Fat Girl's Guide to Triathalons

Busy time of year...

It is a totally busy time of year at work for me...so the posts have been few and far between! Nothing new on the adoption front. We probably will be waiting for a long while. Rick is out of school on Friday and I will be done at the end of June. This is the last summer I will work for a loooooong time! We saw X-Men 3 this weekend and it was wonderful...I loved it and it made me actually made me want to read about the x-men...then I found out they were only in comic books...so I will rely on other people's infomation about the mythology of the characters...post if you know something I might find interesting!

I did complete the Martha Stewart cake this weekend. It was the coconut cake. I hate coconut and this cake totally reminded me I am nowhere near a Martha Stewart. Rick announced that it was "...*large pause for dramatic reasons...ok..." Have you heard of lying to your wife??? Seriously...a hug and a "you are the best baker ever." That was the appropriate lie I should have gotten. He also made sure to notice that he had to saw through the layers with the knife. I did have to get white frosting a flavor it with coconut! It was a complete disaster. I needed a couple of days to actually get this cake done. Martha loves to add curds to her cakes! Oh well...they can't all be fabulous!

He did love the strawberry sauce from the Rachel Ray Everyday magazine that I made. I also enjoyed this Rachal Ray recipe. I love her. I also made this 5 minute mousse! So good!!

Martha Stewart...April

Well, Martha kicked my ass again...April's cake wasn't hard, but my lack of knowledge about cake ingredients seriously hurts...first of all...who knew that Marzipan and Almond paste were the same thing/ Thank you Whole Foods for being so wise and helpful. Just for your information...Elizabeth and I learned that Condensed Can Juice...as called for in a Kashi recipe...is actually just sugar...why not call it sugar. I am sure there is a smart reader that will tell me the answer to this.

Secondly, I have no idea how to make gum paste flowers, so I went in search of edible flowers. When someone called them edible, I think that it means, "you won't die when you eat these," because it isn't for their delicious flavor.

Thirdly, frosting petit fours, which I was smugly told is pronounced "pettyfours" not "petite fours" is not easy. I am not sure how Martha did it and I wish that I would have watched the show on how she makes these darn cakes. They always seem so much easier when Martha makes them...

I will say that my loyal Bible study, or as I refer to them, tasting group, did say that they loved these. They were my second to least favorite, but I don't like cherries. I think I would make the cake a bundt cake with a little icing drizzled over...flavored with strawberry and put pretty flowers on it.

Martha Stewart Cake and Albequerque

Ok…Some of you have been wondering where I have been!  I have been in

Albuquerque

.  I finally learned how to spell it…I think. 

It was freezing there!  My dad doesn’t believe in turning on the heat so we were shocked to see the heat off and snow outside.  It was pretty and great to see my dad…

Anyways…to the Martha Stewart Cake for March.  This was my least favorite tasting cake, but easiest to make and turned out the prettiest…actually like the picture.  That was a first for these cakes.

I don’t think I like the spice cardamom, very much.  I think I would have done a walnut/carmel streusel instead and I would have not added the cardamom to the cake.  The coffee cake lovers really liked it.

The addition of a Kitchen Aid to the cake making process was invaluable.  Thank you dad!  We didn’t do Christmas with them this year so he slipped me enough cash to buy a kitchen aid.  So great!  I also made some Splenda cookies with lots of brown sugar and butter.

Martha's February Cakes

I love Martha...but is she out of her mind?  Aren't there any cake recipes that take less that 9 hours to complete.  That is my total time for the February Cake time.  Here is a link to what the February Triple Mousse Cakes are supposed to look like.

If you don't know I am taking the self-invented Martha Cake of the Month Challenge. 

I am realizing that if I continue this that I will need to invest in a Kitchen Aid Mixer...I seriously never thought I would feel the NEED to have this, but literally my arm is sore from all the manual mixing I had to do...when I say manual I mean a hand held mixer.

I only had to substitute the dutch cocoa to the nestle cocoa.  I don't know where to find some of the things she asked for and in San Antonio, we are limited to Walmart and HEB...so I use what I can. 

I had to triple the cake batter recipe and double the mousse recipe to make enough for 14 people.  My Lifegroup continues to be the guinea pigs...they are not complaining too much. 

I almost started crying when I was trying to tape the parchment paper around the cake because I was tired of baking.  So I just spooned on the mousse and my sweet husband said "that just makes them look like gooey goodness."  Sweet...he is my sampler.

If I were to make these again...here is what I would do differently. 

1. make the mousse first

2.if I was really lazy...regular cake mix would work just fine for the cakes

3.  Find a stiff tube to spoon the mouse into instead of parchment paper

4.  Sprinkle chocolate chips to instead of trying to peel chocolate...just as cute not as messy!

Martha...Cake of the Month Challenge

Ok...Well if you love Martha, like me, you will know that she has a cake for each month of the year.  So I decided that I would make each cake, every month and document it.  I got this idea from the 2peas yahoo reading group when they reviewed the book Julie and Julia.

Let me say this...I now know what curd is.  I actually had to make curd.  This was a 5 page recipe that took me 2.5 days to actually complete the cake...and trust me it didn't look anything like the cake on the cover of Martha Stewart since I didn't feel like making a 3 tiered wedding cake and 8xing the recipe!

Martha does not have time to make this cake herself...but it was the best lemon cake I ever ate.  I love it.  It had meringue in the frosting and the cake.  You had to soak in with the syrup and curd...It was delicious.  I did not candy the lemons and I had a ton of supplies left over.

Ignore the fact that it leans...I am sure Martha's would not have leaned!