he's a dichotomy. and so is his cake

in my last post i talked about topher's cousin(i forget already! 2nd cousin...?...) cooper.

cooper is a funny fellow. he loves himself some marvel superheros, power rangers, star wars guys, lego anything, and zombies. he likes dressing up and shooting fake guns and doing boy stuff. he is a boy's boy. (equivalent to a man's man.)

 

but dear cooper also LOVES himself some stuffed animals. he loves his stuffed penguin, 'happy', who has his own little personality according to cooper. his mom, elisa, also told me that on a recent visit to barnes and noble, he found a little gray and baby blue panda bear, and walked all around the store with him, and read books with him. when it was time to leave, cooper put the bear back on the shelf, gave it a kiss, and wept with tears of true sorrow to be parting with his new found friend. at the sight of this, cooper's older brother kiefer just looked at his mom and exclaimed: "can't we just buy it for him!?!?!?" what a nice brother. they bought it for his birthday a few days later :)

 

anyhoo, when elisa asked cooper what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, cooper was torn. cute dog cake? (new obsession: biscuit. the cute little dog. you know what i'm talking about... right?) but he also kinda wanted a zombie cake.

so we did both. cute dogs and zombies.

 

elisa wanted to see how the whole 'fondant' thing worked out, so i brought some store bought stuff (easiest to work with) over to her house and we started making stuff for cooper's cake. elisa made the yellow fire hydrant that is pictured below. pretty great! elisa also baked the most incredible looking cake (and delicious too!)- it was dense and had no dome to cut off or anything! perfectly level. incredible!i was very thankful that elisa wanted to bake the cake for her son. that's just not really my thing, and it was one less thing to do!

 

so, here's cooper's cake. he enjoyed it. so it was all worth it. all the zombies have exposed brain, per cooper's request. (except the worm! i forgot to give the zombie worm a brain!) there were other limbs coming out of the cake on the sides and stuff, but i didn't get pictures of that. oh well. my favorite part of the cake was where the icing wouldn't stick, so i made a zombie face coming out of it. it made the accident look intentional- major score!

 

superniece loves superman

my niece christina is obsessed with superman. seriously, totally, and completely obsessed. (topher's a couple steps behind her. or maybe 13 years behind...;)

she just turned 17, and barb threw her a birthday party, cause barb is a wonderful nana! so i made some superman sweets for the shindig, that my kids were very sad about not being invited to.i told them it wasn't a party for kids. they said: "oh, we like hanging out with old people." and then i tried to explain to them what a 'teenager' is. they didn't get it.

anyhoo, i tried to do something new and awesome. only it didn't necessarily turn out awesome: 

i wanted the cake to be blue and red, with yellow frosting between the layers. as you can see this looks like it should be a cake for a baby shower...

 here's how it turned out- on the outside and inside:

maybe next year i will add a blazer on the outside, and a lot more red food coloring on the inside...

then i made some cake balls- and i know i told you i HATE cake balls, cause i cannot make them look pretty for the life of me. so this time- i covered the cake balls in marshmallow fondant! and they behaved much better! did they taste good?... i have no idea. i'll have to ask barb or christina later.
under the superman symbol are pieces of cake that i cut out with a cookie cutter. then i just put a swirl of buttercream on top. if i had preplanned this portion of my contribution to the birthday party better, i would have made actual mini cupcakes. but i did the best with what i had (which was an extra layer of a cake) when i felt like i should bring more to the party.

the like the little capes :)

so, that's it. i have a little break from cake making and then it's more cakes!

and look! i found a picture of an acorn cakepop that i made for corban's birthday party. like i said, i don't like making cakepops, cause i am not very good at it. these things can't stay upright cause they are too heavy and pierce through the top. will practice make perfect? we'll see...

panCakes

look!

i am so proud of the above picture. ok. look at it but don't inspect too closely...

what does that look like to you?

a stack of pancakes?

why would i take a picture of a stack of pancakes? cause that stack of pancakes is just rolled up fondant arond a chocolate cake that i baked for a five year old who loves pancakes!

i got an e-mail from a super-faithful blog-reader who asked me to make this cake for her son. she did all the leg work of finding a blog that had a tutorial on how to make it and everything! great job kelly and buttercream bakehouse! you can check out the original here 

so this is how my cake turned out and is sitting nicely in it's little box. the original cake has the 'syrup' as piping gel mixed with syrup. the order came in speciafically requesting that the gel not taste like syrup. so i just used piping gel, a little brown gel coloring, and a little hershey's chocolate syrup.

it is AMAZING what you can do with fondant (i used homemade marshmallow fondant), wilton's gel colors, and a paint brush. that's pretty much all i used. so great.

i was gonna post about the superman cake i made from my niece, but i just got supertired. so that'll have to wait til tomorrow...

