Salted Buttercream Icing

As many of you know, Casey was born on December 27th. He's one of those poor unfortunate Christmas birthdays that gets shorted every year. This year is no exception.



These little car cakes were baked with the best of intentions today. I went to Publix and tried really hard to buy a birthday cake for Casey, but I couldn't justify $22.00 for a cake that I could make for $4.00, so I bought flour and headed home. I found the car cake mold that my mom gave me and things were going well until it was time to ice the little suckers. Casey's favorite color is green and I didn't want to have to fiddle with multiple colors of icing, so I only made the green, thinking . . . well I didn't really think it through, actually. I just started putting icing on the cars, saw how things were heading, and eventually called Casey in to put on the sprinkles, the dot thingies, and the blue sugar so that when the cakes got to the table, everybody would say, "Casey -- did you decorate these yourself?" -- and he would say "yes" -- and I would be off the hook for the green icing disaster. And who cares how it looks so long as it tastes good, right? Well, it didn't taste good. The cake part was good, but when the recipe for vanilla buttercream icing calls for unsalted butter, don't think to yourself, "well, all I have is salted butter, so that will have to do; can't make that much of a difference. Maybe I should call in Grandma and ask her what she thinks. Naaah, why bother Grandma?" While I have found that unsalted and salted butter are somewhat interchangeable, that only applies when you are using a tablespoon or so of butter -- it does not apply when you are using 2 sticks of butter. They call it buttercream icing for a reason. It's pretty much all butter. And salty buttercream icing is disgusting. Take my family's word for it -- no one objected when the leftover cars were dumped into the garbage.

We celebrated Casey's birthday tonight because we are taking him to Disneyworld tomorrow. A few weeks ago I asked Casey if he would rather have a party with his friends or go to Disney for the day (please pick Disney, please pick Disney) and he picked Disney (yay!). I hate planning birthday parties for young kids -- it costs a ton of money if you have it somewhere like Pump it Up or Rolly Pollies, but it's so much work to have it at home and then you have all those wild indians in your house for the afternoon. Our party at home tonight was so much calmer. There were no wild indians -- unless you count this one:



And he's not an indian so much as some sort of birthday pixie all hyped up on green icing.

Mace had his first haircut today. He did great -- no screaming fits:



He's holding on to his Hess "goggin" for dear life, though. Speaking of which:



My son did not get enough trucks and tractors for Christmas, could someone please buy him some more?

And look at what my Christmas present can do:



That shot is going to be on the front cover of the brochure for the Hope Springs Eternal Bed & Breakfast -- we'll just crop out the edge of the half-built chicken coop over there on the left, 'cause the HSEB&B is a high class establishment notwithstanding our pants-optional policy.