The Importance of Continuity

When my brother or I got sick when we were kids, we'd bring pillows and blankets to the couches and (mostly) sleep in front of the TV all day. We'd usually put Disney cartoons and such in the VCR. I think one time I was so sick and slept so much that Fantasia played to the very end of the tape and restarted itself - maybe more than once.

I was dreadfully sick last week. When I wasn't sleeping soundly in my bed, I moved to the couch for the endless loop of old cartoons to help me feel better. The 'toon of choice this time around was Defenders of the Earth from 1986. It was released on DVD a few years ago so I have the whole set. I remember watching the series- it was probably my first exposure to my favorite superhero, the Phantom.

The series itself doesn't really say what year it is supposed to be (or, if it does, I've never paid that much attention to it). But there is a note in the credits that states, "This is the 27th Phantom." There's a problem with this! In an episode, Return of the Sky Band, the '27th' Phantom refers to an incident with his grandfather "80 years ago, before World War 2." That, my friends, is the Kit Walker we all know and love, the 21st Phantom. That would make the DOE guy the 23rd Phantom. And if we're looking at the years, that puts the DOE series at around 2015, give or take.

But wait, there's more! The mini series Phantom 2040 is about the 24th Phantom. That takes place in, you guessed it, 2040. How can the 27th Phantom be in 2015, just 80 years after the 21st Phantom, but the 24th Phantom is in 2040, 25 years later? AH! Continuity FAIL!

Now, we could say that the DOE Phantom remarries and has a son in 2022 and completely forget about his daughter Jedda (who briefly became the 28th Phantom when she thought her father had died). Maybe she marries Rick Gordon and chooses to give up her right to the Phantom legacy when her little brother is born. We can just ignore that little "27" note in the credits and it can still work, right? RIGHT??

Really, DOE is considered crap by most fans of any of those King Features heroes, so it doesn't really have to be considered canon. I enjoyed it enough when I was seven. But however you look at it, just ignore that little note about 27 in the credits. Whoever thought that up was way off.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon!

SOPA and PIPA Are Not The Way

Those of you who know me, or who have been reading my blog for a time, know that I don't get political very often. If you're here (reading some page on the Internet), this is something that you should care about.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act are great ideas in theory. As an artist, I'm very concerned about the safety of my intellectual property. These laws are supposed to stop IP theft.

They won't.

What they will do is make individual websites like this one have to police content posted by their users and block it if it appears to be violating someones copyright. This post would probably be removed, because Blogger doesn't know if I made the image above or if I have permission to use it from the person who did make it (FTR, the person who created this image did so for the sake of this protest and it is intended to be used thus, therefore I do have permission). More than half of YouTube would be gone - videos of people singing popular songs would violate the singers/songwriters copyright. Except those things are not in violation of copyrights; they are allowed through the Fair Use doctrine. SOPA and PIPA would make Fair Use null and void.

But most websites can't handle the burden of policing their users. Etsy has a standing policy on this, actually. They don't go looking for copyright violations (and there are a TON) but will take action if the copyright holder contacts them. While it's not very efficient for putting an end to the piracy that goes on in Etsy stores, it's probably the best way to go. Etsy doesn't know if you bought a license agreement to use copyrighted images. Under SOPA and PIPA, they would have to remove those items (assuming if you have a license you would just need to prove it) and that size of a company just doesn't have the resources to do that. What would happen then? Etsy would shut down. Blogger, YouTube, Facebook - all of those sites would have a problem too.

The laws are great ideas in theory, but they're not written the way they should be. The letter of the law means Internet censorship. We all need to fight this.

Today, Wikipedia is blacked out. If you go to their site, you can enter your zip code and it will give you the contact information for your representatives. Tell them you are against SOPA and PIPA. They are not going to have the desired effect. The idea, what the laws want to do, is good, but they will not succeed in the way they are written. I think Wikipedia sums it up nicely, so I'll repeat what they say here:

SOPA and PIPA would put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won't have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn't being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won't show up in major search engines. SOPA and PIPA would build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.

In a world in which politicians regulate the Internet based on the influence of big money, Wikipedia — and sites like it — cannot survive.

Congress says it's trying to protect the rights of copyright owners, but the "cure" that SOPA and PIPA represent is worse than the disease. SOPA and PIPA are not the answer: they would fatally damage the free and open Internet.

House Cookies

My sweet friend Jessica gave me a bunch of totally awesome cookies cutters for Christmas. One of them is this cool house shape and as soon as I saw it, I knew what I had to do with it.

Jack has been renting a place and working on buying a house for a while. After a lot of searching and a few setbacks, he found a place and closed this past Monday. I'm so proud of him! And the house he found, which has its quirks, is awesome. So, to celebrate, I knew I had to make him cookies and it was the perfect opportunity to use my new house shape! (I know I've tagged this post under cakes when it's actually about cookies. Deal with it!)

But you, dear readers, know I can't just cut a few shapes and call it done. I have to decorate! I've never actually made cookies like this before. I've cut shapes and I've decorated with sprinkles and icing, but I've never cut shapes and decorated with royal icing. I had to do some research and fine some recipes.

Mixing Cookie Dough

Sugar cookies tend to be the best for shapes. Jack's favorite cookie is chocolate chip, but you can't really toll that out (too many lumpy chips) so I just had to make sugar cookies and he had to like it!

Balls of Dough

I made the dough into balls because I had limited space to roll it out flat so I made little batches.

The Cookie Cutter!

Here is my cutting board and cookie cutter all ready to be floured.

Rolling Dough

Rolling cookies for cut-outs does take some skill. My first couple balls were too flat and ended up very very brown. They were still tasty, but I made the last few thicker and that worked better.

Cookie Cutter on Dough

Finished Cookies

Don't they look delicious? Next step, icing!

Mixing Icing

Royal icing is fun stuff. I have learned a bit through all my cakes. People don't care if you make them from scratch or not. If it looks awesome, a mix is just fine. I admit I did use a mix.

Coloring

Icing cookies involves making an outline and then filling it in, a process called floating. I outlined it with a roof color and a house color, so a few globs of brown gel food coloring makes the roof.

Outlined Cookies

I just put the icing in little plastic bags and cut the tip to line. The white bag gave me a bit of trouble, but it worked. The next step was red icing on the chimneys, which I just slathered on with a spoon.

Floating

Floating is really fun! Give the outline a bit to dry, add some water to thin out the icing, then squeeze it all out and swish it about to cover the whole area.

Iced Cookies

The cookies are iced! The whole process took about an hour. I left them to dry overnight so the icing would be nice and firm for me to put the details on.

Little Blue Doors

I could have mixed up more icing and iced the details, but I decided drawing them with food coloring markers was just going to be easier. That was mostly true, but if I put too much pressure on it, it poked right through the icing.

Lights in the Windows

Yellow squared make windows. I'll finish it by outlining the windows and drawing panes with black.

Bushes too

It wouldn't be a home without some cute little bushes. There are little red berries or flowers on them too, but it's hard to see that in this image.

Finished Cookies!

A little pearl in each door for a doorknob and they're done! They were so much fun, and they were delicious.

Congratulations, my sweetie, on your knew house!

That Time of Year

I could get into my regular rants about the names of holidays and what to wish people but I'm not feeling it today. Instead, I'll just show off my Yule tree! Happy Everything!

The tree!

The mantle!


Glitter house lights!

Halloween Cake Time

Hello, dear blog readers! It's time for another cake!

My fabulous friends from Etsy and I have been talking about this crazy device that cooks little balls of cake. You can insert a lollipop stick, decorate, and have a cake pop, similar to confections you can buy at bakeries and coffee shops.

The more we talked about this device, the more several of us needed to acquire one. We learned they carried them at Bed Bath and Beyond and Kohls. One of my friends went to BB&B and found them sold out so she had to order it. I went to the BB&B not far from my office and they were also sold out. They told me of another store that had twelve in stock according to their computer, but that one is impossible to get to in evening rush hour. The next day, I went to a different BB&B and they had three on the shelf! Yay! My first batch with my new cake pop maker was apple cider doughnut holes, a recipe included with the manual.

Since we had been talking so much about cake pops, my friend came across this site that features an awesome Monster Cake. I got my maker the Thursday before Halloween, and as soon as she posted about that cake, I knew I had to make it for a party Saturday.

The first step was easy. I picked a vanilla cake ball recipe from the manual and ended up with a little more than three dozen cake balls.

Little balls of vanilla cake

I didn't take any pictures of baking the cake, but it was not complex. When I was making the spice cake for my mother's birthday cake, I thought it would taste amazing with pumpkin. Pumpkin is the flavor of the season, so I used a box spice cake mix made with about 15 oz of pumpkin (no eggs or oil or anything, just mix and pumpkin). I was a little worried that my cake would not rise, and it did not. It cooked fine, but both layers ended up lumpy. since I was making a monster, it did not have to be perfect.

The next step is to make my cake ball eyeballs. I got some candy melts from the craft store, melted them in the microwave, and got to dipping. Candy melts come in a variety of colors. The store was out of orange, so I went with a light chocolate.

It's something like chocolate.

The trick to dipping cake balls is to dip the stick first, skewer the ball that has been chilled in the fridge or freezer, and then dunk and swirl it in the melty candy. You want to get a nice, thin, even coat but, I have to admit, after the first dozen, I was less stingy with my dip.

