Friday, October 5, 2012

Matthew's Camouflage Cake

Matthew's 4th Birthday Camouflage Cake!
Um, hi, remember me?  I took the summer off from blogging (although not from baking) and all of a sudden realized that it's already the beginning of October and I haven't posted anything yet!  Sorry!  I've got a ton of things to put up, but here is a neat one.  My sweet Matthew turned 4 in June and couldn't decide between camouflage and Star Wars.

So we set the cake on the Forest Moon of Endor (home of the Ewoks), where Han, Leia and the team go to disable the shield protecting the Death Star.  Oh, how we love you, Return of the Jedi.  (Yes, I have three boys.) 

The cool part about this cake is that it's camo on the outside AND on the inside!

To make a camo cake, start with your batter.  For this I used white cake batter (half white and half dyed green) and chocolate cake batter. 

Then drop your batter into your cake pan in these unattractive little blobs.

More blobs.

Bake and voila!

Layer, frost and, of course, adorn with Star Wars Legos.

Happy Birthday, Matthew!










Monday, May 28, 2012

Happy Summer Snow Cones!

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend!
I got the idea for these from Bakerella (she makes the coolest stuff!).  They look like Snow Cones but are actually cupcakes.  A super fun dessert to kick off summer!

Here's how you make them:

Make your white cake batter and divide into thirds.  Use food coloring to make one bowl red and one bowl blue.

Spoon batter into decorating bags.

 
Use twist ties to secure the tops.

Tape the bags together at the bottom with masking tape.

These are served in little candy cups.  I couldn't find any without a wax lining, so I just baked mine in regular muffin liners and then, when cool, removed the liners and plopped them into the candy cups.


Take a deep breath and cross your fingers.  Now you need to snip off the ends and squeeze gently using a back and forth motion to fill your muffin cups.  By some miracle, it actually worked.

Voila!  Tri-color cupcakes!

Peel off the cupcake liners and drop the cupcakes into the candy cups.

Sorry no pics of the icing process for some reason, even though there were 200 of the previous steps.  Divide your white vanilla frosting into thirds and again dye some red and blue.  Pipe the white frosting onto the middle and top with white sugar crystals.  Then do the same for the red and blue frosting with red and blue sugar crystals. Sprinkle a few extra white sugar crystals on top of the entire thing to make it look extra icy.  Garnish with a little wooden ice cream spoon and you're done!


Happy Memorial Day!

Chocolate cake with whipped cream and berries

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Broncos v. Colts

Happy 8th Birthday, Hudson!
Here's a man who knows what he wants - Hudson gave me very specific details on how he wanted his cake! :)
And cake pop favors to match...

Peace Baby!

Happy 6th Birthday, Charlie Grace!
With pink cake pop favors to match...

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Pandas!

Panda Mini Cupcakes!
I saw Bakerella's neat blog posting about these little babies (Bakerella's Easy Little Pandas) and had to try them!  They were generally pretty easy, although for some of them it was tough to get the little ears to stay in place and the mouth sprinkles sometimes took on a mind of their own.  But still super fun to make and super cute!

First, I made my mini chocolate cupcakes.  My 3 year old was helping with these so we expedited things and just did a boxed Devil's Food cake mix.  I used our awesome pancake pen to squirt a little batter into each cup, which works great!
Into the oven...
...and out of the oven!
Next, I used a little vanilla buttercream frosting (luckily I had some standing by in the fridge leftover from the Yoda cake) with a #12 tip to put a small dollop on the top of each cupcake.

Then I lightly pressed the top of the cupcake into a bowl of white sanding sugar.
Then on go 2 upside down chocolate chips for the ears, two for the eyes and one sideways one for the snout. Use the chocolate jimmies to make whatever kind of mouth you like.
Now for the eyes.  Using an edible ink pen, draw black dots onto white confetti sprinkles for the eyeballs.  (You can get both the pen and the confetti at places like Michael's.)  Then use a little frosting to stick them onto the chocolate chip eyes.
  And voila!
And, of course, one cake mix makes 3-4 dozen mini cupcakes - so when you get tired of making pandas, just top the rest with a little frosting and either jimmies or sugar.
Enjoy!  :)


Monday, April 23, 2012

Happy Birthday, Jackson!

Happy 6th Birthday, Young Jedi Jackson!
It's all about Yoda, baby
My sweet Jackson is madly in love with all things Star Wars!  We had a bowling party for his friends this weekend and it was a great time!
Cake pop party favors with rings!
Happy birthday, Jackson! :)