Happy Birthday, Cheeseblarg AKA How NOT to Make Cake Pops.

Today is da Cheeseblarg's FIRST birthday.  A year ago today, I started this here blarg to talk about my computer being a dick, which it still kinda is.  But to celebrate, I made us some cake pops! And I made us cake pops, mostly because making cake pops is one of my least favorite things to do in the ENTIRE world.

It was also to prove a point, because my mom thought that making cake balls might be a great idea for holiday gifts and having made them before (or well, cookie balls, which might actually suck more than cake balls) I wanted to show her that while we are good at A LOT of things, dipping shit just isn't in our skill set.

So here is a (partially) illustrated guide for how NOT to make cake pops:



1. Gather your ingredients. Take a picture. Forget ingredients.

2. Begin to make a cake which cues everyone else in your house to come into your very small kitchen to also cook. Get angry.

3. Mistake directions on cake box, read: mix on HIGH for 2 minutes, instead of MEDIUM and splatter entire kitchen with cake batter.

4. Fight the people in your kitchen to get to the oven to put the cake in to bake.

5. Remember to check how long you should bake the cake that is now in the oven. Take box out of garbage, consult, set timer (minus approximate amount of time it took you to remember that you should probably set a timer).

6. Wait a long damned time for cake to bake and cool. Begin writing and illustrating your hilarious blarg post on the subject in the meantime (optional).

7. Go to Bakerella.com and read the recipe because you realize you don't really know how much of what you are really supposed to use.

8. Crumble cake and mix in half a can of frosting. Roll into balls. Ask someone else to come in and set up a pan for you because your hands are now coated in cake and frosting.

9. Clean out fridge to make space for the balls to chill.

10. Take some prescription pain pills because this is going to suck, and also because you have been standing for hours and all of your joints hurt.

11. Read the directions on the candy melts, follow directions, spend 17 minutes melting stupid candy melts. Think using a blow dryer might be faster.

12. Begin dipping cakepops. Have an argument about dipping methods. Result in cakepop that looks like this:

13. Add Crisco to candy melts because Montana weather makes them harden up in approximately 1.75 minutes.

14. Give up on cakepops, turn to cakeballs.

15. Give up on cakeballs, dipping is too hard.  Roll rest of the batch in powdered sugar and call it a day.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on how not to make cake balls. You should probably not follow it. But, while I knew it was going to be bad when I started, I did manage to make one cute one.

Happy Anniversary- My Wedding Cake Wreck

Twelve years ago today, I was getting married in a hurricane. And I had a really ugly cake.

Being the artistic type that I am, I, of course, had an artistic vision for my cake.  I was very into Martha Stewart at the time (I still love her, but I am a bit less obsessed.  For example, I no longer tape her shows, all of them, to watch later because I am doing other things. I think I have just seen them all now, though) and so my cake was a simple clean design.  I drew it from different angles, attached swatches of color for them to match it to my dress (which I also designed and which came out almost as bad as my cake) and took it to Pubic's Supermarket to have it made. Now, yes, I know, when you have a wedding cake made at a grocery store, it is not made by the top bakers in the country. I'm poor and my design was simple enough that I thought it would work, AND they have the most delicious frosting of all the stores in the entire United States.

So this was my design :

I went over it with the baker. Yes all green and ivory. No other colors. Just stacked. etc.

This was the cake of my dreams. So simple, yet different.  So Martha.



This, on the other hand,

was NOT the cake of my dreams.

The cake was not set up before the wedding started, which I am kind of glad of. I'd already had enough disappointment with my dress. Before I entered the reception, my mom sidled up to me and whispered, "You're gonna be mad."

Thankfully, someone managed to snap a picture of me reacting to my first view of it, while my husband laughed at me, most likely because I was saying dirty words and questioning the IQ of the decorator.

That is my "WTF is this shit!?" look.

No really, let's break this down.

Totally NOT Martha!

But it really was delicious, especially since I got my money back for it. Plus, it gave us something to eat while we sat in my grandma's house with no power during aforementioned hurricane.

I'd also like to mention that both of my parents, while walking me down the aisle, stepped on the train of my dress, almost knocking me over.  I am going to guess, for my sanity, that it was not planned.


p.s. My comment section no longer has captchas in an attempt to get you people to comment more. YES, YOU PEOPLE! =P