Megan and Dusty's Wedding Cake

It was wedding time again in our family--this time was my niece Megan's turn. Her colors were black and white with hot pink accents. She found a cake design she liked and all I had to do was copy it.

It was 4 tiers tall: 6", 10", 14", and 18" squares. The bottom tier was actually a styrofoam layer since they didn't need that much cake. I did the 6" and 14" layers in a butter-almond cake with layers of rasberry filling and vanilla buttercream. The 10" layer was a chocolate cake with layers of chocolate ganache and vanilla buttercream. I was very happy with how moist the cakes stayed even when I had to assemble them 2 days before the wedding.

This is a before-flowers shot after I had finished all the decorating. I did all the black detailing using chocolate royal icing that I dyed black--dyeing it black was more of a challenge than I anticipated, but after adding extra cocoa powder to my frosting and a full large tub of black food coloring paste, I finally got it black. Luckily it was only for the outside detailing, because it sure tasted aweful with all that food coloring in it.


Being from the same Disney-loving family that my last wedding cake went to, I had to keep tradition by hiding a hidden mickey on the cake. It was pretty obvious, but I stuck it in the back to make it a little more inconspicuous.


Megan's fiance Dusty didn't want to be left out from the special additions, so he requested a hidden Y on the cake, since he is an avid BYU sports fan. This is the best I could do while still keeping with the scroll design.


And here's the cute couple cutting the cake. We are very excited to have Dusty join our family.(Don't mind my nephew's head sticking out from behind the cake.)


It was another wonderful wedding. We really enjoyed the day full of celebration and are very happy for Megan and Dusty to begin their life together as an eternal family.

4th of July Pavlova

I know you may not believe it, but I do like to make things sometimes other than cake. This 4th of July I decided to take a basic pavlova recipe and turn it into an American flag. This is super easy to do, and very yummy (if you like meringue, which I LOVE!).

First make a basic meringue shell. I doubled the recipe I had since I had 6 egg whites on hand instead of 3 that it calls for. To make this size cake you probably want more than one recipe, but a full double is a little too much, unless you like your meringue shell really thick (which I do, so no harm done there). Here is the recipe for the shell (modified from a recipe found in Good Housekeeping Best Recipes 1998):

3 large egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c sugar

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 275 F. Beat egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt on high until whites begin to mound. Continue beating on high speed while adding the vanilla and gradually adding in the sugar, 2 T at a time, beating well after each addition, until all the sugar is completely dissolved, and the meringue forms stiff, glossy peaks when beaters are lifted.

Spoon meringue onto the parchment lined cookie sheet, and spread it out into a rectangle (however big you want your flag). I like to make the edges a little higher than the rest of the shell.

Bake meringue for 1 hour 15 min. Then turn off oven, but leave the meringue inside the warm oven for an additional hour to dry out. Then remove from oven and transfer meringue and parchment paper to cooling rack to cool completely.

At this point you can store the shell in an airtight container for a few days, or fill and serve that day, but once filled you should eat it fairly soon.

Now here is where you can go the easy route or a little more difficult route--the filling. There are many different variations out there for a pavlova filling--recipes using sw/cond milk, yogurt, heavy cream, etc. I choose this time to simply fill it with a tub of cool whip, although I have a lime pavlova recipe that is super yummy that I usually use. Simply spread the filling in your shell.

Then the fun decorating part takes place. Using sliced strawberries and blueberries, turn your pavlova into a patriotic American Flag, perfect for the 4th of July, flag day, veteran's day, President's day, or any other day you feel like. You could also shape the meringue into a heart for Valentines day, or and egg for Easter...so many fun possibilities.

The March of the Penguins

There is a bake sale tomorrow--the proceeds going towards helping a girl in our community battling lymphoma. I wanted to make something for it that would be cute and special.



I wish that I could say this idea was an original of mine, but unfortunately I can't. I got the idea from one of my all-time favorite cake books--Hello, Cupcake! Seriously--if you only went out and bought one cupcake book ever, I would strongly suggest this one.

Because of copywrite laws, I probably can't explain to you how to make these. You'll just need to go out and pick up a copy of the book yourself, but here are a couple pictures showing my progress...

When I got to this point I started thinking of all kinds of things I could make with this basic shape--dip them in warmed white icing, add eyes, and voila--ghosts for Halloween. Or if you are big into badmitton (hey, there's got to be a few of you out there), dip it white, then dip the tip in a different color and you have a badmitton birdie. Let your imagination run wild.

Hmmm...what to call my goup of penguins. According to WikiAnswers: A group of penguins on land is a waddle. The nesting group is a rookery. A group of babies is a creche. A group on water is a raft. And a group of penguins in general is known as a Parcel. I learn something new everyday.

So there will be a dozen of these cute little guys at the bake sale. Please go and buy them and everything else you see. Spend LOTS of money. Skip the dieting for this weekend. Here is the information on the bake sale:

"Come join us at a bake sale to benefit the treatment of Krystol Simpson in
her fight back against Lyphoma.

"Saturday, June 26th from 9am to 4pm at 2304 Thayer Avenue, Henderson, NV
89074"

Hamburger Cake Balls

I had a bunch of leftover cake from my last project ("It's a Baby Girl"), so I decided to make some cake balls with it. I had seen a post recently on Bakerella that showed these cute little hamburger cake balls. Since Father's Day was a couple days away, I thought these would be perfect (my husband loves hamburgers).

They are pretty simple to do. It just requires dipping the cake balls in different colors of candy melts to get the hamburger, lettuce, tomato, and buns. I probably could have taken a little more time to make them a little nicer, but it was already 10pm the night before Father's Day when I finally started dipping, so I kind of rushed things. I also wish that I had some white nonpareils to sprinkle on top for the sesame seeds, but all I had was a bottle of multi-colored ones, and I really didn't want to hand pick out all the little white ones (some things just aren't worth it!). For detailed instructions and to see ones with the nonpareils on top, check out Bakerella's post here.

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.