Life's Your Oyster Shell

Entertaining

Entertaining at college is entirely too difficult, but I think that I need to try.  Now, when I say entertaining I do not mean “LET’S PARTY AND GET TRASHED LOLZ!”  I mean something a little classier.  Maybe some swathing, hors d’oeuvres, and elaborate cake.  I still have a box of red velvet.

So this weekend or next I am going to try a classy little soiree in my room, permission of course required from my lovely roommate.  And maybe, to celebrate the fact that I go to Cornell (YEAH!) I’ll make a C shaped cake out of red velvet.  Have the frosting be white, the inside be carnellian (er, red), and BAM.  Look at that school pride.  Or I could try out a Clifford the BIG RED dog design.  I think that I would need another box of cake for that.

Classy.

And the occasion?  One does not need an occasion to entertain.

Still Stuck on Shark Ideas

I don’t have time to do this for my Shark Week party this evening, but I thought of a way to make a “Chum” drink.  Based off of a punch recipe that my boyfriend’s mom gave me years upon years ago.

Dissolve 1 large packet of green jello (or 2 small) and 2 cups of sugar into 4 cups of water (over heat).  When dissolved, take off heat.

Add 2 containers of large pinapple juice.

Split into two ziploc bags and freeze.

Take one out one hour before party, and put in punch bowl.

30 to 45 minutes before party add Ginger Ale (AND ONLY GINGER ALE!).

We used this for a Halloween party and put the jello mixture in a glove to make a hand shaped block of ice.  So what if you used a red colored jello (black cherry?  Raspberry?  Strawberry?) and put it in a fish shaped mould.

Maybe something like that.  Then use that in the punch.  It’s reminiscent of what they use to “chum” the water to attract sharks.  I would want to try this beforehand to make sure that it actually works.  Also, if there are no available large fish moulds, you can use small ice cube ones.  But warning, those will melt faster.

That one has alive fish and bones.  Cute, cute.

Other Shark Ideas

I really like these cupcakes from Lana Stewart.

Good for a larger party than what I did.

Sticking a guy in the shark’s mouth.  From Sugar Plum Gals, a groom’s cake.

Shark Cake

Just popped the cake into the oven.  First of all, I would like to moan about how hard it was to find red velvet cake.  I do not have time to make it from scratch, so I thought that I would just hop over to Safeway and get my various fixings (including shark gummies and swedish fish).  I looked at the cakes, and although they have two pink cakes (strawberry and cherry, yuck), they had no red velvet.  Not to fear, I thought as I finished my grocery shopping, I would just skip over to Mars.  I dashed in, looked at the cake mixes and saw strawberry and cherry, BUT NO RED VELVET!  fml I figured, and decided that I would go to Giant.  I had my doubts, but by this point I was desperate.  I even called Yanran to make sure that I was not hallucinating the idea of a red velvet cake.  I doubted myself and worried that it might just be white cake dyed red.  (Surely it has some sort of chocolate-y flavor-y goodness!)  Turns out that I was right.  There IS such a thing as red velvet cake and that these grocery stores were just crazy.  (Really.  Cherry cake?)  So I went to Giant and BAM.  It was on sale.  Score.

Needless to say I purchased two, just in case I fail epicly.  Or epicly fail.

Pictures so far:

My stuff.  Planning on making teeth out of the chocolate.

Not yet mixed but oil, water, and eggs already added.  I love how it looks pretty brown where no liquid has touched.

I adore this blood red color.  VERY shark-y.

So good.

Shark Week (Beginning)

This week is SHARK WEEK on the Discovery channel.  In celebration I will be having a party either today or tomorrow night.  What to watch?  Great White Appetite or Shark After Dark?  (Do not answer that.  The answer will depend on my schedule.)  So.  What do we need for a Shark Week party?  Obviously a shark cake.  I went online and looked at a few cakes, and although I am terribly unartistic (no, really.  You should see some of my pictionary drawings), I am going to try to attempt one.  Or two.  Depending on the level of my fail.

First one is awesome because it is a shark.  Quite a fan.  Second one is good because the shark face is really, really cool.  I don’t know which one I will be able to handle more.

I’m thinking about using red velvet cake and either butter cream or cream cheese frosting.  Red velvet will be good because when you cut it… KABAM!  Blooooooood.

Sharkey.