Johnny Cash and the Power Rangers

Have you ever played Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" and do "sign language" to the song?  I recently experienced, twice in the same day.  It is a BLAST!  It's not real sign language, you just make up your own movements through the song.  It reminds me of what the Happy Hands Club does in the movie "Napolean Dynamite."  I had fun doing it with a group of people, or maybe I'm just crazy.  Of course, I am easily amused!  Give it a try some time and make a comment about it.

I was asked to make a birthday cake for a 6 year old.  He requested a rainbow cake with something Power Rangers on top.  Well, as fascinated as I am with cake decorating (I hope to get much better), I still have a lot to learn about it, so my skills are very basic.  When it comes to rainbow cake, I LOVE making them!  I have the technique down pretty well; I just need to work on the pop recipe more.  (The pop recipe makes tends to make the cake fall apart easily)  Anyways, the little man got a rainbow cake and cupcakes.  I did the lightning bolt from the logo and surrounded it with "Happy Birthday" like the logo.  His favorite Power Ranger is red, hence the reason the cake is red.  The cupcakes I frosted with the colors of the Power Rangers (NOTE: PRs have changed so much since I was a child, gold is currently one of them not black).  Since I didn't have anything edible that is gold, they told me I could just use black.  The cupcakes dont' have all six colors in the batter, they have two to three colors.  It is hard enough to get three colors in without using too much batter.  FYI the black scribble is the birthday boy's name scratched out.  Happy baking!

Blue, Red, Pink, Black, Yellow, Green Power Rangers cupcakes

Rainbow Cake

Last Friday I (none other than A) made a VERY yummy (and pretty) cake to share with my family during our Memorial Day weekend camping extravaganda down by the farm pond.  I just HAD TO share it with you all.  I used a blog (http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake) and a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgGqPg4Ca4w) to make my first ever rainbow cake.  I used the recipe on the blog and the pouring technique in the video.


Picture Descriptions:
Picture #1  The only two ingrediants (2 boxes of cake mix and 24 oz. of clear pop) in the cake PLUS my two special ingredients (vanilla extract and a little applesauce).  You can do the pop thing with any white cake recipe, apparently, and just bake it according to the directions on the box/recipe
#2 What happens when you put pop and cake mix together.
#3 The six pretty colors
#4 Just before going into the oven
#5 Halfway baked
#6 Done baking and cooling down
#7 My hideous frosted cake (24 oz. generic Cool Whip and two small boxes of vanilla pudding, with a little milk).  I was worried that I wasn't going to have enough (I used a lot to hold the brittle cake together) so I mixed more in that I had on hand.
#8 After the cake had been cut into

Just some notes

This was a YUMMY cake!  It had FANTASTIC flavor; it just didn't turn out very pretty is all.  I think this recipe (the pop thing) would work better as a single layer cake.  I have made several layered cakes, but I have never had so much trouble before.  I had a request from our 4 1/2 year old nephew (who doesn't really care for sweet stuff) and our 2 1/2 year old neice for a rainbow cake.  My oldest sister is even trying to think of an excuse to have one.  My entire family loved it, despite how bad it went together.  M isn't big on sweet stuff, although he eats them now and then, but even he loved it too.  Needless to say it was a big Memorial Day weekend campout hit!

I must say this.  I have been looking for a good homemade white cake recipe for a long time and haven't found one.  I take that back... I found a good one once, but the recipe got lost.  This is really good though!

Although it got put together really badly, my dear friend C told me something very improtant once, "Never apologize for anything that comes out of your kitchen."  I live by that now.