Peanut Butter Bones- The Dog Kind

I was thinking about baking something today, when I had the epiphany that dogs eat food too! So I decided to make some Peanut Butter Dog Bones as treats for my one year old German Shepherd puppies (CT is on the left & Dozer is on the right- hanging out together on the patio right after the rain made mud that was promptly attached to their big paws and trampled over my patio- kids *sigh*).

I searched online to find a good recipe, but ended up splicing 3 different recipes together to get the right dog-bone consistency and flavor I thought they might like.   This recipe can be easily halved.

2 packages dry yeast
1 C lukewarm water
2 C mashed potatoes

2 C milk
1/2 C molasses
1 C Water or Broth

1 C Smooth or Chunky Peanut Butter

3 C whole wheat flour
2 Lg. Eggs

3 cups all-purpose white flour

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 ° F (165 ° C).

1) In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in water- set aside. 

2) In a large saucepan, mix together the potatoes, milk, molasses, water/stock, and peanut butter. Heat, stirring frequently until boiling. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

3) Add yeast mixture. 

4) Gradually blend in the egg and wheat flour. 

5) Gradually blend in enough white flour to form a stiff dough.

6) Transfer to a floured surface and knead until smooth (i.e. does not stick to the board or rolling pin-  takes about 3-5 minutes). 

7) Cut the dough into two halves. Shape each half into a ball and roll to approximately 1/2-inch thick. 

8) Using cookie cutters, cut out the dog bones (or whatever shape you desire). 

9) Place on ungreased baking sheets, spacing them about 1/4-inch apart. This recipe expands slightly but not much, so you can fit a large number of them on one cookie sheet. 

10) Gather up the scraps, roll out again, and cut additional treats.

11) Bake for 40-45 minutes. 

12) Let cool uncovered for at least 2 hours, but preferably overnight. 

13) Makes several (about 6) dozen bones that freeze well.

And here they are! These are only a few of the dozens of bones that came out of this recipe. And our dogs ate them right up!

Father's Day BBQ Cake

I made a BBQ for my dad for Father's Day. 

It is a Chocolate WASC cake with a White Chocolate Ganache filling (2 C Whipping Cream whipped, 16oz melted White Chocolate chips, blended together then chilled for 1 hour prior to applying it to the cake).
The cake is covered with vanilla Fondant. The flames, burgers and hotdogs are colored vanilla fondant.

Baby Grand Piano Cake

My cousin Chuck graduated from high school last week! He is going to school to be a pastor!  He has an AMAZING gift to play and compose the piano, so for his graduation I wanted to do something special. I made him his very own baby grand. Now, it didn't last the night, but it was pretty yummy :)

The cake was a Chocolate WASC with Vanilla Buttercream frosting and Bavarian Cream Filling. The cake is covered with Black Fondant and is on a cake stand that my husband made after I carved the cake.   Here are the pictures showing how I made the cake:

The pictures below are of the following points in the process.
1) Newly carved cake- no icing.
2) Bavarian Cream filling.
3) Crumb coating on the cake.
4) Fondant covered cake.
5) Almost done! Accent pieces placed on cake, ready for transport.
6) The final cake- ready to be cut into.

Tank Cake

My aunt asked me to make a military themed birthday cake for my cousin. It turns out he likes tanks- so I got a tank in my brain and started carving away at the cake. I was super excited to make this cake because it is my first real carved cake! So here it is- let me know your thoughts!

I used my typical WASC cake recipe using yellow boxed cake this time, then added a little marble-twist.  I saved about 4 Cups of the yellow cake batter and added about 3/4-1 C of cocoa powder. Mix the batter and cocoa really well, then drop on the cake in rows.  Once the chocolate batter is striping the yellow batter, I took a silicone spatula and ran it through to get a marbling effect through the whole depth of the cake. (This is the pre-cooked marble cake).

Once all layers were baked, I leveled each cake, then I froze them overnight (makes it easier to carve!).  The Tank was composed of 2x 2-layer cakes.

The filling was a Vanilla Cream Cheese Mousse (without the vanilla beans) that was colored Army-man green.

The icing was an Vanilla Almond Buttercream (I used this recipe, but used half-almond, half-vanilla extract. I used the paper towel method to smooth the icing on the tiers.

 The final product was accented by black fondant strips to look like treads and gears. The gun barrel was created using a pretzel rod covered in buttercream, and tipped with a black fondant gun barrel.