Hungry Anyone?

Ignore the huge box of cookies in the background. We took those on vacation. We didn't eat them. Now they're sitting in my kitchen taunting me.

This is what I'm doing today . . . baking . . . not eating. I've made double chocolate brownies and peanut butter brownies for our youth group's bake sale tomorrow, and I've made a strawberry cake for Patrick's (30th) birthday dinner tonight. Later on I'm going to grill ribs and chicken to go along with some corn on the cob and watermelon (don't worry I'm not grilling the watermelon).

Now see the mixing bowl sitting on top of the stove by the un-iced cake? That's there for a reason. But first I should make a confession. I am not a recipe follower. In the kitchen I'm a rebel. I haphazardly measure (if I measure at all), I don't pay attention to what I'm doing, I've been known to forget ingredients, and I make a ginormous mess. Especially when it comes to baking. Which is why I don't bake all that often. Anyway, in that bowl is the icing for the cake. The icing calls for butter creamed with powdered sugar. Easy enough. I softened the butter, threw it in my mixer, and then for some reason I don't fully understand tossed the (still cold) strawberries I had just pureed on top of it. Shoot a mosquito. That wasn't smart. I knew better, but did it stop me? Nope. Then, because if I don't have some sort of disaster in the kitchen it's not a complete day, I turned on my mixer. Creamed? Not so much. More like chunks of cold butter mixed in with strawberries. So anyway, I set the mixing bowl on a warm burner hoping to soften the butter. But then I had to be careful not to cook the icing. Thank the good Lord it worked. Here's the final result.

And that by the way is double the amount of icing I needed. I drank the rest. Ha!Ha! Just kidding. Now I've gotta run and scrape strawberries off the floor. Not so much kidding about that. Have a fanastic Friday everyone.