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.

busy as a bee

happy fourth of july to all my american readers, and happy belated canada day to my canadian readers!

we have been crazy busy the last week or so. it's july- party month. from the 1st to the 10th of july, we have 5 birthday parties that we have gone to/are going to. and that's just the first ten days of july! there are more coming after that too!

fortunately i am only slotted to make cakes for 2.5 of the birthdays this month. which is good, cause i tried to time myself to see how long it takes me to make cakes and cookies for a party, and i banked over 8 hours! but it's not so bad since i discovered that baking ahead of time and freezing cakes not only save time, but are a necessary step, especially if you need to carve the cakes. which i did.

so i made a cake for my sweet friend Jenny, whose sweet and adorable daughter turned one yesterday, but had her party on sunday. the party was so lovely, even though it was a million degrees out. but fortunately there was a pool and chick-fil-a sweet tea involved, so i am not complaining!
anyway, jenny told me a lot of months ago that she was having a bumble bee themed birthday party for bree, and i told her that i would love to make a cake for her. and then i was out and about and found a bumble bee and bee hive cookie cutters, so i also made cookies to boot.

the cakes were duncan hines, but the cookies, chocolate buttercream frosting, and the marshmallow fondant were all homemade! i even decorated the cookies with the marshmallow fondant which made life a lot easier since my hand goes kinda stiff when i have to pipe too much. i haven't gotten a real review about the cookies (lily and topher loved them, shocking, i know) so we will have to see if that is something i will actually do again. the cake was three layers, and the smash cake sat on top with a little fondant bumble bee. something i probably won't do again is make the smash cake with fondant- cause it's just too hard for a 1 year old to smash. but i used the fondant for bree's smash cake cause i didn't think the shape would hold properly if i iced the bee hive- due to the ridiculously hot weather we've been having.

anyhoo, eveything turned out pretty good over all, and jenny is such a great photographer that even if things didn't turn out great on my end- she made everything look great in her pictures ;) great job jenny! and happy 1st birthday sweet little bree! i love you you cute little chubby girl!!!!!

Pretty Little Things

last week was a busy one. i made 40 cupcakes and 20+ wedding dress sugar cookies for a bridal shower that i found out about 7 days before the event. fortunately my calendar was pretty empty, so i was very happy to provide sweets for this family that bid on my cupcakes at a silent auction on sunday (the day before the order was made!) i don't know the bride very well, though she goes to the same church as me (which means not a lot since apparently there are HUNDREDS of people who go to the same church as me), but i did house sit for her family 7 years ago before chris and i got married, and she works at the starbucks by my house so i have run into her there a few times. how's that for random degrees of seperation?? but her mom did e-mail me her pinterest page, and though i continue to not be on pinterest, but i think you can tell a lot about a person from looking at their pins! this bride to be is a lover of vintage and lace, so that's the look we went for with her cupcakes and cookies. both the cupcakes and cookies were taken from pinterest for the most part, so i have very little to do creativity-wise. though i did make these flower cupcakes for chris' grandma's 80th birthday last year. again, please excuse my inability to take special looking pictures. i just got my mother's day present (hint- it starts with an 'i' and ends with a 'phone') so i am looking forward to glamming up my pics the instagram way from here on out!!! i don't know if you can tell, but the cupcakes are covered with lace. found that at Hobby Lobby. love that place. the icing colors were beige, tan, and white. going for the vintage vibe:

found this cookie cutter at 'Sur La Table'. love love love that store. you can't really tell from this picture, but there is glitter/shimmer on the cookies. actually, i don't know if anyone could tell that i did that, which begs the question- why did i bother, but alas, i tried to make these pretty. hopefully i succeeded:

i haven't heard whether or not the treats tasted any good or not. as long as no one got food poisoning, i feel like i did my job.

partied out

happy good friday to every one!
we had great hopes of going to a praise night tonight with the kids- especially since lily has been all about singing to Jesus lately. she doesn't need to know the words to songs- she just sings along anyway. it's precious. although the other day she was "singing/mumbling" along with a song, but clear as day she said something like: "hallelujah he's my savior". it was amazing.

