First Birthday Photo Shoot

 I don't get much time with my camera these days but I still like it and who could resist this face.

 He still has his moments though

I love you darling son, you bring so much joy into our lives, I thank God for giving you to us!  Happy Birthday!

Birthday Cupcakes

Keeping with the theme of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Birthday Cake we made these peanut butter cupcakes and used the left over butter cream peanut butter frosting.  (I did alter the cupcakes: I put in half the sugar, used 1 cup whole wheat flour and then the rest was all purpose four, I also used 1/2 c applesauce and 1/4 c oil instead of the shortening.)   In some of the cupcakes we added chopped pb cups, those that we didn't we put pb cups on top of the frosting.  My daughter picked out these cute pink tea party cupcake wrappers. 

Skate Cake

As tradition goes I made my daughter a special "fancy" cake for her birthday.  Originally she asked for a flower cake with a number 6 on it.  As time drew closer to making the cake she changed her mind and said she wanted an ice skating cake and she wanted it to be blue.  So . . . let the cake making begin.  

This year, as I blog about this event I decided to "write down" all the recipes I used so I didn't have to search and search next time for them.  (Now, I will just have to search for this post)  For the look of the cake I searched and looked at many pictures but pulled most of my ideas from these two cakes.

Ok, so lets talk cake . . . . I'm not really sure my daughter even likes cake so when it comes to flavor she didn't really care.  When I suggested chocolate and peanut butter she totally went for it (our family are huge Reese's PB Cup fans!).  I found this recipe for the cake and used this recipe  for the filling and then I had a brilliant idea to cut up peanut butter cups and put that in the filling.  

When carving and decorating cakes it's a good idea to have a crumb coat and then put a second layer of your frosting.  The crumb coat will seal any crumbs from the cake so they don't show through the decorating layer.  This is especially important when you are decorating with frosting, giving a nice clean look.  I saw that this was very important when I made my daughter's Rocket cake.  This year I did a crumb coat because . . . I have always done a crumb coat.  (Not really a good reason to do something.)  I decided that doing a crumb coast is not only not necessary when decorating with fondant but detracts from the cake's flavor.  Because I was making a peanut butter frosting the crumb coat, a simple powder sugar frosting, detracted from the flavor. - Lesson Learned (hopefully) - Ok, so back to what I did with this cake.  When decorating with fondant it's a good idea to use butter cream frosting as it makes a good glue to help fondant stick to the cake.  I used this peanut butter butter cream recipe.  I also made my own fondant, I made two batches one using this recipe and added blue food coloring and almond flavor into it before I added the powder sugar.  The second batch I used this recipe which is basically the same as the first.

Covering the cake with fondant did not go as smoothly as last year . . . still learning!  First mistake was rolling more than we needed and letting it sit too long after rolling it out.  Our first attempted we failed and had to try again.  The second attempt I think we used too much crisco making it too soft and "melty".

I learned from my new friend some very helpful things about modeling with fondant.  You can use a lot more crisco on the fondant than I thought, it can make it too wet though, but, then you just have to add more powder sugar to it and it's back to normal.  I think I found that when adding so much food coloring to the fondant can cause it to dry and crack. But when making shapes you can just rub and work with the fondant and smooth out cracks and seems.  We tried to make the ice skate out of complete fondant but it didn't work,  The fondant wasn't firm enough and kept falling down and not holding it's shape.  (I would like to try adding Tylose Powder to the fondant to make it into gum paste, which is more firm and stiff.)  We ended up using a cut out shape from card board for the ice skate and a hanger shaped into the number 6.  I didn't have silver food color so I bought pearl dust and painted with it.  I also bought white and blue pearl dust and used that to give the cake a sparkle to it.  We put snow flake "sprinkles" on top as well to give a snow look (not shown well in the picture).

The taste of the cake was very good!  As I cut it the smell of peanut butter brought me to a happy place.  The filling was by far the best part!  I thought the chocolate cake was a bit dry but the frosting was very moist and so the dryness of the cake really balanced that out.  Just about everybody loved the fondant and ate almost all of it. 

