Pumpkin Spice Truffles & Boobie Shaped Foods

Sadly, I am attending another farewell to boobie gathering for a friend who will have a mastectomy. But we are all bringing breast themed food items, which is a fun distraction. Last time I attended a farewell party, I made melon balls and gave them berry nipples. 

Truffles seemed like a good idea. I even tried out a recipe with avocado and chocolate last week, but they didn't go over too well with my family. Cake balls or cake pops also came up in my searches. I hadn't eaten cake balls before, but I had seen them and heard about them.  Though I hadn't quite grasped the entire concept. 

Cake balls it was.  Generally cake is baked, crumbled up, mixed with frosting and formed into balls. Then the newly formed ball is dipped into chocolate flavored coating. 

I was set on spice cake with pumpkin;  cream cheese frosting seemed like the way to go. I checked around to see how others had had success with that.  I found two references to only using cream cheese, not cream cheese frosting. Also, the spice cake mix can be made with only a can of pumpkin, or water and pumpkin and sometimes eggs.  

These were to be a healthier version of pumpkin spice cake balls.  The process took less time than I expected which was a nice surprise. I used a spice cake mix and added a 15oz can of pumpkin and one egg. I placed the sticky batter in a 9x13" glass dish sprayed with Pam. After baking about 27 minutes at 350 degrees, I let it cool completely and cut the cake into sections.

The whole cake seemed pretty soft and moist but I did trim off the edges in case.  This also gave the young one some nice samples. I had a package of softened cream cheese, the lower fat, neufchâtel variety.  I crumbled the cake into fine pieces with my hands, then added the chopped up cream cheese. The mixture became smooth and dough like. The next step was to form balls. The consistency of the cake and cream cheese made it very easy to roll balls. I placed them on wax paper and then put them in the freezer. I intended to just leave them 15 minutes, but then I had to pick up the middle one and they ended up being in the freezer a bit longer.  My concern was that if the balls became frozen and then thawed, they might crack the chocolate coating. 

12/21/13- For round two of Pumpkin Spice Cake balls, using only 1/3 of the cream cheese complimented the moist pumpkin spice cake even better.

In my research of cake ball making, I saw that a small chocolate melting pot might be a nice accessory. This information was just after I has unsuccessfully melted chocolate for the avocado truffles. I gathered my coupons and found the last one on the shelf!  In addition, I purchased some new chocolate:  pumpkin spice in a nice orange. 

While the chocolate melted, I allowed the nearly frozen cake balls to warm up a bit too. The chocolate melted perfectly. I began with white and covered the first sheet of balls, it went pretty well. I used a fork to lift the balls out of the chocolate and allowed the excess to drip off. The second sheet of "balls" had a flattened bottom and was a bit more dome-like to resemble breasts. 

With my daughter's help, we added pink to the white and finally decided to add a little bit of orange too.  It yielded a nice color. I had hoped to find pink m&ms for nipples, and also considered fondant. Finally, I hoped to create nipples out of pink melted chocolate, but my result was a bit messy. The pink chocolate was too warm and wanted to run everywhere out of my decorator bag. Interestingly, the orange chocolate decorations I added to the white balls was perhaps not warm enough and too thick. I thought I might have challenges with the dipping, but that was the easy part. 

After sleeping on it, I decided to try the orange again. The old orange came off easily. I melted new orange and it still was rather thick. I considered adding coconut oil or shortening, but decided to add some white chocolate which had melted so nicely. It helped a bit.  I think the orange spice just melts differently. 

The great part of this experiment is that the cake ball truffles are very tasty.  And I know for next time spending a bit more time on the decorating would help.

Passing on Some Hope

Through my Modern Quilt Guild, we are contributing log cabin blocks to be made into "Mother's Hope" quilts for mothers experiencing post partum depression.  It is part of a day program for mothers to attend along with their babies. I made up three blocks. It was fun to look through my stash and choose fabric for this project.

