Where The Wild Things Are 1st Birthday Party

 My littlest turned one this year! He's a bundle of fun and just a little wild. I think that is just part and parcel of being the second child! We decided to put on a Wild ONE party. I centered the theme around the book, Where the Wild Things Are. There are so many great directions you can go with this book!

Let's start with my favorite part of a birthday party...the cake! Cam's cake was 3 tiered. The bottom cake was an 8 inch lemon cake with a lemon curd filling and a whipped mascarpone frosting under the ombre American Buttercream waves.  The second tier and the third tier were  chocolate cakes with the same whipped mascarpone as filling and frosting. The second tier was a 6 inch and the third was baked in a small ramekin.

For the decorations I used American buttercream in three different shades to give the wave effect.  I used black fondant to cut out silhouettes of the monsters from the Wild Things book. I did this a few days ahead and let them dry a little. Once on the cake I brushed them with a little water and edible dusting powder to give them a nice sheen. I also used some yellow fondant to make the crown.

The menu was Italian themed. We had pasta salad,  crescent ring sub sandwiches, caprese salad with French bread, fruit and veggie tray, and a Lasagna dip. For drinks, since it was mostly and adult party we had ginger ale and a white wine Sangria. It was all pretty tasty! I mean how can you go wrong with bread and cheese right?

You can find the recipes I used below:
Lemon Mascarpone Cake
Chocolate Cake
American Buttercream
Pasta Salad
Crescent Ring Sandwiches
Lasagna Dip
White Wine Sangria

I found a little crown for the Wild One to wear at Target and I made little shirts for both of my boys. I got the plain shirts at Walmart and purchased some transfer paper. On my computer, I found some free clipart silhouettes of monsters, a gold crown, and dowloaded some fun fonts. Using basic word, I created the image and REVERSED IT before printing on my inkjet printer. This was super easy and relatively fast and cheap!

On the big brother's shirt below the Monster silhouettes it says "Wild and Five" and Cameron's says Wild One with a monster peering out of the pocket.  

On Cam's it has the same monster silhouettes that are on the front of Big Brother's and Z's says Big Brother.  

 I also had a craft. We painted terra cotta planters and then planted little succulents. We just used craft paint and sponge brushes. They turned out great and were a lot of fun! Everyone's were so different and unique!

We had a blast with our little Wild ONE!

I've loved making cakes these last few months, but I'm itching to get back into my sewing room. I'm hoping to use my creativity in a different medium. But for now, I'll say Cake On since I've still got cake on the brain....Unicorns and Mirror Glaze cakes are in my future. 

J

Harry Potter Cake

Hello All-

The last month, I've been caking it up! First with the Lego Cake, and now with a Harry Potter Baby Shower Cake. This was a fun and challenging cake for me! 

I don't know if you've ever encountered this problem, but I was having some difficulty with the cake itself. I live at altitude and the center kept falling. I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong as I was following the recipe exactly. The reviews for the cake were excellent, and no one else was having the same problem with the recipe. 

I decided that it must be due to altitude. So I did some research, and found that cakes that sink in the middle don't have enough structure to support the rise or they are too airy. Structure in cakes is created via the proteins in the flours used. The recipe called for cake flour, which has a lower protein count than all purpose flour. I decided to switch out the cake flour for All purpose. 

Usually it is advised that you make just one change to a cake recipe so you can narrow down the problem....but I decided that I'd throw caution to the wind! I went ahead and made an adjustment to the actual cake mixing process. As I had been using a stand mixer to incorporate the dry and wet ingredients together, I decided that might be adding too many bubbles to the batter. Instead of using the stand mixer to add the dry and wet ingredients together, I did it by hand.  Also, after the pans were full of batter, I dropped them on the counter 3 times each, just to make sure that there were no unwanted bubbles left. 

Believe it or not, the cakes came out perfectly! I was amazed that making these changes helped the cakes to such a degree!

Set up for checkerboard cake interior. 

