{"id":74,"date":"2009-08-20T08:10:21","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T13:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annakatedonovan.com\/?p=74"},"modified":"2009-08-21T10:06:04","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T15:06:04","slug":"the-bar-is-raised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"…the bar is raised…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last 6 months or so, we have started watching food shows at our house.\u00a0 Our favorites include Ace of Cakes<\/a>, Amazing Wedding Cakes<\/a>, Food Network Challenge<\/a> and Good Eats<\/a>.\u00a0 Abigail has even watched a little Julia Child<\/a>. Yum!<\/p>\n

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t inspired.\u00a0 The older I get the more I love to cook.\u00a0 I don’t particularly love cooking dinner – it’s still that witching hour at our house.\u00a0 Everyone is cranky, tired and hungry and it can quickly become stressful.\u00a0 I’m sure as the children get older, making dinner will become fun.\u00a0 For now I mostly enjoy making desserts and snacks….I enjoy eating them too….. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I have always made the girls’ birthday cakes.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong – I have no problem with “store-bought” birthday cakes.\u00a0 I know that a lot of people do not have the desire or time to make a cake.\u00a0 I started making birthday cakes when Abigail turned 1 and never stopped.\u00a0 These cakes have all started as basic two-layer cakes with butter-cream icing.\u00a0 Typically, I would bake and ice the cake and Robert (the real artist in the family) would decorate it in the theme of the party.\u00a0 We’ve had Rainbow Fish<\/a>, ladybug, princess, duck, Hello Kitty<\/a>, butterfly….all things girly!<\/p>\n

\"ladybug\"<\/a>\"Hello<\/a>\"duck\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But now, thanks mostly to\u00a0Food Network<\/a>, the bar has been raised.\u00a0 We’re on to fondant!\u00a0 Of course I have to make things difficult so I make my own fondant.\u00a0 It is labor and time intensive but in my opinion it tastes a lot better than the premade stuff.\u00a0 I have 2 different recipes for fondant.\u00a0 One is supposed to taste like buttercream.\u00a0 It does but the taste is not worth the pain in my butt!!\u00a0 It is too greasy, heavy and difficult to work with.\u00a0 The second recipe<\/a> is made mostly of melted marshmallows.\u00a0 It is delicious!\u00a0 Even though it is harder to knead, it is much easier to work with (especially after I decided to let my mixer do most of the work!)\u00a0 However, I am still on the quest for the perfect professional looking recipe.<\/p>\n

I started with Hattie’s Tinkerbell cake last year.\u00a0 It was very simple.\u00a0 One layer, light green with cut out leaves and Tinkerbell on top.\u00a0 I used the non-fabulous recipe but it still turned out great!<\/p>\n

\"Tinkerbell\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This year, Abigail wanted more.\u00a0 For her birthday she designed and I made a two tier circle and star cake with about 6 different colors of fondant.\u00a0 I used the marshmallow recipe and it turned out really well.<\/p>\n

\"circles <\/a><\/p>\n

For my parent’s 50th anniversary celebration I wanted to make a cake representative of two of their favorite activities.\u00a0 So I decided to make a rectangle-block shaped cake with a piano keyboard on top and gumpaste flowers around the bottom.\u00a0 For some inane reason, I made the buttercream fondant recipe.\u00a0 I guess I wanted to give it one more chance before removing it from my recipe binder.\u00a0 I won’t make that mistake again!!\u00a0 Despite the many cracks and imperfections, my parents loved it.\u00a0 That’s what’s really important, right?<\/p>\n

\"piano<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course the cake shows that we watch edit out most of the hard, tedious work and make it look incredibly easy. \u00a0This can leave the home baker frustrated and cursing late at night! \u00a0Somehow, I still love it. \u00a0That feeling of accomplishment and pride when my child looks at her cake and says “Thanks Mom. \u00a0That’s exactly what I wanted.” \u00a0What more could you ask for? \u00a0At the end of the day, it’s all about doing something special for my family while finding a creative outlet for myself.\u00a0 I’m no Ace of Cakes yet but I’m going to keep at it so stay tuned!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last 6 months or so, we have started watching food shows at our house.\u00a0 Our favorites include Ace…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[46,47,42,43,44,45,48,49,55,52,50,54,51,53],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cooking","tag-ace-of-cakes","tag-amazing-wedding-cakes","tag-cake","tag-fondant","tag-fondant-recipe","tag-food-network","tag-food-network-challenge","tag-good-eats","tag-gumpaste","tag-hello-kitty","tag-julia-child","tag-marshmallow-fondant","tag-rainbow-fish","tag-tinkerbell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}