Rain Barrel

After a torrential rain storm last night, we awoke this morning with hopes of finding our rain barrel (read about it at Tuesday Adventures) partially full with water. Instead, to our delight, it was entirely full! Yes, an entire garbage can full of rain water! We have since moved the barrel from the middle of the yard to under the roof (slightly less white-trash) but have also added two more cinder blocks (more white-trash; net gain of 0 white-trash points). It seems to have been a smart decision as we can now gather an entire barrel of water in one big rain storm! Now we just need a garden to water.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to everyone! As part of the celebration of Easter, Meghan and I decided to construct a Lamb cake... a cake shaped like a lamb... not a cake made of lamb, this is an important distinction. Meghan owns a Lamb cake pan, which greatly aided our endeavor, as carving a lamb from a giant brick of cake would have proved quite difficult.

In order to create a successful Lamb cake, it is important to select the appropriate cake. Past experience with making a Lamb cake for other occasions (because what occasion isn't a Lamb cake appropriate?) had shown that using a (typical) moist, fluffy cake lead to an unstable lamb and immense frosting difficulties, as the cake would crumble when being frosted. To combat this issue, we decided on pound cake as it is both delicious and rather dense.


A quick mix of two store bought batters (one for each half of lamb) and we were out of the gate quickly.

With that, we put the cake in the oven and baked for approximately 45 minutes. A beautiful cake of lamb resulted.

As the cake baked up quite a bit, we had to then shave Lamby (all Lamb cakes are named Lamby) down to match the edges and ensure a smooth fit when we frosted them together. An initial layer of frosting was used to "glue" the two halves together. We placed the first frosted lamb in the fridge to allow it to set and followed it up with a final layer of delicious vanilla frosting.

Purple jelly beans for eyes and a pink one for the nose, and you have a finished Lamb cake! Note of warning: the eyes are directional. My initial positioning of the eyes created an angry Lamby. Luckily, a quick rotation gave a cute lamb expression.

And there you have it! An adorable Lamb cake!