It's a . . .

We got some exciting news today at the doctors for my ultrasound. I wanted to share it with all of you . . .

Due November 13th. Abby is excited to get a baby sister, and we are excited to have another little girl join our family.


Aren't these mini-cupcakes darling? I couldn't help myself today, and had to make something to celebrate. I got inspired by an idea I saw here, and changed it up a little.

Beckham's Soccer Cake

I'm back. I know it's been way too long since I made anything and posted anything on my blog. I have a really good excuse, though. It's called morning sickness. It hit a couple of weeks after my last post and is still going, but is slowly going I way...I think...I hope...fingers crossed.

I did get to do a fun cake last weekend for one of the cutest little boys in the world--Beckham. I have the wonderful privilege of babysitting him about once a week while his mom works (and she does the same for me with my little girl about once a week when I work--it works out perfectly--thank you Rachele!). His name being Beckham, of course it was a soccer theme for his first birthday.

So I went back and forth as to how to do the soccer ball part of the cake. I used Wilton's sports ball pan, but I couldn't decide if I should cover it in buttercream or fondant. It being a first birthday and the tradition of the birthday child digging in with their fingers, I wanted buttercream, but I really like working in fondant, and I knew it would look more how I envisioned it, so I decided to do the ball in fondant, but put it on a 9 inch round cake which I would cover in lemon buttercream to resemble grass. Problem solved!

I took some black icing to fill in the lines--still not sure if I would have liked white lines better or not. The black shows all the little mistakes and is hard to get off the fondant to clean up a bit. Maybe next time I'll try white lines. Still, all in all it wasn't too bad.

Do you like my little birthday Beckham guy on the cake. You tell me, does he look like the real thing...
What a cute little kid. He sure had fun digging in to the cake (which was a lemon cake with rasberry filling and lemon buttercream icing-yum!)

You should have seen the cute table that Rachele put together. Super cute. This is only the center part of it. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the whole table for you to see. She went all out.

Now I can't leave without showing you my two favorite people--my husband and little girl. They had a blast at the party, especially on the water pad at the park--can't you tell?!

and here are all the cute kiddos. What a fun group of kids! They sure had fun.

Dr. Seuss Cupcakes

It's Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2nd. I heard that Lakeshore Learning was doing a Dr. Seuss birthday party with crafts and storytime for the kids, and I got into the Dr. Seuss spirit and wanted to try to make some cupcakes inspired by this great author and have some friends over before heading down to Lakeshore Learning for the crafts.

I knew I wanted some of them to be with green eggs and ham. That was my favorite Dr. Seuss book growing up. I couldn't think how to make the ham. Then it came to me--cake balls. I actually have never made them before, but have wanted to try them out. Super easy. Just bake a cake in a 9x13 pan, let it cool, then crumble it up, and mix a tub of icing in with it. Now comes the fun (and somewhat messy part)--roll the mixture into balls, or whatever shape you need (mine are cute little hams). Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet and refrigerate for several hours.

Then take candy melts in whatever color you choose (I of course picked green). Melt them in a microwave on 20 second intervals, stirring inbetween. Then have fun dipping. A spoon with a toothpick to help push the balls off the spoon worked just great for me. Once it is dry you can take a knife and trim the excess chocolate off the cake balls. That is your basic cake ball.

Now here is where I started to have some creative fun--a dot of white candy melts in the center for the bone.

and some painted lines to give it the Seussified ham effect. (I used some brown food coloring paste mixed with a little clear vanilla--the Food Writers that Wilton puts out didn't seem to write at all on the chocolate candy melts)

Just frost some cupcakes in chocolate and add a couple of eggs made from blobs of melted white and green candy melts, and voila--Green Eggs and Ham

The Cat in the Hat cupcakes were super easy. I found this idea on line. First you need some kind of red, round candy. Red lifesavers work great, but I opted for the red cinnamon discs from Walmart. They were perfect for the hat.

I just layered them with blobs of vanilla icing to get these cute little hats.

I definitely would eat these in a box, and I would eat them with a fox. I would eat them here or there. I would eat them everywhere! How about you?

Why stop there? I needed an excuse to purchase a bag of my favorite candy--swedish fish. (I have been craving them for a couple of weeks and needed a definite sugar fix). Why not include them in my set up--you know, incorporate the "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" theme. No blue fish to be found, but I'm fine with just red.

And I just had to throw in a hidden Mickey on one of the cupcakes. Call it my signature statement (that I'm kind of just starting, so maybe I can't call it a "signature statement" quite yet). Hopefully Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss liked each other, or they may not have been too happy with my incorporation of their two worlds.

Thank you for having a birthday, Dr. Seuss. It gave me a good excuse to be creative this weekend. It is such a destresser for me.

Valentine's Cupcakes

I'm on a cupcake kick. I blame the book 101 Cupcakes for this. There are just too many scrumptious sounding recipes in it. I feel the need to try them all. I tried 2 new ones for these cupcakes: Black Forest Chocolate and Chocolate Mayonnaise.

I took one chocolate cake mix, divided it into 2 separate bowls, and made a half-recipe of each flavor. So easy. This book is great . . . well, almost. I struggled with her Chocolate Mayonnaise recipe. I followed it exactly, but all it called for was the cake mix, mayonaise, and a little bit of water. When I mixed it all together it was a solid glob--nothing like a normal cake batter consistency. Strange. I don't know--maybe this is how it is supposed to be--but I was skeptical, so I turned to google, and found other Chocolate Mayonnaise recipes. They all had a little more water and some eggs, so I added in the eggs and water, and it turned out perfect.

