Cakes - Phase four

One hundred fifty-six cupcakes to frost, Onehundred fifty-six cakes, take some cream and smear it around, One hundred fifty-five cupcakes to frost.

Thanks to the help of three wonderful women - all cupcakes were frosted by 9pm. (Starting at 7 with a break for dinner) Everyone had fun and now the biggest question is how to get them to church in the morning. Not quite all 156 cupcakes will make it - a few have already left his world and several others got put on a plate in the freezer for a friend. But the tally is still over 120.

Whew. Overall it has been fun and a great learning experience - but I think I won't do something like this until Saphira graduates or some big achievement like that. All things in moderation - and this was a bit beyond that border stone.

Cakes - Phase three

Next step - lots and lots of cupcakes. Three people have come to help. The cake was made using the Hershey Sourcream cake and the Hershey heritage cake - the Sour Cream cake was the overall favorite. Not only was the taste and texture great - the color was amazing. Little bugs were for the babies and made from cottage cheese.

Saphira decided to dig into the big people cake.

Now she found her own lady bug.

Sweet Dreams

There were just too many good captions to go with this scene that we saw on our walk the other day:

Cakes - phase two

If you're following along - I'm baking an insane number of cakes and cupcakes for our one-tomorrow daughter. Did I mention I've never done cake decorating before? Frosting yes, decorating no.

Cake status

total batches of cakes baked: 7

Recipes used: 4 (used another Hershey - but it is untested as it is a cake base, not a cupcake)

1 large round cake in freezer

2 rectangle cakes in freezer

22 unfrosted large cupcakes in freezer

8 partially frosted large cupcakes in freezer

over 100 unfrosted mini cupcakes in freezer

Today I did the final baking and did a frosting test run with the Ukrainian dyes.

I also decorated Saphira's Sugar-free sirnik that I colored/sweetened with pureed cherries.

Then I decorated 4 cupcakes and 2 other sirnik "cakes" that I'm going to drop by a friend's tomorrow - her son was also born on the 13th!

All the sirnik bug were made using a silicone "bug" form.

The frosting of the cupcakes is taking as much if not more time than I feared - I think I'll put a call out for Saturday help.

Phase three will be Thursday night when I make the "big" flat cake for the country team meeting - as well as make up 30 hard boiled eggs for deviled eggs. Eek.

Incredible edible eggs

I normally buy my eggs from the egg wagon on the way home from the supermarket. Okay - so its the back of a truck - but wagon sounds better. My last egg lady (they seem to move around alot - she was my 4th) always made sure to give me the freshest eggs and would even refuse to sell them to me if they weren't fresh enough - all because I had a baby in tow.

This new egg lady has been pushing me to buy Quail eggs. Well, They're cute enough - but I really didn't see the point. A year or so ago when we were in Ivano-frankivska, the woman we stayed with gave her young daughter raw quail eggs in a yogurt type drink every morning - for health and to fight against radiation and several other health benefits that i took with an interested nod and a generous dose of skeptic's salt.

Well, when the egg lady keeps trying to get you to buy something, the least you can do is find out about it. While I couldn't find any totally authoritative source on the internet, I found enough pseudo sources saying similar things that you just have to believe that they are healthier for you than chicken eggs. Actually the item that most caught my attention was that Quail eggs have twice the iron content of a chicken egg packed into their small shell.

Iron is incredibly important for growing babies and as we don't have all the iron enriched (or no-sugar) cereals that there are in other places Saphira's diet is probably a bit low on natural iron - at least according to the iron calculator. And since I can get 10 eggs for 3 uah (I think) - they're a bargain compared to western prices - so i think I'll give them a try. We'll see if it helps us run faster, jump higher, and conquer illness with a single egg.

The Great Cake B ake - or a probable recipe for insanity

I have these two parts of me - the very direct, keep it organized and simple part and a creative part. The creative part succumbs to odd activities and projects - sometimes ones that never get completed. The organized part often stays too busy too allow the other part to succumb. And sometimes the two parts battle it out. Win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose: I've suffered them all.

Enter Saphira's Birthday. Plan A was to just have a quite song at home with gifts from her family - after all, what does a one-year old who we don't give sugar to need a party for? And then things kept happening - like meeting a mother with a child who has the same birthday, like the country team meeting falling on that weekend, like the newest doorkeeper giving Saphira a treat every time she is on duty and saying she is going to act like a granny since her granny is far away, like the fact that the whole church has been stand-in family for Saphira, like making a photo album and not having the traditional picture of 1st b-day cake smeared all over the place.

Creative side put her foot down and said something had to be done - She decided we needed a big cake and 100 cupcakes to bring to church. She decided on a ladybug theme.

Organizer queen still can't figure out what the big cake is for, and hasn't quite figured out the decorating of all the cupcakes - but she did manage to win out on mini cupcakes instead of big ones (less baking, less frosting, less cost) and after Creative Girl tried making about 30 cupcake liners herself out of parchment paper, she took over that project as well and found a woman to meet her on a street corner and sell her some mini cupcake liners. Now those were a great find.

So far they've both won on the choice of cake - Creative Girl obviously likes variety and Organizer Queen doesn't see the point in baking a lot of cakes unless you discover the best one - so while all the cakes will be chocolate (what other color can you have for a ladybug??) the following recipes (in order of niceness) have been used.

http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateCupcakes.html - method really is everything, they say - while most involved, this recipe gave the best chocolate flavor overall - texture was also different than the others. The top of this cake was matte rather than glossy which was also probably due to method.

http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/4602/Chocolate-Sour-Cream-Cake.aspx (really almost 1st) - very very rich, easier than the 1st recipe, but a bit more pricey with ingredients

and http://www.hersheys.com/recipes/4754/Black-Magic-Cake.aspx - wins on cost and color - but flavor almost tastes boxed :-(

Was going to do a 4th variation - but Organizer Queen missed the fact that she would have to give the mini cupcake tins back when she did and so she didn't have the buttermilk she needed for the other recipe - we settled on a second batch of the sour cream for ease of baking and because there was lots of sour cream.

Would expound on this theme more - but Organizer Queen says that time is ticking and I still have another cake to bake. (If you're wondering - OQ won out on the doing it in advance and putting the cakes in the freezer, will just have to figure out the frosting bit as we come closer to to celebration day/week)