Dashboard S'mores

Hello again from the Land of Always Summer, aka Dallas, Texas.

This year is turning out to be the second-hottest summer in recorded history, trailing only the unbearable summer of 1980. (I'm glad we didn't live here then!) This month we finally ended our 40-day streak of 100-degree-plus temperatures with a day in the high 90s, meaning we came within two days of tying the 1980 streak of 42 days. Rats!

And now, as we wind up August, we've had 63 days of at least 100 degrees. Right now it's only 95 degrees, which actually feels good by this point. The record of the most 100-degree days in Dallas is 69 days in 1980. So we still have a shot at meeting that record, although I'm not sure I want to.

One of the more interesting things we've done this summer is to try our hands at dashboard cooking in our old Chevy Suburban. We've made quesadillas, garlic bread, grilled-cheese sandwiches, cinnamon toast, hot dogs, bruschetta and beef jerky. As the temperature inside the car can easily hit 120 degrees and above on a hot day, most of our experiments have turned out quite well.

By far the most popular experiment with our kids was the dashboard s'more. Easy and tasty, it came out great! Since then, I found this funny song on YouTube titled "Dashboard S'mores." It takes place -- you guessed it! -- in Texas. Where else?

I've also come across several people who've baked chocolate chip cookies in their cars! You can find out more at Discover Magazine, Baking Bites, SnarkyVegan or Completely Delicious. We'll have to try that sometime as well! I bet the smell inside your car is heavenly. :)

I've also found a surprising number of online articles about solar cookery using cardboard boxes covered in aluminum foil, or funky reflective dishes that look like giant woks. This turns out to work great in hot places such as Africa, where they don't have electricity or Suburbans. And it might be fun for a Scout project.

For now, though, we'll continue trying car cookery and hoping for our heat spell to eventually end. But maybe it would be nice if we could break that 1980 record, for bragging rights anyway.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Happy Back-to-School Day!!!

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved going back to school: picking out my favorite outfit to wear, seeing my friends again, toting a brand-new lunchbox with a PBJ and a Hostess Ho Ho, wearing new leather shoes, meeting my new teachers, and seeing which boys had grown taller and more handsome over the summer.

Now that I'm a mother, the first day of school has morphed into my all-time favorite holiday of the year! The above video accurately reflects the states of mind in our house as I excitedly prepared the kids for school and they looked at me glumly and asked why they had to return to that horrid place.

Here in Dallas, yesterday was the first day of school, and I've enjoyed seeing all the Facebook photos of my friends' kids all dressed up, brandishing their backpacks and ready to face a new year of classes. It's fun to see how all our kids are growing and changing, getting a little bit older and a little bit more jaded every year. Even though my own kids complained, I of course took their obligatory pictures in our front yard as well. It's a family tradition! I remember my mom took our pictures on our first days of school so many years ago, and it's fun now to look back at them and see the feathered hair, big jewelry and "cool" outfits we sported so many years ago.

The temperature here in Dallas this August is still well over 100 degrees every day (we're now enduring the second-hottest summer in recorded history), but band kids and high school football players have been marching and practicing for weeks already in the heat. And even though the thermometer doesn't say it's fall, it's nonetheless time to head back to school.

Although I may groan at the cost of binders and notebooks, I consider the small fortune I've spent on school supplies a fair price to pay for 6.92 hours of peaceful bliss every school day for the next nine months. With all my kids now safely at school, I can finally hear myself think for the first time in three months. You know those new kindergarten moms crying on the first day of school? I was practically crying tears of joy as I did my happy dance!

So while Back-to-School Day may not be an official holiday, to me it's the best one of all. Best wishes to all the parents, kids and teachers as they embark on another journey of learning.

And then start the party!!!

Dashboard Beef Jerky

Our latest foray into dashboard dining is a blast from the past ... beef jerky! With our record summer temps this year above 100 degrees for 40 days in a row, we thought we'd try an ancient method of food preservation: drying meat in the sun.