anyhoo, i am still recovering from the last week of march. we did 3 birthday parties in 6 days. it was crazy. in fact i still have decorations up from the first birthday party. pathetic, i know.

i already posted about lily's princess party, and then on saturday we had a family party. since we watched the hunger games on friday night, i knew the cupcakes for saturday would have to be easy and ready to go. so i saved the fondant figurine of lily from thursday and used it for saturday. that worked out especially great since lily is not a fondant-eater. which is the opposite of her brother who pretty much only eats the fondant and icing and leaves the cupcake for the birds. watching lily and topher eat their sweets is funny cause lily will seriously take off her icing and leave it on her plate, and then topher will dip his cupcake into the icing and eat that up. they are the sweetest ying and yang siblings you ever did see!

here's topher eating the head off of his fondant figure:



here's lily holding out her cupcake with her mini-me on it:

i actually had to re-do the head on her figure cause the one on thursday had smudgy eyes. not like smokey eyes, smudgy. like there was some 'eye smudge' on her cheek kind of smudgy.

topher's cupcakes were an ode to power rangers jungle fury. they didn't turn out very special. sorry son:


then tuesday we had a small little party for our one and only son at peter piper pizza. i was going to keep the jungry fury theme, but topher decided he wanted 'the avengers' cupcakes. so i did that instead. i have to admit i was pretty happy with how these turned out, even though the fondant started 'sweating' a bit from the short car ride:



and that's it! next year we've gotta come up with a better plan that involves a lot less sugar.

one more cake...

it's late and i am going to go to bed very soon so that i can be woken up every two hours by my precious daughter who is battling out her first ear infection. supersadness. she is doing pretty great during the day, but she really likes to remind me that she is uncomfortable in the middle of the night. often. she reminds me very very often.

anyhoo, this weekend my sweet little friend paige, and her friend emma, celebrated their 7th birthday with an outdoor pool party. gotta love arizona and the fact that you can have an outdoor pool party in february. the pool was heated, and it also happened to be about 80 degrees, so everything was perfect. except the fondant i used was not that fond of being out in the harsh heat. the 'b' melted a bit in transit. i will have to think hard about using that fondant in the serious hot months here in the desert.

anyhoo, paige is one sassy and adorable little 7 year old. i have had the pleasure of knowing her my entire life in arizona, so the last six years and four months of her entire life. her favorite color is purple and she LOVES zebra print. so i made her a cake to go with those two favorite things. i used purple fondant and pink and black sugar sheets. the sugar sheets were a first for me. they were pretty easy to use so i was pleased with how they worked out for this cake. and the birthday girls were happy too so i guess that's all that really matters in the end!

party party party

a few years ago i used to be a party animal. ok. maybe not an animal, but if someone had a birthday, i would be out with my friends, hitting the clubs, going out for dinners, etc. it was oh so glamorous!...

now my kind of parties involve very little glamour, and no clubbing- unless there's a pinata on the scene. but that's ok. these parties are just as fun as the parties i used to go to- a decade ago!...

well, this weekend i went to my niece's first birthday, and we also re-celebrated gabe's birthday with the family. so that meant i did more baking and decorating! i did not get a picture of the cupcakes that i made for gabriel, but i made him a Rio (the movie with the birds) cupcake. i went to his house with donuts on wednesday (his actual birthday was wednesday) and he was playing with a toy from the movie and he said he wanted a cake with Blue (the bird's name) on it. ugh. these toddlers are so stinkin smart and have such great memories that i knew that if i showed up to his birthday party with anything other than Rio cupcakes, he would have been like: "hey, didn't i tell you that i wanted cupcakes with Blue on it?" not cause he's sassy or rude, but just cause he's four and remembers stuff now! i was happy to oblige him with what he wanted though ;)

and then i made a cake for emma, which made me happy cause i was able to make a little fondant figurine that looked like her. well, not really. but i knew the dress she was going to be wearing to her party so i made her fondant self with the same dress. good times with sugar.




anyhoo, happy birthday to my febraury niece and nephew! thanks for keeping me on my baking-toes this month! love you crazy kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

birthday funtimes

birthday season is, and has been upon us for awhile now.
my birthday was about two weeks ago, and it was awesome.

