ruffled apron tute

I found a really great ruffly apron tutorial that I thought I would share
http://sugarbabyboutique.blogspot.com/2011/06/ruffly-apron.html

It is really cute!

Here is one that is called fabric lovers apron

http://maureencracknellhandmade.blogspot.com/2011/06/fabric-lovers-apron-tutorial.html

A few things I like to bake with

Doesn't everyone have their favorite things to bake with?  Here are a few things I find useful.  First put on your favorite apron, whether it is one you have made, or one you have bought - does not make a difference.
Unlike in this previous picture, always pull your hair back and plait it in some way.  When your hair is as long as mine, a ponytail can still shed!  LOL

I had been decorating a cake before taking this picture, and I am still wearing my bandanna.  I wear bandannas in lieu of hair nets.

Spatulas are a must also!  Both my spatulas are from Wilton and in my favorite colors, green and yellow!  Have fun in your kitchen and buy things that make you smile!  I use the small scoop from Pampered Chef for my cookies, mini cupcakes and stuff like that.  The ice cream scoop is for cupcakes and pancakes.  It is much easier to be uniform when using a scoop and the slider thingy (is that a word?) makes sure all the batter comes out easily.  No muss, no fuss!

Invest in a good sifter!  My husband bought this one for me.  Always sift your powdered sugar to ensure you do not have any blockages in your tips.  When baking with wheat flour, always sift and throw away the bits in the sifter, DO NOT pour them into your batter!  This will help in softer baked goods.  I prefer whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat flour over regular wheat  flour. It has the same nutrients, but it is a softer flour and bakes better without giving your breads a corn bread texture!   I love organic unbleached all-purpose flour.  Who wants bleach in their cakes?  So sift, sift, and sift some more!

Be sure to invest in some great cookbooks!  I have a ton of cookbooks that I love to use, including the cookbook my church has put out!

You should also invest in some great cake decorating books!  2 Timothy 2:15 says "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."  This verse is talking about the Bible, but you should also apply it to other aspects of your life. I do not want to be ashamed of something I have baked or created because I did not take the time to study about it! I love to study cookbooks and cake decorating books to improve my art.  No matter how long you have been baking and cooking, there is always something new to learn.  Don't forget to use the recipes out of your cake decorating books, after all who would have better recipes then the experts?
Now go bake yourself a cake!
Missy

Ice Cream Butterfly Cake

I made my first ice cream cake!  I have always loved ice cream cakes!  I remember when I was eight years old, my mom bought me a butterfly, chocolate chip ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins.  Yuuuum!
I made french vanilla ice cream using the recipe from the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream book.  As soon as it finished mixing I poured it into the pan.

I followed the directions from an old Wilton Year book and froze the soft ice cream in the pan I would be using for the cake.  I used the Wilton Butterfly pan.  I did this the day before I baked the cake to make sure that the ice cream was frozen solid.  My husband said that next time, I should slather the soft ice cream onto the cake instead, but I'm just not sure if the ice cream would be too soft?

I cut the cake in half and set the top aside using a cake lifter.  I have the big Wilton one - love it!  And it is yellow, double bonus!  I had put plastic wrap in the pan to help pull the ice cream out.  My husband helped with this step.  He is such a sweetie!  Using my cake lifter to make sure the ice cream did not break, we centered the ice cream over the cake.  We then added the top half onto the top of the ice cream.  I put it back in the freezer to firm back up.

I quickly frosted the sides and smoothed them down, then put it back in the freezer.  I repeated this several times to keep the ice cream from melting.  Next time, I will start earlier to give myself 30 minutes of freezing each time to make sure the ice cream stays hard.  I waited until Saturday to decorate the cake, but I think next time I will decorate it the day before and let it firm back up over night.
The sad part is that my church has a side by side fridge and the cake would not fit in the freezer.  (the birthday party was being held at church)  This is why I never want a side by side fridge, because my cakes won't fit in there!  I put the cake in the big refrigerator instead, but it was slightly melted when they went to eat the cake. 
If anyone has any tips on ice cream cakes, please share!
Happy baking!
Missy

Pink and Green Skirt

For the third week of the SONP challenge I made a skirt.  I had bought this pink and green kind of sheer fabric last year on clearance.  I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago and decided that I wanted to make it into a skirt, but there was not enough material, so I set it aside and thought about how
I could use it as part of a skirt.

