Just Sew It

A good post at AB Home Interior’s blog. She talks about the difference between custom drapery verses store bought. She also brings up the point that custom costs and for good reason. I find a lot of people need to be educated on custom work because these days people think everything should be Ikea cheap.

Back when I was growing up and even in the 1990’s, many people had custom drapery made and understood the cost involved.

I thank Amanda Burdge for educating her readers on custom drapery.

Ty Pennington is going to be designing fabric for Westminster/Freespirit fabrics. Can’t wait to see his line of fabrics!

I custom create window treatments, bedding, accessories and more. On my Etsy store, I create specific items for your home such as pillow covers, heat therapy bags, baby bedding, baby comfort accessories and more. Please visit my store from time to time to see what I may have in store.

Today I made my first and LAST fondant cake! Why?? It’s back breaking work. Kneading the fondant is not my favorite task and it is messy as hell. I’ve always said that baking should be left to the baker. The money is worth it to have it made.

Anyways, I’m still glad I took a shot at it. I’ve always enjoyed making my kids their birthday cakes each year. I usually just whip up a buttercream icing, colour it and decorate it using a piping bag with tips. Honestly, I still prefer that method. Fondant cakes are very beautiful and I admire anyone who can do this but for me I don’t enjoy the clean up.

So, this morning I baked a chocolate cake from scratch.

I substituted the white sugar with Splenda as my son is a Type 1 Diabetic. Then I whipped up some Buttercream Icing in order to “dirty Ice” the cake. If you watch Cake Boss, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Why am I making such a rich icing for my son? He doesn’t get to eat the icing and in order to decorate I need a sturdy icing.

THEN, I made the fondant. I found this fondant recipe from a site called thecookduke.com Good recipe and I thank The Cook Duke for the wonderful recipe.

The original plan was to make a Sponge Bob cake which is what I really wanted to make. My son decided that since his birthday party was going to be at the Telus World of Science he wanted a science theme. I suggested a cake of our solar system. So, thus, his cake was born.

It’s not bad. Not my favorite looking cake but it wasn’t a disaster. The icing is definitely not for a Diabetic but we’ll be scraping the icing off for his piece.

One tip that I strongly suggest is get yourself a silicone cake pan. I used one and I love love love it. So easy to get the cake out it’s ridiculous.