Thomas the Train 3rd Birthday

It doesn't seem like my little guy should be 3 or that it should be his birthday already.  I posted here about his birthday invites and now I have the party details.  I decided to do the party in our apartment rather than my mom's house this year which meant less space to decorate but I'm really satisfied with how everything turned out. 

(after this pic I realized my table was not centered and fixed it lol)

I used scrap paper I already had in my stash for the cardstock circle garlands and the #3/Happy Birthday hanging cutouts. 

I had planned on having these accordion circles hanging from the ceiling but when I went to put everything up it just didn't work.  Instead I hung them as a backdrop. 

The All Aboard banner was made with scrap paper I had in my stash.  I didn't do the typical Happy Birthday banner because I had one already made from last year and I had enough hanging from the ceiling with Happy Birthday on it I thought it might be a little overkill to have a banner too. 

This is the first birthday of Grant's I didn't do cupcakes.  I couldn't figure out a way to decorate them that satisfied me and when searching online I found some really cute round cakes that were decorated simply enough I thought I could do something similar.  I haven't decorated a cake since my sister's graduation party and I swore I would never use fondant again, which meant every detail on the cake was gonna have to be piped by hand by me.  That's a lot of pressure on this mama, and looking back I should have just made the cupcakes and stuck to what I know I'm good at.

I chose a pumpkin flavored cake with cream cheese frosting.  It took me forever and a day to decide on a cake flavor. I knew Grant wouldn't really care and we would be left with any that didn't get ate so I didn't want a plain old chocolate or vanilla, that's just not my style.  I decided on pumpkin because it's October and I love the smell of anything pumpkin flavored baking in my house.  I also made Butter Cookies, a signature cookie of my mom's.  She used to make these for every Halloween, Christmas, and Easter.  Every time I smell them baking I think of so many Holiday memories, and I've made them for every one of Grant's birthdays so far.

There weren't many things to actually buy for decorations this time around.  Other than the balloons, table cloth, streamers, and some cardstock.  Which was great because I got to use up some of the craft supplies I already have and it kept costs down.

I didn't do a whole spread of food this year since I'm pregnant, working part time, and I figured it was ok to cut myself some slack and take the easier way out by ordering pizzas and buying a couple 2 liters of pop.  I usually go a little overboard at showers and birthdays with all the food and then I'm left with a ton of leftovers, and spend the whole 2 hours before the party cooking and cleaning up the kitchen before people arrive.  I knew with me doing the cake during Grant's naptime I wouldn't have much time to cook a meal then clean everything before people started showing up.  And lets face it sometimes it's nice to not stress yourself out.  It seems the last hour before every party I've done is me being short with everyone, aggravated that certain things aren't done or people are in my way, and me runnin around like a chicken with no head.  It wasn't worth it this year, and given Grant's pickiness with food, I'm sure he more than appreciated the pizzas since it's one of the few things he loves eating.

After everyone left my husband and I sat there surrounded by toys, boxes, and wrapping paper and it was the feeling you get when Christmas is over.  All the build up and waiting all year then it's over and all I could think was, another year gone.  Another year celebrated.  Another year before the next one.  It's exciting to think next year Grant will have a brother or sister to celebrate his birthday with.

 

Until next year!

Graduation Cake

Here is the infamous graduation cake I confidently took the on the task of making without a single minutes worth of experience with fondant.

Of course with all the packing necessary the one thing I forgot was my camera so this pic is taken with my cell phone.  I think my sister has the ugliest school colors I've every seen, burgundy and golden yellow.  I made 2 9 inch cakes for the bottom layer and 2 6 inch cakes for the top.  Bottom cakes were chocolate cake with chocolate chip cookie dough filling and oh my goodness was it every delicious.  I don't like to brag on myself but I made one heck of a good chocolate cake.  The top cakes were suppose to be lemon cake with blueberry cream cheese filling.  I made these in cupcake form about a month ago.  Here's a lesson to anyone out there thinking of trying this, don't!  The filling works beautifully in cupcakes not in layered cakes.  I made two beautiful and delicious lemon cakes and was so excited about them, then proceeded to make my buttercream dam and add my filling thinking I was home free, wrong!  As I started filling my chocolate cake i turned around to see the top layer of the lemon cake sliding off and taking some of the bottom layer with it.  So I had to scrape the filling off and use my buttercream icing to fill and glue them together. 

I made homemade marshmellow fondant and it was super easy for anyone out there wanting to try it.  It takes about 10 minutes for one batch and cost less than $5.  I used Wilton food coloring in burgundy and golden yellow which worked perfectly.  Of course I had to make 5 batches to get enought for all the decorations and both the cakes.  Covering each cake with fondant is not as easy as cake boss makes it seem, there were obvious flaws in mine I had to cover with fondant decorations.

