Bless It

I must share this, and as my sister Amanda and I say often say "Bless it". My wonderful nephew Levi will be turning 8 in a few weeks. Love this guy, something about your sister having a baby makes you realize you can actually be a mother one day yourself. Anyway, Levi and my cousin Casen are only 3 weeks apart...and this year they are going to have sleepovers as their birthday parties. Such big guys, meaning we will have a separate family birthday party. FYI, I come from a large family and we do everything together I am proud to say. My nephew Levi loves cookie cake just like me. So being a new baker I wanted to make him & Casen a cookie cake for their party. Bonus: Casen asked for a cookie cake, "Yay". I don't think there is anything better than a yummy thick cookie cake...not the mall cookie cake "YUCK". When Jonathan and I got married his groom cake was actually a cookie cake.

Not wanting to disappoint the boys I decided to practice making and decorating their cookie cake. Keep in mind I have made this cookie cake a few times, just never to show off to anyone. I use the recipe on the back of the Nestle semi-sweet morsels package without the nuts. Back to the cake, I wanted to try to make the boys a cute layered cake. So I decided to bake it on a cookie sheet and add wax paper like I do when I bake my pumpkin roll to make it easy to remove it from the pan. Reminder: new to this baking business so it is all about trial and error. Half way through baking the cake I smell burning, I open the oven to find.....

GREAT, now I have to clean the oven.....but the practicing must continue. I have never decorated a cake other than frosting one. I don't even own anything to decorate a cake with. Once again my wonderful sister Amanda did, so she let me borrow her decorating kits to practice. And no, she has never used them.

I was very excited about playing with food coloring to make beautiful blue icing. I haven't played with food coloring since I was a little girl. So I started mixing a few drops of coloring with the icing and I got the perfect country blue. YUCK. Not wanting to waste all my blue food coloring on the practice cake I decided to jump into the decorating. I ice the bottom layer and attempt to add the top layer with no luck. The yummy top layer just ripped apart. I decided to jump into decorating and seeing what each little tip would do. I did find my favorite tips to use. So here it is....all I can say is "Bless It". As my friend Lolly said when I sent her a picture of it. "Wow, that's a beauty".

Notice, Hart liked so much he had to have a little piece. Don't worry, I will be practicing again before the big party. Bless It.