Celebration | Changing My Destiny

My hope was to share this cake yesterday, but I didn’t get home until after 9pm. However, it was such a hit, you get to see it today! Today is my Dad’s birthday (Happy Birthday Pops!); but he had plans today so we celebrated yesterday afternoon. Overall it was a very Golf themed birthday; he got golf clothes, golf balls, tickets to a golf tournament, a golf cake, and today he’s…wait for it…golfing (shocker!)

The tournament tickets and golf cake were my contribution and I think they went over quite well. It was also pretty easy since I used store bought cake and mix. The love was in the decorating.

The Goods:

1 Box Dark Chocolate Cake Mix (plus eggs, oil, water, etc)
2 Cans Vanilla Frosting
Green Food Coloring
Cake Decorating ‘Grass’ Tip (bought at Michael’s for less than $2) & Pastry/Plastic Bag
Small Juice Glass

Since I would be transporting the cake,I also purchased some disposable 13×9 baking tins. They worked out great since they came with a plastic lid and my dog wasn’t able to attack it in the car on the drive to my parents house. Although, he did some major sniffing and had his eye on it the whole time.

Following the boxed instructions, I made a Dark Chocolate Cake in the lightly greased tin. I actually made this cake on New Years Eve, allowing it to cool overnight so I could frost it first thing yesterday morning.

On Sunday morning I pulled out the frosting supplies.

To ensure that the grass frosting stuck to the cake, I did a very thin layer of vanilla frosting. I think the professionals call this something like a ‘crumb coat’. I am not a professional cake decorator, that will become very clear, but I did pick up a few tips by watching all those cake decorating reality shows.

Next I greased a juice glass…

…and pressed it upside down into the cake. This was to create the golf hole.

Press the glass all the way down to the bottom, twist slightly, and slowly pull it back up. Remove the entire cake circle.

Use some of the cake that was pulled out and crumble it into the hole to cover any of the tin that is showing. Eat the rest (of the circle, not the cake)!

Set the cake in the fridge so that the first layer can firm up while you color the rest of the frosting.

I’m a little bummed with the food coloring that I purchased from the grocery store. It would be perfect if I wanted pastel frosting, but I wanted a dark green to simulate grass. It took almost half the bottle of coloring to get the frosting dark enough.

I happen to have some disposable pastry bags, but you could also use a Ziploc bag with the corner cut off. Insert the decorating tip and you’re ready to go.

This is where I realized the difference between homemade frosting and store bought. Store bought frosting is softer and will fall, where as the homemade butter cream would have created stiffer blades of grass. However, I don’t own any type of mixer (other than my own arm power), and I certainly wasn’t going to hand mix butter cream frosting. If you are using store bought, I would recommend putting the colored frosting in the fridge for a bit to firm up, decorating will be easier.

These were my very first attempts at using the grass tip, it took a few practice rounds to get the hang of it. When I did these I hadn’t refrigerated the colored frosting and it was starting to slump a bit since it was too warm.

I have a new found respect for cake decorators…this was tedious.

Not bad for a first time decorator with store bought frosting. I think it looks somewhat grass-like.

Once we were at my Dad’s house, we popped a (clean) golf ball into the hole.

The cake was a big success, in fact we didn’t even wait until after dinner to eat it. I think we waited a whole 10 minutes before having the first slice. We even bypassed candles and singing.

It was that good!

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Linking To: Craft-O-Maniac, The Girl Creative, Everything Under the Moon, Today’s Creative Blog, Ginger Snap Crafts, Blue Cricket Design, Very Merry Vintage Style, We Are THAT Family, Savvy Southern Style, The Shabby Creek Cottage, Beyond The Picket Fence, The Artsy Girl Connection, The Crafty Nest, Addicted 2 Decorating, The Shabby Nest, Dear Creatives, Ohh Baby! Designs, The Not So Functional Housewife, Funky Junk Interiors, Positively Splendid

Side Note: Thank you to all the kind comments/emails regarding my ‘serious note’ post, I was touched by your kind words. My back is feeling much better and I was able to ring in the New Year nearly pain free. This year is already off to a great start!

Oh yes it did!

No, I didn’t get the year wrong above, I’m just breaking out my psychic abilities to see the future. I knew watching all those Psych DVD sets were doing me some good, I feel smarter already.

Actually, I’m trying something new this year (beside watching less TV, because being able to recite full episodes of Psych is not a worthy skill…or so I’m told). This year I decided to attempt the ‘Future Letter’ and write a letter to myself 12 months in the future. Over the past few days I’ve been planning my goals for the new year. I know some avoid them, but I love resolutions. I usually try to be very specific and break them down into smaller tasks so they are more achievable. It would be a very long post if I was to list them all out so I won’t bore you. However, to give you an idea, I wouldn’t write eat healthy on my resolution list. Instead, I would write specific monthly goals, such as…eat 7 servings of fruit/veggie each day in January, or drink a green smoothie once a day in February. The hope would be to turn the monthly goal into a habit and maintain eating a healthy diet all year long.

This year, in addition to my incredibly long goals list, I created a letter as my future self. The letter is written as if it’s New Year’s Eve, and I was looking back over everything I have accomplished in 2012. I described what I looked like, where I travelled, people I met, adventures I took, and all my accomplishments. It was detailed and fun. If the letter comes true, it’s going to be a very, VERY good year.

I tucked the letter in a safe spot so that I can reference it a few times a year to see my progress, but not stress myself out over reading it everyday.

Last night, to celebrate the new year and the first day I’ve been off pain pills…I popped some bubbly. I had been saving this for when I bought my first home. I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t drink it when I bought the house in 2010…but it came in handy last night.

Nothing like enjoying a glass of my favorite ‘cheapy’ champagne to start things off on the right foot! I may have paired it with some Dark Chocolate Moose Munch. The combination tasted as odd as it sounds. But if you drink enough Champagne, you kind of forget about the Moose Munch, so it’s all good.