A wedding cake!

It's been, like, forever.... *ashamed-toe-in-dirt-expression* I know. *cough*

Anyway!

Remember that wedding cake I made in May? Here's a photo

I made that. Magical, yes?

Here's another:

I made two ten inch cakes besides the actual wedding cake so that at the party, people could enjoy cake and look at it too. Plus there were a lot of peeps at that party. It was a lot of cake. So, clearly, it was a very successful party. :)

Here's me.

Tada! A cake.

It took me like, a week! And a few weeks of planning and prep before that. Here's a few photos of production, if you're interested. (I know you are.)

Mix the flour and baking powders, salt, etc. Mix butter and sugar and eggs. Mix them together and add some buttermilk. Repeat like 12 times. Phew.

For the 32 cups of buttercream, I did this step a lot:

Eggwhites to fluffy clouds. I then stabilized them with sugar-water boiled to the hard candy stage.
 But before I could whip egg whites, I had to separate them from their yolky side-kicks...

yigh....It took like 4 dozen eggs!


 And then- I added butter.

LOTS OF BUTTER

Like, a gajillion pounds of butter.

And homemade vanilla extract, measured in a heart tablespoon, for extra love:

The process made like, a gajillion cakes...

But it also made about the same number of dishes...

That's like, hardly a fraction of the dishes I ended up doing. Thankfully I baked the whole thing at my church's kitchen and had these ENORMOUS sinks to use. I could have bathed while I did the dishes, if I was so inclined....(I wasn't)

Then I crumb coated each and every layer.

Imagine this, times 10.

And then filling and stacking:

2 ten inch cakes 2 layers each, and then the wedding cake, each with two layers, a 12 inch tier, an 8 inch tier, a 6 inch tier....Do the math. That's a lot of cake.

And a lot of frosting and filling....

But it was made with love, and I had a helpful sister along!

She read to me and kept the tea coming. So I was able to pull through.

See that stove clock? It says 9:34. That's pm. We pulled some late nights on this project....

The final step was assemblation. That's a real word you know...

Dowels keep it from collapsing into itself. Very important, despite not being edible...

And then, I frosted it!

And decorated it!

Have another look at that beauty. Really, just look and be inspired by awe and majesty.

And have some cake, it's on me.

No really, I had a lot of cake on me by the end of the whole thing.

It was really good. I ate a lot of it. And received lots of compliments. And ate lots of cake.
The end

P.s I'm 40 weeks pregnant and 2 days, now, and the contractions this morning amounted to nothing special. Just thought you might like to know. I'd post a picture, but my new camera is still being figured out...

p.p.s Georgia also took quite a few of these photos, but I'm not sure which ones. Give her credit, though.

p.p.p.s I'm now realizing how many times I used the word "like" in this post. Forgive me, but I kind of think it sounds good, so I'm not editing it.

A newsy update and some pregnancy photos

Exciting things happening this summer!
And it's not even summer yet. Well, not officially anyway. It's beginning to feel a lot like it here though.

First off, my sister Georgia is coming to town. She'll be staying with us for awhile, about 6 weeks I think. It will be great to have her and have all kinds of adventures together. The best part, is I think it will really make these last couple months of pregnancy fly by. (That's a good thing right?)

Speaking of pregnancy, here's a little update on that. For folks like my family who may actually be interested:
I am (I think.) 29 weeks along. I think that's somewhere around seven months, but these days it's really hard to translate weeks into months and still know what the heck you're doing. Because 40 weeks is clearly LONGER than 9 months. And what baby comes on his due date anyway?

Here's a pikch:

And quite possibly the thing I'm most psyched about! (Except of course, about Georgia coming, of course.)
*drum roll*

I'm making a wedding cake!!!

Are you as thrilled as I am? No? Oh well!

Boy am I excited. I love making wedding cakes. It's such a glorious undertaking. It's just one of those amazing challenges that when you've accomplished the task you settle back and feel good.

And eat cake. And receive a lot of compliments.

And eat more cake.

This will be my fourth wedding cake. And this time, it's not for me or for someone to whom I'm related, so I feel like I'm really advancing in this career! My average so far has been a wedding cake every two years. So as you can see, this "career" is really hurdling a long!

Anyway, I feel my creativity bounding and springing in all sorts of new directions. Inspiration is flowing and the ideas are swarming. This most certainly will be my most amazing cake yet.

Have I mentioned that I love cake?

I also have some plans to learn to surf this summer. Ever seen a hugely pregnant lady on a surf board? Neither me, it should be funny. Though some might debate that I look "hugely pregnant." A lady told me I looked "a month pregnant" a couple days ago. Sheesh.

A month ago I looked like this:

Eh, about the same I guess.

That's about it. For the next few weeks I may not get around to posting simply because sisters and cakes are serious business. Plus it's summer and that's the time to be outside!

I need to go practice some cake meditation.... "Nommmm" (said like om, get it?)

Nevah mind....

Things I love Thursday: Dandelions

If you haven't figured it out by now, I love dandelions. I eat them and make them into things on a regular basis. Okay, on a springly basis. They're also very lovely to look at. And when they become little puff balls? ZOMG are they fun. I will spread those seeds like nobody's business.

