Jenson's 4th birthday party

Note to self--and everyone else in the world: Betty Crocker Sugar Cookies do not hold their shape, as evident below.

Thankfully I've had this experience before with sugar cookies, so I simultaneously made this recipe from scratch that turned out perfectly. For Jenson's birthday this year we rented a wet/dry combo water slide and moonbounce. I went with the water theme and made shark cookies(design ideas courteous of Bridget at Bake at 350), a shark cake, shark-shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, etc. The most time consuming part was the cookies. Here's my step-by-step process. I made the cookies as mentioned above, then I practiced drawing the shark on paper.

That didn't go so well but I forged ahead with making the royal icing and practicing my borders on saran wrap. Once I had drawn 2 pretty ugly sharks, I said, "what the hell, it's 10pm!" and went ahead and drew the borders on the rest of my circle cookies. Then I thinned my royal icing and flooded the borders like so:

I added gills, teeth and eyes, then I was done with my sharkies! I did the same thing with starfish, and since the sharks were chasing the starfish, presumably to chomp them into smithereens, I removed an arm of each starfish before I baked them.

Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Layer Cake (and Happy Birthday Heather!)

My cousin asked me to bake the cake for his brother's girlfriend at their Cinco de Mayo/Heather's Birthday Party. Because I love baking, I love eating, I love Cinco de Mayo, and I love Heather, I happily said yes! I immediately knew which cake I would make, and I chose this one based on appearance and taste. The effort required is extensive, but worth every bite.

Menu Planning

I feel like a Superstar right now. I got inspiration from this Menu Planner, and by "inspiration" I mean I flat-out copied everything she did. Hey--I picked my own color scheme so it's totally different!

Nom nom nom...

I had my doubts in this one with the lack of spices. I'm a spices girl, and the more the merrier when it comes to spices playing in my mouth. But this was astonishingly flavorful and you can consider me a Super Fan. Just make sure you don't skip the 20-minute simmer.

Hubby's Birthday Cake, Lemon cake with lemon mascarpone filling and vanilla bean butter cream frosting

Check out the awesome cake I made for Matt. Funny story, it's not really the one he wanted, but I chose to exercise my better judgement (meaning better than his) and make it anyway. He wanted the cake his mom makes. Chocolate with white frosting. But I wanted to make this, so I did. What kind of a person does that make me?