I was going through my patterns and found this Mccalls pattern 5056 that I had bought two years ago when I first started sewing but have been too intimidated to try to sew.  It has godets in it and I thought that would be perfect for that little bit of material I had, but I still need to buy another 3 1/2 yards of material.  It takes six yards of material!

Here is a picture of the inside of the skirt before I sewed on the back half of the skirt.  I had to sew on eight godets (triangles) and eight rectangles.  I did not have enough of the pink and green material to do all the triangles, so I only did four of them with that material and did the other four in pink.  That was a lot of sewing!

Since the wind was blowing it is hard to get a good idea of just how big this skirt is!  It is a complete circle and I think the hardest part of the whole skirt was the hem, good thing nobody can see it!

I was trying to iron the skirt which took forever and my material wouldn't move anymore, so I looked under the ironing board and this is what I found!  Isn't Tiger so cute?  When I got home from church I was standing there and Muffin ran under my skirt and laid down on all the material.  He likes playing under my skirts and when I lifted my skirt, little Pippi was under there with him.  Silly kittens!
I must say that I think this was my favorite project so far!

Have ya'll been sewing anything lately?
I love to hear from ya'll,
Missy

White Jumper

I finished my second dress for the Summer of no pants challenge!  I must admit that a summer of no pants is pretty easy for me since I stopped wearing pants when I was 16!   I love having the challenge of having to sew one item a week, but I am kind of neglecting my blogging because of it.  I am not a very fast seamstress!

This pattern was actually pretty easy once I got the hang of it.  I made it a little too long and I think I'll go back and add another 1/2 in. hem to it so I can walk without tripping!  My pattern was smaller then what I needed according to the directions so I added some material which made it too big.  I added two extra darts on the front bodice at the top and at the waist to keep it from looking like a sack of potatoes.

I love the belt and the bag, even though it is a little crooked.  I still need to add the button hole and the button to the belt.  I actually got this white twill for free and the pattern for free so the only thing I had to buy was the zipper and the thread!

Let me introduce the newest addition to my family, Pippi.  She has three socks and one long stocking.  Get it?  Pippi Longstocking?  She is only about four weeks old and is a rescued feral kitten.  Isn't she adorable?

It's really hard to get a good picture because she is always moving!

And here is my big boy Tiger, he'll be 9 months next week.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, have a great weekend!

Missy

Yarn Cake

You may be wondering why I took a picture of my cake before I cleaned off my table?  That's easy, I was running late and figured I would take a good picture when I got to my friend's house.  My friend's daughter, Ashleigh turned 20 on Monday.  I normally don't like to bake cakes on Sunday, but I needed to get it baked last night.  I baked my honey whole wheat pound cake ( recipe here:  http://missyscakesandaprons.blogspot.com/2010/05/honey-whole-wheat-pound-cake.html )  With a strawberry filling.  I decorated it first thing on Monday morning since the party was at 1:00 in Ft. Worth.

I had the pink yarn spell out Happy Birthday and the purple yarn spell out Ashleigh on the side of the cake.  I was in a bit of a time crunch on this cake and was not able to take very many pictures I'm afraid.  It took me almost an hour to make the basket weave (which I love to make)  I could already tell that it was starting to "shift" from the filling here, but I had put "support straws" in to keep the layers from sliding, it was a three layer cake.

Saturday night I printed out a 20 and placed parchment paper over it to use as my guide to make a 20 out of royal icing.  I "roped" the royal icing to make it look like a crocheted piece of yarn.  Sunday night I turned it over and re-enforced it by looping royal icing of the same color around it.  I laid a lollipop stick on the side of the 0 in the icing then added more icing on top of that and let it dry again over night.  It was the last thing I added to the cake and I stuck it beside the ball of yarn that was the same color and had my yarn sticking down from the 0 connected to the ball of yarn.
I took a tip 21 and tip 22 and drew a continuous line of v across the top, alternating colors trying to make it look like a knitted sweater.  I wanted to do a rope border, but I think my tip ten must have been a garbage disposal casualty because I could not find it anywhere!  (That is why a lot of my decorating tools are dumped on the table, I was looking for it).  So I just used the tip 21 and used it to make a rope border.

I did not have a square baking pan and Ashleigh really wanted a square cake, so I made 3 - 9x13s, stacked and filled them, then cut the end off to make it fit on the platter.  I took the end pieces that had some filling and a tiny bit of frosting and stuck it in my fridge while I finished decorating the cake.  I have tried making cake balls before and it was a mess!  But I decided to go ahead and try making the balls of yarn out of big cake balls.

