It's happening

Dear Julibean,

When we open our bakery we will be making and selling these:


We could do it to support No Shave November or find some legit reason, but it's happening.

That is all.

"Bitches, Happy Drunken Tuesday!"

Last night was pretty fantastic.

I had work, whatevs it was fine and I actually enjoy working with the store manager because she's really mellow and lets me do my own thing without commanding me to do something. She knows I know what to do and just lets me get it done in my own way. I appreciate that.

Anyway, after work I met up with Julibean and some friends at one of our favorite local bars. RJ's is a really nice place to go to happy hour, especially when the outdoor bar is open. Casey and I sometimes meet her parents there after an especially brutal day of work and we've made friends with some of the bartenders. (Which is always the greatest friendship to forge.)

Since it was a Tuesday night the bar itself was pretty quiet. I met up with them around 10ish and caught up with some people I haven't seen in awhile which is always nice.

Matt (Julibean's Army friend) is home for a few weeks. He needed a break since he's going through a pretty horrific divorce/paternity crisis. It's seriously awful and I feel so bad about it because Matt is a great guy and doesn't deserve that sort of ish from anyone.

Anyway one of Matt's other friends wound up being at the other end of the bar celebrating his birthday so we invited him down to our end of the bar to share some cake. Since she's in the cake portion of her pastry schooling Julibean brought along one of three cakes she had made in class so we could munch on it at the bar.

While everyone was making birthday cakes and anniversary cakes, Julibean went straight for the Drunken Tuesday cake.

Sorry for the poor quality.
Bar lighting + cell camera = shitty photo.

The story of Drunken Tuesday:
When we were in school Wednesday was typically a day of no classes. Sure, some people had testing periods early in the morning or labs, but most of us (the Humanities students) didn't have any Wednesday classes.

So Tuesday night became a great night for parties and going out to the bars since everyone had a light schedule on Wednesdays. Literally the campus was buzzing on a Tuesday night, it was insane.

Drunken Tuesday was born.

It was inevitable. Even if you were just sitting around you apartment with nothing to do and no parties to hit up, you would pop open some wine or some tequila and watch a movie and get drunk with your roommates. It was marvelous.

So in honor of our college days, we had some Drunken Tuesday cake and some drinks and now I'm going on like 5hrs of sleep instead of my usual 7. But thems the breaks. It was a fun night and I don't regret it.

Wilton Cake Update

I was holding onto my cake that I decorated on Friday. This happened for a few reasons.

Long story short, Jason's grandfather is not doing so great. He's been in the hospital for quite some time now and they stopped force feeding him/giving him his meds on Tuesday. When I say that I mean last Tuesday. The man has held on for a week without nutrition or the pills that were supposedly keeping him alive. We expected to hear word on Wednesday and were prepared for Jason to drive up to my house, his three cousins in the city to take the train to my house and the five of us to drive up to New Hampshire to be with the rest of the family. Right now these plans are on hold as we wait. It's not the greatest of situations but unfortunately this is what happens sometimes.

I planned on bringing the cake with me for the family to eat in NH.

Instead, I brought it to work since I don't want it sitting in my fridge at home for another week.

It was delicious. It was pretty. And I totally forgot to take a photo of it.

This is what is left.

The cake itself was a homemade funfetti cake with fruit preserve filling and the trademark Wilton butter-cream frosting. Problem was nobody in the office wanted to cut into it since they all thought it was so pretty. I had to do the honors and took the tiniest sliver just to see how it tasted.

This week I'm making a chocolate cake with Nutella filling and a chocolate/butter-cream/Nutella frosting. I anticipate it ALSO being delicious.

Wilton Course 1

Friday was our first Class of Wilton's Cake Decorating Course 1. It was exciting even though all we did was get an introduction from our instructor and watch her assemble, frost and decorate a cake.

I can't wait to decorate cakes and learn how to make flowers and stuff. I mean any skills I pick up will definitely make any cake I decorate in the future much better than the last one I made.

I guess what I didn't realize about this class is that we have to bake cakes and bring them to class with us to decorate. I mean, obviously what else would we be doing? But the thought escaped me at first and when Julibean and I decided it would be a good idea to bake ALL of our cakes at once and put them in the freezer (as suggested by our instructor) and mix ALL of our frosting at once and put it into smaller containers to take to class with us...I didn't think it would be such a daunting task.

I was so wrong! So.very.wrong.

Julibean and I literally spent the entire length of the Super Bowl (plus a few hours ahead of and after) baking cakes and trying to mix frosting. When Wilton says stiff frosting, they mean stiff frosting. It almost burned out our stand up mixer, it was scary.

But we'll frosting and constructing a cake to bring to class next Friday. We're decorating the top with a rainbow of piped icing and learning how to make borders. I figured since it'll be a rainbow on the outside it should be one on the inside too and made funfetti cake. They didn't have any actual funfetti cake mix at the store so I made white cake and threw some sprinkles in to the mix.

Basically I'm just super excited to learn these new skills and everyone who I've mentioned this course to seems just as excited for me. Plus I told everyone in the office I'll be bringing in random cakes each Monday to work so they're excited about that too.

Lamb Cake

I've been the worst blogger ever. I really have no excuse except that I've pretty much lacked motivation to do anything the past few weeks.

So let's travel back to Easter. Just for shigiggles! Since my wonderful company gives us a vacation day on Good Friday, I took the opportunity to leave early on Thursday and drive up to New Hampshire to spend the long weekend with my boyfriend and his family. My mother thought it would be a fabulous idea if my sister Julianne came to meet me since she didn't want her to be alone for the holiday. The more the merrier in the Shire, eh?

We decided ahead of time that we would make Jason's family dessert so I went out shopping with Jason's sister Amanda and got all the ingredients for my Julibean's carrot cake and cream cheese frosting. None of them had every had carrot cake so it was all the more exciting!

A little back story. Easter used to be a huge holiday in my family. When we were younger my Mom would decorate almost as much as she does for Christmas and we would go out to New Jersey to spend the day in pretty dresses at my uncle's house. One of the big draws was the lamb cake. No, not a cake made out of lamb, but one shaped like a lamb. When we decided to bake for Jason's family I immediately asked my grandmother for the lamb tin (which has not made a public appearance since I was 10) and we revived the tradition.

(Please excuse the tiny poor quality photo, it's from my phone)

Voila! My first attempt ever at decorating a cake. Look at him, ain't he cute? Sitting in his little bed of grass. Best of all, he was delicious!

We had a wonderful Easter dinner on Saturday night, and then devoured the lamb soon after that. The next morning, after church we dug right into a delightfully unhealthy breakfast of delectable cinnamon rolls and then it came time for the Easter baskets.

Jason's mother is hardcore about her Easter baskets. I mean, the thing was HUGE and had full bags of candy in it. In our house Easter baskets had a chocolate bunny, a few Cadbury eggs, a handful of jelly beans and a dash of robin's eggs. Plus, you'd have the glorious task of digging through the plastic grass to find them all before my Dad came by and yoinked your eggs! So low and behold, a plethora of chocolate, and all for me!

It was intense. And not only was there a cornucopia of candies, but quite useful things like a pair of knee-highs, healthier options like a box of raisins and fruit snacks, and best of all...a trashy romance novel. Yes ladies and gentlemen, my boyfriend's mother gave me (and my sister) trashy romance novels. This woman is awesome.

Now I have never read a trashy romance novel before...ever. I laughed at them, sure, but I never legitimately read one. But low and behold, No Place for a Lady was hilariously awful. In fact, I might just review it for you.

All in all, Easter was fantastic. Spending time with Jason's family is always entertaining and having my sister there was even more wonderful.