Snowman Cake Pops

I had a few things going on at the same time.  Friends from Boston were coming down to Florida to spend Thanksgiving down here and a co-worker was transferring over to our Chicago branch (yep, crazy) and Wednesday was the last day I was going to see him.

I decided to work on some cute snowman cake pops for them.  These were from Bakerella's book and boy howdy -  very detailed.  I had some staycation days that I used baking and baking and decorating.  My back and legs were killing me from standing up for hours on end.  I made gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies, potato chip cookies and these cake pops.

They came out not too bad.

I made about 48 cake pops.

My Boston pals were given a total of 15 each and my co-worker was given 4.  I saved 4 for people coming over for Thanksgiving, leaving 25 for me and my family to enjoy - tee hee.

This is my coworker's "Things to Remind You of What You're Leaving in Florida" Basket.  A beach towel, flip flops, sunglasses, suntan lotion spray and golf balls.  I also put in the 4 cake pops, 4 Christmas cookies and 2 potato chip cookies I made.

Hello Ginger

The holidays are soooooo close?  Can you feel it?  I can!  I am so excited.  I have started baking and freezing cookies to have them ready for decorating.  Isabel's teacher, my co-workers, friends, etc.   I love decorating cookies.

This year, beside my regular sugar cookies, I decided to try a gingerbread recipe.  The house smelled so good. I can't wait to decorate these little guys.

Cappuccino Truffle Cake

I decided to try a new recipe for a Cappuccino Truffle Cake.  In attempting said recipe, I tried making chocolate truffles.   This was quite funny.  Not.  Actually, it would have worked had my white chocolate melts not petered out.  Rather than melting into a nice coating, they melted into a paste.  Bye bye chocolate truffles.

The cake itself was REALLY yummy.  Almond butter cake with a coffee/Kahlua butter cream, with nuts and store-bought truffles.  (I hid some non-coated truffles under the store-bought ones.

It was a hit.  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture with anything but ze' crappy cell phone camera before we hacked right into this puppy.

My sad little non coated dark chocolate
truffle peeks out from the bottom right of the stack.

Purple Flowers Anniversary Cake

I mentioned earlier that I was working on a cake for a 90th birthday party that ended up getting cancelled due to unforeseen medical issues and car issues on our end.  The cakes remained in the freezer, the 400+ flowers in the pantry.  Since this weekend was our 10 year wedding anniversary, I made my own anniversary cake instead.  :)

Happy 10th Anniversary David

Golf and Deer Cookies

Hello!

I've been a little low-key on the baking lately.  I did start working on a cake for a relative turning 90, but things took a sideways turn, grandma went in the hospital and the party was postponed, so those cake plans were put to a halt.  Grandma is fine, by the way.

This past week, one of my best friends who works at our Baltimore company branch had a male co-worker in the hospital with a scare.  My friend/co-worker B is such a good person.  She went to the hospital several times to check up on our male co-worker K, as he has no family near and was alone until his family could drive in from out of state later that day.

While speaking over emails about him, we 4 gals who talk over email daily decided to do something for him to let him know we're thinking of him.  I offered cookies, they agreed and offered money to help pay for supplies and shipping.

K likes to hunt and golf, so I went on Google Images, found some cute designs and made these cookies below.

Part of company logo on shirt.

Isabel piped the grass on the golf balls.

I'll be mailing these off to him on Monday.  He's off recovering for a couple of weeks.

Get Well Soon, K!

Happy First Birthday Ava!

My niece turned 1 last week and I was asked to make the birthday cake.  (I had already made the baby shower cake when Ava was still "baking.")

The theme for her party?  Pink and black baby skulls.  (click the pics to make them bigger if you'd like.)

The top is a bandana with hearts.  It's an Oreo cookie cake.

The middle is an almond butter cake with buttercream, covered in fondant.

The bottom is a carrot cake in pink cream cheese frosting.  I stink at frosting cakes with icing.

The skull decorations on the cakes were hand cut out of gumpaste, all hand-decorated and all edible.

The only non-edible item was the pink glitter ribbon around the zebra tier.  That was me, being super-tired after an 8-hour work day, and 3 hours of decorating that same night,  saying "I give! No More! What do I have to put around this cake!?"

Ava's Smash Cake

Happy First Cutie Patootie!

Graduation Cake and Goodies

My son graduated from high school this week.  Lots of planning went into the party, food and of course, the desserts.

