Birthday Circus Cake

Alright, here it is!  A quick little post of mostly pictures of this past Sunday's adorable little circus cake.  My cousin's baby girl turned one yesterday, and they celebrated with a circus-themed birthday party over the weekend.  The party was great, and everyone loved how the cake turned out.  My sister gets a lot of the credit for how great this cake turned out; she made all the little fondant circus animals and clown, and all the flat clowns for the cupcakes.  My mom made and assembled the whole cake, and she was the one that came up with the great (and delicious) idea to use caramel corn as a border for the bottom of the cake.  It was the perfect sweet and crunchy way to finish off the cake!  As for me, I had the task of making, frosting, and assembling the cupcakes.  I'm not much of a fancy cake decorator myself; I love bakery style cakes covered in frosting and sprinkles, and to be perfectly honest, I just don't really have the patience for it.  I do however, love seeing what my mom and my sister can come up with together.  I think this might be one of my favorite cakes that they've made together!

Tea Party Cupcakes

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen a tweet this past weekend that went along the lines of baking and decorating 6 dozen red velvet cupcakes.  I really wasn't lying, that was how I spent my Friday night! I hadn't initially intended to spend my Friday night baking and decorating so many cupcakes...this kinda just sort of felt into my lap unexpectedly.  You see, my mom had been put in charge of making the cake for my cousin's baby shower on Saturday, and we had planned out an amazinggg cake for it.  Seriously, this cake was gonna be amazing.  

The theme of the shower was a combination of Alice in Wonderland, gardens, and tea parties.  My mom and I had planned out the cake, and I drew up a sketch of what the final cake would look like.  It was to have three tiers or red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.  Each tier was to be covered in fondant.  The bottom tier was to be a garden, and covered with fondant grass, flowers, butterflies, and the like.  The second tier was going to be a pale shade of pink with a white fondant bow along the bottom, and the top tier was going to be a tea party setting, complete with an engraved tablecloth and a full tea set.  It had the prospects of being a really beautiful cake.  

Note that I say, "it had..."

Unfortunately, the cake my mom and I had spent so much time planning out never actually happened.  Three days prior to Saturday's shower, on Wednesday afternoon, my mom somehow managed to fracture her hand while adding the green coloring to the fondant for the bottom tier.  I know, it sounds crazy, but it actually happened.  I guess it makes sense though...mixing fondant colors by hand is hard enough, but it's even harder when you have to mix enough fondant to cover a 16" cake that's supposed to be 4" tall!  If you've never added color to fondant by hand before, imagine that it is something like play-doh, but much much much harder.  In any case, after a relatively quick trip to the emergency room, my mom was left with a totally bandaged hand, and the next day, a bright purple cast all the way up to her elbow. 

It's a Halloween Party!

It's October 7th today.  That means Halloween is only 24 days away.  That's three and a half weeks.  There's no time to lose, Halloween Party planing needs to start NOW…or soonish I guess.  There's really no reason to put it off because #1, Halloween is quickly approaching, and #2…these Halloween treats are too cute to put off any longer.  Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so I couldn't put this post off any longer.

When I went home last weekend, I had it set in my mind that I would make a batch of really great Halloween-inspired spiderweb cupcakes.  Something cute and simple that anyone could make.  I honestly hadn't really thought of making too many other Halloween things, but I knew that my spiderweb cupcakes would be great.  I enlisted the help of my mother, who is fantastic when it comes to all these sort of decorative/ seasonal type of things, and she wasn't too keen on the spiderweb idea.  At least she wasn't too keen on making only spiderwebs.  That's right.  I was going to make ONLY spiderweb cupcakes? That just wouldn't do.  My mom had so many great ideas, and I really couldn't say no to any of them, they were just too good!