The Flamingo Cake

My adorable niece is turning 4 today!! She sat me down, very seriously, and described her cake. She asked for a "giant flamingo on a plain green background," It was very important to her that the inside of the cake be pink as well. Of course! What else would it be?

I set out using 2 rectangle 13X9 baking pans. Using my handy favorite steak knife, I cut away the parts that would become my snack cake pile (top of the photo) and left a basic flamingo shape.

With it all lined up on the board, I thought a little of the neck should be cut down. In hindsight, I should have left it longer. Eh, she's gonna love it anyway! She's four. haha

All that was left is to toss some (of course, pink) icing on it and cover it in fondant. The fondant was tricky around the neck but it worked out nice and smooth. In my opinion, with our limited cake tools we did a pretty good job.

It was a fun cake to work on with my girls. We had a good laugh at how much pink cake batter looks like pepto! Haha We are off to the party.

I hope you have a sweet day! ;)

Mickey Birthday Cake

Y'all know I don't make cakes anymore. However, my little friend Spencer is having a party and I made this for him as a gift. Who knows what to buy kids anymore? Surely not I!

He just loves Mickey Mouse Club House. His party was so adorable too! They had the special candles and even a shirt made for him. It rocked.

I made it using Satin Ice fondant. It's an 8" & 6" stacked. All the decoration are fondant. The ears you have to do in advance, as they need time to dry, and toothpicked in place.

Thank you for stopping by my craft and crap blog. :) I hope you have a great new year!!

Rainbow Dash MLP Cake

My daughter is heavy into Rainbow Dash, you know, from My Little Pony.

She was so sweet when we were making this cake. She said not to stress it. If it didn't work out we could make it into a hill and put a little figure of Dash on top!
I love how accepting she is. She made all the hair for this cake by herself!

For this cake we baked 3 round chocolate 6" cakes and we used RKT. You could use the Wonder Mold pan too. I basically carved her body down to that shape anyway.

The head and front legs are RKT skewered in place. Coming up, printables and more from her Rainbow Dash Party!

Woodland Fairy Birthday

Birthdays in our family are small, family & close friends events. Every year my daughter picks her theme and we make a party. This year the theme was Woodland Fairy.

  

In NLR there is a great place called The Old Mill. It was in Gone With the Wind, well it was a flash in the credits but it still counts! It's the perfect backdrop for my little girl's woodland fairy birthday.

 

Let me tell you about the table.
The front is a branch with holes drilled to fit skewers. We dipped large marshmellows in chocolate and added sprinkes.

We have pink rice crispie balls and sandwiches on the sides of the cake. There is more food on the right of this picture but it's not as cute and the goodies! I made the cake.

All the girls got fairy wings and goodies. They danced around the garden, having a ball and keeping us all very entertained... Happy birthday to my amazing daughter!!

Sponge Bob Cake!

Hey there, I hope you have a sweet tooth today because this cake is heavy with sugar.

My daughter never really watched Sponge Bob so I had to hunt google pretty hard to find the colors and environment. I think I did okay making it into a cake, for newbie! The figure is plastic. Some day I will learn figures.

I'm learning more every time one of my nieces or nephews have a birthday. I hope to be the go to cake lady for our family for years to come!

Easter Cake 2010

Hey crafters!! Here's our Easter cake for this year. I just had to try my hand at a stump. lol

My little bunny is running away. Maybe he saw the Napkin Bunny Army from the post below. Get him!


Happy Easter!

Little cheese burger cupcakes...

I don't really know how I feel about these but I made them. It's really easy too.

             

It's just a cut in half vanilla cupcake with a slice of chocolate in the midde. The cheese is fondant, I just squirted some red buttercreme for ketsup and leaf tip lettuce. It's really very easy.

 

What do you think? My honey took them to work. They were yummy!

Peanut Butter Snowflakes

More food?! Yea, it's that time of year. These are an adapted family peanut butter ball recipe.

1 1/3 cups of crunchy peanut butter
1 1/2 cups of softened butter
1 pound of powdered sugar

Mix until creamy, I use my kitchen aid. Roll the dough out and you can make them into balls or cut them into shapes.

Melt one package of chocolate bark or whatever chocolate you have on hand.
Once they are cold and firm melt chocolate and drizzle or dip with it. I also dusted powdered sugar over them after the chocolate cooled.

My little girl did these. She really likes drizzling chocolate.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Hope you all have a safe and fun holiday.

It's a good time for cake.

Hey bloggers! I think it's a great time for a cake post. :)
This cake is for my friend Sarah. Her daughter is "not girly" and "kinda skater" so this is what I came up with. I'm getting some good practice in!

The picture looks light, that is actually red even though it looks orange.

Christmas is coming fast. Are you ready?