According to "The History of Beef Jerky," Since prehistoric times, one of the oldest methods of preserving food was drying it in the sun. In North and South America, native Americans dried strips of deer, elk and buffalo in the sun to eat later. In the land later called Peru, a tribe called the Quechua (part of the Inca empire) dried meat and called it ch'arki. This term later became charqui and then jerky. In later years, North American pioneers dried meat by smoking it or by draping it over the outside of their covered wagons for two to three days as they headed westward.

At our house, my husband is a big beef jerky fan and usually makes his jerky in the oven or in his smoker. But last week he decided to try making his beef jerky on the dashboard of our Suburban because it was about 105 degrees, and the inside of the car gets really hot when it sits outside in the sun all day long.

First he bought some thinly cut beef strips and marinated them. Then he laid them over racks atop the car dashboard.

The jerky sat in the sun for several hours, with the car windows cracked open so the meat could dry more easily.

My husband said the jerky drying actually went more quickly than he anticipated. It came out perfectly and used no electricity to make. Just think how much easier and faster it could have been for the pioneers if they had had Suburbans instead of Conestogas!

And of course, we had to taste-test the car food to make sure it was safe to eat. In this case, the boys ate it all by the next day! Luckily for us, it didn't have to last us weeks on the trail.

Next up in car cookery: pizza bagels.

Let's Get a Bruschetta!

 

Hello again from Dallas, where we are closing in on the dubious distinction of suffering through the longest stretch of 100-degree-plus days in recorded history! As we parents wait eagerly for the start of school (yahoo!), our heat-addled brains have come up with new ways to entertain our families in the broiling heat of the summer. One novel idea for us is car cookery, or cooking food in the solar heat built up in our 1999 Chevy Suburban. With the city's heat at all-time highs nearly every day this month, we have more than enough solar energy to cook a few things in the car.

Why cook in the car? There are several good reasons for doing so:

1. to cook when camping

2. for summer amusement

3. as scientific experimentation

4. to save energy and lower your electric bills

5. to cook during power outages, and

6. to avoid heating up the house with your indoor oven

So if you live in a hot part of the country, why not try something new?

Today's entry into the annals of car cookery is much fancier than yesterday's cinnamon toast. We've already tried car-cooking plenty of kid favorites, such as quesadillas, garlic bread, grilled cheese sandwiches, hot dogs and that all-time classic, s'mores. But man cannot live on kid food alone, so I thought I'd branch into something more sophisticated: bruschetta. 

Bruschetta (pronounced "broosketta" in Italian) is a yummy appetizer made with baguette rounds, fresh tomatoes and basil. For my recipe I looked online and found a five-star version here on allrecipes.com. When I made the bruschetta yesterday, it was 105 F outside and 158 degrees on the car dashboard.

First I sliced the fresh baguette into 3/4" slices.

 

 I toasted the bread slices for about half an hour in the car until they were warm and slightly crunchy. In the meantime, I chopped all the tomatoes and assembled the savory topping. Then I spooned some topping onto each baguette slice and sprinkled a little bit of mozzarella cheese on each one. 

Then it was back in the "oven."

I let the bruschetta broil under the windshield about 45 minutes, until the topping was warm and the cheese had started to melt. I could have let it go longer, but it was dinnertime, and we were hungry!

After I brought them in, I garnished each round with a fresh basil leaf from our yard. They looked so cute and tasted so yummy! Sadly, our kids were too chicken to try them (they prefer cinnamon toast), but that only left more for my husband and me -- oh, darn! We even had a bunch left over for our neighbor, who gladly tasted them even though they were cooked in our Suburban.

The bruschetta turned out to be the tastiest and most elegant food we've made in the car yet ... definitely a success!!!

And it's only a few more days until we break that 1980 heat-wave record!

Next up in car cookery: sun-dried beef jerky.

Dashboard Cinnamon Toast

Cinnamon toast made in our car.

