Birthday Treat

I have been in intel school for a little over 3 months now. If you look on a map to find San Angelo, TX, you’ll see it’s a small town, quite a ways from anything else. I no longer have my running clubs or hiking trails, and I’m prohibited from taking college courses while in training status. I’m not very good at just sitting still. So to keep me occupied when I’m not on shift, I have discovered the joy of baking. I grew up with a very creative mother who designed… still designs, cakes and baked goods of all sorts. Until recently, Jen + oven = disaster. Just ask my niece and nephew about the gingerbread men I attempted to make last Christmas. Brianna and I ended up on the floor in tears of laughter at their final appearance when I mistook gel food coloring for gel frosting… the poor things looked as though they had been brutally murdered. When Sean tasted the first cookie, his exact judgment was: “hmmm… tastes like chicken.”
During my first month in school, one of my young Airmen was celebrating her birthday. After watching a couple of episodes of Cake Wars, I boldly decided to try the latest trend in desert culture with my attempt at cake pops. I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t even have a recipe. I just called my mom from the grocery store and asked her what ingredients I needed and for a quick run-down of how to put them together. The cake baking part turned out quite nice but it quickly turned into disaster once I mixed in the whole container of frosting and couldn’t figure out how to melt the candy. I tried to make a double boiler and ended up with the water boiling into the candy… which of course, ruined the candy. After a few runs to the store I finally figured it out and began to stick the cake balls. That didn’t quite work out either. I missed the step of dipping the stick in the candy first, letting it dry then dipping the pops into the melted chocolate. The cakes just slid right down the popsicle sticks. After about 4 hours, I gave up and picked up a couple dozen donuts on my way in to class for the Airman’s birthday.
The next birthday, I just baked a cake, frosted it and threw on some sprinkles. Although I wasn’t satisfied, the Airmen loved it. Lately, we have had a birthday just about every week. Since I refuse to give up on what I would like to call my new hobby, I have remained simple, with mini cupcakes, brownies, and cookies, all of which are devoured within the first hour of class so I must be doing something right. I am slowly working my way up to the second attempt at perfecting the cake pop. Yesterday I got one step closer by baking a red velvet cake, crumbling and shaping with cream cheese frosting, dipping my cake spheres into white chocolate candy, then sprinkling them with crushed peppermints. Not quite a “cake pop” but I’m almost there and they were delicious.