Simple First Communion Cake

The husband's nephew had his First Communion a few weeks ago and, now that I'm known as the family cake maker, I was enlisted to bake and decorate the cake for his party.

Skating Party Cupcakes

Even though I'm stuck in bed, I finally uploaded some pictures from my camera, including the cupcakes I made for my friend's roller skating party a few weeks ago.

Can you tell they're supposed to look like rollerskating wheels? Well, even if they don't, I had fun using an apple corer with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Cooking with Pumpkin

I meant to take more pictures of the cooking part, but when I'm cooking, I get completely distracted with it.

So, I had two pumpkin's worth of innards. Separating the seeds was a draining experience. Wow...I just realized that was a pun, in fact, because there was a lot of draining that had to be done.

But before the draining could be complete, I had to separate the seeds from the, um, little stringy pieces. (I couldn't figure out how else to phrase it.)

Finally, after running them under the water in the colander, the little bits came off, but weren't big enough to be strained through the holes.

And then, I noticed that the seeds floated in water, and the pulp sunk. Ah-ha!

With the use of a slotted spoon, the seeds came out perfectly!

With the pulp that was de-seeded previously, I put it in a blender and blended...and blended, and blended, and blended (see, I knew I should have registered for a food processor). I read online once it gets to the consistency of applesauce, it's great for cookies, breads and anything else that would require the basic pumpkin from a can.

P.S. Looks nothing like what's in the can. I'm not going to question it.

So, I made pumpkin bread, which was delicious.

And I made pumpkin coconut chocolate chip cookies...but the husband got into them before I could take pictures.

One minute I saw the bowl, the next minute it was gone and I heard him running through the house and slamming the bedroom door.

When I pried it open, I found this.

But I did get a picture of the big cookie I made with the leftover dough. It was supposed to be shaped like a turtle, but ended up looking up like a manatee...or a fetus.

Nom nom nom.