Cake Fail + Spring Racing?

Hi guys! I hope your weekends were great. We had a fun one over here!

One of the big weekend highlights? 

Practicing my cake baking skills for next weekend! 

What’s next weekend, you ask? 

My future sister-in-law Roxanne’s bachelorette weekend! 

Roxanne and my brother both love watching the Great British Baking Show, so as part of the bachelorette weekend we are actually going to be having our own baking competition – so fun and creative, right?!

For those who know the show, we are skipping the Signature, doing a surprise technical (eek!), and then for our Showstopper we have been tasked with making a wedding cake themed for Roxanne and my brother. Everything has to be homemade (no props or box mixes or pre-made icing or anything), and the cake has to be at least two tiers. 

Now, considering I have a food blog you’d think I’d be all over this, right? 

Ummmm, yeah.

I have only baked a cake once in my life. (You can actually read about it in this super super old post with terrible photos where Matt and I look like babies – ah, gotta love having a blog for nearly 10 years!)

If this was a muffin challenge, I’d be ALL over it. (See also: the bazillion muffin recipes on my recipe page.)

But, cake?

Yikes. 

Luckily, my mom happens to be an excellent baker, so she invited me (and Matt and Riese!) over for a fun afternoon cake baking practice sesh yesterday. 

I had an idea in my head I wanted to test out, and as you may have seen on my Instagram stories, at first things were going really well…

And then things very quickly went south when I tried to get super creative and artsy. Lol!

I’m not sharing any more details right now because that would reveal my Extremely Top Secret Plan, so you will have to wait until after next weekend to see my final masterpiece. But I’m pretty sure I figured out a way to carry out my creation that will actually work!

Fingers crossed.

Either way, I’m really glad I practiced this first given how the above photo looks. ;)

Thanks for your help in plotting my masterpiece, mom! 

Other highlights from the weekend included a beautiful walk while the cakes were in the oven (my mom didn’t mind staying back to tend to the cakes!)…

Plus not one but two runs – what a treat! 

The first one was with my buddy Heather. 

We hadn’t run together in FOREVER (the last time we remember running together I was early in my pregnancy, before she was pregnant – now we both have over 1 year old babes!) and it was so fun to get back out there with her. 

Despite the fact that we did a really hilly route, I felt good on this run and the miles flew by!

Good convo always makes the miles fly by, doesn’t it?

We ended up covering 4 miles:

My second run was yesterday morning with my college friends Sarah and Kathleen! 

We met up at Roosevelt Island and did a casual jog/walk for 4 miles – it was really nice to catch up with them, too, and I was glad we kept things super casual because my quads were def sore from the hilly 4 miler the day before. 

I’ve been starting to get the itch to get back into running more consistently and training for something again… the only race I’ve done since Riese was born was the Marine Corps 10k in October, and I really miss lacing up my shoes more often and feeling like I have a goal/something specific I’m working towards. 

Now that spring is kind of around the corner and we will have warmer and less dark early mornings, it might be time to get back into the swing of things more again with running!

I’m currently eyeing the GW Parkway Classic 10 miler in late April.

Matt and I ran it back in 2015 (recap) and enjoyed it, and I like the 10 mile distance – long and challenging but not insane… feels much more doable than a half marathon right now. 

It’s a little sooner than I’d like, but I think with muscle memory on my side, and if I just go into it with the goal of completion vs. a time goal, it seems doable. We’ll see – I’ll keep you guys updated!

Anyway! Apparently I have lots to say today! 

Let’s try to wrap this long post up with a little less chatter, shall we? 

We did a lot of eating leftovers and random odds and ends (and more Make-Ahead Breakfast Burritos, of course) this weekend, and had a couple meals out, but one of the home-cooked meals we enjoyed was a simple stir fry on Friday night.

If you want some stir fry ideas, check out my Mix + Match Stir Fry Recipes post!

We also had oatmeal a few times (the recipe from my microwave banana oatmeal post, but made on the stovetop since I was making more than one serving) – my tiny sous chef assisted: 

As for the best meal out, these bacon, egg, and cheese mini biscuit sandwiches from Evening Star Cafe were sooo good. 

Aaaaaaaaand I think that’s it for this super random and all over the place post. 

I hope you guys have a fabulous day, and I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new easy recipe – stay tuned!

p.s. By popular demand, I switched my RSS feed back to the full feed as you guys have probably noticed (if you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it). If you read my blog in a feed reader and have the ability to click through on occasion, it would help me out a ton. Thank you for being here!