Overall I was very pleased with the cake, it wasn't too hard (I was going for simple) and my daughter said it was the best part of her birthday!  I'm still learning and hope to make even more improvements next year. 

My First . . .

 

(check out that hot car model!)

At 30 I bought my first car . . .

 

and at 30 I crashed my first car.

 
To find out what happened read here. 

Local Lunch

We ate with our friends in a local and very small town. We arrived at the restuarnt which appeared to be someone's home. Our friend asked us to order but we politly refused saying we would like anything he ordered.

As he finished up ordering the workers ran around gathering everything needed to make our food. One ran out back and returned with our chicken. They killed it, plucked it chopped it up and cooked it. They also pulled out an eel from a bucket, killed it, chopped it up and cooked it (see picture below). Talk about fresh food!



I'm sure this would violate some health code.



The food was pretty good and we tried several new dishes. One was a local speciality called sweet and sour cucumber. I was a little hesitant to try it because it looked like a bowl of fat. Once I got over the look the taste was good, a little sweet. One of my favorite dish was sweet potato leaves



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Snuggle Time

I hope he bonds to his new little brother

Lessons in Birthday Cakes

I have been trying to write this blog for over a week but was first uninspired, then unmotivated and then I was kicked off line because our VPN was blocked. Here I am, finally writing this all down. I am writing this blog, not really for others to read but for my own future reference. I want to document the things that I have learned from making these birthday cakes so I can remember for future endeavors (if I dare to try again).

This all started 3 years ago when my not yet 3 year old daughter told me she wanted a Rocket cake from Little Einsteins for her birthday cake. At first I just laughed but as I thought it over I thought that I could possible do it. I looked online for cake ideas and found something that I liked, thought of a plan, and then asked my friend (an artist) to help me. I was actually really pleased with how it turned out.

The only problem with this cake was that there was too much! I could have just done the rocket and had plenty of cake (we aren't huge cake fans). I made a 9x13 chocolate cake that was used for the sky (covered in blue frosting). The body of Rocket was made from two round cake (one was actually cooked in a bowl), the recipe I used was given to me by my sister that is suppose to be very good for carving and shaping. The engines were made out of gluten free chocolate cup cakes.

Summary of the things I learned from making the Rocket Cake
1) Freezing the cake makes it a lot easier to carve and frost
2) Doing a crumb coat frosting will help seal in the crumbs so your final frosting coat is nice and smooth
3) When trying to get a a deep red frosting you should mix it up at least a day in advance, when you stir it up the next day it will no longer be pink but a nice brilliant red

The next year we decided for my daughter's 4th birthday to have a Dora the Explorer themed party. This year I wanted to try making fondant and I also wanted to make the cake taste good. Although I think the cake is pretty cute (my favorite were the stars shooting out of the cake) I almost gave up in the middle of the project and was really disappointed with the end result. However, I was happy with how the cakes tasted, the top was red velvet and the bottom was chocolate with chocolate ganche & raspberry filling.

A few things I learned from making this two tier Dora Cake:

1) Marshmallow fondant dries out & cracks very easily
2) When covering a cake with fondant you need to do it quickly or else it will pull, tear and crack

3) It is very important that your cake is carved flat, DON'T try and cover mistakes with extra frosting - too much and the frosting melts and then the fondant falls/droops
4) Less filling (as well as crumb coat frosting) is best; when using a filling you don't want too much or the cake will bulge.

For my daughters 5th birthday she wanted a princess theme so I thought doing a castle could be simple enough. I started searching on line again for ideas and found some ideas that I liked. After the previous year's fondant frustrations, I wasn't looking forward to working with it again. But my friend pointed out how much prettier the cake with fondant looked and I figured I could give it one more try. I hoped to remember the mistakes from the year before and improved on it.