It looks good!

My cake pop maker came with a stand that holds a dozen pops. When you have more than three to work with, it makes it a slow process. Also, I've learned from previous work with these candy melts that once you melt them, they want to stay melted, so I had to keep the dipped pops in the freezer until it was time to decorate them.

Delicious chocolate-covered balls

Decorating the cake balls to look like eyes was easy. I put some white candy melts in a plastic bottle, melted them, and piped a circle on to one side of my coated cake pops. A chocolate chip for the pupil was the finishing touch. I used long and short lollipop sticks to give my monster a different look.

Eye see you

Now it's time to ice the cake. I used cream cheese icing because it pairs so well with a spice cake. I colored the icing with brown gel food coloring. The first layer was way too light.

Start with a yummy, lumpy cake

The purpose of the dirty icing layer is to glue the layers of cake together (with icing between the two) and to tame the crumbs on the outer surfaces of the cake. This step is more important when your icing is light colored and your cake is really crumbly.

Cover it with icing

I dyed the second layer of icing much darker, but not the same color as the chocolate on my pops. I was running out of dye, so I just left it as is.

Nice and smooth

Smooth icing does not look like a hairy monster, so I took a shell tool and gave it some wispy texture.

Quick strokes make a furry cake

It looks fuzzy to me

The lumpy cake gave me a nice surface for the face of my monster. I used decorator icing with a piping tip to pipe on a black mouth line and some white teeth.

Grrrrr

I baked the cake and cake balls on Thursday and decorated the mess on Friday, but I could not place the eyestalks until I was at the party, because they would not fit in my cake carrier.

When it was time to bring out the cake, I put seven of my three dozen eyestalks in and brought it out.

Ta-da! The Completed Monster Cake!

Doesn't it look delicious among all that yummy food? The remaining eyestalks made for a yummy treat as well.

Good stuff to eat

The death of a Monster Cake.

The pumpkin spice combination was just as tasty as I thought it would be.

I really love my cake pop maker. The appliance was very easy to use and the cake balls are so fun to decorate. I think the next monster cake should be purple. I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

You Taught Me

You Taught Me that true friends are people who love you for who and what you are.
You Taught Me that true friends wouldn't try to hurt me, so if they say something that I take as hurtful, they probably didn't mean it.
You Taught Me to trust the people in my life, to trust that they have only the best intentions toward me.
You Taught Me the value of communication, to talk to my friends when they say something that hurts me, or when I feel they don't have the best intentions toward me.
You Taught Me to think about how I react to my friends and to talk to them when I feel hurt. Because You Taught Me that my true friends don't try to hurt me.
You Taught Me to pay attention to the lives of others.
You Taught Me that every day is not peaches and roses and maybe the distance my friend is showing is because of a bad day, not because of me.
You Taught Me how to be open and understanding. Because You Taught Me to talk to the people who matter.
You Taught Me to move on.
You Taught Me to be thankful for what I learned from the time we had together and to let you go your own way when that time has passed.

By your anger, by your mistrust, by your assumptions.
By the way you did not do these things, You Taught Me.

This One is For Mom

My mother is a wonderful person. I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about her mothering skills, or that I want to be a mother just like her if I ever am a mother. All I can say is, whatever she did, she did something right. I am proud that she is my mother, and I am blessed that she is my friend.

Her birthday was Tuesday. It was also her sister's birthday: they were born ten years apart. My aunt likes to joke, "you mom always used to say 'my birthdays were great until I turned ten!'" She loves her sister though, so I bet she thinks about it differently now. But, as you well know, dear blog readers, birthday means cake time!

Since my mother is the eldest, I told her to choose the cake. She first insisted that I use a box and not make anything too complicated, after hearing the story of Jack's red velvet disaster. She said she wanted something that goes good with cream cheese icing. I told her red velvet (I can get a box of that) or I have a box of carrot cake and spice cake on hand. Spice cake was the winner! It so happens that I have a fondant recipe that involves cream cheese, so I was all set.

I always talk about my friend Seddy's awesome blog. Ever since she posted about this fabulous cake, I have wanted to try it! The first thing I needed was jimmy sprinkles (Note: I actually only learned that they were called 'jimmies' within the last year or so, they were always just 'sprinkles' to me, and they will henceforth be called 'sprinkles' here. But for those who can't accept that there are different kinds of sprinkles, now you know I'm talking about jimmies.). As Seddy wrote in her blog, I also could only find a great mixed tub and no individual colors. So, I bought that tub and spent an evening sorting until I went crazy and my neck hurt from bending over. Then a few days later, I found a few colors separated in a sectioned jar. As it turned out, the pre-sorted sprinkles were mostly short and not very uniform in size. The ones from the tub were longer and fairly consistent, so I ended up using those anyway.

