Book Review- Deco Cakes

Junko has written several cookbooks with some of the cutest ideas and designs, well illustrated and explained to be easy to recreate in your home kitchen. Unfortunately, most of them haven't been translated to English. Just this one so far!

This was a great choice to translate, and I'm so glad to have it. There are a lot of fantastic designs. For Mother's Day, Christmas, Valentine's, and all-occasion cakes, this is a great collection. There are tips for decorating and packaging to turn your gorgeous cakes into gifts for friends. Believe it or not, the decorated versions are even better than the cover photos. The baked inlaid designs are impressive looking on their own, combined with themed decorations, it takes it right over the top into something that looks very professional.

To start with, you'll need a 25x25 cm swiss roll pan to make the cakes following the recipes in the book. Unfortunately, that's not a common size in the USA, but a 10x10 inch square pizza pan will work just fine. I imagine a 10 x 10 inch cake pan will work too, but it's easier to get the cake out of the shallow pizza pan than a deep cake pan. A 10 inch pan is just a tiny bit bigger than 25x25 cm.

The instructions are written originally in precise weight based measurements that are used commonly, and to get the exact cake recipe recommended, you'll also need a kitchen scale. However, US style volume measurements are included.

After that, it's just following the step by step instructions, which also include filling ideas. These cakes have lots of flavor and texture coming from the combination of cake, cream and fruit fillings. If your only experience with jelly roll cakes is the kind sold in supermarket bakeries, or worse luck, those chocolate dipped, plastic wrapped individual cakes- these will be a revelation. Great flavors using good ingredients makes a big difference.

The designs are fantastic, for the more complex designs, there are stencils to trace on parchment paper to follow. For the simple designs, they are well illustrated and the techniques explained well. You don't need to be an artist to make a fantastic looking cake using this method. It's nearly as simple as a coloring book. Some of the designs have elements painted on after baking, but most of the design is done before that.

I absolutely recommend it. If you have your own ideas, but just want to practice with the technique and get a good recipe for making these gorgeous confections- it's a good starting point. If you want to be able to make impressive looking from scratch cakes with minimal effort, it's a good choice.

Published by Vertical Inc., check out  their Facebook page!


Amazon.com affiliate links don't affect your cost, and provide extra income to me personally, which helps support this site.

I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the book. You can read more about my review policy here.

Dandelion and Bee Mandala to color

It's GLORIOUS here. The weather, my garden and the incredible amount of dandelions that comes from living in one place since your daughter was little and blowing dandelion clocks all over the place. Fortunately, I like dandelions. They taste good, look bright and cheerful, and they are a good plant for bees.

I hope you enjoy this dandelion and bee inspired mandala. Click the image for a larger version to print and color.
Small JPG:

Large transparent PNG:

The image above is on my Facebook page if you'd like to share it. 

Friday was my birthday. My husband got me the camera I wanted. I'm all sorts of thrilled, and so is the Turnip Girl, because she got my old camera. There will be a summer photo post soon! 

Crabby Bread Recipe

Actually, this is kind of a non-recipe because it's quick, adaptable and so very, very good. It's more of an overview of how to make crabby bread. A family favorite.

You will need:

• 1.5 lb Snow Crab clusters  OR 12 ozs of cooked lump crab meat*
• 8 oz container soft cream cheese
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp. hot sauce (optional)
• 1 loaf of French bread sliced in half lengthwise
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• marinara sauce (optional, good quality jarred is fine)

This can be made either under a broiler for a crispy, toasted cheese look that's very pretty and yummy or done on a grill which doesn't make the cheese as pretty, but cooked over a wood fire adds all that great smoke flavor.

Shell the crab if you have legs/clusters. Or have your son do it because he doesn't mind doing it if it means he gets crab for dinner. (my son really, really loves crab)

Mix the crab, cream cheese , lemon juice and hot sauce.

Toast the cut sides of the bread. Spread the bread with the crab mixture. 

Top with the shredded cheese. 

Then put it on the grill or under the broiler until the cheese is all melted. Serve with warm marinara.

