A Castle Cake

Since I only get comments on my posts about food, here's a post about food!

I got the assignment of making refreshments for a Young Women event that was themed around princesses and castles. I knew from my sister that you could easily make a castle cake like this (photo taken from www.bettycrocker.com):
The problem is, this cake isn't very accessible to eat. It's three layers of 8 x 8, topped with 3 layers of 4 x 4, topped with 3 layers of 2 x 2, topped with a sugar cone to make the center spire. I would have to make a separate cake to make sure every girl got refreshments.

So I decided I should do a 9 x 13 cake. But I also wanted to make sure I had something that would look good. So I kept looking for other designs. And I found this one (photo taken from picsicio.us):
It works. And the towers add a lot (photo taken from www.thebamboosprouts.com).
Of course, the photo didn't have instructions with it, so I wasn't sure how many layers the cake was . . . but I made three cakes, since I figured that was how many we would want to eat overall.

The first layer of cake. I cut out the corners so the ice cream cones would fit.
I also discovered that it is almost impossible to get a 9 x 13 cake out of the pan without it breaking. Especially if I make it to be a super moist cake. So I cut it in half.

Layer 2:
Clearly, two layers is not enough, so I stacked all three.
The filling is raspberry jam that we made as a YW activity last month. I thought it was overly sweet for bread, but perfect for cake.
Here it is after 1 lb of powdered sugar. There's even a side that's not covered. Isn't that disgusting? As I cut the cake later, the frosting just fell off one side.
There is a reason to do a crumb coat. Here's the cake after its 2nd coat of frosting (another pound of powdered sugar)--much more elegant. Yes, it did end up a kind of weird color.
And then I added another half pound of powdered sugar with decorations! (Can you tell I don't generally like frosting?)
Top view:
Side view:
I filled in spots with more frosting.
And here's the finished product at the event. (The young woman who took this picture also posted it to Facebook from her phone, right then.)
In case you're wondering, it tasted good, too. (Except for the frosting.)

Hiking

At the family reunion, Shauna (David's oldest sister), Aaron (Shauna's husband), Bryce (David's sister Karen's husband), David, and I went hiking to some really old and tall trees. Check out this trunk. I could easily go through it (and I did).
Here's David climbing through it.
This picture of Shauna gives you a good idea of how huge the tree was. Actually though, it wasn't a tree; it was a stump. Just a really really tall stump.
David, Bryce, and Shauna.
David, me, and Shauna on the "elephant branch." David and Shauna reminisced here about getting all 6 siblings lined up for pictures when they were younger.
This was a cool-looking rotting tree that David and I fit inside.
(It's amazing how different these two pictures look on the different cameras!)
We also hiked down to the coast, which is just breathtaking. (Okay, so really, it takes more breath to hike back up to the road, but anyway.) Here's Shauna watching the waves crash against the rocks.

Cooking for 22

This was our night to be in charge of dinner at the reunion. Yes, I had all 4 burners going at once, with the 4 largest skillets in the house.
David made pesto with fresh basil from the garden. And isn't that full granite backsplash great?

Kayaking

One of the fun things about family reunions on David's side is the kayaking.
We took the nephews and one niece with us down part of the river. I really like this picture of Tanner and me, because you can really see how low we got riding the waves.
We also went upriver, to a run with class II and class III rapids. Here is a class III rapid. (This picture is from 2008--we didn't take a waterproof camera with us this summer.)
And here it is again (also from a 2008 photo).
This is not where I capsized. I capsized on another (also class III) rapid.

I was going down a narrow shoot when I fell in the river. Being the calm person that I am, I reached for my oar. In doing so, I missed my brother-in-law, Aaron, reaching for me. As I came up, I hit the bottom of his kayak and felt my sunglasses sliding off my face. I came up again, and this time grabbed onto another brother-in-law, Steve's, kayak and quickly lifted my legs up to avoid rocks as we continued through the rapids, me holding onto the front of Steve's kayak. (I'm sure I threw off his steering ability with additional weight and drag.)

Once we got to a calmer point in the rapid, I hopped in Steve's kayak and rode out the rest. Miriam (my sister-in-law) probably had the hardest task of riding through the rapid while holding onto a second kayak, which limited her ability to steer. Once through the rapid, I got my kayak back, and we finished out the run.

Here's the waterfall at the end. (Again, this picture is from 2008.)
Only 2 of us made it through the falls without getting our kayaks full of water. I was one. And, of the 4 of us who capsized, mine was the most spectacular. So, it was a good run.

Dairy Farm

We went to a dairy farm with some friends of ours, Mark and Teandra. There were a bunch of these life-sized cow sculptures.
(Here's proof that I was there, too.)
We got to see a calf being born. Here he is, moments after. (The line you see is the seam in the glass wall.)
An hour later, we came back, and his mother was licking his face.
This is such a Bambi moment! We didn't hang around to see him actually get up, but I'm sure he did.
Yes, newborn calves really weigh between 75 and 100 pounds.
Anytime we were near the actual cows, we were separated by glass. They were pretty serious about keeping germs out.

This is a huge turntable where the cows are milked.
They don't give chocolate milk.
We also enjoyed cheese samples made there at the dairy, as well as their ice cream. It was tasty!

Delectable Foods

David enjoys trying out new dishes, and perfecting them to be restaurant quality. This weekend, he added Chicken Parmesan and Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms to his repertoire.

Here's the Chicken Parmesan:
And the Portabella mushroom stuffed with mozzarella cheese, pesto, and sun-dried tomatoes.
David doesn't like mushrooms, so he also made stuffed bell peppers. Here are both stuffed with sausage.
They were delicious! (And there are plenty of leftovers to eat, which means that I don't have to cook for a while.)

Baking Adventures

I made a bunch of goodies for a dessert auction fundraiser. Here I am cooking.
My first cake was a chocolate chip bundt cake. It came out of the oven looking beautiful! The recipe said I should let it cool 10 minutes in the pan, and then turn in out onto a cooling rack. That part didn't go so well.
In retrospect, that's really the best cake for me to have messed up on, because it tasted amazing and David and I got to eat it!

For the next cake, I was super careful about getting it off the pan. I succeeded. (I know, this picture shows it still on the pan, but trust me.)
I was going to make a cheesecake, but cream cheese wasn't on sale and I only had 2 packages. So I tried a no-bake cheesecake recipe, which really had so little cheesecake filling that it was more of a cheese torte. And then I made it look pretty. Here, I needed three hands to hold spatulas to make sure the graham cracker crust didn't break as I moved the torte from the pan to its platter. This dessert created a bidding war.
I also made a moist chocolate cake with fudge filling and whipped cream frosting. It looks pretty plain compared to the other cakes, and consequently sold for a lower amount. Even the lemon bars beat its price.
Here are the lemon bars. I kept them in one piece because it makes for a nicer presentation. This kept sliding around on my "platter," and every time it moved, I could see the grease that was transferred to the paper underneath. Not the most appetizing thing.
All in all, a good contribution to the fundraiser.

Another Baking Story
I made David a cheesecake for our anniversary. (This was when I still had 5 packages of cream cheese in the fridge, so it was a real cheesecake.) I made it the day before, and then washed and put away all the pans that would give away the surprise. I hid the cheesecake under some tortillas in the fridge, where I didn't expect David to look.

I decided to make Sesame Chicken for dinner, which incidentally happens to be the first dish I ever made David. When I pointed this out to him, he jokingly asked, "And is there cheesecake in the fridge, too?" There went my great surprise.