Michael's Cake Class 101

I finally decided after all my many failed attempts at cake making and the $100's of dollars I spend each year for birthday cakes.  That I was going to take a cake class.  Fortunately,  Michael's offers one and it's relatively inexpensive.   Well the class is anyway, but of course you have to buy "supplies" for the class.  Most of which are Wilton's and not cheap.  Thank goodness for Michael's coupons.  Some of you may laugh...Michael's cake classes...but my sister-in-law took them and she is a cake goddess now.  Beautiful, delicious cakes come out of her kitchen all the time.  I thought maybe it could work for me.  Here is my first cake attempt.  Of course I cheated and used real butter after they told us to use Crisco.  It made the frosting less stiff and harder to decorate the cake.  I also have a very unsteady hand, but it wasn't so bad : /

Easter

I hope everyone had as great an Easter as we did this year!  We went to 2 different get togethers and the kids decorated eggs on Good Friday.  I didn't get a chance to make any cards or scrapbook, but I did find some creativity by baking/cooking.  This year I thought I'd try out some of the cool recipes I found on Pinterest.  The Bunny Bums were fun.  I didn't follow the recipe, I just bought some Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and reshaped them.  The quiche recipe I also found on Pillsbury.com but I made my own crust.  It was the ham and broccoli recipe.

The Monkey Bread was also from Pillsbury.com and it was delicious!  The chocolate chip Easter baskets were from Nestle.  They went fast!

No I know it doesn't look appealing...but it was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.  It's a Lemoncello Torte.  Sound familiar...yes Cheesecake Factory has one and I love it!  So I tried to find a recipe that could match it.  I found several online and tried one.  It was really good, but I think it needs a little work.  Plus I need to work on the appearance : )

I'm looking forward to eating less food and making more cards and scrapbooking...I'll be full until Christmas : )

Easter Crafts

The kiddos and I have been busy the last couple of days.  We are anxiously getting ready for Easter.  This year our entire family decided that we have way to many plastic eggs.  The kids and I decided to make paper mache eggs.  I found the directions on Pinterest.  Although they don't look quite as nice...we were happy with the way they came out.  My daughter ended up doing like 4 or 5 all by herself.  She's only 4.  My son got a little bored after 4, so they left me to finish them.  It was a little harder than I thought, but it was fun. I kept forgetting our little Happy Easter tag, so I had to redo a few of them : )  We filled them with little prizes and some candy.

We also ended up making some Easter sugar cookies.  We decorated them with Wilton's Icing and used some of Wilton's gels to add some color.  Like most kids, they had more fun eating them than decorating them, but they did a good job decorating none the less.  We used the sugar cookie recipe that came off of the William Sonoma SpiderMan cookie cutters.  That's my favorite.  Next time I won't make my favorite so I won't eat as many : )