GASP! What happened to May?!

Just noticed that I completely MISSED posting the photos of the biggest one's birthday cake!!  This year's theme was FROZEN, of course, which was FUN to do and fun to make!  We started out her 5th birthday celebration this year with a friend party at a gymnastic place, with cupcakes:

These guys were fun and easy to make!  I found the eyeball candies in the cake section at Safeway, mixed up some black frosting and went to town.  The blue around their bodies are supposed to be reminiscent of the little blue pants that they wear.

For her actual birthday, she let me do a "Frozen" cake, which took some convincing, because not a week before that she wanted me to make her a Hercules cake! After searching high and low for some sort of Elsa cake topper/toy, and having no luck, I tried my hand at sculpting, with also no luck.  Last ditch effort, was to find a graphic online, print it out, stick it to a stick.  Miss 5 year old was thrilled.

I was also pretty happy with the looks of this cake - I'm still working on find the perfect recipe for the INSIDE of the cake, along with a yummy delicious filling.  The snowflake cutters were the funnest in this cake - they were so cute, and fun to stamp out little fondant snowflakes.  The "ice" was a little tricky, as it was a hair humid at my house that week, so when I made the glass a couple of nights before, some pieces were crystallizing by her birthday.  None the less, it was a fun cake to make. 

Minnie Mouse.

Minnie Mouse is a favorite of my baby girl.  Every day she asks to watch "Mouse" on TV, carries around a Minnie Mouse stuffy, and often comes and shows it to us.  She even has a little Minnie Mouse dress up doll thing that she loves.  So, for her birthday this year we decided it was appropriate that she have a Minnie Mouse theme!  We didn't go crazy this year, but did manage to get my folks to come to her birthday party!  I decided to make a Minnie Mouse cake as well, although was intimidated by lots of the cakes that I was seeing online.  I ended up finding one that I thought I could pull off. 

For the cake, I decided to do a bottom up cake using this recipe, which I ended up tripling to get enough for two 8" square pans and a small 1/2 circle cake.  I also used Sweetapolita's whipped vanilla buttercream frosting recipe.  It is delicious!  The end result - (I had baby girl's name on it, but blurred it out):

 

I have to admit, I wasn't that excited about the buttercream bottom when I was trying to get it smooth, but once I started putting stuff on it, I started to mind less.  I was reminded why I am drawn to fondant, it's ultra smooth texture is so nice and clean.  I've struggled in the past covering cakes with just fondant, and didn't want to go that route again, so opted for the buttercream and struggled there too!  In the end, i thought the face ended up adorable, and I love the polka dots and decorations on the side of the cake.  

Another issue I ran into.  Beings that I work at my job during the day, I was working on this cake in stages.  I baked it Monday, and decided to save myself some time Tuesday night and buttercream it - which in total with baking probably took me 3-4 hours.  On Tuesday, I did all the decorating with the fondant, which ended up taking me another 2-3 hours.  But then it sat another day until we had the party Wednesday night.  I wasn't sure what to do - I didn't really want to put it in the fridge in fear that the fridge would completely dry it out, but it ended up being a little dry from sitting on the counter for 2.5 days.  Ideally, I suppose, "real" bakeries bake one day and decorate the next?  I'm curious what everyone else does!

Ladybug.

I just posted about my baby girl being born, and shockingly enough it's already been a year.  My sweetie had her first birthday and to celebrate we threw her a little birthday party with few of our friends who also have little ones around her age.  I decided since we really went big for my older daughters 1st birthday that we needed to do something great for baby girl too.  Enter the lady bug.  I decided a while back that I wanted to make her a lady bug cake that I had seen in my cake book.  After a little internet research to decide whether to make cake pops or cupcakes, I decided to go with a lady bug cake and lady bug cake pops.  In addition to the 'theme' we also got some lady bug birthday hats, with some cute lady bug napkins and plates.  To top it all off we got a pile of red balloons, which all the kids loved!

So here are the cake pops - pardon the picture - I took it at night, and my kitchen is very yellow at night:

They turned out really cute although were a pain to make.  I had never made cakepops before, so this was all an experiment.  I followed the directions on the Wilton website.  I had a few decide to come off of the stick and take a swim in the candy melts, which was frustrating.  And getting the dots on the lady bugs was also a bit tricky.  I decided to pipe the chocolate on the pops since I couldn't quite decide how i was going to get it on there, and so I was having trouble getting nice little dots - instead got nice little points.  I called them dinosaur lady bugs.

