Merry Un-Birthday

For my daughter's 6th Birthday she wanted a Mad Hatter themed party. Keep in mind I said Mad Hatter NOT Alice in Wonderland. She was very careful to make sure I understood that.

A child after my own heart, she has fallen in love with Tim Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland and not that of the cartoon produced also by Disney. 

The party was to be dark and creepy. However, I knew there needed to be some color involved (we are talking about 5 and 6 year old girls) and I know not all children are as strange as mine. :)

I made the cake based on the Mad Hatter's hat from the animated Alice In Wonderland. 

I used a Wilton Food Writer to draw the "stitches" on the hat to make it look worn and used. I also used different color fondant to make the patches all over the hat. 

You can see the hat is leaning slightly, this was don eon purpose, again so it looks old and worn out. 

TT Tip: to make a cake lean like this one, I off set the layers of the cake and then used a bread knife to carve off the edges that hung over so it was smooth. I then added the dowels so it wouldn't fall over.

I decided to try my hand at making hand made embellishments to the cake because I can never stop when it comes to these things! lol

The Cheshire cat was made with a gum paste/fondant mix and so was the pink stopwatch. The details were put on again with the food writer and they were left to dry over a couple nights. As you can see there is also the famous 10/6 tag sticking out of the ribbon on the side. 

To throw in a little mischief I also added a card solider. The finishing touches were the doorknob and a few little mushrooms. 

TT Tip: To make the card bent, I laid it over a rolling pin over a few nights, once it hardened it held it's bent over shape. 

Because there were a few other fun "treats" to this party, I'm going to show those too. 

While shopping for last minute items at Party City, I came across some mini plastic teacups and mini rainbow spoons. 

I couldn't pass them up so I bought them without any plans as to what to do with them. In the end I decided on rainbow jello. It was a great way to add more color to the party and the size was perfect for the kids. They looked great on the table and they tasted great too!

S'mores Cupcakes

I've been on a new cupcake flavor kick lately and decided to try one of my kids favorite things as a recipe.
S'mores!!!

This is fun because just like a s'more the cupcake has 3 layers. Graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallow.

The graham cracker bottom was cooked for a few minutes before the batter was added so it was nice and crispy. Yum. 

TT Tip: Once the cupcakes are finished, you can garnish with a graham cracker or take a hand torch and torch the top a little, just like a real toasted marshmallow. 

The icing isn't really marshmallow because that would melt down and become a mushy mess, however, this home made icing tastes just as good as marshmallow and holds up much better. 

Chocolate Cookie Dough Cupcakes

I mentioned the other day that I have been wanting to try new recipes and I finally did.

I decided to go with a chocolate cookie dough cupcake recipe that I got from Annie's Eats. This is a great site with lots of fun recipes and I thought this would be a good one to try.

Most of the ingredients I had on hand but I did need to go out and get a few things like chocolate chips and extra brown sugar.

I used my big mixer with the paddle attachment to mix the batter in the beginning. This is great for creaming together butter and sugar.

Once the batter was all mixed together It was time to put it in the pan and get it into the oven. I made a batch without cupcake wrappers just to see how they would come out. As these are for testing anyway I figured it couldn't hurt.

They batter was heavy and thick, so baking time ran close to 20 minutes. I was so impressed by how nice they looked when they came out. They actually looked like chocolate cookies!

I knew from the beginning that I would need to make a filling. The filling was going to have to be chilled for an hour in the fridge as well so I started this right when the cupcakes went in. This way, by the time both batches had cooled it was time for the filling to come out. The cupcakes are to be filled so the center needed to be removed after cooling. The filling was made without eggs so it is like cookie dough without worrying about ingesting raw eggs :)

TT Tip: I recommend using a paring knife and cutting an upside down "cone" shape in the cupcake. Using a knife gives you more control and keeps the hole from becoming too big.

I also went ahead and made the icing while I waited. The icing ingredients were similar to the batter itself minus the rising agents and eggs. It also called for brown sugar AND confectioners sugar. This left the icing a tad gritty for me. I will have to look into ways to keep that from happening in the future.

Once the cupcakes were filed, I iced them using a Wilton tip and garnished them with mini chocolate chips.

The cupcakes were a great hit for everyone that tried them and I am really glad I took the time to try out the recipe. I will definitely be trying more soon and posting my tips and experiences here. Please feel free to share any questions you have. Thanks

Cupcake Fun

Sometimes it's just nice to make cupcakes for fun. Although I usually stick to making cupcakes and cakes for special events,this was a spur of the moment deal.

I made these very simply with a 5 year old helper. They were vanilla but for fun we tinted them purple with Wilton's gel color and added some very big sugar colors to the top.

The cupcakes were moist and very very yummy.

TT Tip: If you are making something for yourself or close family, consider going the semi home made way and but your frosting or use a box cake mix to save time. 

New Cupcake Flavors

I have recently come across some new flavors for cakes and cupcakes. If I am to be honest with myself (which I always try to be) I would like to try and make ALL of them today, right now!

This always happens when I come across something new. The problem is that I can't realistically make 2 or 3 dozen cupcakes to try out a new recipe. I don't want to eat all of the cupcakes ( and I will) and I also don't  have the time. With 3 kids and a house to keep in order, a new recipe takes time. It also takes tweaking.

Sometimes a recipe that works for one person, doesn't always work for the other.

It would be nice if I could get a babysitter for a few hours just so I could stay home and try out multiple recipes. I could then give the cupcakes and cakes away. Or heck, sell them at a bake sale of some sort. I wonder how legal it is to hold a bake sale out of your home if you are donating the money??
This will be something I will need to look into.

