Blackberry Sorbet & Banana "Ice Cream"

I got a new appliance! Bet you can't get what that is, heh. That's right. An ice cream maker! It's not a very big one, just a 1.5 quart Rival, but still. I'm excited!


I was looking at this months's Ladies Home Journal, and they had a section of homemade ice cream recipes. Next thing you know, we happen to be out shopping for necessities and we saw our new appliance calling to us.


Of course, i didn't make ice cream my first time around. Instead i decided that instead of going out and buying cream and whole milk and half and half and all the other stuff you need for actual ice cream, i'd start out with some sorbet and sherbet.


I don't know about you, but this is the time of year i really get my fruit on. I love nothing better than to can some jams, and pick fruit (the free-er the better, in my opinion), and experiment with the cheapest fruits in the market.


I already had tons of blackberries at home, and i picked up some bananas while we were out.


I started out with the bananas.


It's not something i invented. I first saw it on Pinterest, but that site has this irritating habit of logging me out and when i go to the home page, i see something AMAZING that i just have to try, but when i go to pin it, i'm not logged in. So then by the time i get logged in, the pin is no longer on the front page, and frankly, i'm more than a little peeved.


BUT, then the same Ladies Home Journal happened to have the same thing in it this month, and i was like YES!


So, the recipe said take some bananas and cut them into chunks and freeze them, and then when they're frozen, use a food processor to puree them. Well, i don't have a food processor, and i don't know if my blender is badass enough to puree frozen bananas.


Instead, i cut up bananas and put the chunks directly into my blender. I have a Wavestation blender for smoothies and shakes and stuff, and i find it is way better than a plain blender.


I pureed them until they were nice and smooth. For future reference, i think i am going to add a teaspoon or so of a fruit preserving agent in there next time to prevent oxidation, because as the mixture got cold it got a little brown, BUT it did not affect the taste.


After it was in the freezer long enough to get a little slushy and frozen on the bottom (maybe 3 hours) i took it out and i put it all in my ice cream maker. I turned it on and let it go for about 50 minutes or so, then i poured it back in the bowl and froze it until it was hard. It scoops really easily.


For the blackberries, i mixed up a simple sugar syrup.


Take 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar. Dissolve this together in a saucepan until it starts boiling. Make sure and stir it up so the sugar dissolves. When it starts to boil, turn the heat down until it simmers for 5 minutes.


Take it off the heat. Let it sit and cool til it's about room temperature.


Take 5 cups (2 pints) of blackberries and wash and drain them. Put them into the blender (or food processor) and puree them.


Put the blackberry puree into the blender with 1/4 cup of the cooled syrup into the ice cream maker and blend it up. Add the blackberry mixture and about 1¼ cups of the syrup into the ice cream maker and let it go for about 50 minutes or so. Then you can pour the sherbet mixture into another container and freeze it up. It is also easily scoopable.


I am so pleased with how this all turned out that i am going to continue to experiment with more flavors. So be forewarned... i may get addicted to this fast!


The best part is everything is absolutely FAT FREE. You can't beat that with a stick. For me, it's awesome, because i am trying to eat healthier.

The banana sherbet/ice cream alone is awesome. My kids loved it.

Add blackberry AND banana sherbet and you have two kinds of awesome. These flavors actually paired very well together. YUMOLA.

Super Simple Blackberry Cobbler!

It is blackberry season in Illinois, and i am happy about that! They are my favorite berry! I love them all, whether they be tart or sweet.

For Father's Day, i baked my FIL a blackberry cobbler. It's his favorite. This will buy me DIL Brownie Points for MONTHS.

I did a quick Google search for blackberry cobbler recipes, and i ended up using a simple one from Betty Crocker.

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups fresh or frozen blackberries (thawed and drained)
1 cup sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
½ cup melted butter (1 stick)

Heat oven to 375°.

In medium bowl stir together blackberries and sugar, and let sit for about 20 minutes until a syrup begins to form.

