Pinkalicious Cupcake Party

My 3 year old requested a Pinkalicious Party for her birthday.  

I had a lot of fun pulling together all the pink details. 

We had a house full of her favorite people and most of them came dressed in pink! 

Even her daddy and her big brothers wore pink t-shirts!

 This was the dessert table, with every version of pink sugar available. 

For the back drop, I covered three canvases with some pretty pink wrapping paper, I found a ball of pink pom pom yarn that I used as decorative border around the table and all around the house.  There were pink tissue pompoms and even pink toilet paper in the bathroom! 

 The cake was layers of vanilla and chocolate cake with vanilla icing.  I used this tutorial to make the pink liner for the Giant Cupcake.  It worked wonderfully and was so much simpler than trying to make fondant look like a liner.   The cupcakes were a mix of chocolate and pink-vanilla cupcakes, topped with pink vanilla buttercream.

 I used buttercream to decorate these soft sugar cookies. 

So much yummier than royal icing!

 This is the little pink lemonade stand where Pinkalicious could sell her Pink Lemonade, so she could buy Pink Gumballs, just like in "Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink"

The happy birthday girl, 

who can't wait to dig into her Giant Cupcake .

 Blowing out her candles.

Happy Birthday to my little Cupcake!

Red Velvet Wedding Cupcakes

 A friend asked if I would bake some cupcakes for a wedding for which she was making the wedding cake.

I was happy to help.  The order was for 15 dozen Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing.

Here they are all boxed up and ready to roll.  

Thankfully I did not have to transport them all!

They were topped with a fondant seal that Joanne had made ahead of time.  She sprayed them copper to match the wedding colors.  They were sprinkled with white and black sugar pearls to complete the look. 

Back To School Cupcakes

 I made some healthy back to school muffins for the kids, filled with carrots and zucchini and whole wheat flour.  Then I added cream cheese icing to them and made them a little less healthy :-)

 And then I had to add a cute little Oreo Cheesecake Truffle to the top 

and now we have to call them cupcakes, instead of muffins.

But they were delicious!

Here's the muffin recipe if you want to try making your kids a healthy treat!

Carrot and Zucchini Muffins
adapted from here

1 cup sugar
4 Tbsp canola oil
1 tsp salt
2 large eggs
2 cups shredded zucchini
2 cups shredded carrot
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
And I added about a tsp of pumpkin pie spice, to make them even spicier

Mix wet and dry ingredients separately then add together.  This filled about 16 muffin cups.  I baked them at 375 for about 20 minutes.

Back-to-School Teacher Treats

We made some treats for the boys new teachers for Back-to-School.

I found these cute apples online and had to try making them.

 The boys helped rolling the balls, putting in the pretzels as well as adding the jellybean leaves after they were dipped in the chocolate.  Then we packaged them up into some cute mason jars, wrap some baker's twine and pretty up the lid with scrapbook paper.

Mini Monkey Bread

My boys favorite breakfast treat is monkey bread, and I wanted to try making it without using the canned biscuits.  So I tried a recipe using a yeast dough, and made them mini.  They were a hit.

Chocolate Wafer Icebox Cake

This is my husband's favorite, and the easiest dessert to make.  It's chocolate wafers layered with whipped cream, chill overnight, and he always requests crushed coffee crisps on top.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

 This was a birthday cake for my husband and my father-in-law's combined birthday celebration that we have every year at the lake.  It was a rich Chocolate cake layered with peanut butter buttercream and then topped with Chocolate-Peanut Butter Ganache.  It was delicious! Here's the link to the recipe.

Pink Snowball Cake

To celebrate my Mom's birthday, I recreated her favorite childhood snack, only bigger. I pinned this recipe, from Sprinkle Bakes, a few weeks ago, and when I was trying to decide what to make for my mom I couldn't stop thinking about this one.

Rich Devil's Food Cake filled with Marshmallow filling and frosted with Marshmallow Buttercream, and covered in pink coconut!

Happy Birthday Mom, we love you!

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

A wonderfully light and lemony cupcake with
silky smooth Strawberry Lemon Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Washington Capitals Birthday Cake

A Special Cake requested by my nephew for his fourth birthday,
who happens to love the Washington Capitals.

It's a triple layer cake covered in Vanilla Buttercream.
All decorations were made from fondant

It was a true Caps cake, through and through...
Vanilla cake, striped with blue and a layer or Red Velvet.

Leftovers

This is what you get when you have leftover carrot cake batter,
leftover cream cheese icing and leftover fondant.

I love these kinds of leftovers!

Inspiration from here

Astronaut in Space Birthday

My son turned 6 this past week, and requested an astronaut and planet cake. So here's my attempt at that.

I'm not incredibly comfortable modeling characters out of fondant, but I was pretty happy with this guy, although he kind of sunk backwards a bit. I did not allow enough drying time for my rocket and so it kind of fell apart when I moved it.

The birthday boy requested a vanilla cake with vanilla icing and caramel inside. So I made a delicious vanilla bean cake and made a nice thick layer of salted caramel sauce between the layers. And there was plenty of caramel left over to drizzle over the cut pieces.

These were the cupcakes that were brought to his kindergarten class, according to his teacher they were "inhaled!"

Here's one picture of the decorations, I hung a black plastic table cloth on the wall, then used vinyl wall stickers from Dollarama, and Birthday Express to make the solar system. I used my cricut to cut the letters. All totalled it cost about $5.

Here's the happy birthday boy, I can't believe he's 6! The best part about making the cake is getting to see his reaction. That's when you know it was worth all the work!

Super Mario Birthday

8 inch triple layer chocolate butter cake with cookies and cream filling.

Some of the other party stuff

Mario Cupcakes to bring to school
Chocolate cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

Lightsaber cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Icing
complete with fondant lightsabers and stars to accompany the Star Wars Cake

Star Wars Cake

10 in and 6 inch Chocolate Butter Cake with Vanilla Buttercream.
It's hard to tell from the picture but the colors are silver and metallic blue.

Here's a shot of the baker and the happy jedi-in-training.

Vanilla Bean Latte Cupcakes

A Double Dose of Vanilla in the cupcake, Coffee flavored Mousse in the centre, topped with a Coffee Buttercream