Double Chocolate Baby Shower Cake

Hello dears.  How are you all?

I am doing all right.  I am cheering up because guess what!  Tomorrow is February.  I am going to wear a red coat.

I am going to paint my fingernails pink.

I am going to try to go at least one day a week without wearing a wooly beanie hat.

I will watch the Oscars and pick and choose among the dresses and the actors.

I might even try lipstick.  To go with the red coat.

I don't have a lot of pictures for you tonight.  There is no light in January, so there are no good pictures.  But this is a cake I made for a friend's baby shower.  A big cake.  A big chocolate cake.

I like a big cake.

The recipe is simple, just chocolate cake and chocolate frosting.  Throw it up into three tiers (use supports or it will collapse!  You have been warned).  Cheat with fabric flowers.

I'd love to take a cake decorating class some day.

Enjoy with friends.  Preferably while eating other pink food.

Because it's February, and that is what we do.

**OOOH and announcement!  I almost forgot!  Kelley Madden?  Are you out there?  Paging Kelley Madden?  You won the Boutique Academia giveaway, but I haven't been able to contact you!  If you can contact me, I would love to send you your prize.  My e-mail is anna@icyviolets.com.  Kelley Madden?  I hope to hear from you soon!  If I can't find you I may have to choose another winner, and I would feel bad about that, 'cause you won baby! **

Summer Foraging

 
Today I walked around my town

Captions not in rhyme.

To catch the fruit that's falling down.

Down side of mint:  it spreads like a weed.  Up side of mint:  your neighbors will beg you to take some.

In neighbor's yards, from tree to tree,

They cast their treasures down on me.

In purples, reds, in golds and browns,

Green walnuts make yellow dye.  Dried walnuts make brown dye.  The oil is citrus-y, and is anti-bacterial.

A feast for kings and queens I found.

It makes me smile, it makes me think,

I see you, sneaky grapes.

It puts no dishes in my sink.

Rose hips make tea and syrup, and are chock full of vitamin C.

I might be poor and maybe small,

But fruit is good, and free to all.

Rosemary

It makes me grateful, summertime,

It makes me feel the world's benign.

Crab apples taste like Smarties...recipes to come...

And so I close my little song,

Bay tree = tree of life

And wish you fruit, all summer long.

A Wedding Cake - ta da!

Here it is folks! After all that build up - I pulled it off!



Three tiers, 12" 9" 6" and a great excuse to buy new pans.



Chocolate cake with raspberry jam filling, buttercream topping sealed with fondant. All my favorite things come together.





See my little floral wire staples to hold down the ivy? Yeah, I made that up. Yeah, I'm proud about it.



While, like any baker (or creative person in general, probably), I can't stop picking it apart looking for flaws, I have to say I'm pretty proud of it. It beats my last wedding cake, and I can only hope my future ones will be even better!





People can make money making wedding cakes, right?





Money? Me? It could happen.

The Mushroom Festival

Do you like mushrooms?



There is a place just outside town here in Eugene called the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum. They do a mushroom festival once a year, and invite the whole community.



Of course this was my first time going, and it was fantastic. I felt like a little kid. There was old-timey music playing and delicious, earthy smells floating around. You had to drive into the park a ways to get there, and then walk, leaving all evidence of cars behind. The festival was in a little dell, and with the grey skies and the forest looming behind us, it was like going back in time.



Of course it was Halloween as well, so people and kids were all dressed up. Often around a mushroom theme. Witches, scarecrows, toadstools and slugs all walking around. And of course, the hippies.

A big group of folks was dancing in front of the band. It made me laugh. It seems like people where I'm from are too uptight for that, at least when there are strangers around.



I don't know. Maybe it is just me that is uptight. But people were definitely having fun. It was woodsy, and earthy, and happy. There was a scarecrow contest, and this green man was the winner.



There were mushrooms of all kinds on display, common and rare, poisonous and delicious (carefully marked, of course).



Mushrooms that smelled like hazelnuts, apples, socks. Lobsters, toadstools, truffles and lichens.



Every shape and size.



Some tiny as pin heads.



Some big as my head.





Every color of the rainbow.



And YES, if you were wondering, there were mushrooms to eat. More than we could afford to try, and all washed down with fresh-pressed, hot apple cider. Do you know how good that is?



There were fried blue oyster mushrooms. There was cream of mushroom soup. And there were two kinds of mushroom ragouts in phyllo dough. One with chicken, and one that was vegan. I got the vegan one, not because I am vegan, but because I thought without all that chicken there would be more room for mushrooms.



Yeah, I think I could live here for a while.

October Harvest

Well, my desert vacation is over. I haven't had time to do much baking, but I did get the chance to put my garden to bed. It was so nice, and so beautiful out working in the sun (it's hard to tell whether its Fall or not yet in Utah), I had to pull out my camera.

So Oregon is beautiful. And Utah is beautiful. But they are beautiful in different ways. Oregon's beauty is mostly based on water, I think, and the green and shady things that grow from it. A lot of people actually prefer this kind of natural beauty.

But in desert places (or high arid steppes, as the Salt Lake climate actually is), the energy comes from the sun, and the beauty is not in green things but in bright, fiery things that reflect that light back.

So without further ado, here are some photos of the final harvest of the year - my last Utah garden (at least for now).


I plant these every year, and I forget what they're called every year. Something with a G...galzanas? Galeanas? Gazongas?? Who knows. But they open up with the light every day into bright, sunny star shapes, and I just love them.


The last of the zinnias. They are my favorite flower because of the fiery colors they come in, and the loads of blossoms they put out. These actually do grow in Oregon, but they still look out of place to me if they aren't in bright, bright sun.






Here are some herbs, melissa, chamomile, and sage. They are currently drying in twine-tied bundles over my windowsill.


Saving them for winter teas.


Here are some marigold blossoms...I know they are edible, so I am drying and saving them too until I can figure out how to eat them. Also I just think they will look pretty dried in a mason jar for the winter.


Grapes and apples. I don't have much going in the way of fruit yet. Maybe next year.




Mmmm nothing like these to keep the frost off.








Not a bad harvest for a little kitchen garden. It's almost enough to make you want to cook a huge feast and give thanks...

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