Hello, again! Here in Dallas, we're still in the middle of an extreme heat wave and extreme drought, so we're trying to entertain ourselves without using water and without being outside. One thing we're not in want of is solar power, so we've decided to use it to cook as many things as we can.

Yesterday it was 105 degrees in the sun and 181 degrees on our car dashboard, so I thought I'd try to make cinnamon toast. It was so easy that kids can do it.

(By the way, can you believe that if you Google "cinnamon toast," you'll actually see lots of recipes for basic cinnamon toast? I'm as surprised that anyone would need a recipe as I'm surprised people would actually buy little bottles of cinnamon sugar in the store. Seriously, can't people figure out how to mix cinnamon and sugar?)

Anyway, all I did was butter some sandwich bread, sprinkle it with my very own homemade cinnamon sugar and place it in a pie pan on the car's dashboard.

The bread before we put it in the car.

In about 15 minutes, the toast was done and ready to eat. It wasn't very "gourmet," but my boys ate it all.

So if you need to entertain your children cheaply in the summer, try toasting some bread in your car. If you don't like cinnamon toast, try regular buttered toast, and then add jelly when you bring it inside.

If your kids like the car toast, then they'll really like the car s'mores I made last week.

Garlic Bread "A La Car"

This is the "after" picture.

As Texas broils in a heat wave (Today is Day 35 of 100 degrees plus), what better time to make "Texas toast"?

Yesterday in our Suburban I made one of my favorite foods: garlic bread. So easy, and yet so delicious! The high temperature yesterday (which happened to be a record high) was 108, so it was more than hot enough to toast garlic bread on the dashboard of our car. (For more information on our heat wave, click here.) In fact, a reporter using a fancy laser gun measured the temperature of a car dashboard in the sun at 165 degrees. She also measured  the rubber mat on a playground at 180 degrees! (Click here for full story.) But I digress.

Anyway, I didn't have any French bread, so I used sandwich bread. First I buttered it, then sprinkled garlic powder on it, then layered some Italian cheese on top. After about 15 minutes, it was done. It turned out as well as any garlic bread I've made in our real oven, and this was energy-efficient because I didn't have to pay for the car oven. (And it's a good thing, too, since the Texas power grid has been straining all week to keep our air conditioners going, and they're asking everyone to conserve electricity.)

This is the "before" picture.

So the garlic bread was great ... yum!!! And there was a bonus, too: The inside of the car smelled really good! 

What will we try next?

Hot Dog! It's More Car Cookery!

Greetings from Texas! It's time for more car cookery!

Today for lunch we tried heating up hot dogs on our Suburban's dashboard. The hot dogs are already precooked, so they need only to be warmed up enough to eat. Luckily for us, that was no problem.

We decided to steam them a little so they'd end up moist and not shriveled. First we placed four hot dogs in a pie pan, then added a little bit of water and covered them with a damp paper towel. It was 100 degrees F outside and far hotter than that inside the car as it sat in the sun with all the windows closed.

After about 30-45 minutes, they were warm enough to eat. 

Most of the water had evaporated, and the paper towel was completely dry, but the hot dogs were moist and had that good hot dog smell. We placed them in buns and added our toppings. The testers pronounced them satisfactory and ate all of them.

Best of all: We didn't have to use any energy to make them, because all the solar energy we could ever want is provided free by our friend the Sun.

Next up: garlic bread!

Sandwiches, Suburban Style

As Dallas endures its 32nd day in a row of 100-degree-plus temperatures, we decided to make another entry for our upcoming Suburban cookbook. Today's experiment is ... grilled cheese sandwiches. No, not cooked on the car's grill, but on its dashboard.

We started by preheating a nonstick black frying pan on the car's dashboard as the car sat out in the sun with all the doors and windows closed. With today's outside temperature at 106 degrees, it was plenty hot enough inside the car. After the pan was warm, we put the buttered sandwiches in and cooked them about 15 minutes on each side.