In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients. Add milk and combine. Then add melted butter and combine again. Spread in ungreased 8x8 pan. Spoon berry mixture over the batter.

Bake 45 to 55 minutes or until dough rises and is golden.

Serve plain or with cream.

My house smells SO good right now!

Sugar your berries! I added an extra half cup because my father-in-law loves his extra sweet!

Whisk your dry ingredients together. Add 1 cup milk.

Add your butter and combine this again.

Spread the batter in the pan.

Drop berries and sugar onto the batter, covering the whole surface.

Pop this baby in the oven!

Yum! This looks so delicious!

And that is ALL there is to it! The hardest part of this is picking the berries! Of course, you don't HAVE to pick them, but i find a certain satisfaction in knowing this beautiful dessert came 100% naturally off the side of the road, and some ingredients i already had in my fridge!

Would You Like S'more?

I've been on a bit of a hiatus lately, and i apologize if you've missed seeing my posts, but summer is upon us and that means moms become even more busy. It should be the other way around or something. I know i always look forward to summer because that means i no longer have 100 things to remember for the 3 schools my kids are scattered across, and i don't have all the shuttling them around and myriad duties associated with the school year. However, even though i don't have to get up at the crack of dawn or worry about what day Box Tops need to be handed in, i find that my kids require constant attention. That's so annoying. Haha.


I've been sitting on this recipe for weeks. I was on a site that i peruse for rewards (because i'm frugal like that) and i was in the video section trying to earn a few extra points when i came across their video recipe section. I was surprised because i didn't know they had such a thing! I had watched a lot of crappy mini-documentaries and they had older clips from The Martha Stewart Show? Wha..? I had been wasting time.


Jennifer Shea from Trophy Cupcakes in Seattle was showing how to make S'mores cupcakes. Actually they call them Chocolate Graham Cracker and Toasted Marshmallow Cupcakes But we all know what that means. As i peruse Pinterest and other sites, i see S'mores are kind of overdone lately, everyone has a version, but i still wanted to give a go at some recipes.


The only problem was that i wanted a *reason* to make these cupcakes. I will make cookies or brownies or bars for any old day, but cupcakes and cakes need an occasion. I have my reasons. When i am making something that takes this extra time and effort, i want someone besides my kids (and husband) to tell me what they think. Unless the recipe will only make 12 cupcakes, it seems a waste to make all that stuff for a family of 5, especially since my girls will lick off the icing and then run off to play. 


When my friend invited us over for a cookout, i was excited! Perfect timing for a cupcake. She didn't ask me to bring anything, so i figured i would make it a surprise.


Recipe:




Chocolate Graham Cracker and Toasted Marshmallow Cupcakes


Cupcake Batter


Sift together:
1 1/3 c ap flour
3/4 c + 1 TBSP cocoa powder
2 c + 2 TBSP sugar
1.5 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt


Add in mixer bowl :
2 eggs
1/2 c veg oil
1 c milk
1 tsp vanilla


Add wet to dry ingredients in mixer bowl. Scrape bowl sides. Mix 2 min.


Add 1 cup boiling water into mixer. Incorporate. Let sit.


Bottom crust


1.5 c graham cracker, crushed
1/4 c sugar
1/3 c melted butter


Take graham mixture and add TBSP in each cupcake liner. Press down with small juice glass to make crust.


Add 1 tsp chopped bittersweet chocolate. (I actually used a sprinkling of semi-sweet chocolate chips instead.)


Put in oven at 350 for 5 minutes to create crust.


Scoop in cake mixture. Fill up to 3/4 full in liners. Add a bit more chopped choc on top, then a bit graham mixture on top of that.


Bake 18-20 at 350, cool 10 minutes in pan.


Meringue topping


8 lrg egg whites
2 c sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar


Take ingredients and mix on stove in double boiler til sugar dissolves til too hot too touch and can't feel the granules.


Add vanilla when ready to mix.


With mixer, beat for 5-7 minutes, until meringue is stff. Pipe onto cupcakes in a cloud.


