Birthday Ice Cream Brownie Cake

My sweet husband had a birthday recently, and his one request was brownies. No cake. Just brownies. I asked him if I could fancy up the brownies a bit. He said I could put stuff on top of it, but as for the brownies, he just wanted the normal Betty Crocker brownies--nothing extra in it.

I held true to his request and began by baking 2 6" square brownies from the Betty Crocker mix. Then the fun began...

My inspiration was brownie sundaes and banana splits, so I began by layering sliced bananas on top of one of the brownies, then drizzling fudge and caramel over that. If you want a super easy way to drizzle those 2 things evenly, then all you need to do is put some in a ziplock baggie, snip the tip off, and squeeze. It even works with room temp fudge sauce.

I had also frozen a 6" square block of vanilla ice cream. Make sure you freeze it really well. My first attempt was kind of a disaster and I layered the ice cream on the brownie when it was still slightly soft. Even putting it directly back into the freezer for awhile, it was a soupy mess when I came back, so I had to start all over.

The ice cream needs caramel and fudge too! Time for more drizzling.

Then I just stuck the 2nd brownie layer on top. Now for some decorating, I decided to line the whole thing with kit kats--one of my husband's favorite candy bars. It made it look kind of like a basket. Simple but fun. You can use some fudge sauce as the glue to hold them on.

Then I just filled in the top with some reddi-whip and more fudge and caramel. Here you can fancy it up even more with nuts, sprinkles, cherries, etc. I just know my husband doesn't like any of that, so we kept it more simple (but can't you imagine how cute it would be if you used maraschino cherries as candle holders? Way cute).

Well, it was a success. As you can tell, my husband, as well as my daughter, liked it a lot. They dug right in before I could stop them.

In retrospect, I would change one thing, and leave out the bananas. I just wasn't too fond of them in there. I guess that brownies sundaes and banana splits don't totally go together for my palate, but maybe you would like it. Hmmm...maybe I would also use mint chocolate chip ice cream instead of vanilla...or cookies n' cream...okay I'd better stop--I'm starting to crave ice cream, and this pregnant woman probably doesn't need anymore ice cream.

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.