The resulting sandwiches were hot and greasy, with melted cheese and toasted bread. Offering to serve as tasters were our two boys, both self-professed grilled-cheese experts. They pronounced the results edible but not as good as regular grilled-cheese sandwiches. The sandwiches looked OK to me, but apparently the bread turned out a little hard and didn't have quite the right texture.

Luckily the dog thought they were just fine. :)

So what should we try next?

S'more Car Cookery

Today it was over 100 degrees again (for the 29th day in a row!). Maybe the heat is baking our brains a little, but we thought it would be entertaining to try another experiment in car cookery.

This afternoon we tried cooking s'mores on the car's dashboard. First we assembled the s'mores.



Then we placed them in a cake pan atop the dash.


After about 20 minutes, they were ready to eat! We found out that if you like your chocolate a little less melty, you can start the marshmallow first.

Either way, they were delicious!


And we didn't even need a campfire. :)

Car Cookery

So it's over 100 degrees again, the kids are out of school, summer camp is over, and everyone is bored. What can you do? Car cookery!

You probably have heard the saying, "It's so hot, you can fry an egg on the sidewalk!" This is a great cliche but cannot actually be done. (For a fun look at a person who actually did this experiment, visit http://phoenix.about.com/od/arizonapicturesandphotos/ig/Fry-an-Egg/Fry-an-Egg-01.htm

People have shown that an egg must reach a temperature of at least 158 degrees before it will cook. This theoretically can be done on the metal hood of a car. (Check out http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/friedegg.html)

Here in the Dallas area, summer is always HOT. The only variables are exactly how hot it will be, how humid it will be, and whether a stray thunderstorm will drench us on any given day. But it's impossible to escape the heat for several states in every direction. This month, the whole Midwest is experiencing a severe heat wave, and the rest of the country is finding out how it feels to have Texas' weather: awful! But at least we're used to it, so we don't whine as much about it.

In these sizzling days, hot cars are a horrible fact of life. The heat sears your hands and backside in your car, the heat bakes you like an oven, and you start sweating like a basted turkey. The heat is hard on your car and hard on your body. The heat even tends to zap your car batteries in the summer. However, there is ONE advantage to a hot car: It's a free way to cook your food!

This summer we are starting a new series on car cookery featuring our old green Chevy Suburban. We are going to see what can be cooked in the car. This provides several benefits: saving electricity, providing amusement and giving us ideas for our next summer camping trip.

Almost all of Texas is currently in a state of severe drought, so most of the state is under a burn ban. So when you go camping and can't build a fire, how do you cook? The answer ... pull up your car!


Our first experiment in car cookery took place a few days ago at 5:45 p.m., when it was 102 degrees F in the sun and 152 degrees inside the car with all the doors and windows closed.



We preheated our frying pan on the dashboard of our Suburban until the pan got really hot, then created a quesadilla with a tortilla and shredded cheese.




About 15 minutes later, voila! The quesadilla was done. The taste testers agreed that it was edible and very much like a regular quesadilla, except that we forgot to fry it in butter. We'll remember that next time.

So, what do you think you can cook up? Bon appetit!


P.S. You are welcome to try this in your own car, but MAKE SURE NO ANIMALS OR CHILDREN ARE LEFT INSIDE THE VEHICLE.

Easy as Pie

Happy Independence Day!

One of the happiest holidays in the United States of America is the Fourth of July, and it's one of my favorites because of its cheerful color scheme and because I hardly have to do anything! Unlike Christmas, I don't have to "shop till I drop," and it's one of the few holidays where the kids don't get candy! (Thank goodness!)

For Independence Day, I made a pretty cookie pizza with strawberries and blueberries. It was so cute, and tasty too! You can find the easy recipe at Pillsbury.com.

This Fourth of July, I finally got my husband to install a flag holder, and I was pleased to hang our Stars and Stripes out front.



We made pretty little cupcakes for all the kids we had over before we all drove to watch the nearest fireworks a couple of miles away.