Use benzomatic torch (industrial strength) and lightly 'roast' the topping. Be careful not to torch paper. Make as dark as you like (not too dark).




I decided to double this recipe. I knew i'd be taking a lot of them to my friend's house but 2 of my kids weren't going to be there and in case they all got gobbled up, i wanted to reserve some for home.


I will just say right off, this recipe would be better done a batch at a time. It all worked out in the end but i had moments.


So, you mix up your cake batter, just like above. Make sure you start your water boiling somewhere in the process so it's done around the time you need it. I had my husband assisting me with putting the cupcake liners in the pans while i did this part. When the batter was all mixed, i let it sit while i used my rolling pin and crushed up graham crackers in a freezer bag. You only need one sleeve of crackers to make 1.5 cups of crumbs, but i made a double batch. Two sleeves makes just shy of 3 cups of crumbs, and i had leftover when i was done, so don't worry about not having enough.


Find a juice glass (or something) that fits the bottom of your cupcake tin. When i bought my Anchor glass baking pans, this little measuring cup came in the box. It's awesome. My husband loves it for measuring alcohol accurately, and i love it because it's the cutest little measuring cup ever, and it has ML and measuring spoon as well as cup measurements on it. It fits perfectly in the bottom of the cupcake tins.


Take a tablespoon and drop some buttery graham cracker crumbs in the bottom. It says use a whole TBSP of crumbs, but i used less and it still made a lovely little crust. So just experiment with what works for you in terms of amount. Take your cup and press the crumbs down and turn it until the whole bottom is covered and pressed down evenly.

I sprinkled some chocolate chips on top of the crusts. It's far simpler than chopping and sprinkling bittersweet chocolate, and last time i checked, you don't make s'mores with bittersweet chocolate anyhow. Pop the crusts with chocolate in the oven for about 5 minutes. The chocolate doesn't really melt into a sheet or anything, and i wasn't motivated to mess up my crusts by trying to spread melty chocolate chips all over them either. So my lazy shortcut is to leave the chips alone.

When you remove the pans, just set them onto some towels or trivets so you can continue working even though the pans are still hot. If you actually have some time, you can wait until they're cooler but i did not have the luxury.

Take a small ice cream scoop and scoop some batter, which will be thinner than normal batter thanks to the addition of boiling water, and fill the cupcake liners about 3/4 full. You don't want to overfill these, because once they hit the top of the liners, they will spread. If your tins are non-stick coated, a little over spill is not a big issue because they will pop right off with a minimum of effort. Once the liners are all filled, take some more graham cracker crumbs and sprinkle each cupcake as generously as you'd like. I did not sprinkle more chocolate on top of the crumbs as the recipe suggested because i figured they are chocolate cupcakes and that would just be overkill. (Besides, i had run out of chocolate chips, so...)

Some of the graham crackers sunk into the batter a little bit. But we were kind of messy in our execution. ;-)

I don't have a double boiler for the next step, but i can improvise. All you need is a saucepan and a metal mixing bowl that fit together. Don't overfill your saucepan with water. All you need is enough water to hit the bottom of your top pan. There will be steam, and you don't want that kind of mess if it boils out the sides.

This is actually the part where making a double batch became a pain in the butt. The meringue mixture took way longer than it should have to get hot. The recipe says that the mixture is done when the sugar granules are dissolved and the mixture is too hot to touch. My husband thought i was joking when i said this to him because he said that it's pretty stupid to be in the kitchen and have to take one for the team in the form of a scalded finger. However, if you keep whisking with a fork, occasionally just lift your fork and gently touch a drop. Once it starts getting uncomfortably warm, just whisk it for another minute or two and you don't actually have to burn the crap out of yourself. As for the sugar, if you whisk it enough, the sugar WILL dissolve and you don't have to worry about if you can feel granules or not. If you've ever made rock candy or fudge, you'll know what i mean. At some point the stirring takes care of that for you.

