Harry Potter and Owl Cupcakes

In my previous post I shared a tutorial for the Harry Potter cake I made for my son's birthday party, (you can check that out here)

I knew I wanted to have some cupcakes for the kids as well, and owl ones seemed perfect for this theme.

Plus, I've seen pictures of owl cupcakes on Pinterest for years, so I was excited to finally make some of my own! :)

I learned a few things through the process, so I put together a quick tutorial for you.

Harry Potter Cake

For the last few months my oldest has been on quite the Harry Potter kick.

He has read the first 4 books and even dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween.

So when the time came to talk about his birthday it was no surprise what he wanted for the cake.

Harry Potter.

(We also made cupcakes, but that will be another post).

I didn't have as much time as I wanted when I was decorating this cake, I probably would have paid a lot more attention to detail and smoothed out the frosting a little better, but my son was super happy with it, so that's all that matters!

I made the batter from scratch using my yellow cupcake recipe. (You can find that recipe here). 

I made the full recipe, plus half.

This allowed me to make 24 cupcakes and one 8-inch cake.

Angry Birds Piggy Construction Cake

This is my third and final post from my son's Angry Birds themed party.

If you missed my other two posts, I showed you how to make an Yellow Angry Bird Pinata and also some Red and Yellow Angry Birds Cupcakes.
Before the big day my son and I had been talking and throwing around ideas for the cake.
My son told me that he wanted Angry Birds cupcakes and a piggy cake.
I knew I wanted the cake to be easy since the cupcakes would be a little more time consuming.
I love how this cake turned out, but more importantly, my son loved how it turned out!

It's pretty self-explanatory but I've got some step-by-step pictures to show you the process.

Angry Birds Cupcakes Tutorial

The other day I showed you a step-by-step tutorial for the Yellow Angry Bird pinata we made for my son's 3rd birthday party. (You can check out that post here).
Today I am back to show you a quick tutorial for the cupcakes we served at the party.
I ended up making 2 dozen of these cupcakes, 12 red birds and 12 yellow birds.

I've tried to include pictures to show the process, and I will explain as much as I can, but as always if you have any questions let me know!

Halo Birthday Cake

Everyone is posting about Christmas crafts, projects, decor, and recipes and I'm over here trying to catch up from almost a month ago...

Oh time, you never fail to amaze me.

Anyways, my oldest turned 7 last month and for his birthday this year he requested a Halo theme.

I have come to rely on this method of cake decorating now that I know how awesome the end results will be.

 What we have here is just tracing frosting on a coloring page.

I have posted this type of tutorial on my blog before for our Avengers Cake, Star Wars cupcakes, and Lego Star Wars cake.

 When my son decides on his theme we then turn to Google and find a coloring page we can use.

Click here to see and print out the coloring page we used for this cake.

Brobee Birthday Cake Tutorial

Last week we celebrated my baby's 2nd birthday with a Yo Gabba Gabba themed party.

One of his favorite episodes is 'Birthday' where the character Brobee has a birthday party, and they have a Brobee cake.

My son talked about that for almost two weeks, so I knew I wanted to try and create one for him.

 *Before we get started, I just want to say that I am in no-way a professional cake decorator, or claim to be one. My methods might even be completely wrong, I just wanted to share how I was able to create this cake in hopes that someone else could benefit from the information.

Robot Snacks

I was looking through the pictures on my camera the other day, and I found these and realized I had totally forgotten I had wanted to write this post!

So, my son's birthday was back in November. When a child in his class has a birthday, that child will bring in treats to share with the other kids. 

When I asked him what he would like to take he flat out told me he didn't want to take doughnuts or cupcakes.  Those were common birthday items other kids had brought. My son's not a big fan of doughnuts, and I didn't want to just go pick up a pack of something. I wanted us to make something together.

About a year ago I had seen a variation of these robot snacks on Pinterest, I showed a picture to my son and he LOVED the idea.

So these are the ones we came up with.

These were so easy and fun to make.

My son continually referred to these as 'his robot army'.

It was so cute.

So here are our supplies.

Lego Star Wars Birthday Cake

I know, I've got Christmas posts and non-Christmas posts going on here. 

I'm just all over the place :)

So I already posted the Death Star Pinata from my son's 5th birthday. Now onto the cake!

This is my third time using this decorating technique for cakes, so I have a few more tips for you this go around.
Check out our Avengers cake here and our birthday cupcakes here.
Before we got started it took me a while to find a coloring book page my son liked, and we actually ended up picking two pictures and I just put them next to each other on the cake.
I of course realized afterwards that the Emperor is facing the wrong way.
Oh well.
Ok, scroll down to see all of the pictures!

So I started out by taping the pictures to the underside of a piece of glass.

Indoor S'mores

Hello everyone!

Today I thought I would share with you one of my guilty pleasures.

S'mores.

I love them!

