Welcome to Arizona!

As I mentioned in my last post, I made a carrot cake for my friends who are now trucking their way cross country to the desert. Something the choose to do as we enter into the hottest part of summer. I suspect they might be masochists.

Anyway. Back to what's important. Carrot cake! Behold - the final product:

Isn't it cute? I don't mean to brag, but seriously, I was amazed I was able to create something that actually turned out better than the picture in my head. And it was so much fun to create! Here, how about a couple more shots:

I think my favorite element is the Red Sox cap. Because of it, Matt assured me that if he ever comes across a bleached steer skull while out in the desert, he will put a Sox hat on it and take a picture for me. Kind of hoping I get that email one of these days...

The cake is the same carrot cake I made a few posts ago, with cream cheese frosting. I then covered the cake in rolled fondant, and used more of the icing to glue on the walnut mountains and "sand" (crushed graham crackers). I also dyed some icing to paint the sun. All of the features (except for the sign - that's just paper) were made from marzipan and brushed with gold pearl dust, and then glued to the cake with royal icing (and in the case of the cacti, reinforced with toothpicks). It really makes me want to branch out even more and learn how to work with gum paste... Maybe for the next one!

Back at it!

Okay, so I don't have any fabulous creations to share at the moment. Not that I haven't been creating masterpieces. I've just been lazy about photographing and writing them up. Like the amazing S'more Cookie Bars I made the other day, or the awesome seafood salad (the recipe's term, not mine...more like a feast or an extravaganza or some other over-the-top-implying term) that I made last weekend. But I'm so unreasonably excited about what's coming up that I felt the need to share something! Major need for therapeutic baking has arisen, courtesy of the job so insane that it defies comprehension. Thankfully, going to a friend's birthday/going away party on Saturday. Cake time! Somewhat sadly, when I pressed her for some guidance on flavor (I was going a bit insane and was seriously contemplating three different forms of cake - traditional, cup, and pop - simply because I couldn't settle on one flavor), she chose carrot cake. Now mind you, I have an AMAZING recipe for carrot cake. It's truly delicious. But...I already know that. It's been done before.

Well, okay. She is, after all, the birthday girl. So how do I make it special? How do I make it stand out from the one I've made before? Well, first off, it won't have dog bones on it, as this time, it's for a human (which Amanda was actually rather shocked to learn, as the last two carrot cakes either of us have made were for a dog). Amanda was very sweet and helped me try to come up with ideas for decorating, without even getting annoyed as I continually rejected them for one reason or another. But really, some of them did sink in and percolate for the afternoon. As I was talking to my roommate (one of the two new fabulous roommates) about the cake, a picture began forming in my head. I decided to sketch it out (very roughly...drawing is clearly not my forte), and then decided that I was so excited to make it, that I couldn't help but start on some pieces of it tonight. So I did, with her help, and now I can't wait to make the whole thing and put it all together! This will definitely require pictures and a new post!

Oh, and as an aside, I'm thinking of joining the Daring Kitchen. It keeps popping up on Food Gawker, my current addiction/obsession. Sounds like a lot of fun! Only question: baking, cooking, or both?