It has been couple of months since I became a “Stay at home mom”. I was both happy and sad about this decision. Happy because finally I could give all the time to Ishaan and also work on a thousand things that I was putting on back burner due to my busy schedule. Sad because it would mean a big unknown about my career. We took Ishaan out of daycare. We thought he would miss his friends, he would be bored at home, but he didn’t even ask for them!. In these few months, I have tried to enjoy every moment with him. I have been busier than ever trying to catch up with a very active toddler. Laptop time for me means TV time for him, so I have reduced my laptop time to minimum. I write a post once in a while when he is sleeping. I still spend time on FB thanks to my iPhone!. I can definitely say these were/are the best few months of my life in recent years. We have been going out almost every day - to library for story time, to toddler play time, children’s play areas, petting zoos, pumpkin patches, swimming and lot more. He is already 2.5 years old and before I know, he will be all grown up. So I have kept everything else on hold and trying to make most of my time with him. Next week we are travelling to India for a long vacation.
Now coming to today’s post – V’s colleague asked if I could prepare a cake for her with K-State football theme , she is going to watch the upcoming K-State game with friends and she wanted to carry the cake. The biggest unknown for me here was the fact that I don’t know anything about American football. After few Google searches, I knew what I was going to make. Although it took a while to bake and decorate it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Ishaan was such a sweetheart, he kept himself busy with his colors and a book.
Lessons learnt : – Make a little more of fondant than needed, if you run out in between, you have to start over again which takes too much time. – Coloring fondant takes too much time and muscle powder. To help with this, microwave the fondant for few seconds and it becomes easily to work with (not sure if this method works with other kinds of fondant, but worked with marshmallow fondant). – To smooth out any irregularities on the cake, dip a spatula in hot water and massage on the fondant. I knew this works with buttercream but had not used the method with fondant before.
Pictorial: (I will have to fix the color balance on the camera, the bright violet colors on the cake are all showing blue here)
When I carve cakes like Thomas cake or football cake , one of the things I worry about are the small irregular pieces that remain after the carving is done. They are all pieces which are not so pretty to eat (they taste great) or to offer to someone. Last time, I ended up wasting most of them and felt terrible about it. This time when I prepared football cake, I wanted to do something with them. I had too many cake crumbs (is that what they are called??). I remembered seeing cake pops from some days back and decided to make them. I followed this recipe , but made them with what I had on hand (mine did not look so beautiful, will work on that next time!).
No one in my home or my friends like (or should I say prefer) too much sweet stuff, so I did not want to decorate them too much. I wanted to keep them simple, I was already tired from making the football cake. I tried making the pops with the sticks, but they kept breaking, I think I should have added some more chocolate frosting to the cake pieces. But that would make them more sweet. So I decided to just go with balls. They were delicious. I think I will be making these more often now – I may just bake a cake to make these next time.
I do not have any measurements for these because they are super simple and you can just eyeball all the ingredients.
Ingredients: Cake pieces (I used chocolate cake ) Chocolate frosting (I used chocolate frosting )
Method: Crumble the cake. Add some chocolate frosting and mix everything well. Now make small balls from the mixture. Dip the balls in remaining frosting (microwave the frosting to make it thin before doing this). Let them sit in refrigerator for few hours and serve.
Pictorial:
