Cakes Since I've Been Gone

I've done a few cakes in the past year that I'd like to share:

Here is a Christian Louboutin Shoebox Cake that I made for a friend's 40th Birthday Party.



The cake is a Strawberry Champagne Cake

Ingredients:
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter 1 1/2 cups white sugar
3/4 cup champagne
6 egg whites

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter a 10 inch round cake pan.
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until very light and fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together, and then blend into creamed mixture alternately with champagne.
3. In a large clean bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold 1/3 of the whites into batter to lighten it, then fold in remaining egg whites. Pour into prepared pan.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

The Icing was just regular buttercream and I added some chopped strawberries in between each layer and it was so good. The shoe is a replica of Sex in the City's gold sparkle shoe that Carrie wears in the movie!



I bought a candy mold of a high heel shoe then painted red chocolate at the bottom and then poured in poured in gold pearl dust into the mold followed by off white chocolate, and then let it harden in the fridge. I then made white chocolate covered strawberries and sprinkled them with gold dust as well. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results.





Twilight Cake
I was pretty pressed for time with this cake, so I made a store bought cake, covered it with buttercream, and then painted the cover of the Twilight book on top with chocolate. I added a few strawberries and Wal-lah - the birthday cake was complete!




Kiddos' Birthday Cakes
My sweet daughter could not decide which princess she wanted for her birthday cake, so we represented all of them - complete with a melted jolly rancher magic carpet for Jasmine! Can you pick out all the princesses?







On my daughter's actual birthday, I made pink butterfly cupcakes, from Hello Cupcake





For My son's birthday - we did a Toy Story 3 Cake; which was perfect b/c Toy Story 3 was just coming out AND my son was turning 3 - how perfect is that!





And, for his actual birthday, we did Spiderman Cupcakes! The cupcakes were red velvet and the icing was tinted blue buttercream with black spiderwebs and candy, store bought spidermans.




Well, that's it for now! More to come:)

Homemade Monkey Bread Muffins

Hello Blog World!
It's been so long since I've posted anything, but I've been so super busy working full time and with two toddlers on my hand, but decided to get back into it! This morning, I had a day off and decided to try my hands and making homemade Monkey Bread Muffins - so YUMMY and so easy to make!




I adapted the recipe from a blog that I found and really enjoy called Sweet Tooth

And, here's the recipe:

Monkey Bread Muffins

1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, chilled
3 tbsp maple syrup
1/3 + 2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 1/2 tbsp Heavy Cream
Splash of Pure Vanilla Extract

- Move an oven rack to the bottom third of the oven and preheat to 425 degrees. Line 1 muffin tin with 12 liners
- In a small bowl, microwave 4 tbsp butter and the maple syrup at high power until melted, about 30 seconds
- In a small bowl, mix together 1/3 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon
- In a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, the remaining 2 tbsp of granulated sugar, and salt. Pulse until well combined. Cut the remaining butter into small pieces and pulse together until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
- Pulse in the buttermilk until the dough comes together.
- Transfer to a floured work surface, and pat dough into a 10" square. Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to quarter the dough, then cut each quarter into 16 equal pieces. Roll into balls
- Dip each ball in the maple butter, then the sugar mixture. Place 4-5 coated balls into each muffin cup press down gently.
- Tent the muffin tin with tin foil and bake until cooked through and golden, about 15-17 minutes.
- Mix together confectioners sugar and heavy cream and vanilla to make the glaze. While the muffins are still warm, drizzle the glaze over the muffins. Serve warm.

Recipe yields 12 muffins

So good - Enjoy Y'all!!

My kiddos will never try anything I cook again - especially on April Fool's Day

So, I thought and thought on how I could do an April Fool on my 2 and 4 year old, and after searching the internet, this is what I came up with this year!

A dinner of a cake that is actually meat loaf, a pizza that is actually cake and a drink that is actually jell-o! It was easy to make and so FUNNY watching the kid's eat it!

For the pizza cake, I used a cake mix and baked it in a round cake pan. I iced it with red icing to look like the tomato sauce and used a fruit roll up that I cut into circles as the pepperoni. The "cheese" was actually grated white chocolate!

Pretty convincing!

The drink was just red jell-o that I made in a cup, added strawberries, blueberries and a straw to it before it got hard!

For the meat loaf, I baked it in a rectangular cake pan and iced it with mashed potatoes! The kiddos were definitely fooled! I asked if they wanted to eat cake for dinner (which was really the meat loaf) and of course, they said yes!

My daughter taking a sip of her drink . . .

My son taking a bite of "cake" (actually meat loaf) . . .

Smiles all around when they realized that it was an April Fools and that they were allowed to eat cake (that looked like pizza) for dinner!

Hop Hop Hoppy Easter Wreath

Hop, Hop, Hoppy Easter everyone! I wanted to share my lastest Easter wreath! I wanted to create a very colorful egg with an Easter Bunny "holding" the egg from behind, and here is the finished product!!

I love all the bright colors against our dark door! It was so easy to make. Here are the items you will need to complete this wreath:
Egg shaped styrofoam (I couldn't find one, so I bought just a rectangle and cut it into the egg shape)
Different colored fabrics
Fuzzy fabric for the rabbit's hands
Elmer's glue
Pencil
Ribbon
Headband Rabbit Ears (I got mine at the grocery store for $1.99)

The first thing that I did was to cut out the egg shape from the rectangular shaped styrofoam using a serrated knife. Don't worry if it's not completely perfect, because the fabric should hide any imperfections.

Next a cut a slit into the styrofoam and put the ribbon that I was going to use to hang it with through the slit. I added a few more slits with ribbon for the ears and hands (that way I'd have something to sew it on with).

I then mapped out the different colors and patterns that I wanted for the egg.

I cut all the fabric into 2" X 2" squares and then wrapped each piece around a pencil, dabbed it in glue and then added it to the styrofoam. For the ears, I cut them from the headband and then sewed them to the ribbon that I had attached to the styrofoam. I also tied a bow with some different ribbon, attached a note saying "Hoppy Easter" that I printed from the computer, and glued it onto the egg. Finally, I cut out some hand shapes from the fuzzy fabric and glued them on as well!

And, that's it!! Happy Easter Everyone!!

The Eyes of Texas are Upon You

So I know I usually talk about cakes on Saturday, but this week I found out that one of my techs just got into UT School of Pharmacy (my alumni)! I had been trying to help him and had written his letter of recommendation, so I feel like a very proud mentor:) To help celebrate this very special occassion, the kiddos and I made him some UT cookies and burnt orange popcorn!

We had to make the cookies quickly since we left the next day on our Spring Break trip, so we cheated and used store bought dough. My little Princess was super helpful in rolling out the dough and cutting out the cookie shapes.

Of course you have to have a longhorn and Texas cookie cutter to make the perfect UT cookies:)

Here they are cooling off while we made the royal icing. Now I know you can make it with meringue powder, but I don't think it tastes as good, so we made royal icing with egg whites using this recipe:
2 large egg whites

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

3 cups (330 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted
Basically, you just beat the egg whites and lemon juice with a hand held mixer while you slowly add the sugar a cup at a time until it's all mixed. Then add your food coloring.

Here's the finished cookies!

For the colored popcorn, we just followed the direction on the back of the popcorn kernel jar, but also added food dye to the oil along with 1/4cup of sugar.

Then we put on the lid and let the popcorn do its thing.

Nothing says UT like burnt orange popcorn! Congrats 'V'!!! I'm so proud of all your hard work!

Today I Am . . . Shirt

My kiddos love to pretend, so I decided to make a shirt to make it clear to the rest of the family who they were on that particular day! It was super easy and the kids love them! Here's my son's shirt:

Here is my daughter's shirt:

It just says,"Today I Am" and then it has boxes that he/she can place a little check or heart in so we know if he/she is "Batman" or a "Fairy" or "Spiderman" or a "Princess" or best of all, him or herself! To make the shirt, I just printed out different fonts from our computer, made a stencil from freezer paper, ironed it on and painted!


For the check and heart, I just used sticky velcro and put a little square in the middle of each box (I used the soft part of the velcro for the shirt), and one little square on the felt check or heart that I cut out.


And, that's it! A quick and easy way to make a really fun shirt!

12 Months 1 Table Runner

I enjoy decorating for all the holidays, even the little ones:) My dining room is the first thing that people can see when they walk into my house, so I love having a decorative table runner, but those things can get expensive, so I came up with a year round table runner that you can change for each holiday. Here it is in action for St. Patty's Day!

This was not only SUPER easy, but also very inexpensive to make! Here's what I did! I bought two large poster boards, 3 yards of white fabric ($2.99/yd plus they were having a 30% off sale - I LOVE SALES!!), sew on velcro, and different holiday colored ribbons and fabrics. I decided on the design that I wanted for each holiday (hearts for Valentine's Day, clovers for St. Patty's, etc) and printed the shapes out from our computer.

For the actual tablerunner, I measured out how long I wanted it, folded the fabric in half and cut it out. I then hemmed the edges and sewed a strip of velcro down the center of the runner. I also sewed some velcro at either end of the runner horizontally to attach the holiday designs.

To make each holiday design, I cut out the image from the computer, traced it on the poster board, cut it out and then using my hot glue gun, I glued the different fabric on each shape. I finished with some decorative trim and then glued a piece of velcro on the back.

I took the cordinating ribbon and sewed on a long piece of velcro so that I could attach it to the center of the tablerunner. And, WAH-LAH, that's it!! So simple and fun! The possibilities to this project are endless!! I love it! Here are the holiday designs that I've completed so far. I'll post more as I get them completed.


Valentine's Day! If you look closely, you can see some of the velcro at the bottom of the hearts, but I don't think will ever show unless people get right up on it, so don't stress over it (I did at first, and decided it was gonna be ok).

St. Patty's Day!


Easter!

That's all I have now, but I'll be working on it the rest of the year:)! I highly recommend getting creative with this project, and if you do, please send me pics! I'd LOVE to see what all you EXTREMELY TALENTED ladies out there can do it!

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