The only problem with S'mores is it's not every day I can make a fire and roast marshmallows... 

So, we started making them in our microwave...I needed a chocolate fix people!

I also didn't always have the larger marshmallows, or the Hershey chocolate bars, so I just started using what I already had in my baking cupboards...wow, that makes me sound like I was getting crazy desperate, but I needed something sweet. :)

Baseball Cookies

Hello hello! I hope you are all doing well :)

About a week ago we had a carnival day/fundraiser for the baseball league that my son's team is in.

They had lots of fun activities for the families, and of course lots of yummy looking treats :)

I volunteered to bring some baked goods. I baked the sugar cookies the day before, making just simple circle shapes, but for some reason I left the decorating until the morning of...

I wanted to originally do super hero designs or something along those lines, (like these sweet Justice League/Captain America cupcakes I had made a few months ago), but since we were short on time I had to come up with something else.

My son suggested I make baseball cookies.

(I had a total 'duh, why didn't I think of that?' moment, I mean they were for a fundraiser for baseball teams after all!...Oh well, it made me proud to see him come up with that idea on his own)

I'm so glad he did, because these were SO easy to decorate!

Birthday Cupcakes

Hello everyone!

So my husband's family came to visit us here in sunny California about 2 weeks ago, and we were so excited to see them and have all of the kids run around and get to spend time with each other.

On that side of the family we have 5 nieces, and during the week while they were here we had 3 of their birthdays to celebrate!

Needless to say, they all have different tastes and likes.

One niece is into princesses, one is into Star Wars, and the other likes animals.

I offered to make cupcakes, and I wanted to make them each something to make the celebration feel special and individualized.

My most popular post EVER on this blog is the Avengers birthday cake I made for my son's birthday.
(If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, you can find it here).
To decorate the cake I printed out a coloring book page and traced it with frosting, check it out, it's awesome :)
Well, I decided to use the same decorating technique for these cupcakes.
That's right folks, I traced pictures with frosting again!
I started out by finding color book pages on the internet and re-sizing them to what I thought would be the right size for a cupcake.
I then taped the pictures under a piece of glass, and taped wax paper on top of the glass.

 I tinted my frosting black and did all of the outlines first.

Easter cookies

I thought I would take a moment to share these little cuties before the holiday on Sunday.

We attended an activity for the Primary kids in our ward last Saturday, and I signed up to bring a dessert.

I let my son pick through my cookie cutter stash, and these are the ones he choose for us to use.

My son has a baseball game tomorrow, and I signed up to bring the snacks.
For the snack bags I am going to include a juice box, a pack of Cheez-its, a plastic Easter egg with a few candies, and these bunny cookies we whipped up.

Super hero cupcakes

Yesterday was a special day in our home.

The light of our lives turned 4 years old!

I just have to take a moment to brag here, bare with me :)

My little man is the sweetest, most caring, considerate, helpful, imaginative, playful, happy, handsome little guy.

I am so thankful that we were blessed to have him in our lives.

He is our everything!

We did not have a birthday party though, if you remember, we had a BIG Avengers themed party back at the end of August before we moved so he could celebrate with family and friends one last time.

(For that party we had a 

Captain America shield pinata
Avengers birthday cake
DIY Avengers masks)

Check those posts out as well if you haven't before, they're freaking awesome :)
Ok, so since we did that huge party, we decided when it was his 'real' birthday we would just celebrate with the 3 of us.
We had a busy day full of activities and play.
Even though it was just us, I HAD to have some sort of cake so he could blow out his candles.

Since my son's 'birthday' party back in August he has been learning more about other super heroes.

His obsession has grown to now include members of the Justice League (Batman, Superman, Aquaman, the Flash, Green Lantern, etc), as well.

I first started out with just the Captain America shield cupcakes, but my husband challenged me and pushed me to try something more difficult.

I'm glad he did, because this is what I came up with.

I was really pleased with the outcome.

The Justice League themed cupcakes.

Halloween cupcakes

I decided I had to do one last Halloween post. 

Get it right in there before the holiday ended :)

It seems like the weekend before Halloween has as much celebrating as the day itself.

I call it Halloween weekend.

Last night we attended a trunk-or-treat.

If you've never been to a trunk-or-treat before,

the adults will line up their cars, usually in some sort of large circle, with the trunks all facing inward, and the kids will go from trunk to trunk for candy.

It was a lot of fun, and my son got soooo much candy.

It's ok though, we will help him :)

About half-way through the trunk-or-treating my husband called dibs on the regular sized Kit-Kat bar,

I will mostly go for anything in there.

Not really Whoopers or candy corn, but other than that I'm in!

People went all out and decorated their trunks.

I was impressed, there was some very creative decor.

There was also a chili cook-off and desserts.

I volunteered to bring a dozen cupcakes, and this is what I came up with.