I did follow 101 Cupcakes suggestion to use a cream cheese frosting with the Chocolate Mayonnaise cupcake. She was right--those 2 flavors tasted fabulous together.

I piped some hearts with white candy melts dyed pink. Just the right touch, don't you think?

Black forest has always been one of my favorite flavors, so I was way excited for this recipe (did you know that Blue Bunny used to put out a Black Forest yogurt--I ate it every morning for over a year--scrumptious!--then they discontinued production of that flavor--Catastrophe!--that was a sad day at my house when I found that out).

I made a whipped chocolate ganache for the icing that I piped on with a large star tip, making a cup in the center that I filled in with extra cherry pie filling. Can you just say Heavenly?! Totally my favorite--although everyone else I talked to like the chocolate mayonaise better--go figure. I didn't tell most people that it was Chocolate Mayonaise until after they tried it because I didn't want them to be biased before hand (I mean really--who would have thought Mayonaise in cake would taste good, but it totally does--trust me).

Well, with a few minor adjustments to at least one of the recipes, these cupcakes turned out great, and I will definitely mark these recipes as keepers.

Valentine's Surprise

I got him good! I totally surprised my husband for Valentine's Day with this cake. He had no idea I had made it (I totally lucked out Saturday night too--he said he'd probably get done studying around 9:30 at night then come home--I frantically decorated the cake--I finally finished at 11:15pm, hid the cake, and hurried and cleaned up, and he walked in the door at 11:25pm--studying took longer than he thought...well, come to find out he was making me a cute Valentine card at school which took him longer than he planned, and totally surprised me too with that and a voucher to go to a nice Italian restaurant--yes, I'm obsessed with anything Italian).

I saw this idea online, and just had to make it. It was too cute to pass up. I made a double fudge chocolate cake in my heart pan, filled it with chocolate ganache, covered it in a thin coating of vanilla icing, then white fondant, and then with different colored fondant hearts, cutting them out so they would fit snuggly together and look like overlapping conversation hearts.

Then I took an edible food writer marker and wrote the messages on the hearts, and finished it off by putting real conversation hearts around the bottom. A cake almost too cute to eat...but don't worry, we cut right into it after dinner and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Sidenote: Conversation hearts through the years:

"Call Me" (1980s), "Email Me" (1990s), "Text me" (2000s), "Tweet Me" (2010s). What will be next? We'll just have to wait and see. (Chris thinks "Beam me up Hottie" is a definite possibility)

101 Gourmet Cupcakes

Okay, I've just discovered this book...well, actually my sweet sister gave it to me for Christmas, but I finally decided to try it out this week. LOVE IT! Seriously, this book is awesome.

Wendy Paul has come up with so many scrumptious cupcake recipes. After looking through this book I started dreaming about cupcakes--chocolate rasberry trifle, chocolate caramel surprise, banana struesel, peach cobbler--wow, my mouth is watering again just mentioning them.

Besides the fact that these recipes all sound downright delicious, this book is great because she takes regular cake mixes and just adds additional ingredients to create these masterpieces of desserts. Also, you don't have to do one whole batch of one flavor. Instead, pick 2 or 3 recipes that use the same cake mix as the base and just half or third the recipe, thereby being able to make 2-3 different flavors simultaneously. Amazing.

Here is my first trial of a couple of her recipes--the Lemon Blueberry and the Lemon Cream, both with a Lemon Whipped Cream icing on top. The Lemon Blueberry was my favorite--such a yummy combination of flavors. The Lemon Cream was good too, although I think it would have been much better if I had used regular cream cheese and regular sour cream instead of the fat free stuff I had on hand (but I guess I'm more apt to eat them if I know they are slightly healthier for me :)

Adam and Rachel Larsen's Wedding Cake

Success! I made a wedding cake for my nephew Adam and his cute fiance (now wife) Rachel during the Christmas holiday. I was worried with how it would actually turn out, but once I finished I was very happy with the final product.

It was a 3 tier cake (6", 10" and 14" round layers), with each tier being a little less than 6" high. The bottom and top tier were chocolate with a chocolate ganache filling, with the middle tier being a marble cake with chocolate ganache filling.

Rachel had told me that she wanted a cake with fondant bows/draping that looked like piece of fabric and been pulled loosely around that cake and tied in a bow instead of the look of a piece of ribbon pulled around and tied. It was rather difficult to maneuver a piece of fondant long enough to wrap around the 14" bottom and sculpt it right, but with the help of my wonderful husband and his 2 hands and mine, we were able to get it just right before the fondant ripped and cracked. After it had all dried I painted it with white luster dust mixed with clear vanilla to give it a satin sheen.

She also wanted me to duplicate the lace motif that was on her dress onto the cake. I piped the lace design with royal icing, painted the middle with white luster dust+vanilla mixture, and added edible 4mm pearls. (Here is a picture of pieces of her lace)

To finish it off Chris dry luster dusted the entire cake (while I was painting the inside of the lace design) and we added an 8mm edible pearl border to the middle tier. Because my nephew is such a huge Disney fan, I added a "hidden Mickey" in the pearl border. It was a hit. Everyone at the reception was looking all over the cake trying to find the hidden mickey. I may put a hidden mickey in all my cakes now. It makes the cakes more interactive!