I heard about another quilt project.  Pink and white Antique Tile blocks are being collected to be made into quilts for women diagnosed with Breast Cancer. These quilts will be staying local and donated to the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester. 

29oz of Pumpkin yields Muffins, Pies, and Cookies!

29 ounces of pumpkin is perfect for muffins, mini pumpkin pies and cookies!

Once again, I sought out some pumpkin muffin recipes.  I was thinking banana would be nice with pumpkin and maybe some Greek yogurt. Fortunately, someone else already had a recipe for that.  The muffins are moist and the pumpkin flavor is present along with a hint of banana.  I made some minor modifications:   I did half and half white and wheat flour, 3/4 cup of regular chocolate chips instead of the 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips and I added a sprinkle of nutmeg and cloves.

The mini pumpkin pie recipe I had figured out last year. It's basically a half a recipe using skim milk. It's very easy.  My son loves pumpkin pie, I bet he could make them himself!

This pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe sounded interesting. The butter is melted and then the dough is chilled before baking. The goal for the baker, Sally, was to have cookies be more chewy than cake like.  Looks like Sally has many great recipes, I'd like to try these ones next.  The cookies are very soft, almost doughlike.  I think we like our cookies to have a bit more texture and firmness.  Adding oats might be enough.

Quilted Crossbody Purse

This project started out with some wonky pink and brown stripes, but then I decided to go with a more plain outside and did dark brown with just a few slice and insert strips on the front.  I added batting and sewed wavy pink lines for quilting.  I like the slice and insert for adding interest.  The pink ribbon fabric, symbolic for breast cancer, has interrupted these nice long pink lines, but they still carry on.


Each front and back ended up 9" wide by 10.5" long.


I added an inside zipper which was new to me.  This tutorial by U-Handbag explained things easily.  My measurements ended up a bit different.  I used a 7.5" zipper, but ended up cutting it so that the  zipper opening was 4".  My pocket was 6" wide by 5" tall.  I used craft interfacing which made it quite stiff, but it seems fine.

Lining front and back

Adding the other side of the pocket was easy too.  The process seems a bit like magic and it really works.  With my wonky stripes, I made an inside pocket and added darts.

The front and back are sewn together with a 1/4" seam allowance and the gusset is 1".

Purse inside

This whole project used fabrics from my stash, though I was running low on dark brown.  I needed to piece the 3.5" x 53" strap and used methods from joining a binding at an angle to make it long enough.  In addition to the brown, I used another 3.5" strip of the lining fabric, sewed them together on one long edge, then ironed and folded each unfinished edge into the center and joined them together ending with about a 1.5" strap.  I decided to add thin batting to the strap and cut that at 1.5" wide.  I just tucked the batting into one of the folded sides.  To add stability, I made a series of wavy lines on the strap.

Target Crossbody

My inspiration for this sized crossbody purse was a bag I was already using from Target.  I liked the one strap attaching at the front and back and the size was just about right, but I wanted it a touch bigger.



My purse is a bit bigger and I like the look.  I use a wristlet because I tend to switch bags for what I'm doing that day.  If I'm traveling light, I go for my crossbody purse.  It even has room for a small camera.

Unicycle Cupcakes

It's birthday time again for my husband and while we are not traveling to a Muni race weekend, I still had unicycles on the mind. 

I wondered about making home made sprinkles.  There are such recipes, but many of them are called confetti and can be cut in shapes. That is what I was looking for. Then one post I read just used fondant and cut out small shapes. Even better.
I did need a tiny unicycle cutter.  I took out my cutter making kit I had used before and found I was out of metal. A couple sites had instructions for making cookie cutters out of a soda can. Because my cutter would be small, this seemed like a perfect plan. I cut up a can and folded the metal onto itself and created a tiny unicycle.

Marshmallow fondant I had made before and felt confident making again. I made up a half a recipe, but easily could have made a quarter. I colored it purple and rolled it out. The mini cutter worked perfectly.  I laid the unicycles out on a cookie sheet and using a butter knife, made spoke impressions. 

