Riley's Cake

Riley is seriously the cutest little two-year-old I've ever met. He calls me Peaches (that's my nickname down in Florida... Since I'm from Georgia, y'all!) and he's got the sweetest little smile.

His birthday was also this past Wednesday (just like Joy) but his party was today. So since he's part of Joy's family, I made his birthday cake too!

The theme was Jeeps and I used this cake as an inspiration. Of course, it didn't matter how inspiring the picture is, if you can't find any toy Jeeps to put on top! I think we spent 10 minutes looking through the Hotwheel and Matchbox cars before we found the right cars.

As far as the decorations go, it really wasn't that hard. I made a 9x13" cake, and  9" and 6" rounds, then I just sorta cut up the round cakes and strategically placed them on the sheet cake so it looked like hills and valleys. And it didn't really matter that the cake crumbs (marbled yellow & chocolate) got in the icing, because it looked more like dirt.

The trees are just ice cream cones cut down to smaller sizes, then covered in a leaf tip (#67, I believe), and I used that same shade of green for the grass (grass tip, obviously). The thing about the grass, though, is you gotta make sure the icing isn't too thin, or the blades of grass will just look all droopy and such.

The mud hole is just chocolate icing and piping gel mixed together to look all dirty, with some Oreo crumbs sprinkled in. And the trail? Graham cracker and Oreo crumbs.

The river is white icing with blue-tinted piping gel smoothed on top so it looks all watery and such. Joy and I ran the little Matchbox cars all over the cake to give it "tire tracks" (although to be honest you really can't tell) but when Joy put cocoa powder on their tires, it looked awesome.

My favorite part, though? The candy rocks:

We got them at Wal-Mart. How amazing is that?! And they tasted delicious too, in addition to looking perfect.

So that was Riley's cake. I wasn't able to go deliver it with Joy, but she told me it arrived safely and everyone at the party (including the birthday boy) loved it.

Cupcakes for Life

Cupcakes for Life is a once-a year-program (on October 9th) to promote awareness for pro-life issues, most specifically abortion. The website asks, "What's worse than being in 3rd grade and not having anyone celebrate your birthday? Not being allowed to be born!"

So the basic premise is that everyone bakes cupcakes, and gives them away for free, in honor and memory of the millions of children who will never be born. I made them with the Imago Dei club on campus and we put pro-life messages on the little cuppies like "YAY BABIES" and "Life is precious."

On Friday during lunch, we gave away 110 cupcakes, along with some flyers, to bring awareness on campus.

And guess what? It was a huge success! And even though 110 cupcake seems like a lot (4 box mixes, 4 cans of icing, a whole dozen eggs...), they were given out very quickly. So next year we gotta kick it up a notch!

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and it was a great cause. I'm so proud that I was able to help bring this nationwide program to my little corner of the world. Yay babies!

The Five Hour Cake

Today is my roommate's birthday. She is, if you couldn't tell, 20 years old. And since I'm a baker (and I had no other gift ideas) I decided to surprise her with a cake.

Which is a lot harder than you might think, because I didn't know her favorite flavor (my guess was red velvet or strawberry) or what colors or design to make it. So I just sorta winged it (wung it?) and came up with this idea on the spot.

It helped that Joy had plans last night so I was able to go out to the store, buy ingredients, have time to bake the cake, make a gumpaste bow and frosting, cool the cake, and ice and decorate it, all while she was out.

The bow is my first attempt ever, and Joy and Sophie thought it looked really good, but (you know what a perfectionist I am) the unevenness and powdered sugar splots really bothered me. Plus, I think using a gumpaste/fondant mix might help instead of straight up gumpaste, because when I put the little bows on the cake, some of them cracked. So I'm definitely going to practice this skill a little more.

And speaking of practicing, this is the website where I got the tutorial, so if you need some gumpaste bow practicing tips as well, here you go!

I still can't believe that I started baking at 7pm and by midnight, it was done. I know if I had more time, I could've fixed thought little tiny imperfections that bothered me, like the bow, and smoothed out the buttercream a little more. (I probably would've used a from-scratch recipe instead of a doctored box mix too.)

If you live in an apartment, or even a house, with a small number of inhabitants, say two or three, and you don't go through a gallon of milk as fast as a household of seven would, then it might because a good idea to check the expiration date of aforementioned milk, just in case it's two weeks past the date, and before you start dumping the milk into recipes. Just a thought.

And my final word of advice for anyone looking for cake decorating tips and tricks: don't burn your thumb on the lighter when lighting birthday candles. Actually, you probably shouldn't use a lighter at all when you're blood sugar is low and you're exhausted at 12am. But aside from the charred mark on my nail (what the heck?!), I survived that incident too.

Happy Birthday, Joy!

I haven't posted since Sept 23

And that makes me sad.

I have cookies to share with you (yes, I partook in last month's Daring Baker Challenge) and cupcakes and other adorable little photographs that I would LOVE to share.

But between classes, projects, the clubs, helping backstage for a musical, and getting sick, blog writing has just gotten pushed farther and farther down the to-do list.

I'm so very sorry.

And I will post delicious pictures of cute desserts soon, I promise.