Recent projects

We've made a few things recently:

1) A patterned cake for our Valentine's Day dinner, based on the recipe found here. In all honesty, the recipe itself was a little too sweet for me (I'm a dark chocolate kind of girl, so I should have known white chocolate ganache would be a bit much for me) but her directions for making the patterned cake are easy to follow and I think could be adapted for any jelly roll type of cake. It was fun to see the final pattern. I'm hoping to try the technique on a spiced cake roll or maybe an ice cream cake.

Clearly I am not a food photographer/blogger so if you'd like to see pretty pictures and a video of the whole process, please click on the link above.

Make the patterned sheet cake by following her instructions. If you are like me, beware that in the process of flipping it out of the pan, you may nearly drop it onto the floor. No one ever wants to eat cake from the floor on Valentine's Day so work hard to avoid that disaster.

Add filling of your choice. As I mentioned above, I think custard, dark chocolate ganache, sour cream filling for a carrot or spice cake or softened ice cream could all be delicious. The strawberries were delicious so add those whenever possible.

Roll it and chill it.

Serve it to those you love.

2) We are starting to make some plans for the future. At this point, it's looking like we might become Texans for a few years! We had to go shopping to get Will some clothes for his interviews. Prior to the shopping trip, his wardrobe consisted of two types of clothes: T-shirts and jeans or suits. His professor was like, "Do not wear a suit. You will look like you're trying to sell something."

Looking good in the academic uniform: blazer, shirt without tie, slacks.

3) Making blankets for babies. Quite a few of our friends are having babies and I've enjoyed getting back into sewing.

Baby blankets are easy when you can find cute fabric and soft flannel.

I knitted a square! This was part of a group gift for one of Will's classmates. It was the first thing I ever knitted by a pattern and really enjoyed the process. I've since started another knitting project which is going well.

This was a favorite. I saw the design on a friend's blog and decided to replicate it when I realized it was just a bunch of triangles arranged in a herringbone pattern. It was also the first quilt I've ever done machine quilting on which was fairly frustrating at first, but I'm sure will be much faster once I get the hang of it.