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.  :]

Dirt & Worm Cupcakes

Dirt & Worm Cupcakes

Tomorrow is Fisher’s 8th Birthday.  He has counted down to it pretty much since his 7th.  To celebrate, I made his favorite cupcakes to share with his class at school today:  Dirt & Worm Cupcakes.  They are super easy to make, taste great and are always a huge hit at school.

Dirt & Worm Cupcakes

I used a box of Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake Mix, but you can use whatever chocolate cake mix you prefer.  Once they have completely cooled, I piped on some chocolate icing, rolled the tops of the cupcakes in crushed Oreo cookies and topped them each with a gummy worm.  Tah-dah!

Even though I used a box mix, I do highly recommend that you make your own chocolate icing.  It is always superior to canned icing that you find at the store and it is super simple to make.  This is my favorite chocolate icing recipe, one that I got from my mother:

Chocolate Icing Recipe:

• 1/2 heaping cup of cocoa powder
• 1/3 cup sour cream
• 3 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• pinch of salt
• 1 stick of butter, softened

Directions:

Cream together the butter and cocoa powder.  Next, mix in the vanilla extract and salt.  Add the sour cream and mix until combined.  Slowly work in the confectioners sugar.  Once combined, mix at medium speed for a few minutes until it is nice and smooth.  I use this time to rinse off utensils and tidy up around the kitchen.  (Confectioners sugar inevitably ends up everywhere when I use it.)

The icing is usually cool from the refrigerated sour cream, so I let it set for a minute or two to let it warm up.  Cold icing is hard to pipe with.  If you want to pipe on the icing, just grab a bag and a large, open tip.  It doesn’t really matter what tip you use as long as it is a large one.  You don’t even have to make it look pretty since you’re just going to roll the iced part of the cupcake in crushed Oreo cookies.  It’s a fool-proof decorating plan!

If you don’t have a piping bag or tips, just grab a spatula or even a butter knife.  Again, it doesn’t have to look pretty.  The crushed Oreo’s hide just about any icing misstep.

This recipe will make enough icing for 24 cupcakes, plus a few extra.  This recipe is also great on chocolate cake.  I usually mix up two batches when icing a two-layer, eight inch round cake.

Enjoy!

Let Them Eat Cake

It’s that time again.  Time for another cake!  Oh my goodness, I love cake.  (Just ignore me when I’m actually decorating a cake.  The wild hair and fangs are only temporary.  They disappear once the stress of decorating is gone.)  Did I say stress?  Is it possible to love something but to also be stress out by something?  I’m a complicated lady.

This one is for my Father-in-Law’s birthday. It’s hard to find a simple yet masculine design for cake, thus I plaid it safe with plaid.  You can’t go wrong with plaid.  (Unless it’s paired with polka dots and zig-zags.  Then it might be too much.)  ;]