What a curious plan.....

For most of Feb (okay the last week of it) and 1st week of March, I summoned all of my sneakiness and subterfuge (pretty easy really for a Gemini) and managed to throw a surprise bridal shower for my friend Marge who is, spookily enough, getting married ♥

Being as how she's marrying an Englishman, I thought it only fitting that the shower be some form of tea party.  I checked this out with one of her colleagues (sneakiness part one) and she suggested a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and that's exactly what I went with. 

Operation MHTP phase one was to rid all local Goodwill Stores and by local I mean within a 20 mile radius of my house, of all of their mis-matched teacups, saucers, teapots and side plates.  Phase 2 was making mad hatter hats - well the youtube video I watched made it look so easy and it only took her 5 minutes - suffice it to say it took me a little longer :-)  I did have to make 4 of them though.  The initial plan was to make 2 -one for the bride and one for me but once the girls saw them of course they needed, not wanted, one each too, hence 4! 

Phase 3 was the making and baking of food, my favorite bit.  For a traditional tea party finger sandwiches, with the crusts cut off are a must, naturally!  There were a couple of platters of sandwiches, 2 quiches, kahlua & chocolate fudge (YUM), white cupcakes with raspberry coulis and white chocolate buttercream - nuff said, and caramel cupcakes with caramel icing, oh and a chocolate swiss roll with raspberry & whipped cream center. I'm not kidding when I say we had enough food :-)

Here are a few pics, these were taken by Jessica who was chief paparazzi until she was allowed food and then we never saw her again and that's the reason there are no late night photo's of the shower, truly it is....



Head table part 1



Need I say more?

 



 

The bride to be (or BB) with her usual wine glass!









Catch up!

Well, that resolution lasted well :-)  Broken in the 2nd month!  But, that's not to say I've not been baking, I have, I've just not been that great at either taking photo's of the delicious creations or blogging (should that be bragging? don't answer that) about them.

Let's see, what did I make in February? .... I did a last minute Superbowl cake, which was red velvet and cream cheese whipped frosting, and looked like well a football field!  This year it was the Greenbay Packers going head to head with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  The names were at either end of the field with their logos in fondant - but I didn't remember to take photo's of this, d'oh!  So you'll have to take my word for it that it looked pretty good and smelled even better!

Of course it was valentines day too last month, so for the girls classes I made cake pops and jammy dodgers with heart shapes instead of circles cut out - you'll need to take my word for the jammy's though as I didn't get a photo of them (are you seeing a pattern here?).  The cake pops I did though.  These little yummy things were chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream and pops to look like mini cupcakes.  The bottoms were dipped in milk chocolate and the tops in pink and then scattered with mini hearts ♥.

February was then consumed with a variety of girls scout and school (PTA) things... and planning a surprise Mad Hatter themed Bridal Shower for bride to be Marge ♥

Moving along swiftly to March....

MOM... Phineas and Ferb are laying on the grass doing nothing!

Lazy Days of summer with Phineas & Ferb



Wow - 3 posts in the one month, I am keeping to my new year's resolution :-) 

This week I've had a lot of fun making a Phineas & Ferb cake.  Now of course I'd heard of them, my girls watch Disney channel in between the adverts of all the other channels that they surf whilst watching the one they're really watching!  But, I did have do to a little research on them and that meant hours of web surfing flickr.com for ideas and other cake blogs & websites - not too arduous a task except well a few things did suffer because of it, namely the laundry, and well is it really terrible to serve reheats for dinner just one night of the week?  Stu seems to think so!

Of course I've still no idea who's who except for Perry the Platypus and that's only because he's a dead give away.  He might well be Agent P in the cake but I'd know that tail anywhere, lol.

As with most cakes I'm asked to do, my first thought is, okay this is going to be a challenge.  Usually followed by what the F was I thinking, how am I going to do that?  And, then I settle into it and color the fondant and gumpaste and get in the zone.  Getting into said zone absolutely always involves loud, good music (and this isn't subjective, my music is good!), no children no matter how good they are at helping and a clear space so that I can spread all of my stuff out and be able to see it and still spend 10 mins searching on the table for it because it is so cluttered - what can I say?  I'm messy. 

I made the triangly headed one first, I'll call him Phineas ;-).  The head was the easiest part, a square fondant cutter cut again to get the triangle and the bottom of  a massive icing tip to curve the mouth, so far so good.  Then it was onto Ferb.... hmmmm not so straight forward.  I rolled the fondant/gumpaste mix into what I'll call a sausage shape and not what it truly looked like(!), several times until it genuinely looked like it could become a person.  I tried 'glueing' fondant ears onto the side of his head but they looked plain daft so I pulled a little out of the sides of his head and well, I think they looked alright.  His nose was easy as was his mouth.  I also made the tree trunk out of chocolate marshmallow fondant and marked it to resemble bark - it really does okay?!  Feeling quite pleased with myself I estimated that the amount of time I'd need to make the rest of the bodies, leaves, and toadstools was (as per usual) no where near the true time it'd take!  End result, all time went to the cake and the Brownie & Daisy movie night party had non-homemade snacks and candy for dessert - they definitely didn't complain.

Alright, ready for some more pictures?




 

Agent P





Ariel view - I love that Agent P is hiding behind the tree!



♫ Pink Wheels keep on turning...♫

Okay, so a little poetic licence if you please....and yes, I'm now singing Sweet Home Alabama and probably will be for the rest of the day - you are so lucky you're not in the same room as me ;-)

Ever since I made the beaver cake for Nicholas, Abby has been thinking of a cool cake to come up with for her birthday and this one didn't fail - a rollerskate!  I was very excited to make this one - I know I'm easily pleased but it was a very fun cake to do.  It's a lemon pound cake stacked and carved from a 1/2 sheet cake.  Honestly, there's no end to my delusional state but it worked, and pretty darn well too if I say so myself!

