Congrats Grads!

I’m taking a deep breath, because this is the official start of a marathon week. Actually, I guess the craziness began this weekend. Family party tonight, MGMT concert on Tuesday, and then our sister-in-law, Christi, comes into town from TN on Wednesday to hang out and get some pics of Jack (she’s an amazing photographer). So… bring it.

Most of my weekend was dedicated to this.

And this (x12).

My sweet cousins, Donna and Makenzie, graduated this month (college and H.S., respectively) and had a big graduation par-tay this afternoon. Congrats gals!

Cake = Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting. The cake itself was easy enough. I used this recipe from the King Arthur Flour website. Instead of 8″ rounds, I used a quarter sheet pan and baked it at 350 for about 25-30 min. The cake was 2 layers, so I doubled the recipe. The cupcakes baked for 20 min.

If you try this recipe, make sure you follow the directions and use Dutch-processed cocoa. I used Ghirardelli cocoa on part and plain old Hershey’s on the rest, and the Hershey’s definitely tasted better. Go figure.

The cream cheese frosting was another story. I wanted to decorate with fondant, but fondant melts into a big, gross mess if you refrigerate it. Unlike buttercream, cream cheese frosting must be refrigerated- plus it’s usually gooey and difficult to decorate with. SO… after lots and lots of time spent searching online, I found this recipe for a “crusting” cream cheese-buttercream frosting. It’s FABULOUS- tastes great and dries to a matte finish after a few minutes. I baked the cakes last night but waited until this morning to ice and decorate.

The mortar board is made from half a styrofoam ball (from the floral dept at Michael’s) and a square of cardboard covered with navy-dyed fondant. Although fondant will stick to wet styrofoam, I had to use piping gel to get it to stick to the cardboard. The stars are fondant and the words are piped with a #4 tip. The shell border uses a #19.

The cupcake inspiration came from Bakerella. The woman’s a genius: Graduation caps made from Mini-Reeses PB cups topped with squares of chocolate (“glued” with melted chocolate) and Airhead Sour Belt tassels. I used candy dots (the sugar kind you peel off of paper strips) for the center “button.”

I miss baking and decorating every day… but it’s a LOT of work, especially in our teeny tiny kitchen.

Jack was in his element at the party, entertained by cousins singing songs to him, graduation balloons, and Uncle Zach’s fart noise iPhone app.

Happy Boy.

Hope everyone had a fun weekend! We already got above 100 degrees.Yikes- looks like it’s going to be a hot summer.

- SURVEY -

Do you brave the summer heat? Or stay indoors instead?

I hate being cooped up in the house all the time, but I’m realizing how hard it is to take a baby out and about when it’s so hot out (sweaty carseat, mosquitos, sunburns, etc etc etc). Thank god for pools!