First thing I did was make the marshmallow fondant much more "wet" than the previous year. This made working with it a bit easier, it didn't dry or crack as much. I also rolled out the fondant much thicker than the previous year which also helped with the cracking. Secondly, I decided to go back to the dense vanilla & chocolate cakes since I wanted to build with it. I knew they wouldn't taste as good but hopefully they wouldn't fall, bulge or slide.

For the bottom cake (purple tier) I used a dense chocolate cake (actually tasted pretty good) baked in two 9x9 pans and layered them. The second pink tier and the purple towers I made a 9x13 dense vanilla cake. After freezing all the cakes I assembled them together using a thin layer of crumb coat frosting. The top tier I carved to a nice square shape and the towers were cut using circle cake cutters with wooden skewers placed in the middle to hold them together. The bottom pink towers are made of chocolate gluten free cake, also cut with cake cutters and held together with wooden skewers.

I have to admit that going into the project I had a bit of a bad attitude, I was nervous and thought it was going to be a disaster. But once into it I started to have fun! I was really pleased with the final outcome thinking it was super cute. It was really pretty simple to make and everything went pretty smoothly. I did struggle frosting the towers, the carved cake kept falling apart. But once I let them freeze it was much easier to frost.

Here are a couple things that did go "wrong" with the Castle cake (but I'm not exactly sure how to improve for next time).
1) Most of the towers were fine but a couple of them the fondant began to slide off (possibly too much crumb coat frosting? possibly the fondant was too thick and heavy pulling it down?)
2) After sitting out all night the fondant's color faded; I guess it needs to be covered but how do you cover a huge carved cake?
3) Need to make sure the cakes are carved evenly and flat (I know I "learned" this the year before - I did a much better job but still had some mistakes

So after making 3 "fancy" cakes I think that I have learned a lot but the big question is "Was it worth it?" I was a little disappointed with my daughters reaction when she saw the finished caked (but she is a bit like her mama and doesn't show too much emotion). But we all have great memories, I had fun creating a master piece, and hanging out with my friend as we made eatable art.

Celebrating the New Year

Since China goes by the Lunar calendar the New Year is not on the same day as we celebrate it (nor is it likely to be on the same day ever). This year we are bringing in the Year of the Rabbit on February 3. The New Year or 春节 (ChunJie), literally translated "Spring Festival" is similar to America's Christmas. It is probably the most celebrated holiday by everyone in China and is probably the most important holiday to spend with your family. People usually return to their hometown to be with their families. Presents aren't exchanged as we do at Christmas time but instead the older members of the family give red envelopes filled with money to the young children.

On New Year's eve everyone gets together and 包饺子 (baojiaozi - wrap dumplings). Jiaozi, or dumplings are made with ground beef or pork and some chopped vegetables then wrapped with a small flour wrap. Usually there are a few coins put in several of them (whoever gets those will have fortune in the new year, and they are usually required to sing a song for fun during the meal).

The Chinese are very famous for their amazing paper cuts . . . my daughter is trying her hand at it. She LOVES arts & crafts and did several paper cuts. This year is the year of the Rabbit, so she cut out a couple of Rabbits (unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the finished products).

During the New Year you will also see signs hung with the character 福 (Fu) on it which means blessing.

Here my friend and my husband & daughter are practicing their calligraphy. One of my daughter's favorite things to do is paint, she practiced her characters for over an hour! I think she is actually pretty good, maybe even better than her daddy. ;-)

When celebrating the New Year you can't forget the fireworks! There are so many fireworks set off on New Years Eve that the car alarms join in with the noise. It really sounds like you are in the middle of a war, especially when you live in an apartment complex where the sound bounces between the buildings.
Every year I learn something new about celebrating this holiday. This year my husband was reading a book to my daughter and we learned that on New Year's eve you don't go to sleep for fear of having a bad dream. If you have a bad dream it is a sign of bad things to come, so to avoid the bad omen people will just avoid sleeping all together, at least until the sun comes up the next day. Probably another reason why they shoot fireworks off all night, so you CAN'T sleep. (But I have to say my children who have grown up here and being here 7 years myself I have learned to sleep through all the noise.)

