52 Cakes: Ice Box Cake

My number one criteria for the next few cakes was that they be small and not too complicated. It seemed like the perfect time to try an icebox cake. The concept has always intrigued me -

(soggy) cookies + cream + time = cake

You're kidding, right?

Um... yeah, they are right. Who knew? Look~

I made ours teeny-tiny (for us at least) as I was seriously skeptical of the whole process.

You start with cookies, we used Anna's Cappuccino Crisps from Ikea as I saw them frequently in the better sounding recipes.

Then whip a carton of heavy whipping cream with 2TBL of powdered sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla until thick and tasty.

At this point we dipped cookies into the whipping cream to test the flavor and we all thought it was smoky, weird and gross. We gave one to the dog... he wouldn't eat it either. 

Not promising.

Chocolate was all I could think of to salvage this train wreck so I grabbed some dark chocolate (also from Ikea) and my micro plane. Armed, we proceeded.

Layer cookies in your pan, breaking them as needed to fill in the spaces.

 I used a 6 or 7 inch spring form pan but any dish will do. Next time I'm using a plastic wrap lined loaf pan.

Spread whip cream over top.

Grate chocolate onto whip cream.

Top with cookies.

Then whip cream.

Then chocolate.

( My youngest had a great time making this... you wouldn't believe the HUGE mess he made. Oh. My. Gosh.)

Do this for a long, long time... at least five layers. 

Top with whip cream and a little cookie crumble or chocolate if you're feeling fancy 

(which is unlikely because if you're feeling fancy you're probably making a real cake, not this weird one. But I digress...)

Cover with plastic wrap and let sit over night in the fridge. Or a couple of nights if you're scared of it like we were.

Slice and serve.

And you know what?

It's delicious. Like heaven on a fork.

The cookies make the lightest, softest, most flavorful layers of cake. The whipping cream is dense and rich. Ice box cake is ridiculously good, much more so then the sum of the parts.

Some variations I've seen in a lot of recipes:

For cookies, you can use oreos, graham crackers, chocolate chip - skies the limit. 

Mix pudding into the whip cream or mascarpone cheese, or liquor.

Other then that though, it's basically a big old strata of empty calories. Yum.

If you have a favorite icebox cake let me know. I'd love to hear about it.

Pi Day: Lemonade Pie

Yum. 3.14, such a tasty number.

We made Lemonade Pie which is simple and delicious, no stress attached.

Ingredients:

1 graham cracker crust 

(I make my own, 2 sleeves graham crackers, 3TBL melted butter, 2 TBL sugar... ish)

1 Tub Cool Whip (we use light, store brand)

1 carton of vanilla ice cream (I use store brand vanilla bean)

1 container of frozen Minute Maid lemonade concentrate. (pay the extra dime for Minute Maid, it tastes best, other brands can be bitter)

Yes, this isn't a healthy, whole foods sort of pie.

Thaw Cool Whip and lemonade concentrate in the fridge overnight.

Make graham crust and put it in the freezer to chill.

Sit ice cream on the counter to soften

Not exactly straining ourselves yet, are we?

Pour the lemonade concentrate in your mixer bowl.

Scoop in the CoolWhip and mix until combined. I use my Kitchen Aid paddle, not the whisk.

Add ice cream a large spoonful at a time until it's all nicely mixed in.

Pour into graham cracker crust

Put in freezer for at least four hours, overnight is even better.

To get a clean(ish) slice where all the crust comes out in one piece, dip the bottom of your pie plate in warm water for a few seconds. It melts the butter in the crust and loosens the pie from the plate.

Cut with a warm knife dipped in hot water for easy slicing.

This is an absolute favorite dessert of ours. Avery had it for his birthday cake. It's delicious.

She Had Colorful Dreams

This piece gave me such a heart attack. I used Prima stencils with Adirondack spray ink to create the top layer of the design on the right side of the background. After six hours of drying time the ink still came off on my hands so I Googled the problem. 

Apparently on some surfaces the dry time can be lengthy and the suggested work around is to sprinkle clear embossing powder in the sticky spots, blast it with a heat gun and go on your merry way. 

