I'm in so much trouble!

Okay, so I was just checking out one of my Fav online supply stores and
OMG
the stuff they have is to die for!
It's stuff like this that is going to make it completely impossible for me to ever give up sugar.
AS IF!
It's hard to see how dang adorable these cookies are but I am a SUCKER for vintage things and these wafer paper designs are killer. They are MINE! Don't know who we will be spending "I" day with but whomever it is, we are having cookies AND cake for the 4th. They have vintage designs for every occasion, so if they work out, that could become a new tradition. I have never used wafer paper before but how hard can it be, right?
Now is the part when I start to

TOTALLY HYPERVENTILATE

Check out this cupcake pedestal...It's made of
SUGAR!!!
SUGAR DISHES???
I HAVE TO HAVE IT!
They are listed as "coming soon". You can be sure I will be checking on their status every day.
To think I might have gone my whole life not knowing the things on this website exist.
I totally HEART online shopping!

Confection Chronicles: Memorial Day Cupcakes

I am most undoubtedly on the road to driving all my relatives CRAZY! By now
"MORE CAKE?"
has to be going through their minds every time I show up with my latest experiments. Especially since I used to pride myself on bringing a variety of goodies, often new and exciting.
Not Anymore!
Now I am searching for ANY excuse to make cake.
No event is too small.
So of coarse Memorial Day was a big enough holiday to crack out my flower cutters
and spend hours sculpting roses.
I'm so In Love!
All I can say is that I must not have played with playdough enough as a kid or something. Puzzling!
But I guess when one is in school, one must study.
And when one is the teacher AND the student one must Really study.
It wasn't a waste of time.
I got two events out of these cupcakes...


The Memorial Day BBQ AND Girl's Night out.
Mexican Hot Chocolate Cake with Mexican Vanilla Buttercream, topped with a Sparkly MM Fondant Rose=
HEAVEN!
So I hear you (insert insignificant event here).
Wait right there, I'm bringing cake!

Mexican Spiced Cup Cakes!

So I actually made up my first recipe. I got the idea while watching
the wedding cake episode of "Throw Down with Bobby Flay".
The girl he was up against made Mexican hot chocolate cake.
I LOVE Mexican hot chocolate.
So I decided to tweak one of my cake recipes to make it a little...
Espanol.
All I have to say is...YUM!
I don't even like cake but I could eat hundreds of these babies.
The frosting recipe I recently found is awesome, too.
I like it because it looks so pretty piped on and it also tastes good.
I usually despise frosting... Oh, I just had a horrid thought...
Since I usually dislike cake and frosting but everyone else seems to love it, maybe the cake and frosting recipes I like, everyone else secretly thinks are gross.
But everyone is trying to be nice and they don't have the guts to tell me,

"Hey, Amanda, stop bringing the gosh awful cake to every function under the sun, it doesn't taste good!"
That can happen, I know from experience.
Someday I will get up the guts to tell someone I know that
pimps a certain recipe every chance they get that
NO ONE LIKES IT! So sad when that happens!
But seriously no one wants to eat gross cake.
Which is why I can't stop trying cake recipes. I want to make sure any cake
I ever serve TASTES as good as it looks.
I really need as much feedback from as many people as I can...Consequently...
There are about to be some serious free samples going around.
So if you see me on your door step with a plate of Mexican Spiced Cupcakes, I am not there to butter you up, I'm not going to ask you for anything,
I'm just there to help save my family's waist lines, most specifically MINE. AND to get your reaction.
And if you notice that there is an empty spot on your plate of cupcakes, I'm sorry,
I just had to have ONE MORE!

Confection Chronicles: The Bloody Pirate Cake

No,
I'm not swearing!
I'm referring to the way that my son, Isaac's birthday cake looked on the inside.
The first layer was red velvet, the bottom layer was white chocolate, and the middle layer was a mixture of the two. I wanted it to look like
the top layer had
"bled"
into the middle layer.
What do you think?
Did I pull it off?


What a busy month it was between Susan's wedding and Aubrey's birthday only 5 weeks later. Not only did I have Sariah's party and cake to do but Isaac's as well, and those two in the same week. I offered to do a
BIG Elaborate Pirate Cake
for Isaac if he would wait a week to have his party
but having the patience of a Kindergartner he opted for the less Exciting one layer cake that I all but cake lifted off of the Sweet Tooth Fairy's web site.


I made cupcakes too...

Not bad, huh? Considering I had to pull together a party for a crowd as well.
This cake actually takes the record for speed, only 5 hours.
Someday I do hope to do the Big Elaborate pirate cake I had envisioned,
with a treasure chest and sword...
but who knows?
Around here we always seem to move on to bigger and better things.
But whatever my son comes up with in the future will definitely be influenced by me,
I totally want another excuse to make a bleeding cake.

Confection Chronicles: The "Thousand Dollar" Wedding Cake!

This February my Oh-So-Sweet and Gorgeous SIL Susan got married again to a Wonderful, is-he-for-real nice guy and hottie, Bob Grove. All of us in the Moss clan were very excited and happy for Susan. After going through some very distressing experiences in her life, it was great to see something good and uplifting happen to someone that deserves good and uplifting things.
I was, and still remain, so honored that she called and asked me to do her wedding cake. Susan called my hubby to see if he would get a feel for whether or not I would be willing to do it. One day while we were driving home he said,"What would you do if Susan asked you to make her wedding cake?" My reply, "I would be so excited, that would be awesome, but she'll ask Jodie(She's another cake artist in the family)." Well, I soon got a phone call from Susan herself, and she asked ME! I was so excited for the excuse to try something new. My waistline has suffered enough from the cake I make for legitimate occasions, I can't imagine what would happen if I started making cakes every time I saw a new cake technique I wanted to try out.

