I will gladly admit that I'm not up for elaborate birthday parties with 3D character cakes for all my kids every year. Sadly, this means, the youngest one has never gotten a "cool" birthday cake. But this was his year. I picked the theme. Can you tell? Otherwise, it would be a combination of Mutant Ninja Turtles (something he knows nothing about) and race cars. We've always been a fan of Meomi's Octonauts long before the books became a show on Disney (not my favorite kids channel).  I prefer birthday parties where I can let all the kids lose out in the backyard but unfortunately, this little guy's birthday is in the winter. I thought I would make an effort at decorating this time, armed with way too many Pinterest ideas. So many in fact, I ran out of time to blow up the carefully color selected balloons and a few other details. I made Peso Penguin's medical suitcase with the Silhouette Cameo machine. I got put that thing to use to justify its cost. And...

For  Monkey Pants eighth birthday, I did a smallish party.  I'm not much for all out theme parties, but I like to have a general idea to motivate the cake design and colors.  I decided on Lalaoopsy .  Keeping the cake simple is always a goal these days. I used a couple of ideas from Pintrest like the rainbow colored fruit ca bobs and I couldn't resist the milk bottle drinks with ridiculously expensive paper straws. I couldn't resist OK! [Tip: Novelty milk bottles are ridiculously priced. I used a coupon and bought Starbucks coffee in these glass bottles for a lot cheaper. My husband didn't mind drinking all the coffee. I'm more of a tea person.  The labels came off easily.  I used these contact paper chalk board labels for names, which also come off with no residue]. For lunch, I made pigs in blanket with croissants (I don't know why they're not on that orange tray), sweet potato fries in individual containers, and some assort...

Now that I'm a mom of three young kids, my enthusiasm for attempting to make 3D cakes, planning birthday parties, and waking up in general, has gone out the window.  I've been trying to keep it kind of low-key lately on these things.  However, my food-allergies-son turned five and now that he has outgrown some of his food allergies such as milk, soy and eggs, I can no longer hide behind the excuse for not making him a cake.  So this was to be his big I-can-now-eat-cake celebration.  I obliged him with a real cake and a real party. I always get a bit nervous about birthday parties no matter how "simple" I tell myself I'm going to make it.  My son has been feeding me his birthday party expectations ideas since the moment his fourth birthday party was over. Expectations Ideas, I couldn't possibly meet.  The problem is, he has an incredible memory and I knew he would remember each and every one of his requests.  A few days before his birthday...

Cruise Almond Cake. I had already started eating it when I decided to take a picture of it. We recently got back from a cruise (we almost never go anywhere, so this was a first) in which I gained three pounds in five days.  That's because, the main activity on a cruise is eating.  While a lot of things were good and a few were terrible (i.e. the popcorn), only one thing really spoke to my heart -the almond cake. When something speaks to my heart this way, I want to keep eating it and only it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Unfortunately, I only had one piece and I could barely get that to go down due to the amount of food I had already ingested that day. When I got home, I was craving this deliciousness, but it was about nine o'clock at night, the kids were in bed, and I wasn't about to discover how to make almond cake.  So I figured I still had time to indulge myself without being serious about baking.  I ground up some sliced almonds and put them ...

I made these grass and bunny butt cupcakes from Hello, Cupcake! They are in the original book . I'm not a huge fan of candy myself, or a fan of sugaring up my kids either, but I can't resist some of the cupcake layouts in this book. The only thing I don't like it having to hunt down all the candy. White chocolate covered peanuts for the bunny feet? Brown chocolate covered sunflower seeds for the foot pads? I couldn't find those and I didn't want to go to a special store either. I made them out of white fondant and just poured some chocolate syrup over the sunflower seeds (and it shows). But it was just for the kids and I knew they would not be that discriminating. I was right. No one even recognized the bunny butts in the soil. They're not dogs, people! The grass was a bit torturous too, so after the first three I made my husband do it. I sent him to get the candy too. So, in the end, I guess all I did was make the soil for the dirt cupcakes and put ...

For monkey pants' 6th birthday I decided on a gingerbread house sort of theme since she was dressing up as Gretel for Halloween. We made it a fairy tale costume party. I tried to keep the cake as simple as possible. I figured a nine inch round with a fondant bow around it and a gingerbread house on top made with a kit wouldn't be too much work. The only thing was that I couldn't find any gingerbread house kits. Finally on the day before the party I found some Halloween kits that I had resolved to get and redecorate. But on a last minute trip to Costco (my favorite store) I was saved by this well priced ($10.00) gingerbread house kit that was already assembled! It's a Christmas one but I just added some fondant details to make it a little more Hansel and Gretel like. I have to admit, I was going for speed while decorating the gingerbread house and while I thought it was fabulous that the white icing was included in the kit I could not make anything neat look...

My little boy's favorite show is Super Why on PBS. His options are somewhat limited and very guided ; )  Trying to keep it simple.  Fondant, 2-tier cake with simple cut out decorations and printed Super Why figures on toothpicks.

