Birthday baking and some Halloween treats

I now have four distinct periods of my life: grade/middle school, high school, college/Kansan and work. I was lucky enough to see people from all four times on Saturday for my birthday. It was an absolute blast, and I saw some people I hadn't in years. There might have been a little drinking involved too, but hey, it was my birthday! Dad and Cathie came to town and then we went out to dinner. Later, it was the customary trip to the Sandbar and Louises. It was great fun. More on that later, though.


I think that once places start displaying their Halloween goods for baking, it's okay for me to start making Halloween treats. Even if that means it's the last week of September. That's what I did last week, at least. They put out lime green candy melts — lime green people! If you know anything about me, you know I had to buy them right then and make the cake pops I'd been wanting to make again. Green with Halloween-ish sprinkles. I tried yellow cake this time. Not too shabby, but red velvet is definitely still my favorite. Now I just have to take that next step and start making shapes out of them...intimidating.


Also, a fun fact about me is that I get suckered in by advertising easily. If I see an ad on TV for some tasty food, I will generally start craving it. And if I walk by a bag of new Halloween Oreos in the grocery store, I'm going to buy them. And make mini Oreo cheesecakes. These are SO good and I forget how much I like them between the times I make them. But I've stocked up on fall-y cupcake liners, so it seemed like a good use for them. I'm going to have to go into cupcake overdrive to use up all those liners though.


Then there was my birthday cake. I debated for a while if I should make my own, but I figured if I could make an ice cream cake for my mom and for my ex-boyfriend, then I could make one for myself. Plus, Kelly helped, so it wasn't totally me! I went for my favorite yellow cake-turned-funfetti layered with cheesecake ice cream from Cold Stone (with more sprinkles and graham crumbs mixed in), fudge and Oreo crumbles. Kelly made the green icing for the cake. Altogether, totally yummy. And I still have some in my freezer up for grabs....

Like I said, it was a great bday weekend. A few snapshots:


My friend Jennifer came all the way from Manhattan just for my birthday celebration (that's her on the left)! On the right is my friend Elizabeth, who's still local but I don't see that often. The tiara was courtesy of the Sandbar.


I also saw some high school friends, including Marshall on the far left. Haven't seen him in a few years either. I don't have that many pictures from the night, but it was a great time!


The day after my birthday, Kelly and I drove down to St. Louis to see Vampire Weekend in concert and also visit my cousin. It was an AMAZING concert. They were so good live, it was like listening to their album.


Last but not least, for graduation, I was supposed to get a dog. Seems unrelated, yes? Well, the dog plan fell through, so on my birthday, my dad gave me my graduation present: a new Canon SLR camera!! Needless to say, I was SUPER excited! Now I can actually take decent pictures for my blog, and of life in general. Oh, and cat pictures, because that's what I'm best at :) I haven't had too much time to play with it yet, but I have gotten some great photos. Case in point: Melvin being obnoxious. I can't wait to mess with it more!

Baking for my college graduation

I did it! I'm an official college graduate! It's so weird that I won't be taking college classes again, unless of course I go back to grad school, which is not in the near future. It was an awesome weekend full of family, friends and baking.

Mom got in on her birthday, for which I made an ice cream cake. She was lucky to land, because it was really stormy and monsooning when we were waiting for her. Apparently the ride was really bumpy too. When we were driving back from KCI we actually had to stop on the highway because the rain was so heavy. But then there was cake waiting. I wasn't fully prepared for how large it was going to be. I used Smitten Kitchen's rich double chocolate cake recipe, which definitely isn't for the faint of heart. I used Ghirardelli chocolate and cocoa just to make it extra yummy. Anyway, the recipe calls for 10" cake pans, which I had thanks to my initial disaster with rhubarb upside-down cake. That's a lot of cake batter. In the center I put Edy's vanilla ice cream with a fudge ripple, and in between layers some cookie crumbles and fudge. Iced it with whipped cream, and then put some chocolate frosting around the edges. Luckily, my mom likes chocolate a lot. Turned out well, except that the cake was SO tall that you could really only eat a tiny sliver.

Dad, Cathie and Grandma got in on Friday. I'm super lucky that Grandma could come; she turns 90 this year and she's kind of my partner in crime. I cooked dinner for them, a penne with tomato vodka sauce I absolutely love. Oh, and breadsticks from scratch. I figured it would be easier than trying to get into a restaurant, plus I got to hang out with family.

The next morning was our 8:30 a.m. graduation ceremony. Whoever thought it was a good idea to schedule the ceremony for the kids who inherently stay up late was stupid. The weather was rainy too, so that kind of sucked. But it was nice to see all my friends from this year all in one place. I lacked a lot of the nostalgia though. Maybe I'm just relieved to be done. I think that's probably it. I liked seeing teachers at the reception, too. After that, we did family time again, everyone plus my aunt and uncle and cousin and his girlfriend. Drew's parents came too. I was supposed to go to another ceremony, but I really just felt like hanging out with family.

