A Delicious Break

Now, I'm no cook. In fact, I'm not a baker, either! Aside from the beautiful cheese cups Isa suggested I make for our Amuse Bouche Christmas House tour ... I pretty much stay out of our kitchen. But last week, during a midnight episode of something conducted by Martha Stewart, I watched a (professional) cake decorator make petit fores.

How hard could that be, I thought. So today, with $24.67 of groceries in hand, I started on what would become a delicious break from the stress of putting together my ground floor rooms.


I started with a 12x8 cake pan, and a Duncan Hines box of double chocolate fudge cake. Mmm, yes, I know! :) Then I measured out perfect portions (about 1x1) - yes, perfect and about - in the same sentence. Perhaps they were "nearly" perfect.

The small pieces of delicious, moist cake were placed on a cooling rack atop a second cake pan to catch the icing I would pour over them.

The first batch got a generous (actually a few generous) coatings of milk chocolate frosting. The second got the french vanilla.

Here I sat, 20 cake bites frosted, 18 more still to frost. Of course, I couldn't leave them like they were - so I started to embellish.

(Toppings pictured on the top plate from left to right: A Granny Smith Apple cooked in maple syrup and cinnamon, topped with caramel icing and a dollop of apple zest; A ripe raspberry and almond slices with a tequila dipped lemon wedge; Double Chocolate with raspberry, almond, and coconut almond icing; Chocolate Icing with vanilla icing dyed a gorgeous robins egg blue, topped with York Peppermint Pattie slivers and lemon zest netting.)

I have to say, they're delicious! And for the first time decorating cake(bites), I think I did a pretty good job! Tomorrow I move onto the vanilla cake, which I'll cut into rounds with my new Biscuit Cutters! I think I'll take more of these delicious breaks, and please - feel free to help yourself (the apple caramel are my favorite!). Happy Saturday!