When it is finally hot, turn off the heat and carefully lift your bowl out of the saucepan using hot pads or oven gloves or towels... and carefully move it over to your mixer and pour it in. You don't need a stand mixer of course, so if you don't have one, just set it onto a surface that won't scald and take your mixer to it.

The double batch took what seemed like ages to stiffen in the stand mixer.

If you've never made meringue or worked with egg whites this way before, you ideally want it to make stiff peaks. Think mountains. However i think i was working with too much at once, and it never really got quite that stiff for me. Once i was able to lift my mixer and have meringue that would stand on itself, i was ready to pipe. I took a piping bag and inserted my coupler and had it ready to to go standing in a tall glass, and i poured a bit of meringue in it. This was quite messy. I kept the rest of the meringue mixing after i got my bag ready so it would continue to stiffen as i worked. Beware, do not overfill the bag and work quickly, as it WILL come out the end of your bag as gravity works its charm.

My first few cupcakes were rather messy, but the meringue stayed on the cupcakes, so i was happy enough with it. It maintained a gooeyness that i think works in S'mores.

As you can see, it was stiff enough to pile and have definition, but it isn't quite stuff enough to go on top of a lemon meringue pie. 

Next was the part that made me a bit nervous. I told my husband several weeks ago i wanted a culinary torch. He was out one day and bought me a small handheld torch that looked a lot like the ones i had my eye on, but it gave us a lot of trouble when we went to use it. We're taking it back, but it did work enough to get this job done, and now i know i need a better quality torch for my next combustible project. On the video clip, they used a really big industrial Benzomatic torch, but i thought that looked too unwieldy for me, personally.

You don't want to get the tops too dark, of course, just enough that it's toasted and has a nice color to them.

And here is a shot of one in the middle. You can see the crust on the bottom. These are REALLY tasty.

They must have looked messy because more kids ate them than adults. I tried to coax one of my friend's friend to eat one and he said he wasn't big on icing. I told him there wasn't any icing, just meringue. But he didn't eat one. My friend's husband, however, said they were fantastic! He said he wasn't big on marshmallow, but he was impressed. I explained there wasn't ANY marshmallow at all, and he said that explained it! I left a whole plate of them so they could be enjoyed after i was gone.

They aren't as messy as they look. I promise. But, after all, S'mores ARE messy business.

I am glad i tried these. They are definitely on my Make Again list. And now i am not nearly as scared of using a torch, either. I had a lot of 'firsts' on this recipe, so i felt like i learned a lot. And that IS why i do this, after all. It's not just for the treats, although that bonus is quite nice.

Pineapple Upside-Down Cupcakes

I've had my eye on this recipe for a week or so, but life is busy right now, with the end of school hoopla. I think teachers are every bit as excited to get rid of our kids as the kids are for summer. The last week of school is filled with kiddie pool parties, Olympic and Field Days, movie afternoons, and parents are trying to cram in those last birthday parties. Plus, i've had three weekends of graduations. I'm excited summer is nearly here. Not that my life will become less crazy, but perhaps less scheduled.


Today i happen to be home with the kids without boys or men of any kind. The kids are happy to run off and play, and i knew the time had come to have my kitchen to myself.


I found the recipe on Epicurean.com.


Fruit topping:


1 can (20 oz.) pineapple chunks (i used pineapple rings)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted


Cake batter:


1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
½ tsp. baking powder
¼ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup reserved pineapple juice or milk
1 egg


Preheat the oven to 350°. Generously grease a muffin tin with shortening.


Drain the pineapple, reserving the juice. Lay pineapple on a plate layered with paper towels to drain completely.


In a small bowl mix together the brown sugar and melted butter for the topping. Divide evenly between the cups. Arrange the pineapple on top of the topping decoratively. Set aside.


In a large bowl mix together your dry ingredients. With an electric mixer, beat in the pineapple juice and the butter. Beat for 2 minutes or until batter is smooth. Add egg and beat it in well. Spoon (or use an ice cream scoop) to add the cake batter to the muffin cups. Bake for 30 minutes or til a toothpick comes out clean.