Cupcake Chocolates: How to included

My daughter's birthday party is tomorrow! She is 8!! Her real birthday was yesterday but we know better than to have a party during the week now. :)
   
I just made these "cupcakes" from chocolate candy melts. They were super easy and anything to add to the cupcake party theme is a good thing right? I didn't plan on these but I was in the kitchen and remembered that I had these candy melts so why not try to use them.             
    
In case anyone wonders how to make these it's really easy. I used a chocolate mini-cup mold, chocolate candy melts, disposable icing bags and an icing tip. All from Micheals. Heat the brown and pour it into the cup mold. Sitck it in the freezer. When they are hard release them fromt he mold. Heat the pink candy melts, pour into the bag with the icing tip and "ice" the top of the cups. Stick the whole things in the freezer until they are hard. The pink part "iced" better when it was cooled a little. If it's really really hot it will melt down into a lump. That's it.
    
I put ours in little favor bags and tied them with pink and brown cupcake ribbon.
Happy birthday Aurora!!

Happy 4th of July!

Hey crafters!! I made these cupcakes for our annual family 4th of July party. If you are looking for a cupcakes idea these are so easy my 7 year old helped. :) To make the batter red use paste icing color (Wilton paste color can be found at Micheals, Walmart and Hobby Lobby.)

The cake is vanilla colored red and baked as usual. I used a filling tip to put white icing on the inside of the cupcakes then used a large star tip to make a swirl top.

                                             

Easy fast idea for last minute bakers like me. lol The blue icing got down in the white when I was trying to cut it for the picture. Eh, you get the point. ;)                                                   
                                           

Happy 4th of July!!

What do you do to celebrate?

Whatever you're doing, I hope you have a fun and safe holiday!

Lyndzie's Wedding Cake & Centerpeices

Happy wedding post!

I got to make my very first wedding cake. This wedding cake was huge. The ribbon is satin and the dragonflies (in the middle of the bows) are pins. The bride loved it! I was so happy that she was pleased. :) You want to make your Sister-In-Law happy!

We gave this to her as their wedding gift. Well, that and we helped with all the decorating, invitation and centerpieces. When your only sibling gets married, you go all out! LaRisa was crating her little butch fingers away! lol

 The monogram topper was a perfect fit. 

                       

The centerpieces were interesting. They are submerged gerbera dasies. In case you have never tried to sink a daisy let me just tell you, it's a challenge. They like to float. We used a little wire though each stem and added a fishing weight (hidden by the rocks in the bottom of each vase) to submerge each daisy.

         

I have missed blogging. I can't wait to get back in the swing of crafting. Does anyone have any new projects that were fun to try?

Happy Birthday Baby!

This is a fun cake that I did recently for my honey. It's her birthday!! It's all MMF. 8" bottom and 6" top. The inside is vanilla smooth BC. The "L" on top is free handed (she likes my handwriting, who knows why). Its finished off with pure white buttercreme dots. The base is actually a candle holder.

The black is always hard to get and people often fear that it will turn thier teeth. I have a few tips and tricks. First of all always (seriously ALWAYS) use gel "no taste" black. If you have the luck to be able to start with chocolate fondant or MMF it really is an advantage. It makes your work easier and saves on the harder to find coloring. The less black coloring you use the better off you are. I have been using "no taste" black on white MMF with no teeth coloring. I think that the blackened teeth is more common with airbrushed cakes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In the spirit of the holiday, I had to share. These are my very first iced cookies ever. I think i did okay for a first try. If I can pull it off so can you! I went to CakeCentral.com and got a cut-out cookie recipe and gave it a try. I used almond and vanilla flavors.

For those of you who are used to the rolls of pre-made cookie dough you should know that cut-out dough is much thicker. It will have to be rolled out. The cut-out dough will actually hold it's shape though. The pre-made stuff just spreads everywhere in the oven. The icing is a very simple to make. There are several recipes on CC too. Simply outline with thicker icing and fill in with thinned icing. You can drag a toothpick with a different color though to make details.

A few tips. Flour keeps the cookie dough from sticking to things like the pan, rolling pin and cookie cutters. I used a tip #3 to outline the cookie. You can wet your finger and run it over the fully iced cookie to help smooth it, you can also use a damp pastry paintbrush. Don't be afraid to play with designs. I did a lot of cookies. Some with different tips for effects ect. Have fun with it. Even if it's not cute it will still taste good!  : )

Hat Cake

This is a fun concept. It's not super easy but practice makes perfect. If you try this and it does't come out perfect don't give up. This is for my Father-In-Law and he is going to love it no matter what, so I got brave and gave this a try.


