Memorial Day picnic

Today we enjoyed family time with the extended family. I love getting together and visiting with this amazing family I married into. Today I was feeling a little tired so I sat and listened and watched everyone mingle. What I saw was a family full of love and adoration for each other. Many I really do feel blessed. I wish everyone enjoyed their spouses family the way I enjoy mine!

Of course I was thrilled to make the cakes. Ryan's cousin Jimmy will celebrate his Bday tomorrow so I made the big cake for him. He choose chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. Then Ryan asked that I make Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. It was a last minute thing so I used cake mixes and they turned out so wonderful. Cake mixes really are easy and they always do turn out. I did make the vanilla frosting simply because I wanted to frost it good and smooth and you just can't do that with store bought.

I tried a few of the tricks I had recent posted about. I used the spaghetti noodles to test if the cake was done and I wondered why i had never heard of this trick sooner. If the cake is not done you just brake off the part of the noodle you used and try again in a couple of minutes. I also changed the tempurature to 325 instead of 350 and that worked great. My cake was almost level. Much better then having a big huge piece you have to cut off. Since I was in a hurry I didn't even level the cake and it turned out mostly level.

My favorite trick which I will always use is viva paper towels! Life saver!! You crumb coat, let set, then give a nice smooth-as-you-can coat, let it set, then (this is the cool part) you use the paper towel to smooth the frosting. This video shows how I did it. It is kind of a long video but the lady shows it off real well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTRNkGpJMH8
You can skip the first 6 minutes if you just want to see the paper towel technique.

Look how smooth, almost like fondant. I am hoping the more I try it the smoother I can get it.



Then I made a bunch of cupcakes for the kids. Since today is national BBQ day, and we were not eating hamburgers, I decided to bring it into the cupcakes. These are mini nilla wafers with chocolate frosting for the patty and red and yellow writing frosting for ketchup and mustard.
Then my adorable husband came home and suggested adding fries. I was trying to finish up the cake before it was time to go so I told him he was more then welcome to make some. Didn't they turn out good? I told him we should open up a bakery together, then we both laughed.