Later, Liz, Taylor and I had our party at his house. I made cupcakes...a lot of cupcakes. Kelly and I had a cupcake factory going the day before our party. Three flavors: red velvet cupcakes (with blue icing), devil's food cupcakes (with red icing) and yellow funfetti cupcakes (with yellow icing). Let's just say the KitchenAid mixer got a workout. And the kitchen looked like a bomb went off. You don't even want to know how many sticks of butter went into those cupcakes. I think we ended up with about 65. It was super fun because we had some awesome red and blue cupcake papers and sprinkles from Bake It Pretty, and some cool little Jayhawk pennants from somewhere else. I also wanted to put them on a cool cupcakes stand. Luckily, one of my favorite blogs, I♥Cuppycakes, posted do-it-yourself stands like a week before graduation. Kelly cut out all the pieces of the foamcore and then I covered it with Jayhawk wrapping paper, red ribbon and assembled it. I think it turned out pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself :)

The party was a great time, and we had lots of friends and family show up. Later I took Dad and Cathie to the Sandbar to have a shark attack. I just had to! Later was Barrel House and the Tap Room, but there were lots of goodbyes, especially to Student Senate friends or people in political science classes. It's strange, but I feel like I will see them again. One told me that we would meet again, and I would write the article exposing him (he'll be a politician someday). I hope I don't have to expose anything, but if it has to be done! Hah.

Sunday brought the walk down the hill. After going through the Campanile a gazillion times as a kid since my mom played it, it wasn't a huge deal to me I guess. But it was still kind of the end. I got to go home, lay on the couch, and not have any more homework.

So now it's on to the rest of my life. I'm working full time, and I really enjoy the people I work with and what I'm doing. I will have time to read books (that aren't about feminist theory or computer science!). I will have time to watch TV and movies I've been wanting to see. I will be able to take vacations. I will not feel guilty about doing stuff and not doing my reading for class.

I'd say easily my favorite thing about this graduation, though, was the family part. It had been a very long time since all of those people had been together — high school graduation, to be exact. I got to see both parents and stepmom, and my grandma, who is definitely not getting any younger. Aunt and uncle, cousin and his girlfriend, Drew and his parents and brother, and lots of friends. It was just a really good time, something I needed after how difficult this semester was. But that doesn't matter anymore. I'm a college graduate!

Rock chalk!

Five-layer ice cream cake

Man, I'm tired. I've hit that frustration point in the semester, as in I'm already weeding out homework and trying to stop myself from skipping half my classes. It's a bit early for that, but senioritis is in full swing. It's not just that though. I've got an internship, a big project to work on and a yearbook to do, PLUS that whole job search thing. No big deal. Hah! Very big deal.

I was going to bake last night. I really felt like baking, but could not come up with what I wanted to do. I had a big interview to do, then cooked dinner, and as it got later and later I realized it wasn't going to happen. I'm finding my brain is shutting off a lot earlier than usual because I'm getting up earlier every day. Ugh. So no cookies last night. Tonight perhaps? Depends, once again, on how another interview for my project goes.

But I did make the ice cream cake. It succeeded! Easily one of the things I'm most proud of. It was Drew's 23rd birthday. Got him a gift certificate for our spring break trip to Vegas (which could NOT come fast enough), 23 balloons and this cake. I tried to combine all things he likes most. Made two nine-inch rounds of yellow cake from scratch, which turned out excellent. I added in sprinkles to make them homemade funfetti. Then, bought Cold Stone's cake batter ice cream with cookie dough mixed in, Drew's favorite. I had to let it melt and then spread it in one of the cake pans lined with plastic wrap. Then you're supposed to let it freeze. I was impatient, however, and didn't let it freeze for that long. If I did it again, I'd let it go overnight. But I didn't. So as I was putting together the cake, it started melting. The layers went, from bottom, yellow funfetti cake, ice cream, Oreo crumbles (took out the cream from the middle and food processed them), hot fudge, cake. I really wanted to get the fudge and crumbles in there like the Dairy Queen ice cream cakes. But those don't have cake, and I wanted cake. Most of the other ice cream cake recipes had cake and ice cream but no cookies and fudge. So I combined them.

As I was saying, the cake started melting. I stuck it back in the freezer as fast as possible and left it there over night, where it sank a bit more and sort of looked like a floppy hamburger. But by morning it was frozen solid, and I could actually cut off all the melted part and make it look relatively circular again. Then, for frosting, I had whipped cream that I put blue food coloring in. I think real frosting on top of this would put you into a diabetic coma after one bite. Anyway, I iced the cake and the put a couple of cookie crumbles on top, and voila! I had an ice cream cake, 5 layers and all. And it was quite yummy. Not a bad birthday present.

A couple days ago I went for the much easier sweet: The perennial Hershey's kiss cookie. You know, the one with the Kiss on top of a peanut butter cookie. I'd never made them before, but they're amazing. Especially a couple minutes out of the oven. Plus, there was chocolate left over. Love it.

Mark is in town this weekend from Chicago with Allison. Should be a fun time. The next few weekends are pretty booked, between him, Erin in town, me visiting Mom, Fake Patty's with Keane and then Spring Break. Wonder when I'll get my homework done. Meh.

As a last note, a book recommendation for you all. I'm working on a project about the 1960s and '70s, and I'm reading this fascinating book about all the hippies from Lawrence and their crazy drugged-out stories. It's called "Cows Are Freaky When They Look at You." It's got excellent short stories from a time I don't really understand. And it's hysterical. I got my copy at The Raven. It's totally worth it for when you need to stop reading whatever awful textbook you have at night but aren't tired enough to sleep.