The trouble with decorating . . . SOLVED

Most people I know love decorating cookies and cupcakes and love eating them that way. But no one likes making all the frosting, getting out all the piping bags and tips, and the mess involved. For several years now (as you can see in a previous post) I have only used freezer ziplock bags with the edge snipped to pipe icing. That way you can throw it all away, but it does limit your designs significantly. My aunt Kelli is a cupcake fanatic and hers always look so beautiful, but she uses a wilton 2D tip, which to me means, messing piping bags or specialty parchment paper ones that are not found at any of my local stores-- but yesterday I thought I would try using the 2D tip in a freezer ziplock and . . . it worked fabulously. I was a little worried it would leak due to the 90 degree angle of the bag and the 30 degree angle of the tip, but the freezer bag held up nicely. It was so easy and mess free. I just spooned one store bought tub of icing into the ziplock where the tip was waiting in the corner. I clipped the corner of the bag just enough to let the tip slide slightly into the hole. It worked like a charm. If ziplock really wanted my life to be easy they would make triangle shaped ziplock freezer bags.

Mini Meatloaf

This recipe is so easy and so quick and so tasty and so healthy.

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 box chicken stuffing mix (I usually use the store brand because it is cheaper and in this recipe it doesn't matter how fluffy the mix gets)

Put your hands inside plastic sandwich baggies and knead until well combined. Shape into small balls that will fit into a muffin pan. (this makes 12).

Bake at 350 for 20 - 30 minutes. They are crispy on the outside and moist in the middle. We each eat about 2 of them (which is only 2.66 ounces of meat) so if you are looking for portion control, this is perfect and filling. If you splurge and eat 4 of them you are looking at only 5.32 ounces -- still smaller than many burgers and most steaks. I usually serve them with baked potatoes or rice pilaf and brocolli (and of course ketchup for the kiddos).

Fondant cake decorating class

I love the look of fondant, but I hate the taste. I took a class at church this week to learn how to do it. It was fun I don't think it is very hard -- It is just time consuming. That is probably why the class was so fun. Someone bought all the supplies, made all the cakes, fillings, frostings, and fondants -- colored them all, placed them in decorating bags with the right tips -- all we had to do was decorate.

This is the "inspiration" photo.

Here is my version. Now the biggest difference is obviously the cake size -- the inspiration looks to be like 3 layers of 6 in cake rounds and mine was 2 layers of 10 inch. Also we did not have the little white dots on the roses, but all in all I thought it was pretty close. . . too bad it still tastes like fondant.