For the cupcakes, I figured I would make a healthier version of the box mix again.  Instead of just Greek yogurt, I had added a bit of water.  But I also read about using coffee with chocolate cake to bring out the chocolate flavor.  Some people mention that the cake is a bit flat when using yogurt, so I added an egg white too. My recipe ended up being 1 egg white, 1 full cup of plain Greek yogurt (6 oz container plus a little), almost a cup of cooled coffee, and Betty Crocker Super Moist Fudge cake mix. It yielded 20 cupcakes.  They are just right in flavor and texture. I baked them in papers for 18 minutes.
Then it was on to the buttercream frosting. I made up a recipe using two sticks of butter, 3 cups of powdered sugar, 1 TB of vanilla and 2 TB of milk. It was enough to thickly frost 17 cupcakes using a decorator bag with no tip.
Finally I added the unicycles and some confetti sprinkles. 

Firetruck & Tools Tote Bag

The birthday boy is also into tools and Handy Manny, in addition to his love of firetrucks.  I thought a quilted gift bag might be fun, especially one that combined two of his favorite things.

One reason I enjoy making quilted tote bags is that I can try out different quilting methods on a small scale.  For this bag, because I was using two different prints, I thought using black and grey as accents on both sides would help tie things together. I used the slice and insert method for adding the strips of grey. 

Wavy quilting lines is something I had never tried for quilting.  Using my walking foot and winging it seemed to work well. I really like the effect on this bag. I used grey on the predominately grey side and black on the other. I did stick with black on the black bottom fabric and decided to use grey on the small grey strip too. 

The tool fabric was leftover from a baby quilt; I did purchase a fat quarter of the firetruck fabric.  For the lining I found the light denim to be a nice match and had just enough. When I heard the birthday boy was into Handy Manny and searched, I found this great ribbon.  I knew it would arrive later in the week.  The first steps were making the front and back and quilting each piece. For the whole project, my goal was to make sure the bag would appeal to a boy and I wasn't sure where the ribbon would come into play. Finally I decided to just use it in the lining, like a little surprise. I added ribbon onto a pocket too.

The finished size is about 15" wide by 10" tall with a 5" depth from a 2" boxed corner.

Girly Dance Tote

My little one is quite the dancer, but I had reservations about signing her up for dance class at age three. Finally I found a creative movement and ballet class at our Y during the day. The teacher has great energy and is very engaging.

Even though it is a dance class, many children wear street clothes and socks or sneakers for class. The teacher did say that leotards and ballet slippers are good too. My daughter has worn a leotard every class and started wearing ballet shoes too. These are everyday clothes for her at home, why not wear them to dance class. 

A mini dance tote for a mini girl seemed like the perfect next project. 

Lately everything is about sparkles.  Fortunately, I had a little leftover purple sparkly fabric and some pink sparkly corduroy.  The ballet slipper ribbon was also in my stash. After looking around for some extra inspiration, I saw many dance bags have a tulle skirt on them. I thought a little tulle would make a nice accent. 

I started with a 10.5" square of the pink corduroy and added about a 2.5" strip purple sparkly on top. Then, I cut 7" from the bottom to add the tulle. The tulle was 4" wide and approximately four times the width of the bag. I layered two strips of tulle and then gathered them. Adding a silver ribbon on the seam helped bring out the sparkles. 

Before sewing up the sides and bottom, I trimmed the tote bag to 9" x 11". This would be the measurement for the lining too. The straps ended up being 3" x 22" and folded into the center so no raw edges are showing. I added ribbon here too to give the corduroy more stability. 

I forgot to add the ballet ribbon until the sides were together, so I ripped out a small area of one side seam and fed the ends through there. 

The bottom corner boxing was sewn in at 1.5".

And when trying it on her shoulder complete with ballet slippers inside, all she had to say was, "it's perfect."