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.

She's Crafty!

So the other day, I became very motivated and spent several hours aggravating myself by doing crafty projects for the blarg. I say I aggravated myself because, at heart, I am a painter or at the very least, a drawer... one who draws, not a sliding receptacle for your socks, underwear, and shirts (yes, yes or any of the other things that people put in drawers, I am not a drawer, I am a draw-er).  What this all means is that I am a complete slob when it comes to art, and so, trying to get things to actually look neat and ordered pushes the boundaries of my boundaries, and by that, I mean my patience.  And I am pretty damned patient, unless I am trying to sew things and the thread ties itself into knots to taunt me, or I think, 'oh, yes, I need to put the needle through here though I am not completely sure it will work... oh, no it won't work, that looks like crap... FFFFFFFfffffuuuu... undoing needle stitches through felt now results in me sewing backwards, awesome.'  Or something not nearly as specific.

And then I switched to clay... I took classes in pottery in college and my teacher asked me if I was planning on taking any more. My resounding "No!" was met with a not too nice, "Oh, thank goodness!" Now, that is work with cups and saucers and teapots and all that crap, and I have a great respect for people who can and desire to do that, but I can't and don't... mostly because it is beyond my boundaries of patience (I feel like we've been through this before), and so I just slap things together and hope not to fail (if I am being graded). I am fairly good at figure work, and animals... though again, my sculptures do show my special touch of impatience, which I now declare as a stylistic choice, if things don't go exactly as I expect them to.

So without further ado, my cheesy crafts (which will be placed for sale later, once I am able to procure a ruler, because there doesn't seem to be one in this house, and having the knowledge that you had a green see-through ruler, once, when you were in fifth grade, 20 years ago, while interesting doesn't really help me much when I want to measure something for a proper description now):

Narwhal Magnet (heart not included- except for in the picture where it obviously is)

Mini Narwhal Figure Thingy (man, my thumb is wrinkly)

Felt Narwhal Barrette (the clippy good kind)

Llama Magnet (it's stylistic, not sloppy!)

There will be more coming in the future... there has to be, because I bought all the things to make more so I am determined to use them and get better at things I am not great at, which is the theme of my year.  And I take suggestions... though, unless you're actually paying me, I'll make what actually strikes my fancy.