Epic Cupcake...Cake.

Soooooo my flight is finally booked for me to head back to Belgium next month. Thing is, I'll be landing a day before my sons birthday. Every year, I make him his favorite dinner as well as a cake. Before I flew back to the states, I asked him if he was wanting fried chicken, mashed potatoes (with gravy) and Brussels sprouts for his birthday dinner as well as an Oreo cake...of course, he said "YES!". Do I know my kid or what? 

I tend to stick with a bunt pan when it comes to making "filled" cakes, but I've been eye balling a nifty little baking pan that makes your cake in the shape of a massive cupcake. Yes, a massive cupcake. Every kids dream, right? Well, THIS kids dream. Anyway, I popped into Bed, Bath and Beyond and managed to find one of the pans...I was pretty torn...do I want it in silicone, or metal? I ended up getting it in the metal pan since I read customer reviews on Amazon (yes, I researched) and a lot of the customers said that the silicone pan made your house smell like burning rubber. Not exactly the first smell that comes to mind when I wanna smell cake. 

Like I said, I'll be landing the day before Johns birthday, so I wanted to do a test run with this spiffy cake pan since I didn't wanna put my eggs in one basket with hoping this thing would work...then it turns out to be a massive flop. 

I figured since it's near Halloween, I'd go ahead and use some holiday themed Oreo's to help get the cupcake feel "seasonal" even though it was just gonna be a test run.

For reference, if anyone happens to buy one of these after reading my blog...you'll need to set the oven at 325& since this takes, roughly, a little over an hour to bake because of how deep the bottom of the muffin is. Even though the box for this pan says it's non-stick, definitely layer a good amount of Pam (I used the baking one) on the BOTTOM part first..don't mess with the top part yet. To make the batter, you'll need TWO boxes of cake mixture..you WILL have left over batter, but it's enough to make a few extra regular sized cupcakes if you want. 

As you can see, I poured in my batter into the bottom portion of the cupcake and left about an inch from the rim. Pop this in the oven for about 10-12 minutes, spray the Pam on the cupcake top pan, pour in batter and bake for an additional 50-60 minutes. 

Once it's done baking, have it COMPLETELY cool off before you attempt to get it out of the pan. If you try to do this while it's remotely warm, it'll fall apart. 

Level off the bottom of the top piece and vice verse with the bottom so they'll sit evenly on one another. 

I ended up having some fun and made a super bright green sour cream / butter cream frosting..I didn't know that you could get neon food coloring! 

I know these probably don't look all that appetizing, but I smashed up the Halloween edition Oreos since they'll be part of the "topping" for the cake in addition to being part of the filling that's already baked into it. 

Here's the finished product! 

Now....this was just a test run for me to make sure this pan actually worked. I really don't eat cake very often and when I do have it, it's a TINY piece. You can ask anyone who has grown up with me; whenever it was my birthday, I had birthday PIE, not birthday CAKE. To be specific, Lemon Meringue. So, when the cake was all finished..the main question that came to mind was "Well. Now what?". I didn't want any of it nor did Stefanie since we're both TRYING to behave when it comes to eating well...and cake certainly didn't help with the whole scenario of working our way into smaller jeans. After much debate...we had an answer..

Death to the cake. 

Yes... blasphemy! The cake..the perfectly delicious cake got cut up and trashed since we couldn't think of anyone that'd benefit from it. It was baked on a Friday night and we weren't wanting to hold onto it throughout the weekend for her to bring into work on Tuesday..just wasn't worth it in the long run. At least this gives you an idea of how it looks once it's all cut up. 

There ya have it! The massive cupcake cake actually works! Yippy!! 

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My Eric :)

Today is my amazing husbands birthday!

He still knows how to drop it like it's hot!

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Smart Hubby

I think Eric felt bad for my lack of birthday flowers (that's the only thing I really want from him for my special day). He's been working pretty long hours this week at work, so I guess he didn't have a chance to go to the florist since they were closed by the time he got off. 