We all had a wonderful time watching the airshow with old World War II-era warplanes; the fireworks in sparkling sprays of silver, blue and red; and the children playing on their scooters and running on the grass with glow-in-the-dark bracelets and necklaces, the boys brandishing little glowing swords.

This week, my teenage daughter learned how to make another American tradition: lattice-topped blueberry pie! It really was as easy as pie, and it was absolutely delicious! I'm so happy she's learning some great skills for the future! I mean, algebra and social studies are great, but you can't eat them!



For the filling, my daughter used this easy recipe at All Recipes.com. For the crust, she used this simple but scrumptious recipe handed down from my Granny Howard:

For one crust, sift together: 1 C flour and 1/2 tsp. salt. Then cut in 1/3 Cup Crisco. Stir this into a ball with 2-4 T. cold water. For a top and bottom crust, double the recipe.

Believe me when I say this pie just looks and tastes like summer. Yum!

I hope you are having a great summer too and enjoy the festive times of these long, warm evenings. Three cheers for the red, white and ... blueberry!

Huge Snowstorm in Texas!

Last month we had an amazing weather event here in north Texas that's even rarer than a blue moon.

We had a huge snowstorm! Usually we get about an inch of snow once or twice a winter. This year, we got about a foot of snow at once! It snowed here for about 24 hours straight and set several new records in north Texas. It was the most snow on the ground at one time that most of us have ever seen around here. In fact, it was the most snow recorded in one 24-hour period in Dallas since the 1930s!

It first started snowing Thursday, Feb. 11. Then it snowed all night, and when we woke up Friday morning Feb. 12, it looked like a winter wonderland outside! With no wind, the snow fell silently all night and clung to every branch and twig. Our house looked like a picture postcard.



All the kids in the Metroplex got a snow day on Friday, and almost every kid in the neighborhood was out playing in the snow all day. Our kids all went to the little park near our house and made snowmen and snow angels, built snow forts, waged snowball fights and took turns sliding down the little hills on plastic saucers. I even got out our old cross-country skis from the garage, where they have sat unused to years, and we all skied around the neighborhood! It was the first time our kids had ever gotten up on skis.

After that snowstorm came the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. The kids were so entertained watching all the athletes skiing, sledding and snowboarding that now they want to move somewhere it snows every winter!

Valentine's Day Cookies

Did you have a nice Valentine's Day?

My daughter and I celebrated the holiday by making homemade sugar cookies using our best family recipe. Sugar cookies are fun to make because you can cut them out in almost any design. Cookie cutters are available these days to mark just about any occasion, and I admit I have dozens of cookie cutters stored by theme so I'm ready for just about anything!

Giving homemade cookies is a special, personal way to show you care about someone. They are much more thoughtful and tasty than storebought, and who doesn't like homemade cookies? And they're even better with frosting!

Why don't you try baking up a batch for those special people tonight?

A White Christmas

"In the meadow we can build a snowman, then pretend that he is Parson Brown."
-- Felix Bernard,

"Winter Wonderland," 1934

No, that's not Parson Brown above. He's actually not even snow. (He's plastic.) But he is surrounded by real snow. It snowed here Christmas Eve!

After all those years of yearning for a white Christmas, we finally got one here in north Texas. In fact, it was the first white Christmas here since 1926! We awoke Christmas morning to a beautiful white wonderland as pretty as a picture postcard.

The snow covered the flowerbeds like fluffy white down.



It even covered the rabbits on the front porch. They think you won't see them if they hold perfectly still.



After opening their presents Christmas morning, the boys had some wild fun throwing snowballs and sliding down our little hill.

But sooner or later, cold noses and frosty fingers mean it's time to come inside.



Would anyone like some hot chocolate?