Cool cupcakes for 5 minutes and then place a wire rack over the muffin pan and turn them out onto it. Let cool completely.


Makes 12 cupcakes.

If you choose to use pineapple rings, which i did because i think it's nicer, please note that you will have to cut sections out to make them fit.

The recipe itself did not warn me this was going to be such a hot mess. Be warned. I had to loosen each cupcake from the sides of the tin with a spoon. I did turn out a few onto a wire rack once cool, but i don't recommend it. The pineapple tends to want to slide off. So i used the same spoon to lift each one out and turn it over to the rack after that.

'

They turned out well though, after i figured that last part out!

I don't have any fancy way to get natural light photos, nor do i have fancy plates and all that good stuff yet. Don't they look delicious? They are too. I have already eaten two. These won't last 5 minutes once the boys get home.

Right after i popped these in the oven, i doubled up the recipe and made a 9x13 cake with this recipe. It's taking longer to bake but YUM. I love pineapple upside down cake!

ETA: A photo of my cake!

Low-Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread

I've had some bananas slowly going downhill on my counter for a few days. You know how it is. I figured if i didn't make bread or something, then it would just be another waste.


Instead of going with my stand-by banana bread recipe, i thought i would try something different. Once upon a time i made a kickass pumpkin bread with oatmeal in it and i can't find the recipe anywhere. It's really annoying. No one in my family except me will eat oatmeal AS oatmeal. I'm always trying to find ways of putting it into their food so it's just there, but in a tasty way. I grew up on oatmeal, and i love it, and don't understand any of them at all as they turn their nose up at it.


I found this recipe which was adapted by Joy the Baker from the Weight Watchers recipe.


Lately, i run back and forth from my kitchen to my computer as i read recipes. I'd write them down but that takes longer. I find writing them down doesn't really help me in the long run because i just lose it and have to do it again later if i want to make it again. That's what happened to my oatmeal pumpkin bread recipe. I'm awful about it. I have recipes all over the place.


Well, the down side to this is sometimes i just throw things together and then by the time i read the recipe again,  i think 'Oh, crap... that's not what i did!'


So, i will now hopefully entertain you (or not) with the method to my madness.


The recipe goes like this:


1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour.
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
3 tsp canola or walnut oil
1 large egg, beaten
2 egg whites
3 large ripe bananas
1 cup uncooked old-fashioned oats


Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour loaf pan and set aside. In a large bowl stir together the dry ingredients, including the oats and cinnamon.


At first, this was all i read of the recipe. I was like 'Gotcha!' and ran off to the kitchen.


So i combined my dry ingredients in one bowl (i used allspice since i couldn't find my cinnamon anywhere!), and mashed my bananas in a 2nd bowl, and then i threw my egg, egg whites, and 3 Tbsp (not tsp.) of applesauce instead of oil into one bowl together and kind of beat the hell out of it with a fork.


And then i came back and read more of the recipe, to make sure i wasn't forgetting anything.


In a smaller bowl, mash bananas with a fork. Add oil and whole egg and mix thoroughly.


Add wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Batter will be fairly thick.


In a medium sized bowl, with an electric hand mixer, beat the egg whites until medium stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the batter in three additions.


Pour batter into pan and bake until top of bread is firm to touch, about 40-50 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes in the pan. Then flip out and let cool completely on a wire rack.


Loaf makes about 10 slices, 4 WW points apiece.


Hmm. Well, obviously i didn't follow the recipe. So i got my electric mixer and mixed the egg/applesauce mixture for a couple minutes. No way i was going to get stiff peaks but whatever.


And i didn't fold it into the mixture either. I dumped everything together and mixed it with my mixer for a minute.


I slid my loaf pan into the oven.


I looked around and i thought to myself... I have 2 bananas left. I wonder if it would make a difference to make another loaf with just those two bananas? The first loaf came out and as it cooled i noticed it was a shallow loaf. The photo Joy the Baker has on her page looked the same, but i also wondered if there would be a difference in the loaves if i actually followed the recipe like i was supposed to.


