Thursday, July 11, 2013

Sweet July

I was recently told that I needed to blog again. I got onto my site and realized that I hadn't blogged in almost a month! I am so sorry, followers! All of that is about to change. July 1, I had an appointment to go to, and my best friend went with me. After the early morning appointment, we went to multiple stores to site see. Of course we had to go to Hobby Lobby. While there, we were looking at all of the wall decor that was one sale, and I found goodies to help kick off my Parisian Cafe theme kitchen.

How cute is this! I am still in love after having it almost 2 weeks. The utensils were not on sale that week, but I got a huge deal on the picture. It was originally around $80.

With the 4th of July just a couple days away from that shopping trip, I knew I was about to spend more money(which I do best) on ingredients to use to make something yummy for a family cookout. What better than a red,white, and blue cake?

Here we go!

For the cake:
White or French Vanilla cake mix(I used #2)
plus all the ingredients on the box
red and blue food coloring

Preheat oven to 325 and grease 2 cake pans.
Mix cake mix, eggs, oil, and water on medium for 2 minutes.
Split batter between 3 bowls.
Mix 1/3 with several drops of red food coloring until desired shade of red is reached.
Repeat another 1/3 with the blue food coloring.
Leave the last 1/3 batter white.

Now the tedious part. You will need 3 teaspoons. To make the zebra stripe print in the cake, you cake 2 teaspoons of one color batter and place it in the middle of the cake pan. Then, add 2 teaspoons of another color in the center of the first color. You alternate each color and continue this process until the batter is even in both pans. Basically it looks like layered circles. Bake your 2 cake pans for around 28 minutes or until a toothpick is inserted in the middle and removed clean. Remove from pans and allow to cool.
For my homemade buttercream icing
2 sticks butter softened
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 tbsp whipping cream
4-5 cups powdered sugar

*Red and Blue food coloring to tint icing*

Whip butter until fluffy.
Add in the vanilla and 1 tbsp whipping cream.
Next add in cup by cup of powdered sugar.
Between cup 2 and 3, add in another tbsp whipping cream.
Separate icing into thirds.
Tint icing with food coloring just like we did the cake batter.

I used Wilton piping bags and the big circle tip(because my star tip magically disappeared) to pipe the icing onto the cake.


I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th celebrating our freedom and honoring those that fought so hard for us to have the freedom that we have today. Without them, and God leading them, we would have completely different lives.