Make a wish!

One thing we always do when dandelions come out is make wine of the petals. Mmm, by always I mean we have every year since we've lived in New Hampshire. (Dandelions don't really grow as abundantly in the lower parts of Florida).

Wine production of years past

In the four years we've been making it, and in the couple years before John moved to FL that he made it, we haven't yet found a perfect recipe. Mostly because we never remembered what we did the year before. We've tried at least 4 different recipes now. This year we decided to really buckle down and figure this out. Wine takes too long to to be so nonchalant about throwing it together. And while dandelion wine is relatively simple and since the main ingredient free, it's not an expensive wine,  it does take some work. After all, we have to pull all those tiny petals out of the bitter green calyx part. That takes time, baby!

Thems are some hot, manly hands... Oh! I mean, see what hard work that is?

Note the addition of tea cups to the process...

Especially when you consider how much of those petals you need.

This year, we made two separate batches, and I very carefully recorded all that we did for each one. One recipe called for six cups of dandelion petals, and one four cups. I'm pretty excited to taste and compare them.

But wine isn't all we make of dandelions. I've told you about pesto and fritters, which I repeated a few times again this year.

 There's also dandelion petal ice cream. The heavenly, light creamy confection that one friend of mine declared "tastes happy." It's true. This ice cream is happiness infused.

Unfortunately, I can't find where I wrote down the recipe, but I can gather from these two photos that I infused the petals into the milk and then pureed it all together. If you're adventurous, try it out. Make it up as you go or follow a vanilla bean ice cream and adapt.

 I think I may have strained it then, but I don't know. This one I haven't yet made this year because my freezer is currently too full to freeze the icecream maker bowl. If I do get a chance to make it, I'll post the recipe for sure.

You can also make a nice tea loaf out of the petals as I did one year.

I don't have the recipe I used way back then, but this one looks very similar. Try it out and be delighted by making something from your yard!

Dandelion potato soup is also a nice treat. Just follow a recipe for potato spinach soup (or even just potato soup) and put dandelions in instead of spinach. Puree and enjoy.

(If you haven't caught on to this yet, I'm using up as many past photos as I can find in relation to this topic. I meant to post most of these as their own thing, but as as per facts 4 and 5, this never happened.)

Two new things I've tried this year are dandelion tincture (extract) and dandelion vinegar.

Dandelion infused vodka, essentially

 Since I just started them a few weeks ago, and these things take a fair amount of time, I don't know how they turned out yet. But I'm excited. I may be able to add a lovely dandelion flavour to my desserts and dishes any time during the year!

So next time you think of trying to eradicate the dandelions in your yard, why not try eating them instead?

Summery Update

Summer is full of activity and adventure. It's hard to find time to stop all the fun and actually take time and record it all sometimes. I've been pretty bad with writing here and even my photo taking has been slack lately. With all my running around and picking berries, making sun tea, going to the beach and delving more into herbalism I just keep forgetting that I need to keep track of it all!

Yesterday, I picked a quart of wild black raspberries. I haven't yet made my mind up about what I want to do with them. I'll need another 3 quarts to make a gallon of wine (according to one recipe, at least) and I'm not sure if I want to put that kind of effort in. It's pretty hot out there, even in the morning! Maybe ice cream, hmm.... Got any ideas? I don't want to just eat them, after all that work!

We've spent some time at Plum Island at John's parents house. They're doing some remodeling including adding 2 decks (besides upgrading their first one). One is a roof top deck and the view is incredible!

Looking to the west south-west

East-northish

We went up to have a look before the actual deck was on, and the only way to get up is by ladders. Soon there will be actual decking and some spiral staircases. I'm really excited to see it done, it'll be some cool architecture.

Of course there's been sun tea:

 

And some very pretty flowers!

Lilies

Roses

Purple and White (Anyone know these?)

Echinacea

We went to Odiorn State Park for Independence Day

 Our group went geo-caching....

There was a tupper-ware in the crags of the rocks....

Which is really great for the pretty hikes you get to go on...

Path through arched trees

 

I crocheted my first hat! I felt inclined to go to my pastor's daughter's baby shower and thought it would make a pretty decent gift. Cheers for youtube.com tutorials!

Baby Beanie

John models the fab hat

And probably the dumbest activity of the summer thus far! *drum roll, please*.......
I made cupcakes!.......No trust me, it was a dumb idea. It was probably the warmest day of the year yet and so humid and muggy. Not only do you not want to be turning your oven on for 30 minutes, but you also don't want to be creaming sugar, beating eggs, whisking flour OR whipping whites and boiling sugar water for buttercream. At least the butter softened fast...

And they tasted good. Earl Grey cupcakes with chocolate orange butter cream.

Not to mention these fail cute hello kitty and flower decorations....

I got the recipe from Katiecakes, and made the buttercream from Joy of Cooking with lots of alterations. I kind of preferred them without the buttercream, though. The earl grey flavour was delicate but really good and the buttercream sort of stole the show. But they were still yummy. Also, the recipe is in metric, which really throws me, but you can use this handy calculator for translating it into American measurements.

We also went to Old Songs Fest, but that deserves its own post; coming soon!