Baking : 1 Tara : 0

I should have known that lately things were going waaaay too well for me in the kitchen.....
Today was a disaster.
Well, to start off with it was the first sunny day we have had in a while and I would have liked to spend it outside.  But tomorrow is one of Dano's co-workers birthdays and I already said I would make the cake.  I decided to make the dark chocolate cake I have mentioned before, which is usually a pretty basic recipe for me!  But our oven and I have a power struggle for it to stay on the right temperature and the cake came out looking a little strange.... then I tried to move one of the layers and it broke into multiple pieces.  I felt like I couldn't start over because I had used all ingredients I had left out for hours to get to room temperature.  So, I made some chocolate buttercream and re-assembled the cake and filled between the layers.  However, during the melting of the chocolate I remembered I need to check the mail for a package I was expecting (this was such a blonde moment....) and just walked out the door to the mailbox!  What was I thinking?!  Walked back in to smoke, burned cream all over the stove.... a huge mess.
I should have stopped here and called it a day, bought some canned frosting, and no one would have known.  But being myself... I decided to try to make a frosting recipe for the outside of the cake that I have been studying for weeks!  When I went to print off the directions it was going to be NINE pages (I deleted the pictures and it was still a full two pages).  Its for Italian Meringue Buttercream from the Whisk-Kid blog (which is absolutely amazing)!  You can check out the link for pictures and the recipe.  Overall I think it went okay... (minus some stray sugar that indefinitely hardened to the stove, the bowl, and my saucepan). 
While all this was going on I also tried to make vegetable stock at the same time!  I've made stock one other time, but today I wanted to try making it in my crock pot.  I sort of used a recipe from Allrecipes but didn't exactly measure everything because a gallon of water won't even fit in my crockpot.

Doesn't that just look amazing!

The veggies roasted and ready to simmer!

I also added just whatever was left of my parsley plant from last summer (mostly stems), sage I found in the back of the produce drawer (ooops!), and a few pieces of the rosemary (also from the patio garden).  I read on other websites that people normally cook their stock for about 2 hours in the crockpot but.... I wasn't really happy with it until it had cooked for like 6!  But that is the joy of the crockpot--you can kind of just forget about it (I went for a hike in the sunshine, finally)!  After roasting your vegetables make sure to really scrape the pan and get all the burned bits into the pot.... I lick the spatula afterward because that caramelized vegetable juice is SO good. Julia Child got me into making my own stock because, well, she says "whats the point of making your own soup if you are using stock out of a can?!"  Which is kind of true... and I would never argue with Julia :)  It's also really healthy because you can control the amount of salt you add and it needs much less because it is so flavorful! 

This was one end result I was happy with today!