Everything is edible, the wheels are rice crispie treats (home made of course) covered in fondant, the silver is lustre dust mixed with lemon juice - often I use vodka for this as it dries quickly and doesn't leave a taste but well perhaps not for a 7yr old's cake.... Okay, so the only bits not edible, or rather not recommended edible are the polystyrene blocks under the front and back ends to help suspend the cake.

Colours were chosen by the birthday girl and for a roller disco party I think they rock.  There were also pink & purple cupcakes in vanilla to complement the skate but again you'll have to take my word for that.  Well y'all have seen cupcakes before, right?

Is there an app for 'I love my iphone'?

Here goes one of my New Year's resolutions, that I haven't yet broken or abandoned... I'm going to make at least one post per month, fingers crossed here goes....

It's been a strange week here in the 'burbs of Atlanta.  It snowed last Sunday and we were all excited at the prospect of no school on Monday - we got our wish, five-fold - school's been out all week, the roads have been treacherous for the most part of that too.  The end result has been cabin fever, which is a very real and very traumatic form of psychosis!

A good part to being stuck home is not the endless cleaning that I could have been doing, where's the fun in that y'all?  But, I had time to make Stu's birthday cake.  What other kind of cake could I have made for the guy who has his iphone attached to his hand most of the waking day, but an iPhone.  I had fun doing this one.  It's all on a x3 scale - yes I measured meticulously and then set about cutting out the squares for the background apps and then making the icons to go in them, and no I don't have a cutter that's 2.7cm square they just don't exist!  The only cutter I had was for the music notes, all others are originals by my hand.  There are a few details missing, i.e. the chrome trim & buttons on the side and the white writing under each app.  These were the extra supplies I was going to pick up this week, along with his other birthday gifts but are all still in the stores right now as the roads have been horribly icy.

The cake is 13.5" x 6.9", 3 layer chocolate orange cake with chocolate orange whipped buttercream.  Cake balls with the trimmings to come.  The girls are making the cake balls, it was the trade off for them not 'helping' with the big cake, this might be the only post for January as I'll be cleaning the kitchen into February (and as always I had to google how to spell Feb!).....

Thanks for looking!

♫ Fa la la la la....♫

Where has this year gone?  It's now December for crying out loud!  So, with time a-ticking it was time yesterday to wedge the laundry room door closed, out of sight out of mind and all that and get on with doing some holiday cakes.  I've started small with some cupcakes - well they take way more time than anything else as everything has to be so small to fit on the top.  For that read, they take more time which means less time to do laundry, are you with me now?

The cakes themselves are regular yellow cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant tops.  Now I've been using this same recipe for a good while now, so much so that I can make it without the instructions, smarty pants huh?  Well the fall usually comes after some silly show of pride and fall I did, or rather the 6" cake did.... I used 1% fat milk in the recipe instead of whole milk (that's what I usually use).  Well you know it's the season of over indulgence and I thought if I could save a few cals here and there it'd all be to the good.  Regardless that the recipe has 12oz of butter and there's another 6oz in the buttercream, ahem... Anyway, the recipe like all scientific formulae didn't like being messed around.  The cake took way longer to bake, of course I kept checking it every 5, then 10 mins past the time it should have been ready and yes I ended up with a divot in the centre of it, d'oh!  So what did I do?  Well, what any self-respecting baker would do.  I cut the cake in half, filled the sink hole with the oh so yummy buttercream and turned it upside down for the cut side to be decorated, 'ta da'.  And, yes, it does completely, utterly and unquestioningly blow away the calories and the reason for trying to reduce them in the first place, but what the H, it's Christmas, or nearly.  The Coca-cola ads have been on so it's definitely on its way!

Everything is edible and everything was hand cut/made by yours truly.  How cute are these?  I've got loads more designs to come, these are just a taster but first I need to get on and do a baby shower order due for tomorrow.  Pop back early next week to see what else has been going on in my kitchen.

Here they are individually too.

'lego, lego, lego what's goin' on 'ere en?

It's been a while since I've posted but that doesn't mean I've not been baking! What it does mean is that I've been going from one cake and week to the next without really knowing how I've got there!

This week I've been making lots and lots of lego bricks out of fondant. Now, you'd think that with the amount of Lego stuff out there they'd have a mold of some kind but no, nope, nada! Each brick on the cakes, oh yes there are 2 of them, are hand made/cut and to within a cat's whisker in dimensions of the real sized bricks. Now of course I could have stayed with just the one size of brick, but where's the fun in that? So, a variety of sizes completes the look.

The first cake is a cupcake pull apart cake, a first for me, with a frozen buttercream transfer, another first - gotta love a challenge! and with a few of the fondant bricks scattered for good measure.

I was intending to take more photo's of each step but I got carried away and so all there is to show is the before and after. To get a true idea of how it all went add whatever sweary words you like and it'll be as though you were right in the kitchen with me. 




Before....

 

After



  

  


















The 2nd cake is a 10 inch square - I could have sworn I had a 10inch square pan but it turns out that I didn't (and still don't). I cut a 12 inch square down to 10 - cake pops coming later today with the leftovers = yummy! It's a rich chocolate cake with whipped(Madagascan) vanilla buttercream - the buttercream is whipped, not the Madagascans! Covered in white fondant before being decked out in the lego mat (hand made by yours truly), logo, name plaque and border bricks around the other 3 sides. The best bit about these cakes? Aiden loved them. His little face was a picture when I delivered them this morning. I had purposefully left off a few bricks so that he could size them up with the real McCoy but before he got close to doing that he'd eaten one and was ready for more. That was my cue to leave and let Mom manage that one :-)