Cake Pops (AKA The Reason I Feel Like Drinking Tonight)

I make cakes.  Sometimes they are fancy, sometimes they are not.  Sometimes I even get paid to make them.  I enjoy doing them- usually.  Tonight I decided to branch out a little and try doing cake pops.  Bad idea.

For those of you that have no clue what I am talking about, cake pops are kinda like a bite of cake covered in a chocolatey coating on a stick.  You take a perfectly nice cake, crumble it into dust, mix it with frosting, turn it into bonbon sized balls, jam a stick into it, dip it in melted chocolate and make it pretty.  Yeah.  Make it pretty.

Kay is having an open house on Saturday to celebrate the fact that she and the baby are both finally home and getting healthier by the day.  I'm making puppy themed cupcakes (because the baby's room is decorated with puppies) and being the glutton for punishment that I am, I thought "Hey!  Why don't I try to do cake pops that look like puppies, too?"  Charlie, being the wonderful boyfriend that he is, pushed the cart around the craft store and watched my slow descent into madness.  His only real input was "I like peanut butter" when asked if he thought peanut butter candy coating would taste good.

Last night I make the cake and frosting.  I crumbled the hell out of the very nice cake and mixed it with half of the frosting.  I made little bite sized balls out of the sticky mess and put them into the fridge.  Tonight, around 9:30, I decided to dip those little suckers into the peanut butter coating stuff.  The first three went okay.  The sticks did not really want to stay still, but they worked.  The next two, on the other hand, were a disaster.  One fell apart as soon as I tried to stand it in the styrofoam to dry and the other fell apart in the melted coating.  Awesome.  Charlie was there to "help" (which actually means eat the mistakes I think) but ended up helping me for real.  I changed how I was doing them a little and managed to dip 10 good ones total before I called it a night.

For a little tiny cake thing, these are ridiculously labor intensive and made me want to drink lots of sangria.  I haven't even begun to decorate the little bastards yet!  I did try one of the crashed ones.  It was okay, but nothing I will crave.  Charlie thought they were pretty good, so at least he got to taste while he helped.  I'm going to send him to the liquor store before he comes home from work tomorrow.  I will finish these come hell or high water, but I am going to require a magnum of sangria while I do it.

Winter All Over

Christmas has come and gone.  So has New Years and Charlie's birthday last week.  Now it's just Winter.  Cold, snowy, miserable winter.  Normally I become a real sad sack this time of year.  This year is different.  I think it's because I have become much more content.  Don't get me wrong- I friggin' HATE winter- but I know that soon enough it will be Spring and then Summer.  Everything changes.  Sometimes it has snow on it, sometimes it has sunshine.  I'm cool with it.

Change used to be my nemesis.  Winter was as well.  I always viewed happiness as a sort of Summer and depression as a sort of Winter.  Real Winter seemed to bring depression with it, so Winter was just, well, Winter.  Yucky Winter.  This Winter is different.  I still hate the snow and cold, but my state of mind is still in the sun.  I don't know if it's a change in attitude, acceptance of change, or just plain ol' chemistry that worked this magic.  (I'm taking vitamin D and a low dose anti-depressant.)  What I do know is that I don't hate the world like I usually do in the dead of Winter.  I'm happy to come home every night to my warm house and put on my fuzzy pj pants.  I watch the cats chase each other and wrestle and I laugh.  I clean, fold laundry and freeze my ass off putting groceries in the car, but I don't hate it like I would in the past.  It's nice.

I have accepted the fact that life is not linear and most certainly will not follow your plan, no matter how detailed the map.  In fact, it's kinda sideways most of the time.  Had my life followed my very narrow path, I would not have Joe and most definitely not Charlie.  I will never be a "free spirit," but I can relax.  I've gotten far more out of life since I started to relax.  Maybe that is the secret to the whole darn thing.  Like Frankie said- "Relax."