Pumpkin Pie...yummy.

So my pumpkin pies turned out great.  Danny said it was probably the best pumpkin pie he's ever had.  That's always nice to hear!

Start with eggs.

Eggs in a bowl.  Fascinating!

All the spices you'll need.

I forgot to take a picture of the can of pumpkin.  But you use canned pumpkin NOT pumpkin pie filling.  We're making this from scratch.  The above is Ally helping me mix up the pumpkin with the other stuff.  When I dumped the pumpkin into the bowl, Ally said it smelled like carrots.

After the milk and other stuff is added.  The filling ends up very runny, but it's supposed to be that way!

Going into the oven.  When making this particular recipe, because it's so runny, you need to put the pie plates on the oven rack, then pour the filling in.  If you try putting them in the oven after you've filled them, you'll end up spilling it.

Finished pies sitting out to cool.  Don't they look nice?

Now to make homemade whipped cream.  These are the only two ingredients you'll need.  It's really very easy.

Action shot of the mixer.  I held the mixer with one hand and the camera with the other to take this.  Awesome.

Whipped creamy goodness!  Homemade whipped cream is the best.

And finally the finished pie with the little guy from last week perched on top.  I just served the whipped cream on the side because some people don't like whipped cream on their pie.  Imagine that.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Painted turkey.

I finished up my turkey last night.  Here's what I did:

First I started with the brown.

Danny said I needed to put a brown stripe across his tail feathers and wings, so I did.

Then I added orange.  Funny story:  I knew I didn't have any orange food coloring to paint him with, so I had planned on mixing red and yellow.  Started painting and realized I used the last of my yellow for the yellow brick road for Cammy's cake.  Oops.  Guess what I used to get this pretty orange...paprika!  So now my turkey smells spicy.

I'm running out of commentary, so one more picture...

He's shiny in these pictures because he wasn't dry yet.  He's not shiny anymore.  I'm just going to sit this little guy on top of my pumpkin pie (which I'll post about on Monday!).  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Happy Turkey Day (almost)!

I was asked to make a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, and being the decorator that I am, I decided it will need dressing up a bit.  Now I haven't made the pie yet; I'll do that Wednesday night.  But last night I decided to do a little character work.

I had some leftover gum paste from making the flower for the Twilight cake, so I got that out last night and tried my hand at a bird.  A traditional bird.

Ready-made Wilton gum paste.

Off to a good start!

Looking good so far!

Side view.  I'm surprised at how quickly this little guy came together.

Wings on...finished!

Front view of the finished bird.  I'm going to paint him tonight, so I'll post that update tomorrow.  Looks like a turkey, right?

Putting it all together...

Okay, second entry for today (and final one).  I spent most of the day on Saturday finishing up the cake.  I made two cakes, one yellow (butter) cake, and one chocolate fudge.  So here's what I did:

Bowls and mixer ready to go!

Butter, sugar and eggs mixed up.

Flour and baking powder.

Mixing it all up.  Not very exciting yet, is it?

The chocolate one.  Funny story, well, not so funny at the time but in retrospect it's a little funny.  I had just melted the chocolate and poured it into the batter when my mother called.  I couldn't get off the phone with her fast enough to mix up the chocolate in the batter before it started to harden.  I went ahead and mixed it up (though it didn't mix up very good, so I knew something was wrong) poured it in the pan, and put it in the oven.  Fast forward 30 minutes when I try to turn the cake out onto the cooling rack:  it crumbles, completely falls apart.  So I had to scrap that one and start over again.  It was frustrating.

The almost done butter cake on the left, and the doomed first chocolate cake on the right.

I made the Emerald City out of cookie sticks covered in green fondant.  So here are the cookie dough sticks before they went in the oven.

Ingredients, because I realized I wasn't taking enough pictures.  Although the creme drops are not part of the ingredients.  They were just left on the table by a child.  When I was little I used to think creme drops were awesome, and totally Christmas-y.  So when Danny and I were Christmas shopping on Friday we bought a bag.  Yeah, they're not as good as I remember them being.  Even the girls didn't like them.  They ended up in trash.  Moving on...

The cookie recipe that I used for the Emerald City.  Although I did not add the cinnamon and sugar coating to them like the snickerdoodles have.

The finished butter cake cooling.

The finished cookie sticks.  I should have made them a little smaller so they wouldn't spread so much.  I ended up trimming the sides off a lot.

On to making the fondant for the Emerald City and the yellow brick road.  Since we were going to be eating these I wanted to make the good stuff.

You've all seen this before, so I'm not going to bore you with the whole process.

So here's the end result. 

Cookies covered in green fondant.  These ended up a lot heavier than I expected them to be.

The two cakes ready to be frosted.

Green buttercream.  This frosting is awesome because it crusts over on the outside.  Yum.

Frosted cake.

Yellow fondant rolled out to make the yellow brick road.  It looks kind of green in this pictures, but I promise, it was really yellow.

See, it looks more yellow here.

Added the Emerald City.  I actually had to brace it from the back with a cookie turned sideways and lollipop sticks because the cookies were too heavy.  I did not anticipate that, but it all turned out okay anyway.

And the finished cake!  You can't see the brick pattern very well in this picture.

Another shot of the finished cake.

Dorothy and the Lion.  You can kind of see the brick pattern a little better.

Scarecrow and Tin Man.

And the birthday girl, Cammy, blowing out the candles.  She loved it!

The Lion.

I'm going to do two separate entries today:  one for the Lion, and one for finishing the whole cake.  The Lion entry is going to be pretty short.

Brown fondant for the Lion.  Ally made sure to tell me as I was coloring it, that it was supposed to be light brown, not dark.

Legs, again looking kind of gross.

I kind of got busy and forgot to take pictures before this point.  Sorry! 

Ears added.  It was hard to hold onto those little things.  Same with Toto.  Tiny ears are not easy to work with!

And now he has a tail!  I think it turned out really cute!

I decided to do their faces with an edible marker (actually Danny helped convince me) since the face I did with a toothpick didn't really show up.

The finished characters all together!  Now I'm going to go get a cup of coffee before I do the entry for the whole cake!