Super delicious birthday cookies

You may not know it, but one my favorite breaks occurs everyday around 9:30am when Cake Wrecks goes live with a new daily blog entry. I stop for a few minutes, have a sip of coffee, and a hearty laugh. Recently they hosted a contest where the people that came up with the best cake one-liner won a free autographed copy of the Cake Wrecks book. And I won!! Well, I already have my own autographed copy, so I thought "Why not pass it along to one of you?"

This brings up one my other favorite daily breaks... spending a few minutes voting for Icing Smiles in the Pepsi Refresh Project. I have blogged about them before, so just to summarize, they are a non-profit organization that brings birthday cakes to critically ill children. They have applied for a grant in the Pepsi Refresh Project. If they are in the top 10 of the popular vote they will receive $25,000 to help their mission. It's something that Chad and I are very, very passionate about.

Yeah, yeah yeah... so what about this giveaway?? OK, the prize is one copy of the Cake Wrecks book, autographed by Jen and John Yates. How do you enter? Do all of the following 3 steps for one entry::

1. Leave a comment on my blog (this post). Just a quick note to say you are voting. I will use this to match up your Pepsi vote.
2. Go to Icing Smiles Pepsi Refresh page, and vote for them.
3. Leave a comment on their Pepsi Refresh page with the wording "Cup a Dee Vote".

You can do the steps above once per day (for up to 7 entries) from now until the contest ends on Thursday August 26th at 5:00pm Eastern. I will randomly pick a winner (OK, Chad will, he's the technical guy) and announce it on on my August 27th blog post.

Have a great weekend and best of luck!

Aug 20 12:30pm UPDATE: Chad says he is seeing people voting on the Pepsi page that are not leaving comments here on my blog. I would still appreciate the comment, but he says he thinks he can work solely off the Pepsi comments page. I just want to make sure that no one loses a vote because of my convoluted rules

I know it seems like I have been slacking lately, but actually we have been covered up at the bakery! In fact, I can barely find time to hobnob with some of my favorite folks. A few weeks back I spent a couple of days with the Amazing Mike McCarey. Mike opened my eyes to the wonderful world of modeling chocolate! Ever since then I can't seem to keep enough of it made up in the kitchen! Take all the stuff you like about fondant, then subtract most of the stuff you don't like about fondant and you have modeling chocolate! And it even tastes better than fondant. BONUS!

Yesterday, Chad and I took off to Altanta for the day. We visited IKEA, as well as several bakeries. We ended out day up at the Barnes and Noble in Buckhead where we got to meet Jen and John Yates of the oh so wonderfully funny Cake Wrecks! They gave an awesome presentation and slide show. There were several really good wrecklipas there and we really turned the Children's Book Section into a party zone. They were as witty in person as they are on the web, and seemed like such a nice couple.

Well, I must go now; I am preparing for my cake decorating class tonight at Dalton State College. Only 2 more classes and my stint as a teacher will be over I fear. I leave you with a shot of the CakeWrecks crew and the Cup a Dee Cakes crew giving you a big smile that's sure to last all week long!