Big Blue Eyed Boy

The other day I was commenting on how pretty my son's eyes are and how long & lush his eye lashes are. Women work so hard to get their eye lashes to look like his, and his are all natural.

I love those eyes, those big blue eyes. I can get lost in them. You can see so much in little children's eyes, watch them learn, look at you with love, or say "what?! I'm not doing anything wrong", or "can't you just hold me for 5 more minutes"

I think we need a new stroller

All I have to say is "Aaaaaaah!! I can't live without a stroller!!"

Bed Time Routine

Before we put the kids to bed we have a routine we follow . . . . brush your teeth, use the toilet, read a book, sing a song, say a prayer. Sometimes we like to throw in watching a YouTube clip. We have our favorites we usually watch: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, John Williams is the Man, a new favorite is Dancin on the Train (two Americans living in China wrote this song). But my son's favorite is Charlie Bite My Finger. I don't know why but usually as soon as we turn that one on he starts giggling. I'm not sure if he just thinks the baby is funny or he enjoys watching others inflict pain . . . should I be worried?

Saturday Mornings

Foot Binding

This past weekend we attended a wedding out in the countryside. I have never experienced anything like that before and I will never forget it. The wedding took place in a village and it appeared that most of the people from the village where there. When we arrived at the groom's house (where the ceremony took place) there was a large crowd waiting. I looked around and saw many different faces, some sad, some happy, most of them intrigued by our white faces. I saw this woman here and noticed that her feet were bound. After living in China for 6 years, in 3 different cities I have never seen this before. I was fascinated by it and when I began this blog I started searching online for information. I found this page that had stories from many different Chinese women who were still binding their feet (I believe these interviews were done around 1989). This woman here, along with one other villager I saw who also had bound feet, wasn't wearing the pretty 3 inch embroidered shoes but these black shoes which are very commonly found around China. Around 1949 the government came around and made the women unbind their feet. This was very painful and some women decided to keep binding their feet because they couldn't walk.

Photography Frustrations

I have loved pictures for as long as I remember. When I was a child I loved looking at old family photos. In high school I liked taking pictures and would organize them in boxes. When we moved to China a family member told me before we left to make sure we took lots of pictures so they could "see" our life. I don't think that I have let them down.

Now that I have a DSLR (which I have been dreaming about for 4 years now) I have had fun trying to take "better" looking photos. I haven't ever worked with an DSLR before so I am trying to learn all the elements of how to take a good picture. I really learn best with a teacher who gives me hands on explanation (which I don't have). The latest frustration I had was my photo shoot at the park yesterday. The sun was shining, the weather was perfect (not too hot, not too cold), the flowers were blooming, so off we went to take some photos.

The good thing about having a digital camera is that you can look at your pictures right away allowing you to try different settings to get what you are looking for. The problem I faced yesterday is that I was outside in the sun so I couldn't see the preview picture very well. The sun reflecting off the LCD screen makes it really difficult to see the picture's true colors.

Last time I took pictures outside there was too much light coming in, so I put on a filter. Now, there is still a little too much light and the color is maybe a little too vibrant. It looks like it is fake. I don't know what to do. Anyone have any suggestions?

Big Huge Mess!

When we first arrived in Qingdao we got our daughter this beanbag. After 3 years the stuffing has flattened and the bag is much much smaller than it used to be. A friend helped me find and purchase more stuffing. I knew from past experience that the stuffing is impossible to work with. Sticking to you and everything else, flying everywhere, blowing everywhere . . . . just crazy crazy stuff. So my plan was to just take the bag and not even open it, just stuff it into the beanbag. HA! As soon as I touched the bag it ripped! So I quickly put that end into the opened bag and I noticed that the beads were spilling out another whole. I quickly grabbed that and shoved that part into the bag and then, you guess it, another HUGE whole and the beads were pouring everywhere except for, or so it felt like, IN the beanbag.

It took me a little while to clean it up but I really impressed myself and was able to get all but a few into the bag.