It's that easy, and the flavor is pretty fantastic. The 4 of us ate nearly all of it on Mother's Day when my husband made it on the grill over a birch fire for dinner. He also made salmon, asparagus, potatoes and carrots and I was so stuffed from the crab bread and asparagus that I had the salmon the next day for lunch! It was darn good cold too. 

Variations- all sorts. You can switch out the cheese, you can use different sauces, different breads. Doing the same basic thing but with Alaskan smoked salmon, cream cheese and a touch of horseradish on a rye loaf is amazing but very salty. Really good to serve with a very cold beer and some fresh fruit or berries. My husband also likes the crab with smoked Gruyere, but I'm pretty sure you could melt smoked Gruyere on shoe leather and he'd ruin my good steak knives to eat it. 

*Most Alaskan crab is already cooked. Including snow crab. I know that down south buying lump crab meat is less expensive per lb than buying any kind of Alaskan crab legs because people have told me what they are paying. Up here- snow crab goes on sale frequently and winds up being less expensive per ounce of meat than the stuff shipped up here. 

Don't forget to enter my $50 dollar Better Sleep giveaway!

A good place to sleep and a giveaway!!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Better Sleep Council for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

A good night's sleep is one of the best things in the world for so many reasons. But sometimes it's pretty hard to sleep well. Having a good place to sleep is a good start.

Here's  a guide for how to get better sleep . My own tip? When there is a lot on my mind, I do word or math puzzles. Get into a comfortable position, close my eyes, breathe slowly and regularly. Pick a subject like animals, names or colors and work through the alphabet, or try to find as many words as possible in a phrase or longer word. Sometimes I'll draw a manala just in my thoughts, or count in Fibonacci sequence. It works pretty well. That's how I get on top for a good night's sleep.
The Better Sleep Council has a ton of information on their site, including some pretty fun things like what does your sleeping position say about your personality.
Between my back problems, and the fact that my husband is a large man, our mattress needed replacing recently. It had developed a husband shaped dip on his side that was making it hard for me to get really comfortable. My previous mattress was a high quality innerspring mattress. The fault in the mattress was simply that it was time to replace it, time and nightly use wore it out. If your mattress is more than 5 years old, you might need a new one.
So how do you shop for a new mattress?

• Check out how to buy a mattress.
• Start with research! There are a lot of types of mattresses out there. 
• Talk to friends, find out who they trust. As my husband says, you can buy mattresses nearly anywhere these days- but getting questions answered and finding the perfect mattress takes a little more time. You're could spend over 10,000 hours in the next 5 years on that mattress. Make sure it's the right one for you.
• Ask the questions. What are your issues? Weight, height, how much room you use when you sleep, how it handles heat, and explain what kind of support you like. 
• Test the mattress using the SLEEP method described on the Better Sleep Council's website.

It turns out that the store that my friends recommended to me is one that links to the Better Sleep Council from their website! So my husband and I went and tried out a lot of mattresses.

The person working was willing to answer all our questions and told us to take our time, to take a nap if we wanted to really know how good the mattress was for our sleeping style. He also had a measuring tape handy so if we needed measurements to figure out if we could fit it in our door, he could tell us. He was knowledgeable and super helpful.
So we got our new mattress, and how does it help? Like I said, we got it a few months ago. In that time, both my husband and I are sleeping better. He's woken up and his first words have been "I love our bed." My back, well, that's not going to be completely better, but because of the way our mattress dissipates heat and how well it contours, I'm not waking up in pain as often. My good days start out good.
So think about shopping for a new mattress on Memorial Day.
So the giveaway? There are actually 2!
Get on Top, win $1,000 giveaway like The Better Sleep Council on Facebook and enter the Get on Top Sweepstakes for a chance to win $1000.00
The giveaway on Don't Eat the Paste is for a $50.00 Visa Gift Card.
Open to US residents, 18+
Contest is open from now until May 30, 2014.
To Enter- just leave a comment on THIS post about your sleeping troubles and how a new mattress would help.
Read the official rules right here. Izea will pick a winner, and we will need a way to contact you so make sure you include an email address.