So i made another. Same as before, i used 3 Tbsp applesauce (i thought the original recipe used 3 Tbsp canola oil, but i misread it) and i subbed allspice for the cinnamon. 2 bananas. I also added a couple handfuls of walnuts. My kids hate nuts in their breads and cookies, but i love them, and so does my husband and son.


I did a side by side comparison of the loaves. On the left is the first loaf, and on the right the one i followed by the recipe and added nuts. There's a slight difference in size but it's really negligible.

So my husband and i did a taste test for comparison after dinner.

My husband said it was okay, but drier than my usual breads. Basically, he's asking me not to do this again.

And he's right. They are not as moist as i expect my quick breads to be. But it could be the oatmeal. Old fashioned oats probably suck up some of the moisture that would normally be present in the bread.

Well, i decided that my final decision would be based on the age old question:

How does this go with coffee?

It's better with coffee. Not really the best bread, but it IS low-fat. I mean, i warned you in the title of this blog. I didn't want the fact that it originally came from Weight Watchers to weigh in on my decision, and i think i am being fair to say i didn't. I also did not warn my husband it was low-fat before he took a bite because i didn't want him to be biased.

I would say that if you're looking for something low-fat for either a breakfast bread or a snack, this would be good. Hey, with the oatmeal, it's also heart healthy! And that's always good, right?

After all the cake i have made lately, it's probably good to eat something like this once in a while.

Margarita Cupcakes

Today i am sharing something that was ridiculously easy. Anyone can throw this together and look awesome.

My sister was graduating on Friday and i wanted to do something special but i have to admit, this was one of those weeks. You know, when all your bills get paid so you're broke, you're out of cocoa powder, Mother's Day is in 3 days and your kids are driving you bonkers.

We all have those weeks, don't we? Maybe you don't have kids to drive you crazy. But you have something driving you slowly to the brink. I know you do.

I was poking around the internet looking for a recipe. I knew what i wanted to make. Margarita cupcakes. I may not have cocoa powder, but we generally always have the makings for margaritas.

I found this recipe. She adapted this recipe from RecipeGirl, found here. The picture is what grabbed me. I love beautiful cupcakes. My cupcakes never look like the photos i see, but i like to keep trying.

I scrolled through it, and to my dismay, it calls for a boxed cake mix. For a while, i just sat here, contemplating it. I hadn't used a boxed recipe in a while. I finally decided to give it a go. I felt like i was cheating, but i figured if i drank a margarita while making these cupcakes, the guilt might fade away. And since the recipe actually called for me to drink the leftover margarita, i was all set.

The only thing i changed was using applesauce instead of vegetable/canola oil, and instead of Grand Mariner in the cake, i used Triple Sec.

The buttercream recipe calls for a lot more sugar than i normally use. I thought i'd try it since i wasn't spreading it on a cake. It turned out lovely and creamy. I was surprised. For the lime icing, i used maybe a teaspoon of orange extract in addition to lime juice for a more citrus-y kick. Her recipe calls for Grand Mariner in the frosting, and i didn't have any of that, nor did i want to risk having my icing too soft for piping.

Up next i made some cupcakes for the kids. I made another box mix white cake and topped them with standard frosting which i added a bit of caramel liquid flavoring to. They were really good.

My sister loved the cupcakes and said they devoured them overnight. In the end, i can't be too grumpy at myself for my shortcut since they turned out so well. Sometimes compromise is good, and it's the icing that really set these apart.

Hats Off To My Grads!

It was a very busy weekend around here. Friday we had a wonderfully unique evening ahead of us. I knew for a couple months that one of my best friends was graduating from nursing school (again!), but it wasn't until the beginning of last week we found out my husband would also be walking in the same graduation ceremony! You see, he was getting his degree after 4 years of grueling night classes in Building Trades, but the college had our address wrong and we didn't get any of this information until someone called him up to personally find out if he was coming! Of course we wouldn't miss it for the world!


Both of my beloved graduates deserve a nice cake, don't you think? I thought so!


