Bad Piggies Birthday

Ugh. I'm like the worst blogger ever.

So my son had a birthday... nearly a month ago. And now y'all get to hear about it. Hopefully you're one of the lucky ones and saw this on Facebook... or not and you don't really care if you see my son's spectacular birthday cupcakes in a timely matter. Either way, you get what you get. But without any further ado...

Now I can't remember if I shared last year's birthday cake, but the theme last year was Angry Birds. Here is a look at last year's cake in case I didn't post it.

We have graduated this year to Bad Piggies. Something of an obsession, I guess. He really doesn't play that much of either, but he likes the characters enough, I suppose. Bad Piggies was an incredibly fun birthday theme. You get to build these wonderful vehicle contraptions to complete the brief obstacle course. And there are all these crazy piggies.

 

For the game, we picked up a bunch of red helium balloons and some dollar store paper treat boxes. We put a Bad Piggy (from our Angry Birds set) inside the box, tied a couple balloons to the box and swatted it around the main floor. When they got to the end, the kids got a yellow card-stock card filled with candy & a balloon. 

I was up very late the night before his party making the piggies, which were lots of fun to make. When my husband got home from being out (pretty late himself), he said, "You're still up???" to which I replied, "Don't tell me what time it is. I don't know and I feel fine and I still have more work to do." It was past 3 AM before I got to bed. Unfortunately I was a little on the grumpy side for the party, but thankfully the kids didn't require a lot of my attention. The whole thing made me want to re-think the way we do birthday parties, though.

But not the cake.

Occasions for Cupcakes

I know some of you are thinking, "I really want to try some of those cupcakes, but there are no birthdays coming up soon, so what kind of occasion is good for cupcakes?" You're not alone. People ask these things all the time. There was a study.

So, first, there's the obvious: birthdays.

Chocolate cupcake topped with vanilla buttercream and marshmallow fondant

And cupcakes aren't just for kid birthday parties, there are plenty of yummy grown up options, too: perfect for your spouse or your co-worker or your boss.

Salted caramel filled chocolate cupcake with whipped buttercream and caramel drizzle

Other obvious occasions are bridal showers and weddings.

Chocolate ganache-filled chocolate cupcakes with whipped buttercream and sugar pearls

Here's where it gets fun, though. There are many unconventional opportunities to celebrate with cupcakes:

Returning home from military service

Caramel-filled chocolate cupcakes with three-toned vanilla buttercream

Becoming Canadian! Canada Day! Valentine's Day!

Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla whipped buttercream & sugar sprinkles

"New job in the oil sands" or "Home from Fort Mac"!

Vanilla oreo cupcakes topped with stabilized whipped cream, oreo cookie & crumbs

Staff parties. Potlucks. Graduations.

Chocolate chip cookie dough-filled chocolate cupcakes topped with whipped buttercream

Christmas parties. Halloween parties.

Gingerbread cupcakes topped with whipped vanilla buttercream & gingerbread boy

Now that we've got the party started with unconventional cupcake occasions, what's your occasion?  Who needs a special occasion for this beauty?

Caramel filled chocolate cupcake topped with salted caramel Swiss meringue buttercream & Snickers

More Cakes

So there were some more birthdays and other cake-worthy events in the last 10 months, too. I guess I didn't make cakes for all of them, but I made some cakes. I may have said this before, but I make cakes for the kids of our good friends and co-church planters. This Star Wars Lego cake was requested for the January birthday. (Star Wars Lego cake? Nothin' like a simple cake, eh? Boys....)

The techniques used here: buttercream transfer (YouTube how to) and painting on buttercream and of course, basic piping. I printed out a coloring page that the birthday boy and my husband found on the internet. I filled in only the grey shape of the Imperial Walker for the buttercream transfer.  Then I painted on the buttercream transfer using a mixture of real vanilla & black icing paste for the detail.

For the sides, I just piped flat monochromatic lego-sized stripes and piped dots on the top of them for the Lego look. I saw this idea here. From what I can remember, it was a hit. I was in my first couple weeks of our diet & exercise program, so I passed on the cake and ate a protein bar instead. I was told it tasted good.

The sister of a friend of mine commissioned me to make this monkey cake for her son's first birthday. It turned out okay. She looked through my Facebook cakes album and found the picture of Zoe's 2nd birthday cake, which I didn't think was one of my better cakes, but oh well, that's what she picked.

I'm always so nervous doing commissioned cakes. People tell me my cakes look professional, but I'm not so sure. I can tell the difference when I look through professional cake albums vs. my own. I'm not down in the dumps about this or searching for compliments, I'm just telling it like it is. I make nice cakes. Some are better than others. Most are better than these and I never make spelling mistakes, though occasionally I make a blunder and end up with a cake that unintentionally looks like boobs.

(It's supposed to be a purse, but it is kinda pathetic, even if it didn't look like boobs.)

Then there was a wedding. I wasn't really supposed to make a cake for this wedding. I'd thought of offering in advance, but the wedding date was only a few weeks after my due date, so I wasn't sure I would be feeling up to making a cake. But then we were visiting with the couple and while I know they're not big cake people (she's celiac & he doesn't really really care for cake), one of the reasons they opted for no cake was because it was expensive for something they didn't really care for. But everyone's grandma wants them to have a cake, if only for the opportunity to take pictures of them cutting it.

So, this was my first attempt at a gluten-free cake. I used this recipe and the bride told me it was delicious. I'll have to try it sometime. I didn't have leftover cake for me to try, so I was really hoping it was yummy.