Visions of Fall

"Autumn"


Autumn in felted slipper shuffles on,
Muted yet fiery ...
... in the garden
Maples are garish, and surprising leaves
Make sudden fires with sudden crests of flame
Where the sun hits them

-- Vita Sackville-West, 1892-1962

The above excerpt of poetry by Vita Sackville-West is practically the only positive quotation I could find about autumn. I was quite surprised, because I love fall, and it is positively a reason for joy here in Texas, where it is not unheard of to have 100 days of 100+ temperatures in the summer. (Believe me, I've lived through it!)

Most of the classic writers, however, have lived in old England, New England and other places where winters are bleak and summers are actually pleasant. Most of the classic poets write rhapsodies about temperate summer days and describe autumn as a melancholy time of decline and getting older.

But I say fall is getting a bad rap! Although spring is definitely my favorite season, fall is right there behind it. If you don't live up north, summer is a period of dreadful heat, and we here in Dallas are always thrilled and relieved when we feel that first touch of cool air in the autumn. So there need to be more poems about the wonders of fall!

After the long, hot days of summer, autumn is a breath of fresh air.



I love the way the days cool down and you feel that frosty nip in the air for the first time in the fall. I love the old back-to-school fashions of thick tights and red plaid skirts. I love how the leaves decorate the yard with gorgeous colors of brown, red, yellow and orange. I don't even want to rake them up because they look so pretty. I wish my camera could better capture the way the sun shines through the leaves and dapples the grass with golden rays of light.

We were lucky this year to enjoy a lovely, prolonged season of beautiful autumn weather, perfect for playing outside and going birding. In fact, we saw many birds we haven't noticed in years past: yellow-rumped warblers, ruby-crowned kinglets, dark-eyed juncos. We think many of them were stopping by this year to enjoy our beautiful fall weather instead of just flying through on their fall migrations. Sometimes it just goes straight from summer heat to winter cold here in Texas, but we had a real autumn this year, and it was wonderful.

Then we woke up Dec. 2, and it was snowing!



The snow didn't last very long, and it didn't stick around. In fact, it melted in a couple of hours. But it was so pretty while it lasted. Thanks to a very early and very cold storm front, we were treated to a little bit of white.

Even our green chairs got a dusting of snow.



The kids were disappointed that school wasn't canceled.

But here in Texas, you just never know what the weather will bring you. In fact, there's a saying here that if you don't like the current weather, just wait 10 minutes and it will be something else. It's actually fairly common to have temperature swings of 30 to 40 degrees in one day, or even 15 degrees in a matter of minutes if an arctic front comes our way!



I found my "Autumn" quote in the above book "Forest's Robe" by Penhaligon and edited by Sheila Pickles. Penhaligon made several such gorgeous gatherings of poetry and prose in themes such as love, the four seasons, Christmas, weddings, etc. They include beautiful color artwork inside and are even scented with lovely perfumes from Penhaligon's line! After 17 years, my copy still smells pretty!

Unfortunately, winter is just around the corner, and we have already had a string of below-freezing nights that have killed my lush, green summer plants. But yesterday I noticed a little narcissus already blooming in my flowerbed! Poor, confused little baby daffodil.

It's not even officially winter yet, but I guess spring -- my favorite season -- is coming soon!

Cool Weather Cooking

Brrr! It has been so cold, wet and wintry around here that it has me wanting to pull on a sweater and some long socks and put a big pot of soup on the stove. The Dallas area has gotten into a seemingly endless rain cycle, and it's made for a much cooler-than-usual October.

So with the coming of fall and cooler weather, we've been craving cool-weather comfort food.

In the past few weeks, I've made clam chowder, beef chili, split-pea soup and cream of broccoli soup, all homemade and all delicious. Soup from a can just isn't the same, and homemade soup is too easy not to try. On a cold fall day, nothing beats simmering some soup on the stove all afternoon and serving it with some fresh, hot bread.

Last night I made some yummy corn chowder from Posie Gets Cozy. I love this recipe. It's sweet, simple and delicious. Alicia's blog always has gorgeous photos on it and lots of good recipes.