Well, Susan went through a few pics and gave me a little bit of an idea of what she wanted. She wasn't too set on anything in particular. Which gave me a lot of leeway.
This is what I came up with...
I was so proud of myself for succeeding at my first attempt at a wedding cake. The more I look at it the more flaws I see but as I blogged about previously, I did everything with very little tools. I have since found tools to help with things like the diamond grid, which I eyeballed, and the Scrolls, which I eyeballed. I wish I had a better camera so you could all see the pretty sheen the cake had. I had so much fun, but the best part of all was all the Love and support Andy's family gave me, knowing how nervous I was. I had no shortage of people telling me how much they liked the cake. Not one person pointed out anything wrong with it. Coming from a family that doesn't always operate quite that way, I really appreciated it. The compliment that takes the cake... a thank-you card from the bride herself, telling me how Bob's ex was incensed at the thousand dollars they must have paid for their cake. I laughed and laughed and laughed when I read that. If she only knew it was made by a frumpy self taught stay at home mom that could only dream of being paid $1000 for a cake, maybe someday!

I Love Sweetness in all forms!

Okay, this is the sweetest costume I've ever seen. I would seriously make it if I thought Ellie would wear it for one minute. Darn it!
I found this on the "All Things Cupcake" site (it's on my blog list) You can purchase it there for a whopping $120!!!
If it were me I would just make it myself. I Love the big bow on top! The whole thing is so cute. I almost want to take a bite.

Confection Chronicles: The Topsy Turvy Topsy Turvy Cake

I often sit at my computer and browse through the work of other talented cake artists. After a few encounters of "How in the world did they do that?" a strange feeling begins to come over me, due to my very competitive nature I believe. It feels kind of like anger...kind of like rejection...kind of like hate...
I think it's called
JEALOUSY!
(I'm not Schizophrenic and this doesn't really happen, but for the sake of illustration, imagine two little cupcakes, that appeared out of nowhere, residing on each of my shoulders)
"You're being ridiculous" the cupcake on my right shoulder says...
"You might as well quit because you'll never be able to do THAT" the cupcake on my left says.
"Just figure out how they did it" the cupcake on my right says.
"They went to culinary school, duh, you have no hope." The lefty cupcake says.

But then a couple of months ago I started to listen to that little "figure out how they did it" voice and I began to focus on CAKE TOOL RESEARCH and that's when it happened...

I had an epiphany!

ALL I NEED IS BETTER TOOLS!
Suddenly when I look at other peoples work I realize, wow they used that tool.
When I think back on the cakes I've made I can't believe I made them with as little resources as I did.
Anyways, when I made Sariah's Birthday Cake this Year I had not yet realized how much easier It could have been if I had only done my homework first. Equipped with only a picture, cake, two batches of fondant, food coloring, and a rolling pin I made this...
Did you know they have molds for strings of pearls??? Neither did I! I spent 2 hours rolling all those pearls. And it was very difficult to get them all the same. They also have molds for bows too. I could just kick myself. (KICK, KICK, KICK!)
And the other thing I could kick myself for on this cake is not utilizing one of the vital tools I did know about...
support dowels.
I ran out of them. And not wanting to run to the store and buy more, I told myself that the two measly sucker sticks I had would suffice. It only had to stand for an hour tops. Well...look close... see the buckling on the bottom? See the finger gouges on the other two layers? All consequences of my attempts to keep the poor thing from tipping over. This was one very topsy turvy topsy turvy cake. In fact It only looks as straight as it does in this picture because I took the picture crooked. Look at the base if you don't believe me.
Well from now on I am going to be a tool and supply collector. I won't be caught so ill equipped again. It only wastes my time!
This cake supply addiction is going to be as bad as my scrapbook supply addiction, I can tell. And HMMMM.....How to Pay for it????
I need to sell some cakes!

Confection Chronicles: THE COSTCO CAKE

The Cowgirl cake,
The Lightning McQueen Cake,
The Groovy Girl Cake,
and The Cakes of Christmas Presents were all big feats for a girl like me that had NEVER decorated cakes like them before. So the next year I was tired. And really felt like I had gotten the cake making bug out of my system. I made my daughter Sariah this really simple cake after she basically begged me.I forced myself to make this cake for Isaac as well. I hated every minute of it. Even though it was the first time while making a cake that I realized it would get easier the more I did it. And I really thought to myself that I didn't want to do it anymore. But still...
I offered to make Aubrey whatever she wanted but she flabbergasted me by saying, "Mom, can I please just have a Costco cake for my Birthday? I really just want a Costco cake." Okay? Most kids would kill for a custom made cake. And not many mothers would bend over backwards and spend literally days crafting out of Sugar whatever their child's imagination could dream up, only to have it destroyed after a measly hour of appreciation? But FINE! if She wanted a COSTCO cake, then that's what she would get. I regret it but I didn't even take any pictures of her Costco cake. Yes, I have to say my feelings were hurt. I suppose in hindsight I owe her because after her rejection I told myself I WOULD keep making cakes. After all, the next Birthday wasn't for another 9 months, plenty of time to rest up and remotivate, Right? So when Ellie's Birthday rolled around I was ready, willing, and excited to make her a cake. And the Princess cake was born. This time I really enjoyed myself. This time my children seemed a lot more impressed and eager to be recipients of my cake projects. Suddenly I find myself wishing I could make cake constantly. Unexpectedly, somewhere along the way I have become addicted to cake decorating.
I am now on a fast track to learn every cake making skill known to man. And I won't stop until I am satisfied that there is NO cake on the planet I could not make. I'm so EXCITED!