Before I bore you with everyday life junk, One of my VERY favorite things is going home… home to Terre Haute.  Memorial Day weekend I’m coming back to the Terre Haute area for a few days.  I have room for three more appointments. Let me know if you’d like to reserve a session time.

1.  MARTHA STEWART ROCKY KIND OF KNIFE THINGY

I’m pretty sure that’s not the technical name, but man oh man do I love it.  My mama got it for me for Christmas a couple of years ago, but I have really just been using it a lot the past couple of months.  Perfect for cutting pizza up in to bite sizes… dicing ham for omelets.  I am NOT a knowledgeable cook (proven HERE HERE and HERE) but anything that makes my life easier gets two thumbs up from me.

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2. THE MAGIC BULLET

I got two Magic Bullet’s several years ago.  One for me, and one for my Mom (yes I bought my mother a gift from an infomerrcial).  Before kids I used it for smoothies and milk shakes, after children I started using it to make baby food.  It is supper handy because the container that you do the actual mixing in has a lid to be stored in the refrigerator.  Or you can mix your smoothies right in the mug you’re going to drink it from so the only thing you have to wash in the blade.  Fabulous.  I love how “not messy” it is.

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3. TINY LOVE

I love Tiny Love baby products.  I have never been in to the “baby” looking stuff.  You know… little teddy bears or Winnie the Pooh.  All of Tiny Love’s products are bright and colorful and most importantly tough.  I have had  THIS PLAY MAT and  THIS MOBILE through all three boys and they still work/look like new.  Most Toy’s R Us carry Tiny Love products.

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4. CITY MINI DOUBLE STROLLER

I  am TOTALLY OCD when it comes to buying baby products.  I research and read and research more.  When we had Cooper I bought a FANTASTIC single stroller that we still have and still use and that extra money that I invested in it has paid off ten times over for us.  So… it only makes since that when it came time to buy a double I had super high standards my double had to meet.  After months of debating and returning one.  The City Mini is the one I decided on.  It SERIOUSLY pushes with one hand with Grady (almost two) and Cooper (four years and 40+ pounds) in it.  It’s one of the narrower side by sides so it fits easily through doors.  It also it one of the lightest high quality doubles on the market.  Love. It.

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5. PHOTO MECHANIC

This one is a photographer thing.  For years the slowest part of my workflow has been weeding through a session (sometimes 400 photos) and deciding which images I was going to edit and show to clients.  Photo Mechanic allows you to flip through large images and rate them by number or color and then sort them when you’re done.  What used to take me at least an hour now takes me ten minutes.  If you are a photographer that shoots lots of frames, this program is for you!

Now, on to Cake Balls.  I need to give you a little history on this whole cake ball thing.  For the past few months I have been addicted to The Pioneer Woman blog.  From the Pioneer Woman, I learned about Bakerella.

People.

I WANT TO BE BAKERELLA.

I told Otey that I think I’m going to give up this whole photography thing and just be a professional baker.

Do you think I need to learn to bake something that requires more than just adding 1/2 a cup of oil and two eggs to a boxed mix?

Nnnnaaaa….

Anyway… I WANT TO BE BAKERELLA.  This is her cake ball recipe.  PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not attempt to follow my cruddy instructions.  If you want to make some cake ball treats…. go over to her blog and learn from the pro.

Did I mention I WANT TO BE BAKERELLA?

So… what you need….

Your favorite Cake Mix (yes… from a box).  Mine happens to be Devil’s Food.  Your favorite tub of icing (yes… it doesn’t have to be home made).  Mine is of course, chocolate.  Chocolate Bark or those little melting chocolate like things (I told you that you’d need to see her blog for real directions).  Lollipop sticks, and some sprinkles.  Oh!  And M&M’s.

Here we go.  Bake a cake.  Please notice the LARGE crack down the middle of mine.  I said I wanted to be Bakerella, I didn’t say I was anything like her.

Now you wait for your cake to cool… completely.  That part is tricky for me.  I’m not so good at waiting.  You fetch yourself a big bowl, and then you crumble up your cake.  See… who cares if my cake has a big crack?  After you get your cake crumbled up in the big bowl, now you get out the huge bowl that you should have used in the first place and dump all the cake crumbles over in to it.  Now take the big bowl, put it in the dishwasher, and mumble under your breath.

Now is when it gets good.  Get out your tub of icing…

Chocolate Fudge… yum….YUMMMM…. YYUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMM….

Scoop the entire tub of icing into your bowl of cake crumbs.

