A Treat

Recently, I have been thinking about cakes. Particularly Gluten-Free Cakes. I realized that as our children get older they will not be able to pick a cake from the store that is fun and just right for them. At some point, they may not want cupcakes with sprinkles on them for their birthday parties.

On our date the other night, Paul and I spent some time browsing in the bookstore. I flipped thru the cake decorating books. I liked Betty Crocker Decorating Cakes and Cupcakes. It had relatively simple designs that looked fun, for cupcakes and cakes. Before I dive into shapes, I wanted to see if I could even make a regular cake look nice.

Following this tutorial at CakeCentral, I gave Marshmallow Fondant a try. I made a half batch since we only do single round cakes (and still toss half of it away after a week). Alayna helped me measure the marshmallows, sift and add the powdered sugar.

The first layer looked good enough, and I had a lot of fondant left over. Both kids helped me cut out shapes from the coloured fondant. We only used the daisies, so they got to eat the tulips right away.

The final resut:

I think our first try went very well. For the next attempt I will be cutting our single round in half to stack for a two layer cake.

Strawberry Soup

Alayna has been talking about making strawberry soup for a long time. I think it started in Florida, that means it's been at least 6 months. It started when she saw strawberries at the store (and I didn't buy them for her). Suddenly, any time she played with her dish set she was making strawberry soup.

One afternoon during quiet time Alayna was out of my sight longer than I realized, and she wasn't playing with her dishes like I thought. She was playing with my dishes.

She proudly invited me to partake of her Strawberry Fruit Soup. I was presented with this:
Would you like the recipe? Measure an arbitrary amount of fat free milk, fat free cottage cheese, fat free sour cream, Dannon Light & Fit Strawberry yogurt, add a chunk of apple (Gala I believe, also the reason for changing the name) and squeeze in some grape juice from a cut green grape. Mix. Put in the fridge to cool. Yum!!

I also received this:
and more of this all over the kitchen floor.

Imagine the surprise flipping thru a magazine at the kitchen table and seeing this picture!
Only to discover that it is actually Watermelon Gazpacho. Now we are looking for a real Strawberry Soup recipe. Anyone have a favourite they would like to share in the comments?

From Alayna

Alayna drew this picture to share with everyone.

"FOR EVERYONE I LOVE

FOR MY AUNT AND MY FRIENDS AND
GRANDPA GRANDMA
FROM ALAYNA"