For the roses, I made them out of fondant using this technique found on YouTube. Seriously people, I don't know how to do anything. I just Google it and figure it out. The beauty of the Internet is that everyone wants to be an expert so there are free instructions out there for just about everything. LOVE! I was pretty happy with this cake, though the seams were kind of obvious, but not if you take pictures from the right side!

Now, the final cake I haven't shared yet. Simon turned three the day after I began my 10 month blog hiatus. This was his cake. He loves basketball.

I was pretty pleased with the basketball colour I achieved for the fondant. Not always easy to get exactly what you're looking for. I used a bowl to make the shape and then used a lot of icing to make it more ball shaped and less bowl shaped underneath the fondant. It's round enough.

If you had a birthday in the last 10 months, Happy Birthday. If you have one coming up in the next 10 months and need a cake, let me know and we'll work something out.

Crafty Birthday

In March, we had a birthday. Two actually. Mine and my daughter's. Mine totally gets overshadowed by the child's. I am totally okay with this. I made cupcakes to send to school on her actual birthday. They were strawberry cupcakes made with this Martha Stewart recipe. Honestly, I've been a bit underwhelmed by Martha's cake recipes. I made a perfect white cake (or something like that) from her site, too. And it was kind of dry. I really like that the ingredients called for in both the cake and the icing were simple, real ingredients, so that's nice. No food coloring and no artificial flavours.

While I have a this great cupcake icing kit from Bake it Pretty, with a number of large, fancy tips, the recipe didn't make enough icing for me to frost them all cupcake-shop fancy. I still need to make some cupcakes with that kit. Personally, I prefer a lot less frosting on my cupcakes and I like the homemade look of just frosting them with a spatula and dipping them in sprinkles.

Last year, I made a 3 shirt for my son's birthday. My husband insisted I put the large 3 on the back of the shirt, since jerseys don't have the numbers on the front. Against my better judgment ("It's not a jersey..."), I complied and my son has insisted on wearing it backward from day one. Funny.

I made a six shirt for Zoe. Pink pink pink. She loves pink. That six is sparkly fabric paint. I used the freezer paper stencil technique to make the six. So easy peasy. I also recently discovered in a different t-shirt embellishment project that using freezer paper as a stabilizer for the jersey knit fabric is super helpful. I could draw on the paper side and then cut the paper and the fabric at the same time instead of fussing with slippery fabric.

So, I sent my birthday girl to her favorite place in the world (school) with 30 cupcakes to share with her classmates and teachers with strict instructions not to return with any leftover cupcakes (remember how I lost 25 lbs this year?). She wasn't feeling great. I knew she wasn't feeling great, but she hadn't vomited and she wanted to go to school. On her birthday. She gets a birthday crown. She hadn't talked about anything else since January. This kid rarely gets sick. And when she does, she can time it to Thursdays (no school) and weekends. She just got her days off (her birthday was on a Wednesday).
By 10 o'clock I'd received a phone call from the school saying she was laying in the infirmary, having thrown up. Of course. So, I picked her up and she spent the rest of the morning laying on the couch at our friend's place while I took her brother to the paediatrician.

She spent the rest of the day at home, napping a little, but mostly being okay and feeling a little sad. We made pizza for supper.

The teacher saved the cupcakes until Friday (3 day old cupcakes...mmmm) and she got to celebrate with her class then.

Then we had her home party on Sunday. It was her request. And it worked out rather well because she invited her grandparents and as it turned out, my mom could make it on Sunday. She requested a Barbie cake. I looked for a picture of barbie that was mostly face, so she could have nice big eyes so she wouldn't look scary and ugly in buttercream, but alas, there were no such pictures to be found in Internet land. When Zoe announced Barbie was beautiful, that's when I knew to stop fussing with her eyes and just let it go. My cake decorating mantra: "You are working in a medium that is meant to be eaten."

She is kind of ugly though.

Hamburger & Fries for cake

This is a re-post from my personal blog, Containers and Compartments. This was for my son, S's second birthday. Instead of making a cake, I made a bunch of hamburgers and french fries, since he's such a fast food loving kid (not really). I got the idea from this post from Bakerella.

Okay, so we didn't forgo cake altogether! It's a brownie cupcake hamburger and sugar cookie french fries! So fun and so tasty (though I found the hamburger to be a little too sweet for my taste).

Duncan Hines yellow cake cupcakes, made a little on the short side. I got 35 cupcakes out of one mix.


Orangey-yellow marshmallow fondant... perfect processed cheese colour!


Tomato red marshmallow fondant for ripe red tomatoes.


Vanilla pudding... mayonnaise.

Brownies.... for the hamburger patties. To stretch my batter a bit, I added 1/2 cup of homemade applesauce instead of increasing the butter, and increased the dry ingredients by 1/3 except the sugar (I figured 3 cups was quite enough). Instead of cracking and falling like they usually do, they were even and fluffy, a little more cake-y, but tasty and beautiful looking.

The "cheese" rolled out and cut for hamburgers. I used a ruler (to make them square) and a pizza cutter and did my best to cut in straight lines. But it didn't matter that much.

The "tomatoes" rolled and cut. I used a biscuit cutter for these and the brownie "hamburgers."

All the ingredients ready for assembly. The bowl is full of the brownies. I squished each one of them before assembling. They were too tall otherwise. The squishing made them a little less perfectly round, which added to the authentic look.

"Ketchup" "Mustard" and Coconut "Lettuce"

Hamburgers assembed.

D taste-testing.


Hamburgers and fries assembled for our friends at the Legislature Grounds.



Delicious! And totally fun!