Now use the back of the spoon and mix and mix and mix and mix some more until you get this…

Now you are ready to form the cake balls.  Don’t quote me on this (again… go look at the real recipe) but I make my balls about golf ball size.  You just roll them around in your palm until they form… well… balls.  That explains the title of this post… CAKE BALLS.  Now place the balls on a cookie sheet on wax paper.  Now, if you are a looser like me and have never owned a roll of wax paper in your life, use clingwrap as pictured.

Place the cookie sheet in the fridge to let the balls firm up.

Again… we wait.

Birds chirp.  Chirp.  Chirp.

Crickets.

Awkward silence.

Okay.  Now we get the balls out and stand at a fork in the road.  Plain old Cake Balls?  Cute little Cupcakes?  First, the cupcakes…

Cupcakes… perform the next four steps as pictured below.  No jokes about the first image.  Seriously.  Grow up.

Am I the only one laughing?

Roll ball to an oval, insert in to small flower cookie cutter, mush into a cupcake like form, admire your handy work.

Now is when I started dropping the ball on the photo taking.  I don’t have a photo, but it’s time to melt the chocolate, or bark, or little round melting things.  Use the color of your choice.  Today… I chose chocolate.  You dip the little cup portion in the chocolate and immediately dip the end of a lollipop stick in the chocolate and insert it into the bottom of the cupcake.  Place the cupcake back on the wax paper clingwrap upside down.

Oh my gosh those look soooooo messy.  PLEASE go look at the real deal.

Now, some more directions with no photos.  Heat up another color of dipping stuff (that’s not the technical name) and dip the top part of the cupcake.  You are supposed to just make the second color almost touch the first, but most of the time mine kind of overlaps.  Hold the cupcake right side up, and a M&M on top, the sprinkles of your choice, and WAH-LAH… CAKE POP!

Back to that fork in the road… Plain old cake balls.  In my opinion, just as tasty… AND WAY LESS TIME CONSUMING.  When you get to the “cake balls chilled on the wax paper clingwrap” stage, stick in the old lollipop stick, and totally dip the ball in the coating of your choice.  Mine… you’ll never guess… chocolate.  Gently tap the stick on the side of the bowl and rotate the stick to make the coat smooth and pretty.

I got all fancy pants and made little swirly things on them.  I waited until the dipped coating was completely dry, and then I took a (are you ready for this) big syringe and sucked up some melted chocolate and swirled the ball around and squirted it all around.  Not so fancy pants when I put it like that.  Here’s Otey’s to go pack to share at the office on Monday morning.

After they are completely dry, the shell is very hard so you can put them in a bag or dish.  While you are making them, use a piece of foam to help them stand up.

My Cooper?  HE WANTS ME TO BE BAKERELLA.  He loves cake balls, cake pops, cake batter, pretty much anything that has the word cake in it.

My Grady?  He wishes he was big enough for a yummy Cake Ball.

Here lately I have had to get a little more creative.   His appetite hasn’t changed any, he is just starting to get VERY large opinions about what he eats.  If I fix eggs… he wasn’t pancakes.  If I fix chicken… he wants a hamburger.  I have finally figured out that Cooper, like his mother, can be persuaded with packaging/presentation.  He will eat ANYTHING if it looks fun.  Kind of like I will buy anything if it comes in a cute container, but that’s beside the point.  Anyway, now instead of making him three big pancakes… I make ten little bitty ones.  Instead of buying regular tatortots, we get the letter shape ones and spell stuff out.  Hotdogs?  No need to get creative with hotdogs.  He eats them with a willing heart every time they make an appearance.  What is it with kids and hotdogs?  I mean I like an occasional hotdog cooked on the grill… but Cooper will eat them microwaved, fried in a skillet (as pictured), grilled, cold… if it even remotely resembles a hotdog…

down the hatch with out hesitation.

Always.

Now, do not send me emails or leave me comments telling me what hotdogs are made of.  I know what hotdogs are made of and I’m okay with it.  That’s why we don’t eat them every single day.  If Hotdogs were filled with good wholesome healthy stuff my life would be a breeze.  We’d eat them three meals a day here at the McCloy house.

What are those brown things on the side of his plate?  Those are dried cherries.  My Mom owns a company that sells Gourmet Food Wholesale to restaurants and hotels and they sell all kinds of dried fruits.  Cooper LOVES… no… LLLOOOVVVEESSSS dried cherries and blueberries.  My Mom mails them to me in two pound sacks and if I didn’t ration them out, they’d be gone in two days.  Speaking of which… we’re out Mom.

Sidenote…  I will be in Marshall, Missouri shooting the weekend of Marsh 21st.  I still have one opening if anyone is interested, drop me an email!