A Bad Buttercream Day

 I made another one of my meat and cheese platters for the first night's dinner with my guests.  I made a huge casserole of smoked gouda mac and cheese to serve just in case the kids didn't like the platter.  They loved everything and everyone was excited for mac and cheese. I reheated it and served it with last night's dinner too.  It seems that no one gets homemade mac and cheese enough. My kids pointed this out to me.

 I served homemade pretzels, salt and caraway sticks and onion/poppy seed sticks to go with everything.

 I set the table with my new 'still life' pumpkin plates.

 This is not the ugliest cake I've ever made but it definitely is the second ugliest one.  It was about a hundred degrees in my kitchen when I made this and my buttercream was not happy!  My daughter suggested that I should have frozen the layers before frosting them.  Why didn't I think of that?  Then she wondered why I didn't ask her to make it.  Now that was a really good idea!  Next time this task goes to her.

Everyone said it was delicious and no one minded at all that it was ugly. I told them that when you get a cake that looks like this, you can be sure it's homemade and not store bought!