here i am flanked by a buttload of watson kids. it looks like they all really love me, but the true love of their hearts is SUGAR. and that's what they are all trying to get to.

and speaking of sugar, i used about two tons of it to make gabe's superhero cake for his superhero birthday party on saturday:



it was tons of fun, especially since gabe seemed to enjoy it so much.

now i am getting ready to make a cake for emma's first birthday party this saturday, and i am mentally preparing myself to make cakes for lily and topher's birthdays, which aren't until next month, but they talk about them everyday so you would think (and hope) that they were happening tomorrow. oh well. gotta love kids' enthusiasm for their birthdays.

happy birthday gabers! you are one superspecial boy and i love you tons!

back to cupcakes

it's been a seriously long time since i have had a cupcake post. i made some cupcakes in june for robert's and for sungu's birthday, but i never really bothered writing about them cause they weren't stunning (sorry boys. there was lots of love in them, but they just weren't that pretty.) i don't even have any pictures of the cupcakes that i made for robert that had a 'words with friends' theme to them, cause quite frankly my brother is addicted to that game. here are two pics i found from sungu's birthday party. yeah for decorating for a four year old- they don't really care what the cupcake looks like, they just care that they are eating a cupcake! sungu did request batman cupcakes, and that's what he got:



so, since june, i have done no real baking and therefore no decorating. until we celebrated grandma's birthday this weekend. grandma said she liked chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. easy! it took a while to figure out how to make chocolate frosting special, but then i remembered seeing people make cupcake bouquets, so i decided to look that up. it was pretty easy! i didn't have the necessary supplies to make the bouquets (flower pot, styrofoam ball, etc) but i will make one of those one day! but i did have the right tip to frost the cupcakes the way that i wanted to, and i also had pretty qhite pearl-like sprinkles which helped to add a little more pizzazz to my chocolatey treats. i was really happy with the way they turned out, and this was probably the fastest and easiest cupcake-decoarating endeavor i have ever undertaken. maybe i will add a video or step by step pics on how to do this cause it was really that easy. someone just needs to have a birthday and needs to request that i make flower cupcakes for them...

here are my kids helping me/helping themselves to a lot of sprinkles:




and these are the cupcakes i made for grandma's 80th birthday.

lindsay's sprinkle!

this weekend we celebrated my beautiful sister-in-law, Lindsay, and the arrival of the much anticipated baby-girl-watson-Emma. i love Lindsay. she is so sassy! she is a girly-girl in the best sense of the word, but she's had some oppression in the girly-girl field these last three years as she has had one son after the other. Lily, has been VERY blessed by her aunt's love for all things girly though. and i too have been blessed because Lindsay gave Lily her first tutu a year ago, and her first Barbie this year, gifts i didn't think to give my own daughter.

our lovely friend Shannon was VERY excited when she found out Lindsay was having a girl and insisted on throwing her a 'sprinkle' (a smaller version of a baby shower) so that Emma could have some pretty things. the sprinkle was lovely and Shannon did a great job. my only task was to provide some desserts, and i was so happy to be able to decorate some confections at long last! in this nomadic period of my life, i don't think i have decorated a single sugary treat...

so, i decided to make/decorate some brownies and petit fours, because they sound fancy and pretty and perfect for a sprinkle. i found this incredible blogger that i have been shamelessly stalking since i found her easy christmas no-bake petit fours. this woman is AMAZING! check out her blog here: http://iammommy.typepad.com/i_am_baker/petit-fours/.

i bought a bunch of oreo cakesters and got to work! i made my own marshmallow fondant (i think i got the recipe from allrecipes.com. there's tons out there. google it. i will try to do a seperate post later of how i made it. if i remember!) the theme of the sprinkle was basically Emma's nursery which is pink and green (though we didn't really use green in our decor) with pink, pruple and yellow flowers, and branches. her room is much prettier than i am making it sound. anyhoo, so for one of my deserts i did brownies with taosted coconut and fondant decorations. and then i made monochromatic petit fours. it was easier than i thought, and five short hours later, desserts were done!


the oreo cakesters waiting patiently for their fondant layer


getting dolled up for the big dance


all the shapes and letter for the petit fours were cut using fondant cutters. some people thought i actually cut every shape out individually. those people are crazy.


stacked up and ready to be eaten!


the brownies with coconut and fondant. the middle says 'Emma Faith' in rolled free-handed fondant.