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Happy 40th birthday to my cousins Amy & Ryan! 

Here are some pics of the cake I made for their birthday celebration. 

I started by making two 6" and two 8" round cakes and leveling them with a knife.

Then I filled the cakes with a homemade chocolate ganache and buttercream icing.

Next I iced the cakes.

I recruited my husband to help roll out the fondant.

Once the fondant was rolled, I covered both of the cakes.

I then cut off the extra fondant and smoothed out the bumps.

For the decorations I used these black Wilton Sugar Sheets.  I found these at Michaels and they come in a variety of colors. 

It was super easy to use and looks really nice on the cake.  To start I peeled the sugar sheet off the plastic.

I then used a cutting board (a clean one, of course) to cut black strips for the cake.

Once the strips were cut, I used a paint brush to brush each strip with water so it would stick to the cake.

After brushing the strips with water, I placed them one by one onto the bottom layer of the cake.

After the bottom layer of the cake was decorated, I stacked the smaller layer on top.

I rolled white balls of fondant to use as the border around the top layer of the cake.  I used a little bit of frosting to hold them in place. 

For the top layer of the cake, I used a knife to cut 4s and 0s from the black sugar sheets.  I added rolled white fondant balls to the top of the cake and added the fun, twirly wires with hanging jewels to the top of the cake.  You can find the wires and jewels at Michaels also.  I think they make a fun addition to any cake.

Zucchini Bread

Does anyone have a lot of Zucchini from the garden that they don't know what to do with?  We recently got a bunch so my mom and I made Zucchini bread using my Grandma's recipe.  For this recipe you will need:

3 Eggs

1 1/2 tsp. Baking Powder

3/4 C. Applesauce (or cooking oil)

2 C. Grated Zucchini

1 1/2 C. Sugar

3 tsp. Vanilla

1 tsp. Salt

1 tsp. Baking Soda

3 C. Flour



Start by grating the Zucchini.  We grated all of the Zucchini and put the leftover in freezer bags for future use. 

 Beat the eggs.  Add oil and sugar. 

 In a separate bowl sift together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

 Add grated zucchini and flour mixture alternately to the egg, oil, and sugar mixture.

Pour mixture into baking pans.  We used miniature bread pans to make several loafs.  We added walnuts and chocolate chips to some of the loaves.  My favorite was the chocolate chip zucchini bread!

Here's a picture of the zucchini bread fresh out of the over.  De-lish!  Do you have any other recipe ideas for zucchini?  We also tried zucchini noodles for dinner that night.  Turned out pretty good!

Back to School - Brownie Bites

Our nanny recently went back to school, so we made her these de-lish Mini Treasure Brownies which you can find the recipe for on the Tasty Kitchen website.  How we miss her already!  We are already looking forward to next summer when she will be back. 

 Start by mixing the sugar, vanilla, and oil in a bowl. 

Mix in the beaten eggs.

In another bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Once mixed, stir into the liquid ingredients.  Pour mixture into a lined, mini muffin tin and bake for approximately 10 minutes at 350.

 While the brownie bites are baking, unwrap the Hershey Kisses.

Remove brownie bites from the oven.  Let cool for a few minutes and then press one Hershey Kiss into the center of each brownie bite. 

 For a fun way to package your brownie bites (or other miniature treats), place in a clean egg carton. 

Add your own personal touch, by decorating the egg carton.  Or use one of these cute egg cartons that can be purchased from Bake It Pretty.  I plan on ordering some of these for future projects!  Hope everyone has a good first week back at school!