Friday, December 14, 2012

Super Mario Wii Birthday Party for a Super Girl!

Well it is December again and that means not only Christmas but birthday party time for our baby girl!  Our girls always get super excited about their parties and always have their theme picked out 6 months in advance.  LOL.  I think it is adorable.  For our youngest, Andrea, this year she chose Super Mario.  We have a Wii and she loves the Super Mario Wii game and is incredibly good at playing it!  I was shocked at watching her at 4 years old beating levels in World 8 by herself.  :)

For her cake this year she wanted a castle on top with lava a la World 8 in the game.  She chose a pick of the cake she liked....I was not sure how to go about doing the castle at first and I decided that cookies with royal icing would be best.  I try to incorporate the theme as much as I can into all aspects of their parties (see our Livi's Tangled party post).  I decided to make milk chocolate mustache pops and white chocolate wii remotes.  The kids loved them.  She decided that she wanted to have her party in Pappy's garage again.  Next year we are going to have it in our house since not as many people show up anymore.  But regardless of how many people I will never stop the parties and making the best cake I possibly can for them.

So without further interruption here are the pics from her birthday party.  I wonder what next year will be!  :)
















She loved every bit of her party.  I'm so lucky to be her Mom.  :)

Friday, November 30, 2012

Another birthday is coming!

We are now in full swing for our youngest daughter's 5th birthday party.  I can't believe she is going to be 5 and starting school next year.  I am going to miss my buddy when she starts kindergarten.  But onward to the birthday party plans.  She loves our Wii and especially Super Mario Brothers Wii and that is her theme.  We are having a Mario cake and a harvest cake.  The harvest cake is a spice cake with apples and walnuts with caramel topping.  Her great-grandmother used to make it and it was her signature cake.  I made it for the first time this Thanksgiving and it turned out great!

I always get so excited about my girls' birthday parties and making the cakes and planning everything else.  I will post again with pics of her party sometime in the next 2 weeks.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Frozen Buttercream Transfer (FBCT) Tutorial.

I absolutely love FBCTs.  I use them a good bit when people want standard cakes.  They are easy to make and edible.  I think that's the best way to have a cake be.  :)

Step One:  I Google 'Coloring Pages' for what I'm looking for.   I find a pic I like and print it out.

Step Two:   I trace over the picture with a black sharpie. I flip it over and tape it to a cutting board and tape wax paper over it.



Step Three:  Outline the picture with black buttercream or whatever you wish.



Step Four:  Fill in with the colored icing.



Step Five:  After it is filled in with the colors I go over it with icing some more to even some of the thinner spots out and freeze it.


Step Six:  Freeze it for at least an hour, take it out and place it on the cake.


Step Seven:  You can either build the icing up to make the level of the picture or you can put a decorative trim around it.


Here is another example of building the icing up.



Here is an example of putting trim around it.


And one more example of the trim.


And that's it!  It's always good to practice one.  The first one I did was a rainbow for a rainbow cake.  The sky is the limit for pictures to use.












Friday, July 6, 2012

Tangled Tower Cake and the Tangled Party...

Well, our daughter's 8th Birthday is over and it was fun!  The cake took pretty much a whole day, I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Thankfully I have a handy husband who made the support for the cake.  He took a piece of plywood, cut out a hole to fit a piece of pvc pipe, secured the pipe and cut a hole on the cake board as well. 



The tower was covered in MMF and the details were gumpaste.  I used a cobblestone mat for the tower, then covered it with more MMF colored to match the stucco (whatever the tower is).  To get the aged effect I balled up a piece of aluminum foil and went over the MMF with it.  I then took a paper towel and dipped it in brown food paste and water to help the coloring of the tower.  The biggest job was the roof shingles.  For the hill I used to small bowls that I baked cake in. I finished the cake and tower with some buttercream decorations and went over the edge of the cake with rosettes.  The birthday girl loved it!



I also made some magical flower punch.  I took a container of frozen lemonade, another of frozen pineapple juice, a 2 liter of sprite, water and star ice cubes.  It was delicious!  I also did the jello boats, but I ran out of time to make the sails.  I thought they were still cute.  I also had our party staples of fried rice and pizza. 





Overall it was a lot of work and I wish I would've managed my time better, but in the end we had a great party.  I loved taking the theme and bringing it to life!








                      The beautiful Princess of the day, wearing the Rapunzel hair I made her.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Mario Kart Birthday Cake and Adventures in MMF

My best friend asked me to make a Mario Kart Cake for her son's 5th birthday.  I happily obliged.  :)  It was definitely the most fun I have had making a cake.  Probably because our family loves our Wii and the Nintendo characters.

I was a little nervous though because most of the time I don't have the best of luck with MMF (Marshmallow Fondant).  Most of the time it gets too dry and I get so tired of messing with it that I just use buttercream, since I know I can get it really smooth!  I knew with this cake though that I was going to HAVE to use MMF.  The sides were going to be checkerboard and I knew if I used buttercream the lines would get messed up when I smoothed them.

And then.....BAM!!  It hit me!  The MMF always sticks to my counters, so I remembered that Wilton sells a roll n cut mat for fondant!  So I bought that and I saw on Wilton's forum where someone said they used cooking spray on their hands and mat.  Talk about a dream! 

I also did a track on top of the cake and it ended up getting a few green buttercream spots on it that I could not get off....so, I took a paint brush and painted a little black icing color on it.  I ended up loving the effect because it looked like oil marks on the track!  Awesome!  I also made a banana peel, a red shell and a small pond. 

I was so happy with the end result, but more importantly my friend and her son loved it too!  :)

So without further ado, here are pictures of the cake.




Friday, June 8, 2012

Adventures in a Tangled Birthday


Our daughter Livia's 8th Birthday is coming up at the end of the month and I am already at work for it.  I finished making the invites.  I also have the structure for the cake planned.  See, she wants the tower.  :)  What we will do for our children!  There are many other things I am making too.  I figured she's going to be 8 and I want to not have as much of the store bought character stuff.  Well, at least closer to the movie.  I'm sure there will be more posts about this adventure!  I know 100% that I will take you through the tour of the cake.  :)



Oh, almost forgot...I found Tangled font and used it in the invite along with the font Majestic.  I love how it turned out!