Graduation cake pops

Cupcake pops

The graduation cake was three-tiered.  Everything was edible.  Starting from the top, we have a fondant graduation cap with gum paste tassels and graduation diploma roll.  These all rest atop two 6" Oreo Cookie cakes covered in vanilla frosting, covered in homemade MMF, and decorated with black fondant keys.  This represents my son's musical side, of course.  The Oreo cake was a hit with the kids/grads at the party.

The next tier is made up of two almond butter cakes, with buttercream frosting, covered in MMF that I tinted purple.  This purple MMF was draped around the cake to resemble curtains, which opened on to a black background (fondant) and the comedy/tragedy drama faces made of gum paste and sprayed with edible silver food color spray.  This is for my son's love of drama.  

The bottom tier was two 10" carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting.  Musical notes and pianos decorates its sides.   My carrot cake is THE BOMB.  A friend who could not decide between carrot and Oreo got a little bit of both.  She ate the carrot cake up, saying how amazing it was, and then stating she was mad.  Mad because she had Oreo cake to finish when she wished it were just more carrot.

Drama/Music-themed Graduation Cake

The Aftermath

Drama Party Goodies

Jacob's in the Drama Troupe at his school. For their end-of-year banquet, I was asked to make some goodies for the party.  I decided on cake pops and mini cake balls.  Then at the last minute I made a small carrot cake too, just for the heck of it.

I dropped off the goodies and went on my way.  Everyone ooooh'd and aaaah'd.

I dropped a cake pop on the carrot cake.  Nice.  

Get it?  Drama club? Get it?
(see where I messed up the icing? *sigh*)

Fun popcorn bag pops

One of the male drama students made this!  Nice!!

Out of Business?

My daughter's inventing.  Should I be worried she'll put me out of business?

Should I also worry that the machine that makes cakes and cake pops can also alter your molecular structure and make you invisible?  ;)

Popcorn and Graduation Caps

I did some more work with Bakerella's book, practicing for two separate events; the Drama troupe's end-of-year party and Jacob's graduation party.

For the drama troupe we have

Popcorn pops.  Yellow cake, chocolate frosting, vanilla candy.  SO cute!  My red food marker was just not working well enough.  Next time, I am using a paint brush and red gel food coloring.  Hopefully it will be more vivid.  The popcorn?  Mini marshmallows scored through 3 times with a knife.

For Graduation

I made the tops using a candy mold, but they're a bit too thick.  This is why I practice.  Next time, I'll fill the molds a little less.  Also, the top little blob holding the tassel is supposed to be a mini M&M but I did not have any.  I'll buy some for the ones I do make for his party.  They're cute though!

Cupcake Pops

I follow Bakerella's blog.  She's so cute and I love all the things she does.  Her most famous treats are her cake pops.

I purchased her Cake Pops book with some gift cards I got from work. Yay, work!  Then I decided to try out  one of her cake pops creations, cupcake pops.  OF COURSE I try one of the most difficult designs.  Also, the cutter I used was too big, so they did not end up right (I need to buy a smaller one) but they are still a hit in this house.

Happy Easter 2012

Hope you all had a great Easter!

He is Risen!

Tangled/Rapunzel Cake

For our gal's party, she chose "Tangled" as her theme.  For those of you without kids, this would be Disney's version of the Rapunzel story.  It was also the theme to the 5k run I did at Epcot.  But I digress.

We found several great cakes on-line and Isabel chose her favorite one from one we liked off of a baker in the UK's Flickr pictures.

We started preparing for the cake a few weeks back, making gumpaste flowers and cupcake toppers.

Finally, it was time to get going.

Baby Rapunzel oversees the operation.

Gahh!

Bringing on the smolder

Our gal creates Pascal's tail

Cupcakes

Her hair's not really complete here.  I was afraid to transport her like this, so the bottom part of her hair is not attached to the part by her knees.   When we got to the party location, I had more gumpaste and my clay extruder, so I could add more and bring the hair together.  

The party was lots of fun!

Think Geek: Customer Action Shot

Oh Yea!

This picture

is one of the Action Shots on Think Geek's site!

Tee hee!

Prep Time for Her Party

Our gal and I are working hard on her cake for her party later on in the month.

Any guesses??

How about now? 

Quick Cake Pops

I was bored Saturday, so I decided to make cake pops for Jacob's drama troupe's last performance that evening.  I've made cake pops before.  They're simple, yet messy.

On some,  I used food color pens.  It did not work too well though.
The candy coating was too waxy for the pens

Others I just sprinkled with sugar.

Cake pops "drying."

  They're even more fun to EAT!  To quote a fellow thespian in Jacob's troupe who had never seen a cake pop: "It's perfect! It's cake...on a STICK!"