To go with the corn chowder I made one of my other favorite recipes -- Albers Cornbread.

Albers is a West Coast brand of cornmeal that I can't find out here in Texas, but you can use any brand of cornmeal you like. This recipe is from the side of the box.

Now everyone knows there are many different types of cornbreads, with both family and regional differences. Most people prefer either really sweet cornbread or not-very-sweet-at-all cornbread. I like mine in between, and I really like this recipe because the cornbread is just right: thick and moist, with just the right touch of sweetness. We've made this quick and easy recipe in my family for years.

-----------------------

Albers Cornbread

1 C yellow cornmeal
1 C flour
1/4 C sugar
1 T baking powder
1 t. salt
1/3 C oil
1 egg
1 C milk

Combine dry ingredients. Then add wet ingredients. Pour in greased 8" square pan. Bake 25 mins. at 400 degrees. If doubling recipe, put in 13" x 9" x 2" pan. Test with toothpick in center. It should be slightly brown on top.

---------------------





When we went to Indiana this summer, we visited the Stockdale Mill in tiny, rural Roann. The old, water-powered grain mill was built in 1857 and ground flour for Union troops in the Civil War. It operated for many decades before finally falling into disrepair in recent years. Recently it was refurbished, and now it is open for tours.



We took our kids on the tour and found it really interesting. One of their favorite parts of the tour was getting to operate an old corn grinder that takes dried kernels and grinds them into a coarse cornmeal.



I bought a bag of this cornmeal ground at the mill and have been using it in my cornbread recipe for the past two months.


The stoneground cornmeal is a little coarser and flakier than factory-processed cornmeal, so the result is slightly different. But you know what? Our cornbread is even better than before!



The stoneground cornmeal is not only healthier for you because it has the nutritious germ still in it, but it also makes for a fluffier bread. I store this cornmeal in my freezer to keep it fresh. You might be able to find a brand of stoneground cornmeal at your grocery store. It's worth a try!

Why don't you bake some bread today?

Adventures in Cake Decorating

As the mother of three growing kids, I've made a lot of "mom" cakes. You know, the ones with sprinkles covering the spots where the kids poked their fingers in the frosting, the ones with mismatched birthday candles and the ones with plastic dinosaurs drowning in red frosting lava (oh, you never made one like that?).




One of the pleasurable duties of a mom is the chance to make a new cake each year to mark the fact that your child (and you) have again made it to the next birthday. (Sometimes you wonder how you did it!)

As each new year rolls around, I find it gets boring making the same old cakes. So I've started branching out and trying new ideas in keeping with our birthday party themes. I find store-bought cakes are often expensive and taste awful, so I prefer to make my own. While saving money, I get to express some creativity and make a yummier cake too.

One year my son had a creepy-crawly party and got a big Bundt-pan snake cake.




Another year I tried making the Mach 5 racecar from the old "Speed Racer" cartoons, using a real plastic windshield. (I know it's not perfect, but my son loved it.)




I made some memorable cakes, but I never knew how to decorate like a pro.

For years I've wanted to learn how to make the elaborate designs of sugar art on those fancy, professional cakes. I love watching "Ace of Cakes" and those cake-decorating contests on the Food Network. So this summer I started taking some cake-decorating courses at my local Hobby Lobby store. The classes are fun, and our instructor is encouraging even when our cakes end up looking more like mistakes than masterpieces. The point is to enjoy yourself and not worry too much about how they turn out. After all, she says, you can always eat your mistakes! And anyone who critiques too loudly doesn't get a piece of cake.

So after two courses, I've learned how to make icing stars, rainbows, roses, daffodils, leaves, daisies, violets, pansies and chrysanthemums. My best cake so far is this one with all the icing flowers and a bluebird on the side. It has a basketweave design around the outside, and you know what? It was made from scratch and quite tasty.




So I'm learning more each time, and I'm already looking forward to my next class.

I'll let you know how it goes!