For my daughter’s birthday we surprised her with a book party.  Everyone came as a character for a book.   I went as Julia Child and made a book cake of two of her favorite authors.  The cakes iced with buttercream and covered with sugar sheets.  The cupcakes were matching sugar sheet flowers.  The sugar sheets are available in quite a few different patterns.  The local craft stores have punches as well as Cricut Cake machines that will cut the sugar sheets into many different designs.  The Cricut Cake machine has different cartridges with all types of designs for all different cake designs.

The cakes were her two favorite flavors Caramel and Rum.  I use both of these extracts quite a bit.  Each year at the Orange County Fair Watkins would have a book at the fair that show cased all of their products.  I would go there just for the extracts and to see what new flavors they had.  After buying out all the favor the lady that was working the booth spoke with me for a while telling me that I should sign up to become an independent agent so that I could get a discount.  She gave me all the information and I checked it out and had a lot of questions for her so I went back the next week to see her.  I’m not a sales person and I would only want this for my cakes.  Anyway I ended up signing up for one year.  Naturally I had to try everything they had and told my family and friends about their products.  This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to start something at home.  For me I’m happy with their extracts and I must admit I like their bath oils and lotions. For Christmas I put together gift trays and baskets with bottles of extracts, measuring cups and cupcakes or cookies.  For my friends that were not bakers I put together baskets with their lotions, oils and lip balms.   Watkins.com also has recipes online and a newsletter on all of their special for the month.  If you are looking for baking or extract supplies you must check them out.  Their pricing on the extracts is half of what the local grocery stores charge.  Check them out at www.watkinsonline.com.