ice age karate party

this saturday my nephew had his 3rd birthday party. he has been obsessed with a huge billboard of ice age 4 by his house. i actually have a newspaper clipping of it 3 pictures down. i was going to try to make a cake as close to that picture as possible. his favorite ice age character is Scrat- the squirrel who is obsessed with acorns. so i decided to make a cake and acorn-resembling cake pops.

can i tell you how much i hate cake pops? i am no good at making them and the idea of them is so wonderful, but the execution is so terrible. so terrible. the cake pops took almost everything out of me, so i lost all my mojo for the rest of the cake. fortunately Mc Donalds happy meal toys are ice age toys, so i just used the one of scrat on the big ice berg pirate ship. i was going to make it all out of fondant, but i didn't want to! so there... sorry corban, aunt jihae will do better next year!

even though i am not super-happy with the way the cake pops turned out (i didn't even get a good picture of one!) they were apparently delicious- which is great news. i used chocolate cake, chocolate fudge frosting, and they were dipped in chocolate melty-waffers, topped with tootsie rolls. i couldn't eat one cause that sounded like a cavity waiting to happen ;)

anyhoo, here is the cake i made for the karate party that was just for corban and his little friends. the party was SO FUN. i will post pictures of it later. but the cake is just a yellow cake, with chocolate frosting, and marshmallow fondant. on the left side i have a row of tootsie rolls. i thought it looked cute. AND, the fondant didn't actually fully cover that side, so i needed a visual diversion ;) the topper is the mc donalds' toy and some more tootsie roll acorns.

and then this is the cake that i made for corban's family birthday party that was held an hour after his karate party. there's the newspaper likeness of the billboard that corban loves. the cake is another yellow cake, and the frosting is buttercream, cause lindsay loves buttercream :) i had visions of a better ocean, but alas- that's what i came up with:

here is the frosting i used for my cake pops. my girlfriend was just saying today that she was just thinking about my cake pops today. girlfriend- this is the taste you are craving. good ol kroger brand chocolate fudge frosting:

here is corban at his karate party, cutting his cake with a ninja sword. i was just going to make cake pops for his party, but then chris said he really wanted to see the ninja sword-cake cutting (it was advertised on the invitation!) so i made the cake at 6pm the night before the party. glad i did!:

and here's corban blowing out his candles at his family party:

corban dear- i love you so much and you are such a precious and wonderful little boy! i love your voice, your joyful demeanor, the jaunty bounce in your step, and so so so much more. you are a bright light in my life little (gigantic-tall) one.