Ginger Bread House

Made with my new Williams Sonoma bundt cake pan

Girls Trip

Just before Christmas my Mom, Grandma, Cousin and I all went to Disneyland and had a great time!

A Belated Merry Christmas from the Trone/Stewart Gals!

Christmas Tree Fun

Since Chris decided to host the Melodrama's Christmas Party again this year, we thought it would be nice to put up a big tree. Quite the opposite of last years 3 foot tree Chris had. Lucky for us, my aunt wasn't using her tree this year due to her wild puppy. The pictures below are before I finished decorating. The finished product had sparkly swirly sticks, poinsettias, and berry twigs. Chris' kitties thought it was their own personal playground!

Christmas at Disney

Chris and I went to Disneyland yesterday to see all the holiday decorations and take advantage of the short lines after all the Thanksgiving visitors go away. We had a great time! I get to go back next week for a family girls trip!

Cornucopia Cake

My mom found this beautiful cake mold at Williams Sonoma in the clearance bin! I made a rum spiced cake with a rum glaze. I was told it tasted like a giant delicious doughnut. Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Elmo Cake

Tomorrow is the first birthday party for one of my coworker's grandson's birthday! He's having an elmo themed party and they asked me to make him a mini cake to dig his face into and 4 dozen cupcakes for his guests. Can't wait to see pictures of the results!

Christmas Wish List

I've had lots of family members asking me to post my Christmas Wish List.  We'll today is the day, if you look over on the left hand side, you'll see an adorable picture of Miss Minnie Mouse eating candy canes.  Just click on that picture and it will take you to my online wish list.  Just some ideas, some of them are beyond crazy but it never hurts to ask! And just general ideas, I always love baking or Disney stuff! Happy shopping, now to figure out what to get for all of you!

Halloween 2010

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for...the revealing of our Halloween costumes. Drum roll please.....

Cupcake and Baker!

I made my costume and ordered Chris' from a chef supply online. We started out the day at church, then the Melodrama had a show and costume contest. (We were automatically disqualified since we work there.) Then we went with our friends Nik and Melissa to take their kid's to a church harvest festival. Tyler and Kyle were Mario and Luigi and Savannah was an adorable little pumpkin. Here are the photos from the night!

Pumpkin "carving"

Well after quite a compromise Chris and I "carved" pumpkins this year. Last year Chris overruled my desire to carve pumpkins saying he hates doing it because he's too much of a perfectionist and he gets frustrated when they don't turn out well. So I caved and we had a pumpkinless halloween. This year I found the solution: behold our Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head pumpkins.


The perfect compromise! We get cute festive pumpkins without the tedious carving. We're still planning on cutting the tops of and hollowing them out to roast pumpkin seeds this weekend. Stay tuned to see the great Halloween costumes I've schemed!

Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Hixson

Well I did it; I made my first wedding cake. A co-worker of mine asked me to make a wedding cake for her father's wedding. After refusing a few times she finally convinced me to take on the challenge. They gave me an idea of the color scheme and let me do whatever I wanted. They said if I didn't make the cake they were going to go buy something ugly at Albertsons so they didn't have high expectations. I was beyond nervous the entire process and still haven't decided if I would ever be brave enough to make another wedding cake. So basically to give you an idea of what you are looking at: We have a 3 tier champagne cake (12 inch, 9 inch, 6 inch) with a pale orange champagne butter cream. There are 3 bottles of champagne and 3 pounds of butter in this cake. Since I was working with a 12 inch round there was NO WAY I had the ability to cover something that large without a sheeter (a piece of equipment that rolls out fondant into giant sheets) so butter cream was my old option.

I did a lot of research to figure out how to make butter cream look smooth, every time i've tried before it always looks choppy and you can see all the lines from the spatula. I learned the answer is: Viva paper towels. No other brand will work. Once you frost the cake you let it sit for about 10 minutes for it set up a little then you set the paper towel lightly over the frosting and lightly smooth over the top with a scraper. Don't believe me? Watch this:

Simple orange ribbon was used to separate the layers then mini edible pearls were set all around the cake. Finally, I arranged fresh flowers finish things off. Here's a 360 degree view of the cake.

The wedding is in a hour, hopefully they like their cake!

Kolbey's 9th Birthday

Last year a co-worker of mine at Coldwell Banker, Jill, asked me to make cupcakes for her daughter's 8th birthday. Apparently, Kolbey was a fan of my work as she asked for me to make her cupcakes again for her 9th birthday this year. Her mom showed her pictures of the mini-layer cakes I made a few weeks ago and she simply had to have them. The mini layer cakes I made the time before were a little grown up so we made these brighter girly colors for the birthday party.

Here is Miss Kolbey on her birthday with one of her mini-cakes

Here's a upclose view of each cake:

All decorated with candy!

The girls with their cakes at Kolbey's party.

So glad you enjoyed your cakes Kolbey! Can't wait to see what I get to bake for your birthday next year!

Candy Cake

This cake may look impressive but let me tell you... it's the easiest cake to make! I made the inside a little fancy with a chocolate-chocolate chip cake with oreo filling--but you don't have to. You could take a simple box cake and a jar of frosting to make this cute cake. Just frost the top and sides as you normally would then break kitkat bars in half (so you have 2 sticks together) and stand them upright using the frosting as glue. Fill the top with m&m's.. I'd buy a big giant bag, buying several small bags was very expensive I learned. Especially if you forget them in the car all day in Bakersfield heat...stupid. The only problem is when you set it out on the table people don't realize it's a cake. Several people dug into as though it were a bowl of m&m's!