I saw the mummy idea on Pinterest forever ago, and I always wanted to give it a shot. 

The eyes are just M&M's!

What did you do this Halloween weekend?

What candies do you search for in your kids buckets? 

It's ok, we all do it :)

Leftover Chicken Broth?

When I am making a recipe that calls for chicken broth, I have noticed I don't always use the whole can.  I decided to try a little experiment and see if it can be frozen...guess what, it can be!  Yay!!  The only thing I had on hand was an ice cube tray, so I poured the leftover broth into that and put it in the freezer.  Once the broth was frozen I popped them out of the ice tray and put the cubes in a ziplock bag, and just kept them in the freezer.  Each cube is 2 Tbsp. of broth.   

Another 'experiment' I wanted to try was to see what would be the best way to use the cubes.  I was making a sauce in a skillet on the stove, and I needed just a little bit of broth.  I grabbed two cubes from the freezer and threw them in the pan.  They just melted, and it worked perfectly!

Marbled Fondant

This was my second attempt ever at using fondant, and I thought I would try something new, again.  One of my brother's was having a birthday/Sunday dinner at my parent's house, so I figured was a good excuse to bust out a new cake.  

I made the fondant a light almost mint green color using regular liquid food coloring.  It was also my first attempt at a two-layer cake.  Yay!  

Yay's for me:  I didn't roll the fondant out as thin this time.  Also, the bottom part of the cake looks much cleaner and almost perfectly flat/straight edged  all the way around, and pretty dang good if I do say so myself :)

Boo's for me:  I probably should have finished off the top somehow, maybe even written 'Happy Birthday' or something, but to be honest, we were running a little late, (I didn't quite give myself loads of time to finish this...)

After covering the cake in the green fondant I had some left over and thought I should experiment with it.  I wanted to do a design and change the color, so I grabbed some liquid blue food coloring and started to mix it into the fondant with my hands.  

The result: this cool blue marbled looking fondant.  I cut it into strips and laid the strips around the two layers.  (They kind of look like strips of gum huh?)  

A helpful hint: to get the fondant to stick, moisten the side that will be placed on the cake with a tiny amount of water.

Much better than my last attempt!  Practice makes perfect!  Endless possibilities here, don't be afraid to try something new!!

Fondant Roses

I know I'm no where close to be a pro at cakes or fondant.  This was my first time making it and using it.  Setting my sights high, I know!  I searched Google for a tutorial on how to make fondant roses, and I found this video.  (I didn't have a sheet protector, so I actually just put it on the counter with plastic wrap.  I also don't have the color paste, so I just used regular food coloring, and it wasn't sticky.  I also didn't have the gum stuff she mentions, and the roses held up on their own.  Wow, you'd think if I was missing so many components I would have failed...I defeated the odds ha ha:)).  I was super excited because it looked so easy, and it really was!

My very first rose, I know it's not perfect, but I was so proud!

After making a couple I didn't want to lay them on the counter because the petals would flatten, so I inserted toothpicks in the bottom and stuck them into my dish sponge, and it totally worked!  They stayed like that until I was ready to put them on the cake.

This was the final product.  I kept the toothpicks on the roses and stuck them into the cake.  I learned something while doing this cake, I rolled the fondant our too thin, so you can kind of see the cake through the fondant, so keep that thicker.  Also, I had to put a border of frosting around the bottom because it wasn't nice and even in some parts.

Also, some of the fondant started drying out, and that's where I got the little cracks around the edges of the petals.

I'm so glad I decided to try this.  I'd always wanted to, and I definitely learned some tips for next time!  If you don't try, you'll never know!

Angry Birds Cupcakes

This is my third and final post about Angry Birds!  (Thank heavens).  Not that I don't love all the fun things it's entailed for us, but, it's nice to have finally posted everything.  

In my previous post I talked about how I made and Angry Birds golden egg pinata for my sons' birthday party.  Well, I also made Angry Birds cupcakes.  These were so fun to make!

*Don't judge me by the way that cookie sheet looks, I'm going to have to use a trick I saw on Pinterest to get that back in spectacular shape ;)

So, here's how they were made:

I just used a box of cake mix, and baked the cupcakes accordingly.  Once cooled I divided the frosting into four bowls and added the food coloring.  After frosting each cupcake I then dipped each one into sprinkles of the same color.  (That's another tip from Pinterest, if you pour out the sprinkles into a bowl, plate, etc. and dip the frosted cupcake, it does a perfect even coating of sprinkles, and you don't have to shake off any excess).

For the eyes and eyebrows, I used frosting in a bag with a pointy tip.  The tummy of the red bird is just a marshmallow.  The 'golden eggs' are marshmallows with yellow frosting, and the piggy's snouts are also marshmallows with green frosting.  All the beaks are made from pieces of marshmallow which were dipped in yellow food coloring. 

And that's it!  They were a huge hit at the party!