Next, I needed a design. Some friends suggested some vintage embroidery patterns and I crawled Etsy, finding some very beautiful and complex designs. I ended up going with a design similar to this doily because I decided simple was better!

Now the fun begins!

Ready to make fondant

The first thing I had to do was make the fondant. My recipe is crazy easy, but I can't share it because it was an old family recipe of Monty's mother-in-law and she swore me to secrecy. I will tell you that it involves cream cheese, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla. I usually put peppermint in there too, but not for this cake. This is the first time I'm going to actually put this fondant on a cake too.

Mixing the fondant

This fondant takes a lot of kneading and slowly adding in the sugar. It's best to work it a bit at a time and then combine each portion together. I wore gloves because it's very sticky and almost impossible to mix with a spoon. I could try a food processor, but I don't have one!

Finished ball of fondant

I knew this was going to be far more fondant than I need for the embroidery topper. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of it, actually. It does freeze well and when Monty's m-i-l first made it for me, she just rolled it into little balls and ate it like candy. That's pretty much what I did with it whenever I was previously inclined to make it as well. The ball of fondant went into the fridge until I was ready to make the topper.

My embroidery pattern

When I was ready to make the topper, I took the fondant out of the fridge and let it warm up so it was easier to work with. While it was doing that, I made a cutting guide so I could cut out a disk of fondant the right size for my cake. It was the same way I measured the fondant for the Stargate Cake too. I then drew the embroidery pattern with colored pencils, a color for each color of sprinkles, directly onto my cutting guide. When that was done, the fondant was warm enough to roll out and cut.

Placing sprinkles

There really is no way to describe putting the sprinkles in place. It was just a matter of picking a place to start and gently pressing them into the fondant. I put the thing on my lap so I could work while sitting with something on the TV. I learned my lesson from the Stargate Cake. Do not carve fondant on your feet, it's tiring!

Completed fondant topper

This is the finished topper! It took less than three hours. There are some white sprinkles there, and they show up against the cream of the fondant well enough (I wasn't expecting them to stand out). I used little pearls as the center of each flower. With the topper done, it went into a bag and into the fridge with the rest of the fondant. I barely used any of it.

Mixing

The cake was made last night so it's as fresh as possible for the party on Saturday. There's nothing much to say about this, as I was using a box mix and didn't do anything fancy to it.

Two lovely cakes

They came out beautiful. I lined the pans in parchment paper to make sure the cakes released from the pans (we were not going to have a repeat of the red velvet disaster!) and they both came out fine. I was a little worried because they look very dense. After they cooled and I cut off the rounded tops with my leveler, I tried some of the cut pieces and it was moist and delicious. I can't remember the last time I had a spice cake, I don't remember it being that yummy! I think it's just perfect for this autumnal birthday.

Layers and icing

Since my mother said simple was fine, the cream cheese icing also came pre-made. Since most of the cake will be covered with the topper, I slathered most of the icing on the sides.

I didn't get a picture of this next step. I wanted the icing to be a slightly different color than the fondant because I wanted to try something with the fondant borders. Do you remember the spray color that failed on the Stargate Cake? I decided to try Wilton's brand of spray color and picked up a can of blue. I wanted it to be very light, like just barely blue. I ended up with far more blue than I wanted, more of a robin's egg color, but I was happy with it. It came out light at first, but then I got a little heavy-handed with it. And now I can report that there was not a single problem with Wilton's spray. Now if only they would make it in silver!

Cutting the border

I made a mistake here. I should have pulled the fondant from the fridge and let it warm up so I could work with it, but I forgot. It's very crumbly when it's cold and it was getting late and I needed to be done with the cake. I kneaded a few balls of it so I could work with it, but it wasn't the best. It didn't cut cleanly, and I had a hard time shaping it. Even so, I was going to make it work, and work it did. I rolled a snake along the bottom of the cake and a kind of wavy, scalloped edge for the top.

Topper in place

Because I didn't let the fondant warm up, I had a hard time getting the topper off the parchment paper. It stretched a little bit, but I just pressed the edges into the scalloped fondant boarder and it worked fine. Moving the topper to the cake was a delicate operation! You can see a little of the blue in this shot. My coworker said it looked like the ocean. I love that! Perfect!

Finished Embroidery Cake!

Tada! The finished Embroidery Cake! I pressed some of those little pearls that I used in the center of the flowers into the rolled fondant at the base for a finishing touch.

The party is tomorrow. I hope my mom (and her sister) loves her cake!

For The Best Mom Ever

Happy birthday, mom!

Heave To!

It be Fae's natal day!

Happy Birthday, me fair friend!