iheartcakegf

The first week of September brings two birthdays in my household. Landing right amongst the flurry of fall activities. At this point I really should be better prepared, but I'm not, every year the craziness catches me off guard.

First, there is my husband's birthday.
I would like to point out that my husband doesn't eat cake. But, for some reason, I have to make him one anyway. Fortunately I have discovered the joy of the mini cake so we weren't stuck with absolutely obscene amounts of cake in our house. 
The man who doesn't like cake, is also, as I've probably said before, a Star Wars dork. This year he requested a Jawa. I try to know as little about Star Wars as possible, but I will tell you that Jawas live on a desert planet and they are scavengers and they like hamburgers. Maybe I shouldn't try hand out Star Wars knowledge. But, I'm pretty sure that this Jawa does like hamburgers. 
This is banana cake with cream cheese icing as a filling. It's covered primarily in chocolate fondant.

Two days after his birthday is my oldest's birthday. This year she had to take her birthday treat to school the day after daddy's birthday. I really didn't think this through and felt really rushed with this project.

The birthday girl asked for lemon and coconut cake. Really, she did. I had already bought everything to make strawberry cake though, because she always wants strawberry, because it's pink. Kids always have to change things up on you. We decided to try for strawberry lemonade cupcakes, but she didn't give me much direction on how to decorate them. 
She loves High School Musical and after much searching I found this super cute cakelet from Cupcake Envy. This is no where near as cute or well executed but it served it's purpose, which was to not make the cupcakes look so random. Because I'm crazy. Because I'm sure a room full of 2nd graders really could care less about the "theme" of the cupcakes. They're just happy if they get to eat one.

And of course we had to have cake for her actual birthday, because if I have learned one thing, it's that a birthday isn't a birthday without cake.
I went the mini cake route again, this one is chocolate coconut cake with coconut cream filling. My daughter came up with the flavor again, she's apparently big into combining flavors right now.
It's a dance bag, made to look, at least in colors, slightly like her own dance bag.

Little ballet and jazz shoes, as they are the dance classes that she takes.

Thankfully, we decided to to her birthday party a little later in the month. So, I didn't have a big cake to do for her, but I did agree to make a cake for a friend. Don't know what I was thinking!

In the midst of all my family's birthdays, I made this chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream for her husband's 30th birthday. It's covered in marshmallow fondant and the design for the bra was piped with royal icing.

It's taken me forever and 6 days to get this post up, so I'm back tracking a bit with this. Last month one of my little minions turned 4. Now for Mama birthdays are kind of bittersweet; it's a celebration, yes, but it also means my babies are getting bigger. To keep my emotions in check, we'll concentrate on the celebration part.


For starters, my baby girl needed a treat to share at school.

She requested "princess cake on a stick," and this is what I came up with. The crowns are cut from marshmallow fondant. Inside they are purple because purple is what the birthday girl requested. It is amazing how much the color of something can change the flavor, I could barely recognize it was strawberry cake. 


Since she didn't have school on her actual birthday, I also had make something for her birthday. I mean, what's a birthday without cake!

She loves frogs so I made her this little frog prince cake. Cookies-n-Cream cake covered in marshmallow fondant.

Wonder what's gonna happen?


So... school treats... birthday treats... what are we missing here? Oh yeah, a party! And party we did.

We had a joint party with a good friend who's little girl was also turning 4, my daughter insisted on a princess cake. 

Pretty princessy, huh?


Strawberry cake with vanilla cream filling covered in marshmallow fondant, with fondant and gumpaste decorations. I figured that each little princess needed their own cake so they each got their own princess.

The Great Falls Mama's are gearing up for the March of Dimes March for Babies. Please help support their team here.

Inspired by Cupcake Envy, these mini cakes are white cake with buttercream icing covered in marshmallow fondant.

The March of Dimes spends 76 cents of every dollar raised in the March for Babies to support research and programs that help babies begin healthy lives. Help every baby to be born healthy by supporting the Great Falls Mama's March for Babies team.

I made this cake for our playgroup's Easter party.

The basket was brown sugar cake with brown sugar buttercream. The bunny and chick were coconut cake with chocolate buttercream. Everything was covered in marshmallow fondant.

I used edible easter grass in the basket.

The eggs were coconut cake on a stick, with a surprise inside.

Yokes!
Yeah, I know, I'm a dork

Yeah, I know it's late, but, better late than never. Right?

I was already late with the post, then I typed it up twice and somehow lost the entire thing! My computer skills are lackluster at best.

I made this basket full of goodies to share with friends on St. Patrick's Day.

Green Velvet cake on a stick with a butter icing.

I tried a few different things to decorate these.

First, I tried piping shamrocks onto them. That did not go so well.

Then, I tried piping shamrocks onto waxed paper and attaching them after they dried. This didn't go much better.

I couldn't get the sizing or shape right and when I attached them they looked silly.

Oh well.

They still tasted good and our friends enjoyed them.

In the mood to bake over the weekend, I opened myself up to suggestion on my Facebook page. This one came from my husband, Bacon cake.
I looked up several recipes; some sweet, some savory. This one was as sweet one. I actually ended up combining two recipes I found, this one for Bacon Maple cupcakes and one for Brown Sugar cupcakes. The flavor was interesting, I'm going to find a few brave friends to try it out for me. It's iced with Maple icing, which is yummy.
I don't do cupcakes often and suck at icing them. But, this icing job was exceptionally terrible (I'm blaming my bum arm), hence I only took a picture of one cupcake. 
I did end up with several more flavor ideas that looked like fun, hope to try some of them soon.

I was asked to make a cake for a baby shower with a yellow and white theme. I thought on it and thought on it, and finally decided on a diaper bag cake.

I made the bag, and added the little duck applique to break up all the yellow. The cake was chocolate with very chocolate buttercream filling, all covered in marshmallow fondant. The binkie was also molded from marshmallow fondant. 

I had some cake left and decided to make some cake on a stick to match the cake. 

One of my good friends had surgery recently and I wanted to get her a little "get well" something.  These are better than flowers, because you can eat them!

Peanut Butter cake on a stick. After dipping these I piped the petal outlines on with chocolate and dipped them in sugar crystals, then added the M&M center. You can't tell in these pictures but the pink sugar was almost iridescent, very cool. I had picked it up in the Target dollar section. I'm going to have to go back and stock up.

These were inspired by Cupcakeenvy (and if you haven't seen what they can do yet- go now and check it out!!! Seriously they are awesome). I made these little books for the teachers at my daughter's school. There were three flavors vanilla, lemon and chocolate, all were covered in mmf. Each is 1-2 servings. They were fun to make, but I completely stressed myself out over the board! Once I was done I had no idea how I was going to deliver them. I had to come up with something to put them on and was really wracking my brain. Of course, once I put the cakes on the board you couldn't even see all the work I'd done. Oh well, I knew it was there.
I also have been told (by my husband) to give credit to my husband. He painted the eagles wings. Well, I painted them first but apparently wasn't "artistic" enough, so he came in behind me and "fixed them.

I recently acquired a new (to me) oven, of course I had to try it out and baked a single 9 inch round cake. It baked beautifully and then I was stuck wondering what to do with the cake. I had seen Bakerella make some wedding cakepops using cookie cutters to mold the cake and I'd just bought some mini cookie cutters, so i decided to give it a go. 

After they were shaped, I put them on a stick and dipped them in chocolate.


They were definitely lacking something.

That's better. How stinking cute are these guys! And they're tasty too, caramel vanilla cake-on-a-stick.