He just gave me these:

Smart Hubby. He knows I love bouquets that look like Fall :)

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Thirty Minus Two

Remember when you were little and how excited you'd get when your birthday was comin up? Your parents would plan out a fun party with all your friends and family, lots of presents...all that good stuff? 

I guess that fades once you get older. 

My birthday was yesterday...and it didn't feel like it was all that special. In fact, it felt like any other day. I ran errands all day... from Belgium to Germany, back to Belgium. Then from Belgium to The Netherlands and back. Fun fun fun. At least I got a call at 5:30a from my Dad wishing me a Happy Birthday...BS'd for about an hour with him, then I was off for my long drive. Is it sad that my husband and son didn't say anything till almost an hour and a half after I was up to say, "Happy Birthday!", and that only happened because my Dad said really loud on the phone, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Kiddo!".  When it was my husbands birthday back in August, the second he woke up, we sang the birthday song for him and had breakfast was already ready for him. For me? I didn't even have a hot chocolate or nuthin'. Not even a card. Correction, John made a card for me off of the computer late last night. My bad.

After the whole day, I ended up buying myself a 360 Kinect:

Just in case you don't know what the Kinect is, it's a sensor that's added onto the Xbox unit. Sure, they have a little camera system you can use to chat with people, but, it kinda sucks: 

Hence why I upgraded to the Kinect. It's a sensor system that actually has face recognition, it doesn't need a remote to work (YOU are the remote). All in all, it's pretty awesome. Here's a video that'll explain it better than I can: 

Once I got home and settled in, we got it set up with the xbox and programmed it...I gotta say, it's pretty awesome! We tried out the Kinect Adventures game that came with the sensors (Johns inlove with it) and it's super entertaining. It even takes pictures while you're playing the game (I wish I could figure out how to import them to my computer!). 

Here's some other games I'm interested in getting, ya know, once they're available to buy (they're all workout type games):

Another thing I purchased was this cute little sign I found in the Shoppette at Schinnen: 

It's rather fitting for our house :) 

So, my birthday was rather mellow. Lots of traveling for the sake of being helpful and for being a friend, being considerate of my family and getting grocery shopping done for them... not really much of an "Erika Day".  Given, I received well over a hundred "Happy Birthday" wishes from various people on my Face Book wall (thank you, by the way). Then again, if the lovely social networking site hadn't reminded them, would they have known any better? 

So, yeah. Happy Birthday to me.

Sorry if I seem so pouty, but, I'm rather disappointed.

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32

My hubba bubba turned the big 3-2 today! As much as I wanna tease him and joke about how old he is, he's such a huge kid at heart :)

I ordered a birthday cake for him from a friend of mine.. the cake is UH-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE!! It's essentially diabetes in a slice, lol. Eric was talking about wanting a Mississippi Mud cake for his birthday.. and luckily enough, Shay knows how to make 'em! I picked it up from her yesterday and Eric knows he's not allowed to touch it till it's OFFICIALLY his birthday.

Know what the booger did? He stayed up till midnight to have a slice! Once the clock struck 12, he got the cake out of the fridge and sliced it up. By the time he was done enhaling it, it was 12:03a.. I kid you not!

Eric talking dirty to the cake...hehehe

It's so heavenly, it floats!

Chocolate Ganash (?), Marshmellow, Brownie and Fudge!

Since it's his birthday, he actually got to sleep in till almost 11 o'clock today :) The poor guy always has to get up early, even on the weekend. So, letting him sleep in was the least I could do! I worked on the house to get it all organized and cleaned up since we were expecting some company later on tonight.
For his birthday dinner, we went over to Maaseik and ate over at "Sweet Name of Jesus" since he absolutely loves their ribs. I think he managed to polish off 6 racks of ribs! I'm honestly surprised that he doesnt put that place out of business with as much as he eats :)
On that note, time to spend some more time with him..
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABE!

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