I made them the size of my hand and then added and decorated one ball of yarn at a time to the cake.  There was not enough room to add all the balls so I did add one ball to the side of the cake to write her name in yarn with.  I think they turned out pretty good!  A lot better then a big ball of frosting or fondant!
Here comes the fun part!  I live in TX and yesterday it was like 95 degrees outside.  I think I may have put too much filling in the cake, combined with the heat on the buttercream, and then a bumpy ride on the Highway with a 30 minute drive to Ft. Worth, my cake separated right where I had put my support straw to keep it from moving!

I tried to "hold" it together the best I could on the drive there, but it still looked like there had been an earthquake right down the end!  And of course it was the side that Said Happy birthday Ashleigh!  I was so sad.  :(  I tried to fix it the best I could, but I had not brought all my tips with me, or the off-white buttercream.  There really was not much I could do!  So this is what it looked like afterwards.

I tried to "stitch" the crater back together using frosting and I tried to cover the mess on the side with "scribbles" of yarn.

I had to "stitch" all around the cake where it separated! It started melting in her hot kitchen so she stuck it in the freezer.  I hope it tasted ok after being in the freezer.  You can see the slope on the cake, so sad!

I hope you enjoyed my cake disaster story!
Missy

I finished my dress!

I finally finished my dress!  I bought this material like 3-4 months ago and did not start sewing on it until about 3 weeks ago.  I had to finally take time out and finish it this week so that I could have a dress ready for the summer of no pants challenge.  That's why my blog has been so quiet this week! 

When I finished the dress it was way too big, so I added two darts to the bodice in the front and the back.    It was still too big so I added some elastic sewn into the sides.  As you can tell it is still a tad too big and since it has no zipper, I think I will add some ties to the back to make it look nicer.  I used an old pattern someone had given me, and according to the measurements I took I was supposed to cut out a size 16/18 which I thought was huge, but figured the pattern ran big.  I was wrong!  LOL  The pattern did not include the underskirt, but I added that for fun!
Excuse my lack of shoes, I took this picture before we left for church, but I was waiting until the last minute to put on my shoes since I had painted my toenails earlier!  LOL  I hate wearing shoes and avoid them when I can!  Precious was walking around my feet while Chris was trying to take my picture, he's the grey and white one.  The orange and white one, Muffin is the one in my arms.  Sorry about the terrible pictures!

I added this picture so you could see my headband.  Isn't it pretty?  My friend Ashley from Church crochets them, and there is a button on the headband so that you can interchange the color of the flower!
I also made my jewelry, which is not something I am very good at, but I wandered into a bead shop and fell in love with the beads!  My friend Miracle (13 yrs) had to fix a couple of my mistakes though!  She makes the jewelry at my church, and is a very talented young lady!  We have some very talented ladies at my church!
See here for an update on how to make casings for this dress which I added later :  http://missyscakesandaprons.blogspot.com/2011/06/easy-casings.html
Thanks for looking!
Missy

Summer of No Pants

I found a new blog I just started following.  They are having a "Summer of No Pants"  challenge where you are challenged to sew a new skirt or dress once a week for four weeks.  It is from May 23 to June 17.  I have to admit that I have a dress and a jumper already started though, I'm trying to get ready for my vacation to Florida this summer.  I love jumpers because they are loose and breezy.  Speaking of jumpers, I found a really nice pattern here: http://www.mariemadelinestudio.net/ .  They sell fabric, patterns, quilts, ready made dresses, skirts, aprons, bags, etc.  Be sure to check it out.
Be sure to check out the new blog I'm following, they will be having all kinds of tutorials during the challenge.
http://www.hideousdreadfulstinky.com/p/summer-of-no-pants-2011.html
Just overlook the title!  LOL  I think this will be fun!
Several ladies in my church want to make a dress that I found a great tutorial for here:  http://go.tipjunkie.com/hm/952/kojodesigns.blogspot.com/2011/04/guest-tutorial-from-tea-rose-home.html
We are going to make it for next sewing circle project!
I'm still learning how to sew, so I don't feel confident enough to do tutorials, so I hope you enjoy the ones I've shared!  Anybody want to join the challenge with me?
Happy Sewing
Missy

A couple of things I've made

Remember the cute apron pattern that I tested out with the rag quilt look?  Someone at Antique Alley asked me to make her a half apron with pockets.  She wanted black, pink and white with a cross.  I made the apron and never could get a hold of her.  I guess she changed her mind, but I think it turned out pretty cute.  I put 3 pockets on the front.

