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Baking Break!

I actually had a weekend with nothing to do (and no working from home!), so I conned the boys into helping me make some treats. Obviously, I love baking and I am trying to instill a love of it in my boys. At least enough that they will hang out with me while I am doing it - and maybe make me birthday cakes in the future?

Clearly, the two of them were having lots of fun helping me today. They weren't really sure what I was doing with the different blue and white batters, but they were happily narrating my choices to eat other. "Momma's using the dark blue! Oh Henry, look she put it right on top of the white one!" 

Much more entertaining than baking alone...!

I was making cupcakes and a cake to celebrate different things at work. I was making the cupcakes for one of the drillers and the only help I got from coworkers was that he liked jerky - which is pretty hard to incorporate into a cake. But if you like jerky, the odds are pretty high you would also like bacon. So I decided to make cupcakes topped with candied bacon!

I have to be honest, these might have been one of the simplest, but amazing cupcakes I have made in a while. Candied bacon makes everything better! On a totally related note, both of the boys may now be a little obessed with candied bacon...

Once the boys were distracted, I got to work on decorating the cake. They are super helpful with baking, but not so much on decorating (yet!). This was a shark themed cake, so I had looked up several idea cakes on Pinterest and combined them. One of my favorite part was "waves" on the side of the cake that were created from strips of fondant and a circle cutter - so easy!

A little less easy was the painting...! I love the painting in theory (and looks), but man it was taking forever to dry. In the end, I kinda gave up on waiting for it to dry and decided to wing it on wrapping the cake. I managed to get them up without too much smearing and only needed to yell for Matt to come help me once. ;) 

And the finished cake! So ocean-y!

My favorite part is the shark on top though. I didn't quite follow the pattern of the one I saw online (I was getting tired, honestly), but he still turned out pretty adorable! And the little "waves" he's jumping out of just made him look even better. Not bad for a relaxing day of cake making. :)

Also, I love that my velcro dog is never far away from me. Though she's not crazy - she is laying on the padded mat that is closest to me instead of right next to me on the tile. :)