Check Mate!

My son celebrated another birthday, and much to my disbelief he's now a double-digit kid. This year he chose a chess cake, and so I experimented with chocolate molds. I researched chess cakes on the internet, and found someone who had the brilliant idea of making a game in progress, which meant making fewer pieces! Since we had just moved house I was a little pressed for time, and I gratefully used her idea. My husband took it a step further, and found a famous end game online, and before we ate the cake, our son got to figure out how to get to check mate!

Experimenting with the molds was interesting, I learned that tempering the chocolate was not that hard, especially since we have a very wonderful digital thermometer. I would definitely use the method again. The hardest part was that the heat of my fingers would take off the lovely shine as I fitted the two halves of the chess pieces together. In future I might experiment with using gloves, and see if that helps.

Dig In!

(I just realized I've had this draft saved since last year! So, have a bonus post for today :-) )


I was thrilled when a friend asked me to bake a cake for her little boy and his friend, who would be celebrating their 4th birthdays together. Not only do I *love* baking cakes for friends (especially their kids!), but this was a repeat request! That meant that I hadn't scared them off last time!

And so, I got to make a construction themed cake, and I had a blast. Plus, bonus, how can you do anything other than chocolate (my *favorite*!) when you have dirt as part of your theme?!

This was how it turned out:

I got to use that spiral cake technique I learned for the Oz cake, and this time I could use the pieces as part of the dump truck scene. yay, dirt! :-)

Celebrating the Ones You Love

When I was growing up in South Africa, celebrating Valentine's Day wasn't that big of a deal--I think the highlight of the celebrations in my school-going years was ordering roses that tenth graders sold as a fund-raiser. These were then delivered on the Big Day, and everyone would wait with bated breath for the knock at the classroom door that would signal the arrival of The Roses. A friend and I eventually learned that ordering a rose for each other meant we escaped the horrible embarrassment of having it look like no-one 'liked' us. 

Anyway, the point of this rather rambling post is that when I arrived in the USA I was a bit startled to realize what a big deal it was here. At first I was a little skeptical--after all, if you're celebrating your love and friendship for everyone, Hallmark sells a *lot* more cards, right? However, since having kids, I guess I've become a lot more sentimental :-). I've come to love the idea of just celebrating love, and if you're doing it with homemade cards and home-baked treats, all the better!

I found a lovely tutorial over at glorioustreats.com which you can find here. And then I went a bit nuts :-)

And I loved sharing the love at my daughter's school Valentine celebration, and the cake with my family for Valentine dessert. Life is sweet!