When you stack your checkerboard cake,
you need to alternate the layers. 

Okay, now onto the cake...I made a red velvet and "yellow" velvet cake checkerboard cake. The colors were the Gryffindor colors. You don't need any fancy pans to make a checkerboard cake. just some concentric rings. After you've baked your cake, let it cool completely and wrap tightly. Then freeze so the cake can firm up. Once it has been well chilled- but not completely frozen, use your rings to cut out the circular pieces. Since the cake is firm, you can easily remove and replace them. Alternate colors for each layer you intend to make. Layer 1- RYR. Layer 2- YRY. Layer 3 RYR etc. Rewrap your cakes and freeze until you are ready to use, or you can stack your cakes at this point.

Viola! This is the interior
of the checkerboard cake. 

Once your cake is stacked and dirty iced, stick it in the fridge for a bit to let it all set up. If you are going to use lots of fondant figurines, I would suggest you make them ahead of time. Sometimes fondant is too soft and can't support its own weight. For this cake, I made the following ahead of time: Golden snitch, baby onesie, Hedwig, Nimbus 2000, and the Gryffindor necktie.  If you make your figures ahead of time, you should store them on parchment paper and cover lightly. Don't store in an airtight container.

There is so much more that I could share with you that I learned while making this cake. If you have questions that I didn't answer, please comment. I'll do my best to find an answer for you. 

Cake ON!

J

Lego Birthday Party!

I love celebrating birthdays! It has always been fun to go all out one day a year for my kiddo. I love spending time planning birthday parties. I've mastered the food- going with a Nacho Bar, fruit and veggie trays pretty much guarantees that all the party guests will have something to choose from regardless of need or preference. (GF, Vegan, Paleo, etc) 

This year my 5 year old wanted a Lego themed party. I was thrilled because I was intrigued by the Lego cakes I'd seen on Pinterest. There were many cakes that inspired me. Some were shaped like numbers, some were giant lego block, others were construction scenes. I read many tutorials and watch videos trying to perfect my approach to the lego cake. I loved every minute of it!

Z decided that he'd like to have a square lego construction cake with one tier being chocolate with cookies and cream filling and the other tier would be chocolate with mint chocolate chip filling. I use a fabulous chocolate cake recipe from Sweetapolita. I have yet to have it fail, in fact, I use many of her cake recipes and find them wonderful. You should check out her blog for sure. The filling/frosting was a Swiss Meringue Buttercream that I added crushed Oreo cookies to. To make the mint cookies and cream filling (it tastes EXACTLY like a Thin Mint cookie) I made Swiss Meringue Buttercream and added the Oreo cookies, peppermint extract, and green food coloring. It was amazing! 

Making the individual lego blocks seemed daunting at first, but then I found a tutorial by Kathy over at Merriementdesign.com . She did a great job explaining how to use a baseplate as a texture roller to create the lego bricks. It was so slick and worked like a dream. The rest of the bricks on the side I used legos to measure the thickness and then cut varying lengths from a variety of colors. It looks complicated, but it went together easily. 

Aside from the cake, I also made some decorations using Mega Blocks, poster board,  plastic table clothes, construction paper, and crepe paper. Using the Mega Blocks, I made letters to spell out Z's name. Using the poster board, plastic table clothes, and construction paper, I made giant Lego bricks. It was far cheaper and easier to purchase the table clothes than primary colored wrapping paper. I used the crepe paper to jazz up our wooden banister and draw the primary colors together throughout the house. 

I like to have a few organized activities for the littles to work on. This year, I had three stations for kiddos. The first was a decorate your own MiniFig station. The second was a Building Station where little built race cars. The third and last station was a racing station. I propped a board up and put a yoga mat over top to create a race track. The kiddos LOVED racing their newly built creations down the ramp.

Ever since the Lego Cake, my brain has been focused on all things cake! I'm currently working on a baby shower cake. Hopefully, I'll be ready to share a success story next week!

So long for now!
J