My friend wanted a chocolate cake. She had pinned an interesting nursing themed cake on Pinterest with a big hint that she would really like one like it several weeks ago. You can click here to take a look at it. 


A lot of people would be like "Aww, hell no, i can't do that!" I'm one of those weirdos who think, "Well... i don't know about that, but let's see what i can come up with." (By the way, to the people who know me, this is not a challenge to find something more difficult for me to do. Haha. Thanks.)


In order to end up with a cake of a decent size, i knew i needed to start out with a large cake. I had to go out and buy a new pan. I chose an 11x15 Wilton's pan that i found at WalMart in the cake decorating aisle. I also picked up some cake boards and a cake box.


Again i used the pound cake recipes on this website, as i did for my last cake. For my friend's cake, i used the double chocolate recipe, and i added chocolate chips this time instead of grated chocolate. Mainly because it was quick and easy and i knew i was going to be trimming this cake down quite a bit from the original size.


I baked my cakes and filled them between with standard vanilla buttercream icing. My buttercream icing is very simple. It doesn't vary much at all from any other recipe out there. I don't use shortening at all. I did once, but it was too greasy for my taste. You can get a nice buttercream by following this short recipe:


2 sticks butter, softened
3 ½ - 4 cups powdered sugar (icing sugar)
1 tsp vanilla


Put your butter in your mixing bowl and beat til smooth. Add sugar a bit at a time. I usually add about 1/3 cup at a time and beat it smooth in between to get a nice consistency. Since i'm spreading this as smoothly as i possibly can (which i am still practicing at), i generally don't add more than 3 ½ cups total of sugar. You can add your vanilla anywhere in the mixing process. I usually add it after about the first full cup of sugar has been mixed in.


I thought about how to get a uniform shape on the cake. I had no template to go by, and one of my biggest worries was getting it all lopsided. I like symmetry. It drives me nuts if things aren't symmetrical when they should be.


I looked around my kitchen and saw these thick wooden skewers that my husband uses for corn on the cob and inspiration struck. I'd use one like a pencil/stylus! So i sketched the edges of my shape with one and when i made a mistake, i could correct it. All my mistakes would be covered in frosting when i was done.

Once i had the entire outline drawn out, i used a piece of aluminum foil i took off the cake and got a straight line for the bottom of the cake. (I waited to draw the right side of the 'shirt' because i was afraid my perception of that line would throw off my bottom line. If that made sense.)

Then, a nice crumb coat.

I asked her what color she liked best. She said she didn't have a favorite, but she'd like something bright. Well, i like purple. I looked online to see how bright the violet gel coloring i had would get, and i thought it would look nice.

I used my Wilton's #47, flat side up, for my sleeve and collar details. I was very pleased with how smooth i got the frosting on the top of the cake. It's my best job yet.

Now, the cake seems about half done, doesn't it? I wish. This was all easy-peasy lemon squeezy, as my daughter would say.

I had done some experimenting with fondant earlier in the week, preparing myself for war. I knew i would never approach the real look of the materials in the example cake from Pinterest. Some of them i am certain are actual products, and not made of fondant or modelling chocolate at all.

I did manage a reasonable cartoon-y facsimile of some of the items. I think i did a pretty good job, considering i haven't worked with fondant much. This was a huge challenge for me.

Voila! Finished!

She loved her cake, and i was pretty pleased with the end result myself!

Now, for my husband. He got his cake a little late, because the nursing cake took up a huge chunk of my time and i was just exhausted over the weekend. We had so much going on. But i finished it on Monday while he was gone to work. Well, i almost got it finished. He came home extra early and i had to make him leave while i finished up the final touches.

When he asked me for a graduation cake, he told me he wanted a big pipe wrench on it. He's a journeyman pipefitter now (since graduation) and they have this HUGE pipe wrench outside their local union hall.

I don't have progression pictures of the cake, because i was totally done trying to document my progress. I just wanted to get it done and made and have time to get laundry done. But it turned out pretty nice. He was very pleased! It was exactly what he wanted!