Marble Marble Cake

 

I was assigned dessert for Easter, and this year it just so happened that it was my brother-in-law's birthday.  After my mom suggested I make him a cake, I sent my sister a text and asked what his favorite was.  She told me marble with either regular or chocolate buttercream.  After some thought, I decided that because the cake would be marble, I would use both!  I used vanilla buttercream for the first layer, mixed the chocolate with vanilla for the second, and only chocolate on the top.  I was a bit worried it would be too fancy for a dude, but he loved it!

Hey Where's Perry?

It's that time of year again.  My twins are TEN!  I can hardly believe it!  And while I got off easy with my oldest wanting an ice cream cake for her 11th birthday back in September these girls are not so impressed with store cakes.

My little sweetface likes simple cakes (thank God) so this year she wanted a sprinkle cake with pink and orange nonpareils.  Pretty simple right?  Haha.  They make is look so easy in the pictures, but for an amateur such as myself, I think it turned out pretty nice.

My little cuteface on the other hand, loves to challenge me almost as much as she loves Perry the Platypus.  She wanted a Perry cake - but not just any Perry cake - and NOT agent P.  This one took some creativity.  I hate fondant so I never use it.  We're a buttercream family and I try to make everything on the cake edible.  

Perry's little feet, bill, and tail are made from those vanilla cream wafers covered in buttercream.  Of coarse I had to prop that bill up.  The eyes are just buttercream (a special treat for my mam).  Everything else is cake - blue velvet cake so he's the same color inside and out...kinda weird, but tasty.

(once I finished him, I looked at a picture and realized I forgot his little tuft of hair, so I added it)

You can't see, but she's totally smiling in there.

Ma Cake

My ma LOVES buttercream roses, but I'm no pro so when she asked me to make her a pistaschio birthday cake, I mimmicked a cake I previously made for one of my daughters, but used three shades of green for the frosting.  She was so happy, and that's all I can hope for.

I took these pictures on the picnic table outside trying to capture some natural light, but it wasn't working out too well for me.

A Bigfoot Cake for my Main Squatch

That's right, my hubby just turned 40!  He was super blah about this birthday, so I threw him a party. Once the invitation was out, I started brainstorming cakes.  While trying to research bigfoot (and I say trying because there's not a whole lot of bigfoot party supplies), the only cakes I would come across were foot cakes.  And then it hit me - picture cake!  I found a few places to order the picture sheet from and a friend of mine did a nice little photoshop job for me.  Once I ordered the sheet, I got really excited!

My mom just so happened to be going to Door County for the weekend so I asked her to bring me some chocolate rocks.  I then decided chocolate footprints were necessary.  I ordered a footprint candy mold (probably for baby showers, but whatever) and put them all around the cake.  

And finally....trees.  They had to be edible.  They had to be cool.  Sugar cones, dipped in chocolate, rolled in green rice krispies - YES!

Of coarse you can't just have a bigfoot cake. 

Fl-owl-ers

Happy 9th Birthday to by beautiful twins!!!!  This year the girls decided they wanted a roller skating party, and therefore we weren't going to have a big party at the house.  We were also going to do the unthinkable...ORDER A CAKE.  After some thought (and complaining on their part), we decided to have just a small family gathering for them on their birthday and that I would make cakes for that.  

When it came down to it, they had no idea what they wanted!  So we browsed the web for ideas and came up these:

Flower Cake

For my very fancy girl, we did all flowers in lots of colors.  She was more than thrilled...and I have to admit, for someone who can't do flowers, this looks pretty cool.

For my girl who loves everything animal, we decided on an owl with an added surprise.

 

I Wanna Rock And Roll All Night

My baby, my first born is 10!  I don't know where the time went and more importantly I don't know at what point in the last year she defected to her father's side.

She is now a Kiss fan.  And despite my begging for something more cake-panish and easy for me to do, she had her beautiful little heart set on a Kiss Cake.

And to challenge me even more, she didn't want black frosting.  I called in the help of Pinterest, Google, and yes, even my husband.

I made trips to Michaels, Wal-Mart, and JoAnn Fabrics scoping my cake decorating options.

I even checked ebay for anything that might help me out on this one.

I borrowed my sister's sheet cake pan and was just going to cut out the Kiss logo, but then she showed me a cute little 6-inch pan she had.  "Stage" instantly popped into my head.  I reconsulted my husband, who suggested these cute little Lego-compatible kiss figures.

In the end, I came up with this - all on my own.  Free hand (with only a little tracing) and even made flames!  I don't think I've ever seen a kid so happy about a cake in my life.  Maybe she'll be defecting back to my side now.

You Are My Sunshine

Apparently my Easter cake was such a hit last year, they wanted a repeat performance.  On top of the pressure of being creative and Eastery, my sister demanded chocolate buttercream - her new love.

Sunflowers are springy...more summery, but Peeps are definitely Eastery and this cake makes me smile!