All in all I'm very happy the cake is done and everyone raved about how good it tasted which is the most important part.  I wasn't crazy about how the cake looked as a whole and I have sworn off doing anymore tiered cakes until I have taken some classes or something because it is serious work.  I now completely understand why custom cakes are so pricey.

Cakeing (is that a word?)

I am praticing with cake flavors to decide what the second layer of my sister's graduation cake should be.  I asked what she wanted and she decided on Chocolate with chocolate chip cookie dough filling and told me I could suprise her with the other flavor.  So of course that means I'm going to have to experiment with a bunch of flavors, which means I wont be fitting into my old jeans any time soon, haha.  I made a Nilla wafer cake last week with banana mousse filling and buttercream icing, it was delish.  I ended up giving it to my mother in law for her birthday.  My decorating wasn't spectacular but hey I'm just starting.

This week I made an orange dreamsicle cake with vanilla mousse and orange flavored buttercream.  I was concerned there might be an overwhelming orange flavor but nope, it was just enough to make it melt in your mouth and that was without any filling or frosting.

Here they are cooling:

Yum!

I got the recipe from cakecentral.com in this thread, and here is the link to all the recipes collected if you don't have time to read through all 376 pages of that thread, haha.  I think I learned more about baking cakes, making filling and icings, and coming up with flavor combinations from that thread than all my hours of watching cake boss and reading cookbooks combined.

My one warning for anyone who attempts to make one of the recipes is that it is a very large recipe.  I used my largest mixing bowl and it was almost full to the top with batter.  1 recipe for me made 2 9inch cakes and 11 cupcakes (of course there are only 10 cupcakes in the above picture because I had to taste test).

Here is my finished cake.  I didn't do any decorating because it was just for us and I really just wanted to try the flavor to see if it would be in the running for the graduation cake.

I love the way layered cakes look.  My husband isnt' a fan of orange flavored anything but he even ate this cake.  I'm over all very proud of myself, especially with this being only my second attempt at making cakes like this.

I'm even more excited that my cousin asked me to help her with a bridal shower this weekend.  She wants me to make lemon flavored cupcakes.  So I'm going to make 12 lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese icing and 12 lemon cupcakes with blueberry filling and cream cheese icing, yum doesn't that sound delish.  I've been wanting to try the lemon cake recipe so of course I said yes, and then proceeded to offer my services to make a cupcake stand, recipe box, recipe cards, and some decorations.  I love bridal and baby showers so I just couldn't help myself.

Cupcake Book

Can I just say, I LOVE CUPCAKES!

My mom recently sent me this book she bought at Khol's.  It's one of the Khol's Cares books and all the proceeds go to charity, I love that too.  It has a ton of recipes for cupcakes and frostings, as well as decorating tips.  Here's the best part, it was $5.00, can you believe that, what a steal.

One more book to add to my cookbook collection.

Graduation Cake

I have wanted to learn how to decorate cakes for a long time.  I was a faithful Cake Boss viewer until we moved and no longer get the channel, darn Charter Cable.  So now I have made a committment which forces me to actually learn, it's kind of sad when you have to do that just to get the guts to actually try something new.  My little sister, Kayli, is graduating high school this year.  Wow just typing that is so weird.  I think I will always think of her as 5 years old and a little kid, makes me feel old to think she is almost legally an adult. 

I was trying to think of someone I could make a cake for to start learning how to decorate and immediately thought of her graduation.  My mom is doing a big 3 family (my parents are divorced) graduation party for her, so what better time to practice my non existing skills.  I officially have 3 months and counting to perfect the skills I hope to have.  She already told my sister I was going to make her one and she's really excited to have a "fancy" cake.  Most of her friends will have the usual sheet cake from the local grocery store.  So now I'm committed and I have to do it.

Here is my inspiration....

The white background will be buttercream and all the little stripes and polka dots will be fondant.  My sister's school colors are dandelion yellow and maroon (they are the ugliest school colors ever haha).  Mine probably won't look as good as this one, but out of all the pictures I found on CakeCentral.com this one was my favorite and I know Kayli will love it.

Now I'm just waiting to get our income tax refund so I can go buy a few decorating essentials to start practicing.  I don't think this new challenge is going to be good for my waistline since there will be cake sitting around all the time.   Maybe I'll get sick of cake and not want to eat it, could I be so lucky?

If there is anyone out there who is wanting to learn anything about cake decorating you have to go to the Cake Central website, it is awesome for any level decorators, from beginners to advanced.  You can post questions, recipes, pictures, anything.  I'm loving it.