Helloooo Summer!

Good news, loyal blog readers! I am officially on my summer vacation! No school, no textbooks, no finals, no 2,000 words papers... at least until August.

On the one hand, I'm disappointed, because I got a B+ in Concepts of Wellness, AKA the easiest class ever, but maybe that's because I didn't take it seriously enough... Ah, hindsight.

On the other hand, I have four long months stretched ahead of me, filled with sun, sleep, friends, and cake! I applied for a job at Publix today, and I have a really, really good feeling about that. The managers were super nice and I'm really hoping I'll get an interview, and then, of course, a job. I'm also really nervous, too, so just send your thoughts or prayers or positive vibes my way! :-)

This Sunday is Wizarding Independence Day, which is totally one of the most important holidays on the obsessive Harry Potter fan's calendar, right up there with Harry's birthday (July 31) and the release of Deathly Hallows (November 19). However, we won't be celebrating until the following weekend, when everyone else is home from college. Oh! And I'll be making a Hogwarts cake and/or Golden Snitch cake balls.

See, Hillary, I totally drew a sketch of the Hogwarts cake!

But in all seriousness, I do have a pretty good mental image of what I want the cake to look like. Now all I need is a good execution! And suggestions about what the flavors should be (hint, hint).

Now I'm off to make a cake with my little brothers before they pester me to death about it! More cakey goodness later!

Carrot Cake

Easter is coming up, and that seems to be the favorite time for carrot cake lovers. Probably because the Easter Bunny is partial to this particular delicious and, um, healthy (oh, let a girl dream, right?) dessert.

I've only successfully made a carrot cake once, and this was years and years ago, before I found out that you could make a cream cheese icing that held up to piping and use gel pastes instead of liquid food coloring to tint the icing.

But, I think this cake still looks pretty cute, even if I was unsure of my garland-creating abilities at the time.

The best part, though was the taste. I used a carrot cake recipe in a cookbook of my grandma's; I can't remember what it's called at this time, but I'm pretty sure that cookbook is still sitting on a bookshelf somewhere in my kitchen, with flour and butter all over the page with the recipe on it.

I even grated my own carrots. That's why I made the cake, actually, because we had too many carrot sitting in our fridge, and they were in danger of becoming gross if we didn't eat them fast enough.

The carrot grating certainly wasn't the most fun part, considering all that elbow grease I had to put into (plus my fingers were stained orange), but the cake was really delicious and really moist... perhaps too moist. One of the three layers didn't make it out of the pan. But that doesn't mean it went uneaten!

This year for Easter I'm not planning on baking anything, since I won't be going home, but  I hope that everyone else who's planning on cooking and baking this holiday has a successful and tasty time of it!