I did, it seemed good and then after the piece was all done I started to brush on the top coat of Mod Podge to seal it all in and in seconds I had a grey-black smoosh over the whole thing. It was horrible.  If you look near her hair and the white 'dreams of love' you'll see the shade it turned... UGH! Not exactly colorful.

So I pulled out my Gauche Alchemy punchinella and covered over the worst of it in thick white hearts. They brightened things up, obscured the dark smooshy patches and saved the day. Crisis averted.

She just might be my favorite.

Did you see her boots? It's the teeny weenie picture of an alphabet sticker set included in my Echo Park paper pack. I've got serious mileage out of that 'contents' insert.

She Made Today Count

Yeah, this looks like the sort of stuff I make :-)

 I was a little worried that my urban, grungy, graffiti style backgrounds wouldn't work with the She Art girls (I joked that it might look like Holly Hobbie had wandered into a red light district) but it turns out all I needed to do was punch up their hair color and style a bit and we're good to go.

Am I the only person who reaches for the same supplies time and time again? That letter stencil is a favorite of mine and it never fails to make me smile.

One of my favorite things about this outfit is how well the fancy border rub-on stood in for a lacy hem/slip. 

Isn't it nice when things work?

Past She Art Projects:

She Was a Child of God

She Was the Keeper of the Home

She Art Project Two: Child of God

I made this piece for my mom's birthday. 

Did you check out her boots? I cut them from a picture of a typewriter on the cover sheet from an Echo Paper pack. The keys do a great job mimicking the hooks for the laces.

Prima makes some really fun masks, for the left side of this canvas I squished colored modeling paste into the mask and it left really gorgeous texture pattern behind.

Mom really likes butterflies so I put one in this girl's hair.

And here's her skirt detail:

She Art Project One

If you look over to the left you'll see a button for the AMAZING She Art workshop I'm taking from the incredible Christy Tomlinson. The woman is worthy of any and all complimentary adjectives you can throw at her. I'm in awe and learning so much from each video.

This is my first project, I had a specific dear friend in mind when I made this and I think it captures her very well. I hope she likes it.

I was a little... err... "me" with my backgrounds and I was really worried about how these gorgeous, sweet-natured girls would integrate into my graffiti laden environments.

But they've done fine. Isn't life just like that sometimes, you worry you're not going to fit in and it all works out smashingly.

Here's some detail shots, as always, click on the picture to see a larger view:

P.S. I wonder if my friend will recognize herself.

Supplies:
Gauche Alchemy papers and punchinella
Paper: Echo Park
Rub-Ons: Kaiser Craft and Jenni Bowlin
Stamps: Unity, Prima, Stampabilities
Paint and Modeling Paste: Liquitex, Golden and Dick Blick
Absolutely drenched in Mod Podge

Disney Princess Half Marathon

We're back from Florida after an lovely eight day vacation. It was so nice to not worry about work, school etc. for a few days.

The Disney Princess Half-Marathon was wonderful, crazy, hot, enjoyable, maddening...

Imagine EIGHTEEN THOUSAND people tromping around through the swampy backroads of Florida at 4:00 AM to get to the very remote starting line about 40 minutes away... CRAZY. I'm surprised no one was eaten by alligators.

We were in corral E (of A-F) so it took an additional 35 minutes after the beginning of the race to cross the starting line. Here we are when the fireworks went off:

The majority of the race was on the freeway and going back and forth across overpasses. Overpasses really feel like hills when you're running them and the steep angle of the road was tough on our knees, back and feet. But then we ran into the Magic Kingdom and all was forgotten.

Main Street:

(this is the thinnest crowd we ran in and it's still very tightly packed)

Running Through Sleeping Beauty's Castle:

Getting our Medals at 2:47

And then we high-tailed it to the medical tent (as did every single person we saw)

I'll never do another huge (population) run again. There was too many miles when we couldn't run for crowding and it was poorly organized. That said, it was an amazing experience and a deeply satisfying way to celebrate the one year anniversary of my spinal surgery.