Cookie Dough Galore

A while back, my aunt needed me to make her a LARGE amount of chocolate chip cookie dough because it was back ordered from supplier she normally orders from. I made over 100 pounds of cookie dough for her. The dough was huge and I had to put it in 2 garbage bags. Pictured above is 1/2 the batch in 1 bag. I put an egg next to it so you can see how much dough there was. Thank goodness for places like Smart & Final, where I bought industrial size bags of flour, brown sugar, white sugar, and chocolate chips. RIP the wooden spoon that broke in the process. I had to resort to using my hands. It was a lot of hard work, but it was fun. I was glad to help my aunt out.

The Twin's Birthday

Yesterday was the birthdays of my friends, Debbie and Donzumoto, and yes they are twins. Since we were going roller skating, I decided to make them cakes in the shape of roller skates. I recruited our friend Sharon to help with the cake.I went with Trader Joe's Vanilla Cake Mix and I wanted to prep the cake by baking it in the morning. However, I was disappointed with the cake. It was much to buttery and it was stuck in the pan, even though I buttered and floured the pan. The only thing that worked out were the cupcakes I made with the mix since they were inside paper cupcake cups. Anywho, this has happened every time I use this cake mix. Future note to self, don't buy this cake mix anymore! I ended using a Duncan Hines Vanilla Cake mix, which came out perfect.
While the cake was cooling, we made the filling and frosting for the cake. Since strawberries are in season and such a good price right now, I decided to go with strawberry fillings. For one of the cakes, I used Martha Stewart's recipe for Strawberry-Cream Cheese Filling and added it some sweetened whipped cream. I did that to make the filling more fluffy. For the other cake, I used the recipe for the filling/frosting from this recipe for Strawberry and Cream Cake.
Once the cake was cool, I cut it into 2 layers and Sharon cut the body of the roller skates. We also cut off the edges of the cupcake tops to make them perfect cylinders so they could become the wheels of the roller skates. Then we frosted and filled each cake. Next, we used fondant that I had prepared a couple nights ago. The body of the skate was covered with purple fondant and the green fondant was used for the wheels and decorations and laces. The cakes turned out to be so cute! The cake was light and sweet.

Sharon and I ran into some trouble while making the cake. The frosting was much to fluffy to cover the cake with and place fondant on top. This caused holes in the fondant that we had to patch up so our end product was not as smooth as I would like it to have been. I knew we should have used buttercream frosting, but I was pressed for time.
Regardless, the twins loved the cakes. My friend Megan also made 2 cakes for them. She made a Better Than Sex Cake. It was a chocolate and caramel cake topped with whipped topping and chocolate toffee bar crumbs. It was rich and decadent. The other cake she made was a White Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake, which was also rich and creamy.

Roller skating was lots of fun. It was a total flashback of middle school skating parties! It was also cool that I got to bring over the Jonas Brother party plates and napkins I found at Target for only 50 cents each pack. The plates were nice and big, which was great because each had to fit 3 pieces of cake and some ice cream on it. What a sugary night!

Sharon - thanks so much for helping with the cakes! Love ya! Muah!
Twins - Hope you guys had fun! Love you both!