Next came the cake.  I first made baked the cake in a bowl and then put it in the freezer, which was mistake #1, because the cake came out a little rounded on top, so when I got it out and decided to cut that round part off, well - it was frozen and was tricky.  Not to mention my recipe was flawed - the cake had good flavor, but was nearly cooked to smithereens by the time I got it done - so it was very dry and hard.  Moving on.  I decided to put a nice heavy layer of butter cream on the cake instead of just a crumb coat, for those who don't like the taste of fondant.  That way they'd have some frosting there and could pick off the fondant.  

After that it was just the red fondant to cover the cake, and rolling out dots, eyes, and head.  I tried to make some curved antenna for it, but they broke when I tried to put them on the head, so I just colored a cakepop stick black and cut it in half, and stuck the black balls on the ends for antenna.  I wanted something like grass to be at the bottom, but I ran out of powdered sugar, and my buttercream was a little loose - so that's what I ended up with.  Overall I love the cake - even though it didn't taste the greatest!

The birthday was a success, all seemed to enjoy the cake, or well...were polite about it!

Elmo.

My baby turned two a couple of weeks ago, and since I used to post my cakes on this blog, I figure I shouldn't miss out on the chance to post her birthday cake.  I baked it the night before and actually froze it for the night, which turned out to be a brilliant idea, since the frozen cake was much easier to work with than a freshly baked one.

I also decided to go for fondant on the nose, eyes and mouth, and I think it turned out great.  I was worried about how hard it would be to cut those shapes, until a light bulb turned on and I just layed the fondant right on the elmo cake pan and basically traced it right there.  And then a little trimming once it was placed, and it looked fantastic!  I did the fur with a grass tip after all the fondant was placed...and it took about a 1/2 hour to pipe once I finally got the red mixed.  I'd say, in total, including bake time, the entire cake probably took about 3 hours.  Not too bad - although I wonder how much I could charge for 3 hours work on a birthday cake?

Birthday.

Happy Birthday Dad!  Wish we were home to help you celebrate today.  Hope you have a great day!

Speaking of  birthday's, my hubby took me out for my Birthday supper last night...usually for each other's birthday's, we go out to dinner to celebrate.  With our birthday's 2 weeks apart, and having to find a baby-sitter this year, my got pushed a little later, but made up for bigtime!  We went to Colterra in Niwot last night for dinner.  I think they tote themselves as a French restaurant, but their big seller is that they try to use all Colorado grown produce, and have a garden every summer to use their own grown ingredients.  I love that!  I have to say that once again, it is one of the best meals I've ever had in my entire life.  We went there a year ago when I was very pregnant, with my cousins, and it was an amazing meal then, but I also didn't get to partake in the fancy unpasteurized cheeses, and the wine, so this year I did!  You can order a cheese plate there as an appetizer or pair it with a dessert, and they are amazing.  We then split a 'small plate' that was a crab salad, which had a layer of avocado under it and a creamy red balsamic sauce.  Then we got our entrée.  Matt got a wagyu steak that had a truffle sauce and some delicious gnocchi to go with. I got a tuna steak that had garlic mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus, topped with some crispy straws, and an amazing sauce too...it was PHENOMENAL. For dessert, Matt got a peach sorbet with fresh berries, and I white chocolate and apricot Crème brûlée. Incredible...can I say amazing any more times?

The other thing that impressed me is this:  when we go out for a nice dinner like that, we plan on being there for a while.  We don't like to be rushed.  So we're often reluctant to give the server our whole order for fear that we'll get everything at once and feel like we're rushing to eat everything and beat it out of the door.  Not at this place.  They take the order, bring you the individual courses (although we did get our cheese at the same time as the salad last night, which I would have liked separate), and once you look like you're ready for the main course, they bring it out.  The timing is great, the atmosphere is very relaxed, and the wait staff make you feel very welcome and not rushed.  I believe Colterra is rounding out as one of my favorite all time restaurants.  Thanks sweetie for the awesome birthday dinner!