Bobbie from a vision to remember asked me to review another pattern for her.  My friend Skye needed a nursing cover, so I offered to make her one.  This is how it turned out:

Isn't it cute?  You can get the pattern for the nursing cover here:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/avisiontoremember

I am really enjoying the rag quilt look, can you tell?

Have a great day ya'll!
Missy

Sweet Jubilee Cake Show

Susan Hamilton allowed me to interview her about the upcoming Sweet Jubilee Cake Show

1. Tell me a little about yourself:
I was a theater major in college and am now a supervisor at Texas Instruments. (That makes much sense doesn't it? LOL) However it is hard to turn my back on the love of art so I don't. I am currently trying to use both sides of my brain.  It is all still a work in progress. I am now on the Denison Arts Council and can talk and hang out with some wonderfully creative people. I still love to act and try different kinds of arts. I tried my hand at cake decorating with Sheryl Robinson at Patty Cakes in Sherman, Tx. I met the funnest group of people and so talented. I had fun doing the classes but I figured out that it wasn't for me for me. I wasn't good at it. What I love about cakes, is that it does not matter  if you have cupcakes that you have made in your hands people like to see you coming. That is the art of cake and cake decorating for me.

2. What is the Sweet Jubilee Cake and Sugar Arts Show?
The Sweet Jubilee Cake and Sugar Art Show will be a party showcasing the wonderful Cake and Sugar Artist as artists in our community. It will be accompanied by a street festival outside and an art show intermingled throughout the entire event.

3. How many years has this show run?
This is our first year. So we hope to make it fun!!

4. What are the dates and times?
June 18th 10am - 6pm in the 400 block of Main Street Denison Tx. The website is:   smalltownbigart.com/events to get the map of the area. We will have the 400 block for festival type festivities outside and the cake and sugar and vendors in the different art galleries. The galleries that will be housing the cakes and sugar art as well as the demonstrations will be Mary Karams at 404 West Main Street, Images is 408 West Main, and then there is the 416 West Gallery which is at ......416 West Main :) . The Sweet Spot show will be at 413 West Main Street at the Artplace Gallery and Framing. The Sweet Spot will be several of the local artists using different painting and techniques to create their own version of sugar art. It has been hush hush.....I have not see the pieces yet and am anxiously awaiting the unveiling of the show on June 1st as it will run through the whole month.

5. Who will the judges be?
The judges are Carley King from the Sugar Wonders Cake Club in Allen, TX, Ryan Coffey of Frosted Art Bakery, and Porsha Kimble from the Sweet Sensations Cake Club in Arlington, TX and teacher of cake decorating classes.

6. Will there be any kind of demonstrations? If so, by whom?
Cristy Alcorn Russell will put together a wonderful cupcake bouquet and also a wedding cake demo, Michelle Foster will pull sugar flowers and Ryan Coffey will be doing a sculpted  fish bowl cake.

7. What can we expect to see at the show?
Aside from the obvious sweet art.....we will have all kinds of neat booths such as jewelry makers, soap and candle makers and music. We will have the neat antique malls open as well as a lot of the shops will have sidewalk sales and the art galleries will be open. We also have recently opened the Denison Farmers Market, which is just a street over so there will be plenty to do and see in Denison. All the shops and restaraunts around Main Street will be open for everyone to play, shop and eat. You can admire the art, cake and sugar art and watch demonstrations. Every year I say I am going to do what my mom says and shop throughout the year for Christmas and I think I will have the opportunity at this time. By the way, in this town there is always the possibilty of sporadic drum circles and hooping.

8. I've noticed it is part of the Denison Art Show, do you consider cake decorating an art form?
YES!! Denison has a lot of art shows as they are a wonderful art district with some very talented artists. We decided on the cake show and then some of the gallery owners have challenged some of the artists in the galleries to bring out their sweet tooth for some of their future pieces. Either way the artists have wonderful art in the galleries year round but we hope to enhance and challenge our artists to bring out some "bakery potential artwork".

Thank you Susan!  It sounds pretty exciting, it is definitely not your typical cake show!

Who plans on going?