Frosty the Snowman!

Thumpaty thump thump.....

Here's an Easy winter cake that will make your kids smile!  
To make this cake, I used an 8" and a 6" round pan (I think, it doesn't have to be perfect) and a small 6" or 8" square pan.
Trim a bit off the top of the smaller round cake (snowman's head) so that his hat sits better.
After that, simply stack the smaller round cake above the larger round cake.   
Cut the bottom 1/4 of the square cake off and then cut that in half, so that you have 2 equal parts to use as the brim of his hat:

Ice the cake with a pure white frosting, I used a Seven Minute Frosting which can also be called Boiled Icing:

Boiled Icing

2 Egg Whites

1 Cup Sugar

1/3 Cup Water

¼ tsp Cream of Tartar

Dash of salt

¼ tsp vanilla

1.  In a separate bowl, beat  egg whites until very stiff peaks.

2.  In a sauce pan, boil sugar, water, cream of tartar and salt until clear and completely dissolved.

3.  Slowly drizzle clear sugar mixture into eggs while beating continuously until completely combined.

4.  Add ¼ tsp of vanilla. 

I sprinkled Oreo cookie crumbs onto the hat to make it look black and added candies to make the eyes, nose and mouth.  I used blue chocolate Easy Melts for the buttons and red shoestring liquorice for his bow tie.

I added a little extra icing at the bottom of the cake board and sprinkled it with coconut to look like snow.

I  also found snowflake sprinkles at the Bulk Barn which added a nice touch.

To make the large snowflakes, use Royal Icing and with a small piping tip, pipe snowflake shapes onto parchment paper and allow to dry.  You can just freehand snowflakes so that they are all a little different, just as snowflakes are or, you can lay parchment paper over a snowflake image and trace it with the royal icing.

Make extras because they are very fragile and some will surely break.

I love snowflakes!

Christmas Countdown 2011 - Find out how many days until Christmas 2011

Christmas Countdown 2011 - Find out how many days until Christmas 2011: Set www.xmasclock.com as your homepage to count the number of days until Christmas 2011!

Still Awake

It's almost midnight and I'm still awake which is nothing out of the ordinary but I don't usually have company.  There is a little person cuddled up on the couch beside me, we're watching the Curious George Christmas special that I DVRed earlier. 

What's with kids getting sick so often from school?  Was it always like this?  I don't remember being sick much as a child.  I have a great memory but, I probably don't remember how many colds I got when I was 5 years old...

It seems that I can predict the sick cycle, it goes like this...a terrible cold hits, usually just before bed or in the middle of the night.  This is followed by a week of coughing and constant nose blowing.  The following week, the nose blowing becomes a little less frequent but seems to get a lot grosser.  The third week is usually pretty good, a little lingering cough a few random nose blows and then just as we are getting comfortable...we're up watching Curious George at midnight!

I thought that I might be onto something when I kept Sophia home from school today.  She seemed a little tired and run down so to avoid getting too run down and risk getting sick, I thought we could have a lazy day.  Well, I guess the cold had already gotten a foothold, but, we did have a great day.  We managed to get all the Christmas decorations up including the tree....only one broken ornament, the very first one out of the box.

So here we sit, peaceful, quiet, and surrounded by magical Christmas lighting.

Bless the winter cold :0)

Horton Hears a Who Party!!!

I wanted guests to think that they had stepped into the pages of a Dr Seuss book, but, decorations weren't easy to come by so I had to get creative!  I ransacked many of the local furniture stores' cardboard bins, to find large pieces of cardboard, which I used to create the characters from the book.  It turns out that it was a very simple and I think successful way to create just the look I was going for!

Horton Ears