Spongebob Cakepants

A few months ago a co-worker of mine asked me to make her niece's birthday cake. She basically gave me free range creatively, which I love, and all she wanted was a Spongebob theme. So I began thinking about what this cake was going to look like and decided on making Spongebob's pineapple house.

The cake is French Vanilla with vanilla buttercream icing. I covered the round cake base with a healthy dusting of crushed up Nilla Waffers to look like sand. All of the decorations are made of fondant and attached with royal icing. I have a 'Big Top Cupcake' mold that a good friend of mine gave me for christmas and after looking at all of my baking pans and briefly contemplating carving the Pineapple out of sheet cake, I decided to make 2 bottoms and stack them on top of each other. I was really pleased with the outcome!

Spongebob, Gary, & Patrick

Flowers

I had loads of fun making this cake and the recipient was equally pleased. Apparently I will be making many more birthday cakes for her...Can't wait to see what else she can come up with for me!

Oh How I Love Strawberries!

I thought I'd kick this blog off with one of my favorite fruits, the strawberry. I recently discovered a 'Pick Your Own' farm not far from my home and I am in love! Fruits and veggies for all seasons at unbelievably low prices, so I hopped in my car and headed out with a mission to obtain 2 gallons of fresh delicious strawberries....Mission Accomplished!

The next question is 'what to make first?' As I always like to begin with the obvious, I of course made jam. This is a very sweet jam with only 2 ingredients and no pectin. I did this in 2 batches and added lime pulp to the second batch for delicious Strawberry Lime Jam!

Strawberry (& Lime) Jam

4 Cups mashed strawberries (you can use a potato masher, but I used my food processor)

4 Cups sugar divided

2 Cups fresh lime pulp (Optional)

Mash the strawberries (and lime). If you are using a food processor, you want the berries to be chunky, not smooth. Mix the berries with half of the sugar and cook on medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Add the remaining sugar and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Strain off the excess juice (Do Not throw this away.) Place the jam into jars and seal tightly!

So there you have it, super fresh, from vine to jar in 2 hours, quick and easy strawberry and strawberry lime jam!

Now remember that sugary strawberry juice I told you to save? I hope you did because if not you are about to miss out on a truly refreshing delight...the freshest strawberry mojito you have ever had! By the way, you can make these virgin for an equally delicious and refreshing spritzer, just cut out the rum!

Strawberry Mojito

4-5 Chunks fresh lime with peel

Fresh mint sprigs

Fresh strawberry juice

1 1/2 oz rum

Club Soda

Ice and a tall glass

Muddle the mint, lime and strawberry juice in the tall glass. Top with ice and rum and fill with club soda. Garnish with a strawberry or lime wedge if desired. Enjoy!