Cake Balls!

I made cake balls. Or stick-less cake pops. Or whatever you want to call them. Little mounds of squished up cake and icing dipped in chocolate. And guess what? They're kind of gross.

Which doesn't mean that I can stop eating them, of course. Here's what happened: we had a birthday party for Henry on the weekend and I tried to be a hero and bake a cake from scratch rather than going with a box cake. I have always had trouble with birthday cakes. I've preformed many successful culinary feats in my life, but birthday cakes elude me. Any other kind of cake and I'm fine. But I can not make a birthday cake to save my life. When I found out a few years ago that Aaron's mum's delicious birthday cakes come from a box I rejoiced and started using the box myself. This year, however, I got ambitious and tried for scratch. The cake fell, I cried and then I ran off to the store to grab a boxed mix.

So, what to do with the fallen cake? I crumbled it up, mixed it with the leftover icing from the successfully baked box cake (I do make my icing from scratch, thank you very much), rolled them into a bunch of balls, stuck them in the freezer for 20 minutes and rolled them in melted chocolate. Cake balls!

I know these things are all the rage, but they're kind of cloying. Maybe I used too much icing, but they're really sweet and kind of mushy. They're sort of tolerable if you eat them right out of the fridge, but if you left them on the counter for any amount of time they'd be disgusting and mushy.

So are cake balls the new cupcake, the new maracron, the new whoopie pie. No. And no.

Winter Mini-Break

Ruby Tuesday: A Story

Once there was a girl who had a tree.


She really loved the tree.


One day a man with a saw came by and tried to cut down the tree.


The girl got a stop sign and said "STOP!"


The girl went back to loving the tree and the man with the saw was taken to prison. The end.

Yee-haw!

Ruby wanted a cowgirl party this year. It was kind of epic. I wish I could show you pictures with the actual six-year-old cowgirls in them, but I don't want to freak out any of the other kids' mothers. Anyway, sparkly cowgirl hats are pure awesome dollar store madness.

Now We Are Six

I have been a mother for six years. Six years. Usually I write Ruby a letter on her birthday, but I've become more and more slack on that over the last few years and I don't think mere words could even start to convey how I feel about her. She is without a doubt the most lovely and complicated human being I've ever met. She's smart (taught herself to read! It just magically came forth one day), generous, gracious, sensitive, and really really funny. She's an amazing artist, a (usually) patient big sister, a beauty, a great friend, and a gentle soul. I guess I can put some of it into words.


This year we had our first ever mother/daughter fancy restaurant birthday lunch and it was magical. We've agreed to do it every year for the rest of our lives. I'm committed to instilling snobby food values into this kid, I tell ya. I think forcing her to go to garage sales and thrift stores balances it out.

Oh, and here is the progress on her "real" birthday doll. Not much, eh? I'm trying people, I'm trying.

Wanderlust

Really not sure where I'm going with this. But I shall knit until all of those little mini-leftover balls are gone.

Made Mermaiden

I finally got Hillary's book. It is so awesome -- of course I want to make every single doll in here. Maybe I will. I make Ruby a doll for her birthday every year and the first one that stood out for me was Margot, the topsy-turvey doll. Now, I'm prone to stressing out over complicated projects (not that any of these dolls are too complicated), so I thought I'd test the waters by making a back-up doll.

Mermaiden is one of the smallest and simplest dolls in the book, but it's also one of the cutest. This doll is really simple -- like, if you wake up in the morning and realize that you didn't get anything for an afternoon birthday party, you could probably whip one of these up.

I chose a pretty wacky colour combo, digging through my vintage scraps to find something that would work. I realize the hair is a little odd (and my freestyle quilting is a bit wonky wonk), but this is totally my style, so my kid is used to it. And if I don't finish Margot on time, I'm safe.

Gifted

Happy 2011! We had some lovely holidays here. The kids were happy, Santa was sweet, much food and wine was consumed. Here are some of my most lovely presents (my friend Alana knitted the shawlette -- isn't it amazing?). Cooking, knitting, and vintage. What more could a girl wish for?