Valentine's 2010

What a busy weekend it was, kind of glad Valentine's has come and gone. I made my heart shaped sugar cookies with red poured cookie icing. The icing needs to dry for better than a day before writing on them. I personalized them all - twenty for Stirling's class party for Monday and fifteen for Madison's on Tuesday. The kids really love them, although with the grade ones reading I think I should have printed their names as some of them didn't recognize the written forms of their names, which is to be expected - they are only six and seven. :o) I had frozen icing I used up first, but had to make new for Madison's. I made it a little on the thin side and was still not completely hard by Monday afternoon, so wrote on them anyway. I would hate to see Wilton's idea of a thick FoodWriter, I found it difficult to not have fat letters with the softer icing. Still had a couple dozen for us to munch on, beginning Saturday, I baked them all Saturday evening and started icing them Sunday morning (just for those of you who might think we ate them in one day, lol)- they didn't last long - kids ate the last one yesterday, lol.


I also spent Monday making our cake for the family. We are on a tight budget right now, its funny how with nothing really to eat in the house I can still bake! Wow! I officially used up my butter with this cake. It didn't need egg yolks so I used Meringue powder for the 8 whites it needed. It is a delicious moist white cake. I used up the last of the frozen Europe's best blueberries I had leftover in the freezer from Declan's cake in November. Defrosted them slowly and added some Knox gelatin and a bit of sugar. How do I avoid my gelatin being grainy? Anyone know? Is it best to dissolve it in choice 1 or 2 on the package? Choice 1 seems not to fair so well on two occasions now. Didn't notice texture while eating the cake and it all came together well with simple buttercream icing. I'm having issues with my apple blossoms lately too, for some reason I'm getting peeks at the centers of my flowers, maybe I'm turning my bag the wrong direction...hmmm. It was a really yummy cake - looking forward to another piece after lunch.

See my writing is getting better too :o)