For my son's birthday, I decided to take an easier approach to the cake this year, so I went with cupcakes. A while back, my sister went to New York and brought me back this cupcake book, Hello, Cupcake . It has a lot of creative ideas decorating cupcakes with candy. I picked what looked like one of the easiest designs in the book which I thought was well suited for a two year old. Now, I'm not much of a candy person --OK, I'm not a candy person at all, so I had a bit of a time just locating the three or four different candies needed for the alligator cupcakes. In fact the Newman's Own Alphabet cookies were the hardest to find. But I finally tracked it all down and I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Sadly, since I'm only running at half brain power these days, I forgot to put the teeth on. But I was quite pleased with myself that I happened to have a piece of brown linen fabric which I quickly sewed the edges on and some fresh lily flowers from our lit...

I was asked to make a wedding cake earlier this year and not having made any cakes for a while, I eagerly agreed.  Somehow I decided that it would be manageable despite the fact that the wedding date was my son's birthday and I don't think I was yet aware that I would be four months pregnant.  Nevertheless, this cake was much less stressful than the first wedding cake I made a year ago for my nephew although still a lot of work. It's a four tier fondant cake decorated with pale pink gerber daisies and black gross grain ribbon.  The bride was kind of going for a vintage-y country look loosely based on this Martha Stewart cake.  She wanted the cake on a porcelain pedestal but we couldn't find one big enough to accommodate the largest tier which was 14" in diameter.  I used a scalloped cake plate on top of a smaller ceramic pedestal to try to achieve the general feel she was going for.  Again, I had my friend help me with the fondant and this time also w...

I made a 6" round mini cake for my niece's 3rd birthday with a left over fairy from the Tinkerbell package and some other "left over" items. I was going for ultra easy and fast. I think this one might be even cuter than the Tinkerbell cake. Maybe just a little more sophisticated I guess. Not too 3-year old like, I guess. "Silvermist" is the fairy of water for those not properly educated in fairies.

Really trying to keep it simple this time for an adult birthday cake for my friend. I still spent probably about four hours on it, in part because I decided to try to make swiss meringue buttercream from a recipe in The Confetti Cakes Cookbook (which I frugally and very uncharacteristically checked out from the library). I usually use cherry or raspberry pie filling or opt for the safer and time cutting store bought icing. The store bought icing is super stable and you don't have to worry about it melting, plus you don't have to clean up bowls and beaters. I'm not a fan of the cleanup process. On the down side, it's made up mostly of hydrogenated vegetable shortening and various preservatives. Anyway, the recipe promises the swiss meringue buttercream is great for sculpted cakes and very stable. You can even leave it out at room temperature for two days! I was convinced to try it. It's made with sugar, egg whites, and unsalted butter. So I tried it, but I did not f...

I made something! A friend of a friend ..... needed a cake made for her daughter's fourth birthday. I came up with a few ideas, trying to keep them uncomplicated. She opted for the more traditional nine inch round cake with decorations. I thought it would be simple enough, but it always ends up taking me way longer than I anticipate. I wish I could go to a professional cake decorating class by Debbie Brown or Rebecca Sutterby so I could learn some techniques like how to get things to stay glued on. I could never be a cake decorator -my time to money ratio is kind of ridiculous. But here it is. Monkey Pants now wants a Tinkerbell cake for her next birthday too, of course. I need to wake up early tomorrow to make sure she's not eating the mushrooms off of it. (It's happened before).

Having done the 3D pumpkin and frog cakes for my daughter's previous birthdays, I decided to do something more of a traditional cake shape but stylized this year. I thought I would do a cute polka dot and bows type of thing to tip the scales more towards a feminine balance. So a couple of days ago I came up with this idea inspired by a Meomi 's September desktop calendar that I totally loved. It didn't turn out exactly as I had envisioned it and I wish I had more time to have added a couple extra details. Because I've only been doing cakes in fondant, I'm not used to making decorations with butter cream anymore so my fern leaves were very blob-y. I should have used royal icing but that pesky time thing again. Although this cake is pretty gender neutral I think it fit the "cute" requirement I was looking for. "Monkey pants" gets so excited about cake she even ate the pine cone guy. She also caused me a lot more work when I left her eating her l...

This is the first wedding cake I've ever made. It's a very simple cake but it was very stressful not knowing if I would be able to pull it off for such an important occasion. There's not exactly a plan B scenarios if something goes wrong. But it all worked out. The cake was french vanilla with raspberry filling; butter cream on the outside covered with ivory " Fondx " fondant. This was the first time using this fondant which I had to order online. I've only used Wilton fondant before on birthday cakes. I was hoping this fondant would be more workable and taste better, plus I wanted to get one that was already colored ivory. I took a gamble but it paid off. It had a lot more elasticity than the Wilton fondant so it didn't wrinkle as much when covering the cakes and it tasted way better, more natural. I used a milk glass stand from a set of stands I got for my birthday last year. I love these cake stands because I have them in four different sizes and they ...