Nana's Secret Recipe... Exposed!!

You won't believe it, the very recipe that I have been keeping quiet is posted for all to view on Allrecipes.com. That is hardly secret!! So just let me tell you that this recipe is the yummiest recipe that I have found to date. This version is vanilla but it gets even better, you can make it chocolate by just adding a couple of tbsps of good quality cocoa when you are beating the butter and sugar together. Please make sure you note the "sugar" is plain ordinary white sugar, NOT powdered sugar.

Nana's NOT SO Secret Recipe

1 cup milk

5 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 cup white sugar

1 cup butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

To Make Icing:

In a saucepan, combine the milk and 5 tablespoons flour.  (I sift the flour before I add it.) Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens.It is important to keep it on low heat so that you don't develop lumps. However, if you do, which I still do on occasion, I strain the mixture after is is thickened also. Set aside to cool completely. Cream together butter, 1 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla until light and fluffy, (this is where you add the cocoa if you are making it chocolate) then stir in the cooled milk and flour mixture, beating until icing reaches spreading consistency. I like to put it into my KitchenAid Mixer and walk away for about 4-5 minutes. It turns out so smooth and creamy!!! It is a very soft icing, so don't ever think that this icing might replace a crumb coat icing that you use under a layer of fodant. I found out the hard way

I made this cake for my girlfriend's daughter's baptism. I thought I would scrumptious it up a little by using Nana's Secret Recipe, but whoops!! that didn't work out.

Nana's yummy soft icing liquifys under fondant. This entire cake was seeping out a sugar sirop All over itself and the table below it. The second layer was sliding off of the top layer and I almost had to hire someone to mop up the aftermath of yet another not so good idea.

Birthday Party Extravaganza

My daughter's birthday is in the middle of June, my son's the first week of July and in 2009 I was acting as the volunteer camp director for approximately 120 teenage girls and leaders the second week of July. I was swamped and decided to combine 2  birthday parties into one. So we had the ever so clever, Princess and Knights in Shining Armour Party. The girls all came in thier finest royal apparel and the boys......  well they came in whatever they wanted but when they arrived they each got a "FOAM" sword and they were all knighted to the royal court. We rented a bouncy house that looked like a fairy tale castle and we had a pinata that looked like a princess. The girls loved it because it was a princess and the boys loved whacking it with thier swords. I designed the cake and guess what I iced it with........that's right.....French Vanilla Icing!!!

We put sparkler's in each of the towers, I thought it would be a "Magic Kingdom" effect. Great idea right? Wrong, there were too many sparklers which terrified the kids and instead of singing Happy Birthday they were all screaming and running away from the cake!!!! I only ever claimed to have a lot of ideas, I can't really say that they are always good ones.