Mini Layer Cakes

For my birthday Chris got me this awesome mini-layer cake pan from Williams Sonoma. It's basically a fancy muffin tin that makes cute adorable little mini multi-layered cakes. The pan makes 6 cakes. Take note that you will only see photos of 5. One of the 6 turned out very very ugly. I made just basic white cakes with a pink glaze and white royal icing. Each cakes has several edible pearls around them as well!

Disney Birthday

Of course my birthday month wouldn't be complete without a trip to DISNEYLAND!! Chris, Jill (Chris' mom) and I all headed down for the day and had a blast! We even got awesome seats AGAIN for World of Color.

Pink Birthday Cupcakes

My dearest blog followers, I appologize for my absence. I didn't realize it had been over two weeks since we've last spoken. To make up for it I'll post a few things today. First up...pink sparkly cupcakes made for a co-worker, Linda Schubert,'s birthday! I just recently purchased a new giant frosting tip online that makes big poofs of frosting like the ones I've seen in bakeries like Sweet Surrender. It's hard to tell from the photo but they are topped with hot pink "disco dust" which is basically itty bitty little pieces of edible sparklies.

San Diego

Chris and I had a 4 day off vacation from the Melodrama so we headed down to San Diego...well Escondido to visit my Uncle Steve and his girlfriend Pam and see their new BEAUTIFUL home.  We had an amazing time and can't wait to go back! I took somewhere around 250 pictures so i'll put the album at the end of this post. We went to Stone Brewery, which is one of Chris' favorite beer makers and took a tour of the brewery.  That night Steve grilled some great steaks and Chris and I made havarti and proscuitto wrapped asparagus, garlic parmesan salad, and garlic bread. Delicious!Tuesday was Sea World day. So fun! We were sad that the trainers no longer get in the water at the Shamu show but understand it's for their own safety.  The new dolphin show is incredible.  It's not part dolphin show part cirque de soleil-esq. They had trapeze artists and high dive jumpers, the works! Just beautiful. That night we met Steve and Pam in Old Town and had great Mexican food. Wednesday we went to Del Mar and walked on the beach, strolled through Balboa Park, and then went into the Gaslamp Quarter and went to the Melting Pot and had a fondue dinner.  Thursday was our trip home and we decided to take the I5 back home and stop in downtown Disney for lunch.  We'll we got a wild hair during lunch and decided to put our season passes to good use and run into the park ride Tower of Terror then get back in the car.  Just because we can! Such a great vacation! Steve and Pam, if you're reading... Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!

I just learned how to embed the slideshow into my blog, let me know how you like it.  If it was better just posting the link for you to click on we can always go back to that. I just thought this was pretty neat! It starts when you click the play button and will scroll through automatically, but if you want to slow down and look picture by picture just use the right and left controll arrows and/or the pause button :)

Big Fish

As most of you know Chris is the contemporary worship director at our church.  We've been doing a series on Jonah and Chris along with 3 good friends (Patrick and Paige Burzlaff and Stephanie Lewis) put together an old FFH song called Big Fish. Enjoy!

Spanish Cooking Class at Cafe Med

It's no secret that my family LOVES to cook and loves to eat even more. A local restaurant called Cafe Med offers cooking classes the second Wednesday of every month and I've always wanted to go. Well, yesterday was the day. I went with my Mom, Aunt Sandra, Mimi, and my cousin Taylor works at Cafe Med and assisted the chef, Meir Brown, in the cooking class...so she was there too!

The main dish we learned to cook was Paella.

Now here's the thing...my mom dad and I spent a week and Spain and my grandma lived there for 3 months. I'm more than familiar with Paella. While Meir didn't prepare the Paella anywhere close to the traditional way we saw it prepared in Spain, but it was still really darn good! My grandma shipped home all the traditional pans and burners and had families that had been making Paella for generations teach her detail by detail the "proper" way to make a Paella. Meir used ingredients and and kitchen wear he already had, which is great! I've just been spoiled by fancy imported paella rice and seasonings. Don't get me wrong, Meir's Paella was great. There is just something nostalgic to me about the real deal!

Anywho....we started out the class with Tapas. Tapas is the Spanish equivalent of appetizer.

First we made Spanish Meatball and Manchego Empanadas, Tuna Stuffed Sweet Piquillo Peppers,

and Serrano and Fontina Wrapped Asparagus. (Asparagus was my favorite dish of the night!)

Next were Goat Cheese Stuffed Piquillo Peppers--there were gooey and so delicious!

Above is an inside view of the stuffed piquillo peppers.  Yummm!

For our main dinner course we had a hot/cold Mushroom, Asparagus, Shrimp Salad with a Lemon Vinaigrette, Spanish Meatballs in Saffron Sauce, and Paella with scallops, shrimp, chicken, pork, and mussels!

Bellow is my cousin, Taylor, at her normal day's work.  Helping in the kitchen at Cafe Med.  What a life!

For dessert we had a vanilla bean flan topped with raspberry and mint.

German Chocolate Cupcakes

Made for a friend's, Ken Burdick, birthday today!

Dodger Game

Yesterday I went to my very first pro baseball game. That's right folks, I live an hour away from LA and have never been to a game. The Dodgers were playing the Padres and it all just worked out perfect. I had a Dodger Dog and everything.

Bridal Shower Cupcake

My friend Jen's mom is getting remarried and I was asked to make cupcakes for her bridal shower. Here is the lemon scented vanilla cupcake filled with lemon curd, topped with a lemon white chocolate cream cheese frosting and a raspberry and mint leaf for garnish.