Patriotic cake pops!

I had to work on the 4th of July this year, so I missed the parade and the fireworks, but I wasn't about to let it go by uncelebrated! A few of my co-workers decided to bring food in to work to share, so we could have our own little celebration. I had a layer of blue velvet cake left over from a cake tasting a couple of months ago, I decided to whip up some cake pops for my friends at work!

Happy 4th of July!

Dinosaur Train!

I can't believe my little girl is 5 years old. Where has the time gone? She is such a sweet little girl, full of surprises and this cake was no exception. When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted a month ago, I expected her to respond with something like princesses, or butterflies, or fairies, but nope, she said loud and clear in her perfect little voice, "Dinosaurs!"
I suppose I should have expected as much - when we went to the zoo earlier this year, I bought her a green stuffed animal pteranodon, and it is now one of her favorites. And she loves to watch the show Dinosaur Train. And her favorite color is green, which many dinosaurs are.
Cecilia helped me design the cake - her input involved the colors of the flowers, and the grass border on the bottom. She must know that the grass tip is my favorite. I bought two little figurines to put on top, made one of my pretzel palm trees, and I was all set!
The cake itself is one of her favorites - chocolate with raspberry filling. She initially wanted strawberry, but when I caught a bad cold just a few days before her birthday, she was happy to compromise since I had raspberry filling on hand and making strawberry would mean a boring trip to the grocery store.

 

I also made cake pops for her to take to school before her birthday, on the last day of school before winter break since her birthday was on December 29th. I made them with strawberry cake, green chocolate coating and green sugar that I made myself with plain coarse sugar dyed green with food coloring. 

Happy Birthday Cecilia!

 

B is for....

Brian . . . and Banana . . . and Birthday Boy!

Yep, today is my husband's birthday! And of course what kind of cake decorator wife would I be if I didn't make a treat for him to bring to work on his big day? I asked him last weekend if he wanted cupcakes or cake pops. He said, since I had made cupcakes for halloween, he wanted cake pops this time. He decided on banana cake, which I mixed with cream cheese frosting and then dipped in milk chocolate before decorating with sprinkles and a letter B for his name. And of course, since it's banana cake, yellow was the obvious choice for an accent color! I gave him a sample cake pop last night and he loved it - and I hope everyone where he works enjoys them just as much!

Happy Birthday Sweetie!

Happy Birthday Monica!

I have many sisters-in-law. 8 to be exact. Yep... EIGHT. Gotta love that big family!

My sister-in-law Monica (who is the wife of my husband's brother Ed) turned 50 last month. Her son Matt is the one that I made the wedding cake for this past summer. So when I heard that her family was planning a birthday party for her, I offered to make cake pops. Everyone in her family that was at the rehearsal dinner for Matt's wedding loved the cake balls I made, so I went with the same cake flavor - yummy chocolate! And of course, being that it was a 50th birthday party, I had to put some awesome decorations on them too! I made 3 dozen cake pops with three different decorations. I had some with silver sprinkles, some with black fondant dots, and some with black fondant stars brushed with silver luster dust. Here they are at my house, all ready to go.

I put them in a big box for the party and actually brought the glasses too, since they worked so well to display them at home. Little did I know that my brother-in-law had already ordered a sheet cake for the party. A full sheet cake! No problems though - everyone was more than happy to eat my cake pops too (and luckily, the cake was yellow cake, so no OD of chocolate!) and several of my nieces, nephews and other in-laws brought cake pops home with them for their families.

Happy Birthday Monica, and here's to the next 50!

Cinderella - and cake pops!

A few weeks ago, I got my first referral customer! My friend Ann, who taught me everything I know about cake decorating, is currently on maternity leave, had referred a client to me! Her name is Daniella and she wanted a Cinderella cake like the one that I made for Cecilia, along with cake pops decorated to look like pumpkins, all for her daughter Lauren's birthday. I decided to decorate the Cinderella cake with fondant, since I remembered how difficult it was to use buttercream. Little did I know that the day I decorated the cake, the temperature outside was in the mid-70's, and because of my oven being on, the temp in the house wasn't that much cooler. Yikes! I ended up having to do a bit of patch work and was a little disappointed that the cake wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be. But it still looked pretty good!

Next up was the cake balls. I decided that cake pops would be really cute, and I bought a styrofoam ball that I decorated to look like Cinderella's carriage. This was my first time making them, so I did a ton of research. I went to the Bakerella website, my friend Ann's blog, and asked a few other friends as well. I mean, I know the basic idea is pretty easy - make a cake, break it into crumbs, add frosting, roll into balls, dip in chocolate, and viola! But still... I wanted to make sure I didn't mess them up. After I felt confident enough, I got started - and everything was going smoothly until I started dipping the pops in the chocolate. They started falling off the sticks! Maybe it was because I had scored the sides of the balls to make them look like pumpkins, but anyhow, I ended up having to spoon the melted chocolate over them and they didn't look exactly like I wanted them to, but close enough.

 I then decorated each with fondant stems and leaves before the chocolate set. Then I wrapped them, tied them off with ribbon and stuck them in the styrofoam pumpkin, just to see how it would look - very cute if I do say to myself!

And here is Cinderella with her "coach"

I took the cake pops out of the pumpkin (couldn't deliver them that way without worrying about the whole thing falling over!) and put them in a nice little box.

Hope you had a wonderful birthday, Lauren, and that you loved your Cinderella cake and pumpkin cake pops as much as I loved making them!