Another Italy photo...

As you can see, I'm going through my old vacation photos.

Gelato in Venice, Italy. No words are necessary...

Once upon a time...

In 2006, the hubby and I visited Italy. The trip was amazing and I often think back to the wonderful time we had, the museums, the culture, and of course the food. :)

This particular meal was enjoyed in the city of Florence after seeing the statue of David. Just looking at this photo takes me back to that moment and I can almost taste the Fusilli pasta covered with creamy pesto sauce and pine nuts, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and my husband's pizza - the thin crust perfectly toasted, just how I like it.

The meal was divine but unfortunately any pesto sauce I have tried since has failed in comparison. I would love to once again taste that creamy pesto...

The solution is a simple one. I'll just have to go back to Italy. :) Right...

Well, a girl can dream!

Speaking of Cakes...

Here are pictures of the cake I made for the hubby's birthday two years ago. I have better quality pictures somewhere, so when I find those, I'll repost.
The theme of the cake was inspired by the cover of Woman's Day magazine, although I changed it a bit and added a canoe in there too as we canoe frequently.
It took me a few days to decorate all of the teddy grahams with royal icing. I didn't have a cake decorating kit then (as I do now) so all of the piping on the teddy's was done with a toothpick.
All of the surfboards and blankets were created out of Airhead bars and the sand was made out of crushed vanilla wafers. The flavor of the cake was his favorite - carrot cake with creamcheese frosting.

What I didn't factor in was the level of humidity on the day I decorated the cake. The place we lived at the time did not have air conditioning and being that it was a very humid August day, everything did not go as planned including having the frosting fall off in globs. I also had created palm trees for the cake which folded in half five minutes after being placed on the cake. Fortunately I had enough "sand" to cover the mishap and decorated the rest of the cake ten minutes at a time - ten minutes in the fridge, ten minutes out, ten minutes in the fridge, and so on.

Cake decorating has only gotten easier for me from here!

Baby Shower Cake!

One of my closest friends is having a baby girl in September and I was honored to make a cake for her recent baby shower, themed with pink, yellow and white.
Her favorite cake is funfetti so I made two 13x9 funfetti cakes and stacked them together with funfetti frosting in the middle. Then a layer of buttercream frosting to serve as the crumb layer.
The crumb layer locks in all the crumbs so when it is time to put the next layer of buttercream down, the frosting is crumb free.
The start of the baby blocks...
Baby blocks complete. The long sides says BABY and the short sides says 09.
Because the theme was ducks, I bought a small duck mold and pressed pink and yellow fondant into it.
Once the fondant had slightly hardened, I lightly painted the beaks and eyes with food coloring
and placed them atop the cake with some baby roses made out of fondant.
This is the only picture I took of the inside of the cake which was quickly devoured at the shower.
Total number of hours spent on this cake: 12. :) But the mommy-to-be was thrilled and that made it all worth it.