A Wild Baby and Cake Decorating, Part 2

As I'm sitting on the internet browsing for zucchini recipes (have I mentioned we have like 1,856 of them???) Frank shouts through the window, "Come here and bring your camera!" That phrase always sends me into a mini panic mode.

He found this little guy in the zucchini plant. I thought to myself, "Why would you catch a mouse to show me?" I looked closer and realized it's an itty bitty baby rabbit. I'll insert Jess and Kaylee's "aaawwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!" noise, the one they make at all things cute. It's super annoying. Frank looks at me with a gleam in his eye and says, "You wanna keep it??" It was more of a statement than a question. We now have 4 rabbits. I hope he never finds a stray cow out there.

This gives you an idea of just how tiny this thing is.

The rabbits aren't sure what to think about the baby.

We have some pretty spoiled animals. I chop leftover garden veggies and hand feed them to the ducks. Ridiculous, huh.

And now for my pride moment. This is the first thing I've done in a very long time that I've been proud of. It probably won't save us from zombies during an apocolypse. Unless zombies eat pretty cakes, in which case we'll be totally safe and it'll be deemed a life saving skill. Perhaps it's not a useful skill but nonetheless, I did teach myself something new. Ok so technically youtube taught me.

I watched Cake Boss on youtube and 4 hours later I have an iced cake smooth as a baby's butt and ready for fondant! Before I began, I ran to Walmart and bought a cake turntable. I'm so glad I did! It made all the difference. I also bought a cake leveler but I didn't even need it. My cakes didn't crown for the first time ever!!! Maybe it was Cake Boss's cake recipe. Maybe it was my homemade cake strips that I made from an old ratty bath towel. Whatever it was, I have LEVEL CAKES!! This is monumental!

Who knows if the cake will be any good. My high tech method of scribbling down recipes on scrap papers doesn't always work out. I tend to forget to write down things or read my chicken scratches wrong. So I might have forgotten to add the butter and cream it with the sugar. No worries, I just threw it in when I realized it. No biggie, right? Cake Boss would cringe if he saw my baking methods.

Let me tell you, the cake batter is HEAVEN. Smooth, buttery, silky heaven. It was so good I wanted to grab a straw and drink it. I refrained.

The icing is also a Cake Boss recipe. Again, I kind of read the recipe wrong and did things out of order. It didn't seem to matter because this stuff is GOOD. Really good. (Pay no attention to the icing drips and clumps. You're just imagining things.)

Now, on to the fondant. Have I ever mentioned that I tend to get a bit messy in the kitchen? Thank goodness  no one was here to witness it. The pictures don't even do it justice. It was so bad the dogs were shaking their heads. (And why does this photo make my hand look so pudgy? Who ever heard of unphotogenic hands? Is unphotogenic even a word? Apparently not, according to spell check.)

                                      

Doesn't my table look beautiful? Yes, I kneaded the fondant right on the bare table, food coloring and all. It was so FUN, kind of like playdough for adults. Only messier. Believe it or not, cleanup only took 5 minutes and I didn't even have to call on the Magic Eraser. From the looks of my shirt, maybe I should think about investing in an apron? Aprons are for sissies, though. People who wear aprons are rich housewives who wear pearls and high heels while they bake. I bake barefoot and just wipe my hands on my shirt. Classy.

Here is the finished fondant, ready to hang out in the fridge overnight. I plan to give Martha Stewart a run for her money tomorrow! If all goes well, I'll have a nice cake to serve to the dads for Father's Day. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

This is a small sample of what my kitchen looks like after I'm done baking. Have I ever mentioned how small and ugly my kitchen is? Again, cleanup really didn't take that long. Ok, so maybe I left part of it for tomorrow. See that hand mixer? Frank watched me whip some heavy cream by hand to make whipped cream. It took about a billion minutes because my old mixer was broke. Wasn't that thoughtful of him? Someday I'd love to have a stand mixer but I'll need to win the lottery first.

So how do you get 3 ducks to go in their house at night? First, you chase them in circles around the chicken coop. When they refuse to cooperate, you try to entice them with treats. If that doesn't work, you curse them and threaten them. Then you plead with them. After about 20 minutes of looking like a 3 ring circus you grab a rabbit and start chasing them with it. Works like a charm. I could hear the neighbors peeking out their windows and shaking their heads.

 And now for today's grand finale. No kids and no husband = I can eat whatever I want for dinner and no one will complain. Except maybe the dogs because I won't share with them. I whipped up some fried dill pickles and had a nice healthy dinner. It occurred to me in all my cake excitement I'd forgotten to eat today. Oops. Well, unless you count cake batter and icing. If that counts then I ate about 5 meals. Today I learned that if I had no children and no job I'd weigh 700 lbs. and have to wear a mumu (is that even how you spell it?) and have extreme diabetes and cholesterol issues.

Zombie Zucchinis and Terrorist Rabbits

Despite the drought, we already have zucchinis coming out our ears. It has rained like twice 
in the last couple of months, but nonetheless we seem to have grown zombie zucchinis again 
this year. Nothing stops them. Therefore, I feel compelled to use them. ALL of them. I can't waste them, you know? I decided to make zucchini relish. Never mind that no one will eat it except me. At least I can say I USED them. It's like a sick, impossible challenge that I know I'll never win, but nevertheless have to try. Grating them is sort of like going to the gym for free. You build killer biceps. Except my biceps are still flabby. But never mind that. 


As if that wasn't enough for one day, I also decided it was a great time to tackle cake decorating. I've never made fondant before. So what? Allrecipes.com says it's easy! Just melt some marshmallows, add some powdered sugar, then knead for what seems like 8 hours. Simple! It's chilling overnight in the refrigerator, taunting me, reminding me that I'm not Martha Stewart.

 On a side note, Frank brought rabbits home from Rural King yesterday. He came into the kitchen and said, "You might wanna grab the camera and come outside." Uh oh. That phrase is common around here, and usually results in some kind of new animal. Yep. Sure enough, I went outside to discover 3 bunnies hopping around my yard. I gave Frank a look. He responded by saying, "They make fertilizer for the garden." Duh. I asked him where he planned to keep them and got met with a vacant look and a scratching of the head. He thought for a minute, then decided they'd be fine with the ducks. "Shouldn't you try it out before you just throw them all in there together?" I asked him. "They'll be fine. It's not like the ducks can hurt them." he said. I went in to check on dinner. About ten minutes later he came in to let me know that the DUCKS are scared of the RABBITS. I went out to see for myself, and sure enough, the ducks were having heart attacks! Those cute little bunnies were hopping around and terrorizing the poor ducks. Never mind that the ducks are 3 times their size. They flapped their wings and scrambled away, hissing all the while.

We went inside to eat dinner. I fixed ham with garden green beans and potatoes in the crock pot, homemade cornbread, zucchini casserole, and a garden salad, with blackberry cobbler for dessert. Ok, so if I'm being totally honest, we all nibbled on the cobbler throughout the day and there was none left by the time we ate dinner. (What do you call a dessert that you eat before dinner?) Anyway, after dinner Frank went out to check on the "farm". He couldn't find the black rabbit anywhere. They decided to hop up the ladder into the chicken coop and have a sleepover with the chickens. I can't help but wonder what's next? A pig? A sheep? A cow?