's house on Saturday morning.  She would get the stuff to decorate them and then we would make something amazingly beautiful, just like these.......

Picture from cakepops.com (much prettier pops than ours)

So anyways, my first big fail happened when I was making the cake.  The directions on the box said to add 1/3 cup of oil.  Apparently I thought it said to add 1 and 1/3 cups of oil.  Ooops.  I didn't realize this until the cake had been baking for like 45 minutes and it was still liquidy.  It finally baked and I decided since we were crumbling it up it would be fine. 

No, not really.   I should have known.  I mean the balls were pretty soggy even after I froze them.  The first one I tried to make ended up like this.....as did the next few. 

We finally got a few of them to stay on the sticks but an hour later we realized that they were actually leaking oil (yeah there was that much oil in them).  GROSS.  So we threw away all the pink cake.  Fortunately I did make a chocolate cake with the correct amount of oil and B5 made a yellow cake to use

Our next big mishap occurred when B5 threw one of the recently coated melted chocolate balls under T's kitchen table.  Ok she didn't really throw it.  She just dropped it.  I just stood there frozen and yelling while T and B5 actually figured out how to get the (hardening) chocolate off the carpet.  (I also took pictures. I'm sooo helpful in a crisis.)  Good times.

by the way, they got the chocolate up with clorex wipes, I think

So in conclusion, when you make cake balls don't add 4 times the amount of oil the cake recipe calls for and try not to drop the balls on the ground.  See what we had to go through, Shanzie.

Did we end up with any successful cake balls?  You will find out tomorrow in the riveting conclusion, 'Cake Balls-Part 2'. 

Happy Paper Anniversary to Me (and B)!

What is that up there?  Oh that is a delicious Hawaiian cake that I have been binge eating for the last two days in honor of my 1st wedding anniversary.  Did we save the top tier of the cake at our wedding?  No, we ate it.  So I went and bought us a mini cake from the place we got our wedding cake (a bakery named Delicious by the way).  It is delish and probably much better than if we had frozen the top layer last year.

So traditionally the gift for the first year of marriage is paper.  So I got a lot of paper for my first anniversary.  My husband has semi-secretly been making me my gift all week.  He told me to keep my expectations low as Arts and Crafts are not his forte.  We even went to Michael's together to get supplies (although he wouldn't let me see what he was buying).  So what did he make me?  He made me some frames with the readings/poem we had at our wedding and pictures from our wedding?  I liked it.  A lot.  I made the number thing with photos I took of numbers at the beach (I might have stolen this idea from Shanzie.)  That's the day we got married.

We also got some hand made paper wedding cards from L-Fab and Mo Young.  Thanks guys!

And a special shout out to L-Fab for really pulling through and making us a DVD of all the wedding footage she took last year on her video camera.  I didn't even know we had that.  (Mo-it features the push up competition!  Yeah there may or may not have been a push-up competition at the Rehearsal Dinner after party.)

Happy Anniversary B!  Only 59 years to go until we get to the 'Diamond' anniversary.  Can't wait!

So even though my sister mocked how I write questions at the end of my blog a lot I'm still going for it.....
If you are married did you give your husband paper for your first anniversary?
Do you like pineapple cake?  (most people I know are not in to it)
Have you ever witnessed a push-up contest at a Rehearsal Dinner?

Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes with a Hint of Bridal Shower

One time I lived with this girl.  We will call her Mrs. A-Corn.  She really enjoyed eating Entenmann's Raspberry Danish Twists.  She loved them sooo much that she knew the date and time the truck would deliver the fresh ones to the Harris Teeter across the street from our house.  Gradually with the help of 2 other friends I weaned her off this addiction.  So when we started planning her bridal shower, I thought maybe we should buy these Raspberry Danish Twists and cut them up in to bite sized pieces and serve them at her shower.  But then I remembered how far she's come since her addiction and decided to go another route.

I remembered that she likes red velvet cupcakes.  So I confirmed with her fiance and began looking for recipes.  Everyone said for me to just use a box but I decided to go all out.  Go big or go home.  I found this recipe (you have to scroll down a little) and thought it seemed manageable.  MoYoung and I decided that mini cupcakes would be better for a shower.  That way the ladies could eat 5 or 10 without feeling bad because eating 5 mini desserts is always way healthier than eating one regular sized dessert.  I followed the recipe pretty much but used a mini muffin tin and cooked them for about 10-12 minutes each or when the tooth pick came out clean.  Also the frosting made about 3 times as much as I actually needed for the mini cupcakes.

So what was my biggest mistake?  Well I purchased ONE mini muffin tin, which makes 12 mini cupcakes at a time.  We ended up with about 70 mini cupcakes which was a lot of batches.  So MoYoung and I were up til 1 AM baking these puppies.  With a special appearance by Beezus5, B and some wine, it didn't really seem like it took that long.

The next day we focused on icing.  I taught Mo to use my special icing tool and she managed to really excel at it.  We added some blue and yellow sprinkles (the wedding colors) and we were done.  I think they turned out pretty awesome.  We only ended up taking about half of them to the shower but by last night most of them were gone from my kitchen.  Also I may or may not be mildly allergic to red food coloring.  I sprouted a couple hives during the cooking and tasting process but that's not really that strange (for me).  And there was a full bottle of food coloring in this.  Oh well.  They are called red velvet for a reason.

PS-I had weird dreams about cupcakes last night.
PPS-And I know my face does not look super attractive in the photo above but I  needed a good action photo.