Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

I’ve meant to post about these amazing little cupcakes for weeks now, however I have been too exhausted to make myself do so.  Two birthday parties back-to-back almost did me in!  I have never baked so much in my life and I am now on a baking strike until after the New Year.  (I “may” have gone through 8 pounds of confectioners sugar in one weekend.  Eek!)

For Jaden’s 10th Birthday, which was two weeks ago, she asked for Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes for her classroom celebration.  I instantly had horrific flashbacks of the last time I made these but resolved to improve upon the last experience.  Surely these cupcakes would not steal my sanity twice!

And they didn’t!  This time I decided to not over think it and to just bake the darn things already!

I filled each cake cone 2/3 way full with cake batter and then placed each cake cone in an opening of my muffin pan.  Mind you, you have to be VERY careful when placing them in the oven or they will tip over.  (…and you will curse and shout and tear out all of your hair when this happens.  Don’t worry, that’s normal.)  Once baked, I carefully set them out on a wire rack to cool.  While they cooked, I whipped up some buttercream icing and colored it in two not-too girly yet not too-boyish colors.  (Because Jaden does not like pink.)  Once colored, I filled up my piping bag which I fitted with my largest star tip and went to work.  Starting on the outside edge, I piped in a clock-wise motion as I worked my way toward the center.  And Viola!

Then came the hard part.  Figuring out how the heck I was going to transport these things to school without them falling over.  The last time I made these I constructed this complicated cardboard carrying system with custom cut holes soaked in my tears.  This time I shoved them all into an aluminum baking dish and willed them not to fall over.  Despite driving 0.02 miles an hour all the way to the school, about half of the fell over.  Thankfully the buttercream had developed a bit of a crust to it and thus they weren’t damaged too badly.  Ah well.

4thd Grade children aren’t looking for works of art, they just want to eat something sweet!  :]

Cake Decorating Party

Mini Cakes

This past Sunday, Jaden celebrated her 10th Birthday early by having some friend over for a cake decorating party.  After letting Jaden & Fisher decorate cupcakes for my birthday and having so much fun, I decided that Jaden and her friends would have even more fun decorating their own mini-cakes.  And I was right!

I baked a 6″ x 2″ round cake for each girl and iced it with buttercream icing.  I sectioned out the leftover buttercream icing and colored each in a different color.  Finally I bagged each color in a piping bag fitted with a coupler and a decorative tip.  I set out the rest of my decorating tips for the girls to use if they so chose.  It only took a short demonstration to teach the girls how to unscrew the coupler and change out the tips.  Once they got that down, they were off to the races!

And boy did they work hard on their cakes.  They carefully piped on each line and flower.  They studied each angle before apply the icing.  They made sure to use every tip and color available to them at least twice!  As one girl proclaimed, “You can’t rush art.”  So true, girls, so true.

We even tested out some spray-on food coloring.  It worked well although, once the girls got a hold of the spray cans, the house was filled with a fine red mist of food coloring.  They got messy with everything in every way possible and cherished every moment.  You should have seen the table after the sprinkles and candy Imperials had been opened.  Yikes!

After making gingerbread cookie rockets for her brother’s birthday party, these mini-cakes were a cinch!  The girls absolutely loved it and each got a slice to eat once they were done.  I’d highly recommend this to anyone interested.  I would definitely do it again in the future.  :]

Bottles & Rockets

Gingerbread Rocket

This past Saturday was Fisher’s 8th Birthday.  For the very first time we had a proper party for him that included some friends from school.  I know, what kind of mother am I?  You’ve never thrown your son a birthday party?  Oh, I have.  It’s just never been one of those parties where you mail out invitations and agonize over RSVP’s.  It has always just been family in the past.

I have fretted over how to entertain a group of boys for weeks now.  What do boys like?  Heck if I know.  In the end I made some gingerbread cookies in rocket shapes and had my husband construct them for me.  (By the time it came to build the rockets, I was on the verge of a nervous break down.  I had this beautiful picture in my head of how I wanted them to look and when my first attempt at construction was a failure, I almost lost my mind.)  Mind you, I’d been cleaning and baking for two straight days up until this point and was utterly exhausted.

Jordan opted for boy-proof construction rather than something that was pretty but would fall apart as soon as someone touched it.  Thus the copious amounts of icing.  By the time the icing had dried, these rockets could have made a daring bid for the moon.  These things were solid.  And I’m glad that they were because the boys first instincts were to pick them up and zoom them around the room. Whew!

I don’t know who was happier, Fisher or his rocket!  :]  If you’d like to make your own gingerbread cookie rockets, here is what you need:

• Gingerbread Cookies, Baked to Desired Shapes
• Sugar Cones
• Gingerbread House Icing “glue” (Super sticky and thick Royal Icing)
• Candy for Decoration

My not-so-specific-instructions:

For the pointed “nose cone” of the rockets I used sugar cones.  You’d think that these would be found near the ice cream aisle, but that was not the case.  I honestly thought that I’d never find them at the grocery store.  They were finally located next to the Peanut Butter & Jelly.  You know, the same aisle as Coffee.  Because that makes total sense.

Next, I measured base of the cone to find out how wide it was.  I planned on inverting the cone for the tip of my rocket and wanted to make sure that the gingerbread cookies I baked would correctly support the cone.

Finally, I mixed up some gingerbread cookie dough cut out rectangles and triangles.  I used three rectangular cookies per rocket to make the body of the rocket.  Thus the rocket ended up being three-sided.  I had originally planned on using four cookies per rocket to make up the body, but that did not allow for proper attachment when I can to the sugar cone.  I also used three triangles per rocket to make the directional fins at the base of the rocket.  It’s hard to tell in the picture because of all the icing, but the little triangular fins are there.

Here’s a lovely sketch by yours truly to demonstrate how it all came together.

Once the rockets were decorated and all the left-over candy decorations had been eaten, the boys headed out into the back yard to set off some bottles of Diet Coke with the aid of mint-flavored Mentos.  It was a huge hit.  The boys begged to stand in the line of fire, but I couldn’t possibly be the mom who sent home boys soaked in soda after a birthday party.  I would be shunned for the rest of time for such a thing.  The boys were only temporarily disappointed.  ;]

The party was a hit and the boys only talked and sang about poop for 30 minutes of the two-hour party.  I say that’s the stamp of success.