On that note, I would like to give myself a really good reason to try new recipes as well as bake to keep in practice and try new things. So if anyone in blog work would like to see something new, or wants to try a recipe but is worried about how it will come out, please let me know and I will make it first and post about it on my blog. Thanks!

Get Along Little Doggie! ( A Toy Story Cake)

This cake was made for a 6 year old girls birthday party! She really likes Jessie from Disney's Toy Story so this is what we came up with.

The whole cake is covered in vanilla flavored fondant. The bottom tier is made to look like blue jeans, complete with pockets and the zipper tab.

TT Tip: Do not try to stick fondant to itself with water. Because fondant is water based, it will melt and make a big mess, it is better to use butter cream, or a fondant and water "paste"

Because Jessie is a cowgirl, the second tier is covered with black cow spots. To break up the space between the 2 tiers there was a red fondant rope added.

TT Tip: Black fondant will fade if left in the sunlight or under flourecent lights, it's best to make anything black at the last min and try to leave it out of the light if possible. 

The color scheme of Jessie's character is blue, red, cow print and yellow. As this cake is for a girl,I had to add more color. The flowers that are on the cake are made from royal icing. They were left to harden and placed on with butter cream icing. When the cake was delivered, we added a Jessie figurine to the top.

BAMM, POW, ZING ( Simple Batman Cake)

Who doesn't love Super Hero's?! There are so many to choose from, making a Super Hero Cake might be a challenge. Luckily for me, I had a little fellow who knew just what he wanted. BATMAN!!!!






As he was going to be helping in the process, I wanted to make the cake simple. We went with an 8 inch round 2 layer white cake. Originally, I was going to cover the cake in fondant, but I didn't want him to feel left out so I went with butter cream.  I tinted the butter cream sky blue because we wanted to give the impression that the Batman emblem was in the sky.

The Batman sign is made of Fondant that I tinted black. The yellow background is also made of fondant and tinted golden yellow.

Twinkle Toes Tip: I trace the image I want to cut ( in this case the Batman sign) on to parchment paper, then I cit it out and lay the paper over the fondant to get a great likeness to the real thing. 


The border around the cake are small fondant balls tinted black. The balls were added to tie in teh colors of the cake on top to the bottom.

The cake was auctioned off at a cub scout meeting and made quite a few bucks. It was a lot of fun and I would do it again anytime!

There's a Party In My Tummy! ( Yo Gabba Gabba)

"So Yummy so Yummy!!"

For my son's b day I HAD to pull off a Yo Gabba Gabba cake. I did a little research online and decided a 2 tier character cake would be the best bet.



I also decided that I wanted the cake to be more then just "white" since it was for kids, i jazzed it up. I discovered an idea for "Rainbow Cake"

TTT: When you are coloring the batter, be sure to use icing color. Regular super market food coloring will run together and you will end up with something brown. 

The decorating for this cake was easy and didn't take long. the characters are pretty simple and with some planning ahead it was...well, a piece of cake. 

Muno

Muno is one of the main characters in the show, I figured he would be fun ( and easy) to re create.

Above is the "Muno" portion of the cake, covered in fondant ( as red as I could get it) and ready to go. 

Plex, is the robot character of the show and my personal favorite. I made the top layer Plex, I figured the yellow would contrast nicely with the red on the bottom. 

The finished product came out very nice and it was just the right amount of cake. I added the "light" on top of Plex's head and we were all set.

Did you think I would end without showing you how great the inside turned out?

TTT: Be sure you always have a cardboard circle between each layer of cake, It adds support and makes it much easier to cut.

Candy Apples

O. K. So these aren't really candy per se', but talk about yummy. We decided to make deluxe caramel apples to give as gifts to friends and family. These have been made before and through a few trial and error shots we were able to come up with a pretty good finishing product.

The granny smith apples were washed thoroughly and then the sticks were inserted at an angle that is meant to be straight up. The apples were then dipped into heated caramel and immediately put into the refrigerator to minimize dripping. Once completely cooled the caramel in the pan was reheated and then the apples were dipped again. The catch this time is to roll them into chopped nuts. ( I used peanuts)

Twinkle Toes Tip:
Be sure to sift the chopped nuts before you roll the apples in them. This way you wont have any nut "dust" on your apple, just nice evenly sized chunks.

Again the apples were put right back in the fridge. Although I would recommend dipping one at a time and refrigerating after each apple rather then doing them all at the same time. The nuts and added caramel are heavy and tend to pool at the bottom quickly if not refrigerated.

Next, chocolate chips are melted and the now cooled apples are dipped in the chocolate. Refrigerate again and there you go. Feel free to add decoration to the finished apples, or leave them as so. The were very tasty and you can see once they are cut into the layers look beautiful!

Frosty the Cupcake man

My son had a class party for the christmas holiday and I decided to take the opportunity to make something a little special.
Snowman cupcakes!

With chocolate chips for mouths it was easy to make these little treats looked surprised!

The hats were chocolate wafer cookies. They were a little difficult to work with and I'm trying to figure out if I can do something differently next time.
The noses ( made from orange slices) were not only edible, but the flavor went nicely with the vanilla frosting.

Twinkle Toes Tip:
 The chocolate cookies need to be inserted into the sides of the cupcakes, if you do this too soon, the whole cookie becomes soggy and gross. Make sure you cut a slit into the upper side of the cupcake before you insert the cookie as well. Good luck!