Happy Birthday Fishes!

Everyone loves birthday cake!  And everyone loves vegetables!  Okay - I love vegetables...don't even get me started on beets but I guess not everyone loves them quite as much as me.  One day I will make a cake with kale in it.  But this was not that day.  When a couple of good friends get married, you go to lots of parties to celebrate with them... a shower, a bachelorette party, a rehearsal, etc.  And when the bride makes a small request to help celebrate the groom's birthday, the day after the wedding, you do whatever you can to make it great for them.  When my friend, the Lovely Lauren asked me if I could make a cake in the shape of a goldfish cracker, I was happy to jump on it.  Turns out, her (now) hubby, eats the cute little fish with dinner instead of vegetables.  Maybe I should introduce him beets - the most delicious of all veggies. 

Anyway - this was quite possibly the easiest cake to make.  A simple dark chocolate single layer cake with a thin layer of buttercream and covered in fondant and airbrushed gold.  How cute is this little guy:

And because their wedding and his birthday was a weekend in May, it coincided with a First Communion for which I made cakepops!  And when a 7 year old says "Can you make pink cakepops with white sprinkles?  No! Rainbow Sprinkles!?"  You nod your head and say "Definitely!"  

Don't these look appetizing?

I've got so many more fun baking projects coming up!  And as always - Go Beets!

1 Amazing Kid and 1 Wimpy Kid

My nephew Braden is amazing.  When he was a toddler, he was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder which is on the Autism Spectrum.  He’s now eight, and my sister has remained unrelenting in finding the tools that will help him function better among typical kids – be it a therapy, a sport, a playgroup, or working with his school counselor and teachers to make sure he gets the help he needs.   She’s awesome and  Braden is brilliant – he just made the honor roll but as with many autistic children, his social skills are not the same of a typical child.  Lots of autistic kids will play by themselves and some are non-communicative at all.  We’re lucky with Braden   - he talks pretty normally but wouldn’t necessarily go play with other kids.  His teacher this year has set up a book club once a week where kids can stay in from recess and talk about a book they are reading to help Braden with his social skills.  Right now they are reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  My lovely sister has been making treats for this event each week.  And when I suggested that the Wimpy Kid would make a totally cute and easy cakepop she said that she thought the kids would love it if I made cakepops.  So much for suggesting that she do it.  So I set to thinking about what I would need.  I figured I could use half a jelly bean for his nose and just pipe on his eyes and smile with black frosting but  I didn’t think the frosting would work as his hair and indeed – it didn’t. 

I finally settled on some black string licorice cut into quarter inch pieces.

I like this one the best:

 I showed the best one to Braden only for him to proclaim that he wanted cupcakes.  Oy.  But by this point I had already baked and crumbled a cake for cakepops.  So not to waste the opportunity to cover crumbs with white chocolate I made the cake pops without sticks.  I used a toothpick to dunk the balls into the melted chocolate and then another to push it off the first toothpick and onto a parchment lined pan.  Before it hardened I stuck half a white jelly bean on the front and three slivers of precut string licorice on the top as hair.  When I hardened I used black frosting to pipe on eyes, ears and a smile J  Since Braden wanted cupcakes, I decided to use these adorable little Wimpy Kids as toppers.  I whipped up a batch of chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and piped on a generous pile of frosting – I find giving third graders a lot of sugar mid-day is always a good idea when you don’t have any kids.  Then I popped the little Wimpy Kid heads right into the center and went from cute cupcakes to adorable overload!

I swear I will never get tired of people saying "Wow!" when they see something I made.  Especially kids!  

Epic Valentine Fail

I recently saw a pretty simple technique to cover cupcakes with chocolate - similar to how you might have a cakepop with chocolate but instead of dipping, you just pour the melted chocolate over and un-frosted upsidedown cupcake.  With the cupcake on a wire rack, the chocolate would cover nicely but just run off.  So instead of covering a cupcake I thought I would try  making cakepop "dough", shape it into hearts and pour the chocolate over it.  It went....ok.   I probably should have been more methodical about the shaping.  Mostly I made a ball, flattened and tried to get it heart-shaped.  I made a bunch of different sizes even using a tiny cutter.  Some of the shapes look ok.

Then I put them on my wire rack and started the pouring process.  Without a doubt I was too stingy with the chocolate - I poured on a little and tried to spread it with a lollipop stick.  This one was bad:

This one is a little better:

So finally I said @#$%#@ it.  (I say that a lot.) And I dumped a whole lot of chocolate on the fattest heart.  This definitely gave the smoothest finish so the obvious thing to do was write on it.  I added a little drippings to make the white one fancy and so it wouldn't feel left out in a sea of pink hearts.  In your face pink hearts!   These turned out just OK.  The backsides were bare - although perhaps that's V-day appropriate - and I wonder if they would "keep" as well as cakepop dough that's completely coated.  Also, you have to wait until they are set to move them off the wire rack but once it's dry, it's also dried to the rack - @#$!#!  So I used a spatula to remove them but they are a little less sturdy than a cakepop so then the chocolate cracked #$%$@!     They still tasted good and I'm sure they wouldn't be that hard to improve but I am worried about the opportunity for microbe to grow in the exposed back.  Even if Cupid did like it. 

Ode To Cakepops!

Oh Bakerella!  How do I love thee!  In her blog on February 1st, Bakerella posted that she was making that day the Official Unofficial Cake Pop Day!  My new favorite holiday!    Here is a woman who has really revolutionized how cake is consumed.  I’m not entirely sure if cakepops were born in the Bakerella kitchen or if she just found a good idea and turned it into a phenomenon.  Every time I visit the Bakerella site, I’m awed by the sheer number of ideas that have stemmed from the simply idea of mixing cake crumbs with frosting and coating it in chocolate.   From Bakerella’s own brilliance to that of her many loyal PopStar followers, cake pops have exploded into a trend that has infiltrated even the mainstream coffeeshop Starbucks.    But can the average amateur baker make a cakepops?  I thought I’d find out.

 My first cake pops were a basic chocolate cake with vanilla frosting and covered in a dark chocolate coating.  I made them to bring to a graduation party.  Sadly the party was in July on one of the hottest days of the year.  I didn’t really know how to transport them so I left them in the Styrofoam square I had used to help make them.  Little did I realize that dry cakepops are just that …..dry.  Duh.  Anyway, I did a few white chocolate swirls on them with some blue sugar and called it a day.  My kitchen was a mess.  There was chocolate and blue sugar everywhere.  I managed to get the cakepops to the party and park them next to the real cake.  Everyone loved them but even in an air-conditioned house – the party got really hot and the cakepops started sliding down their sticks!  BAH! Cakepop fail! 

My next cakepop adventure was a little practice version – Just some spice cake covered in white chocolate with sprinkes.  Cute and I finally understood how to transport them.  This photo shows that cakepops are toddler-approved! 

Then I made some cakepops for a girls’ night with my pals from highschool and they loved them.  Three of us were in a wedding in Maine in August and I made some Bakerella-inspired cupcake bites as our snack for the 8 hour drive.  Same idea, less stick.  These were surprisingly easy.  Seriously – maybe I’m just stick challenged but these were super easy.   The drive ended up being fun and we rationed the cupcake bites  throughout the whole weekend.  I’m looking forward to doing lots more cake pops and cupcake bites in the future!