It's the Thought That Counts

Whenever there is a birthday in our office, we go out to lunch and come back for dessert. Usually Clare or I volunteer to make something yummy. Tomorrow we are celebrating Michael's birthday and I decided I would make his cake because I thought of a great idea! {after making the cake... not sure how good of an idea it really was.}

Michael's favorite band is Muse and he has a background on his computer which was my inspiration for his Birthday Cake -

My crazy "great idea" was to attempt to make his cake resemble this CD cover. Well, apparently today wasn't one of my best baking days. Here is what happened during Cake Baking, Round 1:

Gathered all of my ingredients

Mixed up the batter and put it in the oven. Note: during that process, I came to the conclusion that me and the "folding" technique don't quite get along. I'm sure you would have loved pictures of what happened... let's just say the chocolate cake batter became makeup on my face!

....and something went horribly wrong! I think this flat thing weighed like 12 pounds. Perhaps there is a huge different between the flour I have and "self rising" flour?? That's the only thing I can think of... argh. But thank goodness I have a cupboard full of box cake mixes! Round 2! :)

Much better!!

I traced the CD cover and cut out the shadows. I pondered for quite some time how I should go about making the shadow shapes on the cake. After today's baking experience, I am forcing myself to learn how to use fondant!! Pretty sure that would have been the best way to do this. I'm not too pleased with my black sugar plan...

But hey... it's the thought that counts, right?! :)

Year of the Tiger

Hello! Happy Chinese New Year! Oh... and Happy Valentines Day for all you LoveBirds!

I decided to try something new out that I saw on another blog, and it was fitting for today.... Fortune Cookies!

I loooove Fortune Cookies, but not necessarily for the cookie. I love opening up the cookie to find out what that tiny piece of paper has to tell me. Unfortunately today, my brain wasn't being too creative and I didn't come up with any good fortunes to put in besides Happy Valentines Day and Happy Chinese New Year. But, since this was just my test run, I promise there will be much better fortunes next time :)

These cookies definitely take practice and you can only do like three at a time, but they were fun to do! If I had chocolate, I would have dipped them and made them pretty too.

It's a thin batter and just a teaspoon per cookie.

Looks like pancakes! Luckily, they only bake for about 5
minutes so even though you can only do a couple, it goes fast.

My boring fortunes!

And.... my awesome fortune cookies! Not too bad for my
first time I think! (I messed up a couple so I did a
taste test, and they actually taste good too! ha)

No work tomorrow thanks to the Presidents! So I'm baking a chocolate cake for someone's birthday :) I'm sure you'll get to see pictures of it if it turns out as planned. Now it's time for some Sushi! My dad is taking me and my mom out, perhaps they didn't want me to sit at home alone on this Hallmark holiday?! Hey...fine with me! Sushi and sake makes me happy! Hope you all have a great rest of the day!

Always In the Kitchen

So tonight while I was standing in my favorite place - the kitchen - I decided that I should try out one of these fancy shmancy blog things to share all my kitchen adventures with everyone.

Anyone that knows me well, knows that I am ALWAYS IN THE KITCHEN! One of my favorite things to do is have friends and family over so that I can test out some new creations in my kitchen. And almost every time I create something, I bust out my camera or my phone to take a picture so I can share with others. So heck, why not just post all my creations on here! I wish I could have everyone over all the time and feed you, butttt that can't happen. So you can just stare at the pictures and hope for scratch and sniff computers someday to make it a little bit more enjoyable :)

Well - might as well post what I made for dinner tonight for Nichole and I. Since I just moved into my new home, I have new pans and gadgets to try out thanks to my mom (who also is always in the kitchen, hmmm wonder where I got that from!). She bought me a cast iron grill pan so I tested it out tonight.

~ TriTip Spinach Salad ~

threw a few spices onto some tritip and grilled it in my new pan - the grill lines make it so much better! (you've gotta have pretty food)

steak and grilled onions?! yumm.

put the two on top of some spinach (which I just recently started eating, and love!) and add one of my favorite things: cheese! feta would have been delicious but mozzarella is great too. and ta-da!

We had ourselves a simple yet deeelish salad and some wine and our tummies were definitely happy!

That's it for tonight - I'm sure this will be updated VERY often since I am constantly cooking and baking. Hope you guys enjoy drooling over my kitchen creations! :)

Sweetdreams ~ Sarah