I used MMF for all the stuff you see and buttercreme for the inside. I dried the brim over a real hat, covered in plastic food wrap. Took about 4 days to harden completely. Then I flipped and let the top dry for about half a day.

The cakes were baked round then carved into the oval shape. The parts that were cut off were re-used on the top of the cake to give the rounded effect at the top. I used a very sharp knife to remove sections on the top sides to make the indent you see. Carving is a delicate process. You can always take more off but it's a pain to put it back on, so slow is best on those areas.

The cake is a bit lumpy but all things considered I think it came out okay. 

Poured MMF

I went on a hunt trying to find a place that says you can use poured MMF on cupcakes and I did not find one. So I altered the Satin ice recipe to try it out. I'm a huge MMF fan. Satin Ice isn't readily available in my area so I needed to know if I could do something else. ready to know how it worked out??

Great! Make the MMF to the standard recipe that you are used to working with. Once it is set up place some in a microwave safe bowl. Add a tsp of water and heat until mostly melted. You want to aviod boiling or burning it. Add small amounts of water at a time. You want a kind of think paste consistancy. Not too runny and not stiff. I know it's called "poured fondant" but for cupcakes I prefer to turn the cupcakes over into the bowl and dip the tops. :) I'm a rebel like that. I feel that it makes a much cleaner edge and it's easier to control. So if you were waiting to try poured MMF, now you know.

On this picture: The line breaks are intentional. The red is buttercreme. I dipped the cupcakes twice to make sure it wasn't see-through at all. Let is dry between dips. You can re-heat the MMF as long as you're careful not to burn it or boil it. :)

The taste was ok. My family seemed to not mind my practicing. hahaha

Random Luau Stuff and Things

Hey people. Here's some stuff for the kiddo's Luau party.

My little one asked for the fruit arrangment. Well, she asked for "fruit on a stick!" lol!! She loved the last one so I threw together another one for her. The pineapple cake was supposed to stand up... um... as you can see that didn't go as planned. Hey, I'm learning!

If you make a standing pineapple cake you should know a few things. First off, you will need the internal pillars to hold the weight. You will also need larger cakes. You can't make a 4-5 inch cake to hold up that kind of height and weight. For some reason I guessed that my cake could defy gravity. ROTFL!! When it fell over we all agreed to just let it lay there.

Tomorrow when we set up we are going to put "sand" (powdered graham crakers) around it with the luau cupcakes. No big deal. It was about time I had my own cake wreck. At least I learned.

           
Here are the cupcakes. They are sand colored buttercrem with bright sprinkles and topped with a drink umbrella. We thought it was festive and fun.                 
           

Another edit. No one at the party cared about the laying pineapple. Least of all my daughter who loves any cake standing or otherwise. lol!! It tasted great and was gone quickly. Who knew an end of summer luau could be so much fun?!
          

I'm throwing in a nice bright card too. I love using a paper piercer to make holes as a decoration. That's weird, huh? Either way here ya go. SU! ink and stamps, the paper is Chatterbox and Bazzill.

Outdoor Sheet Cake

You all know how much I like sheet cakes right? Yea, not at all. I put aside my dislike for sheet cakes to make this half sheet outdoor cake for my brother.

Obviously, it is chocolate. I didn't smooth the icing on the top because I liked the idea of it being all rough, as it is supposed to be ground. The river is bc base with piping gel over top. Trees are bc on pretzel sticks. The tent and sticks for the fire are made out of chocolate. Grass all over and there ya have it.

This cake takes a lot of icing so make several batches. The icing for the trees needs to be stiff so they don't droop.

Click for larger picture. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Polka Dot Cake

Hey again! Today is my birthday! We must have cake!
           

The dots are cut with the carnation circle and the stripes are made with the tulip leaf cutter (gum paste cutter set). I wanted stripes that were not the same. I'm tired of the same ol' dot and stripe cake so that was my solution. MMF, as usual, no shock there. BC under.
                    

This cake stand is simply a large candle holder purchased at a discount store for $4. It was prefect for this cake! The cake board fit right inside in inset area on the candle holder making this cake very stable. Neat idea for an interesting cake stand.  : ) 

 Happy Birthday to me! I'm going to eat it now.   Yum!!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes

These were fun to make! They are peanut butter cupcakes covered and filled with melted chocolate. We just had to try these. The kiddo approves!

If you want to fill the cupcakes with chocolate just use your cupcake filler tip. I dipped the cupcakes into the melted chocolate and set them aside to dry a little. That is peanut butter candy melts drizzled over the top. Easy to do. I love peanut butter so it wasn't "peanutty" enough for me. I think next time I'll put more in.

Forgive the messy-ness of my cupcakes. I was in a hurry to make some dessert for tonight. This was all stuff I had in my kitchen already, on hand makes everything faster!