Pug Cake and Birthday Party

Our middle child, Annika, turned 6 earlier this month.

Yikes!  How did that happen?

Although she had given me numerous ideas for what kind of cake she wanted, I knew there was really only one choice.  A Pug Cake.  Annika has adored pugs ever since she watched "Milo and Otis" a couple of years ago.  Her favorite birthday gift last year was a Webkinz pug, whom she named Otis, and he's her most cherished stuffed animals (of many).

So I didn't want to make a fondant covered cake or just draw a picture of a pug, although the latter did cross my mind.  Nope, when I saw this cake, I  knew it was the one I had to try.  I don't think mine turned out as cute, to be quite honest, but it's all good.

So here's the breakdown.

You'll need:
2 9" round cakes
1 8"square cake
Buttercream frosting 
  *2 cups butter, softened
  *8 cups powdered sugar
  *1/4-1/2 cup cream or milk
  *1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
  *1/4 tsp. almond extract
  *dash salt
  *Cocoa powder and food coloring (I use Wilton)

    Beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer until smooth.  Add powdered sugar gradually.  Mix in
    1/4 cup cream, vanilla extract, almond extract, and salt.  Beat until light and fluffy.  Add additional cream
    or milk to achieve desired piping consistency.
    Separate into bowls and tint as desired.
    I tinted most of mine tan with a little bit of sifted cocoa powder.  A small part I added a lot more cocoa
    powder  (plus a little more cream) to make the dark mouth area, and added some black food coloring
    to part of that to make the ears, eyes, and nose.

I always freeze my cakes so they're easier to carve without falling apart.  I used 1-1/3 of this recipe to make my cakes. It's a delicious and moist cake that is also fairly sturdy and doesn't crumble too easily.
 
So here's how you cut it.

Take one of the round cakes and carve out sections to shape ears and the face.

From your square cake, carve out a niche for the head to rest into.  Cut a little off the corners to make rounded shoulders.

Use the other round cake to carve out the legs and paws.  I didn't do perfectly with that and ended up having to stick some scraps to the cake to make the shape I wanted....but when it was frosted, nobody was the wiser.

I just used a basic star tip (Wilton # 17, I think) to pipe all over the cake.  I didn't even bother with a crumb coat.  I used a small round tip to pipe the outlines of the legs with the dark brown frosting. 

For the nose area, I piped lots of extra frosting to mount it up more 3D like - it's kind of hard to tell from the photo. 

Sooooo......onto the rest of the party.  

I made a double batch of Puppy Chow and saved part for the party, but packaged the rest up in little cellophane bags to put in the goody bags for the guests.  Annika cut out some little bones and we stapled them onto the bags.  Cute!

In the goody bags, I also included some Sugar Cookie Dog Houses  (there were Dog bones as seen above in the cake photo for eating at the party), a ball, and some random candies that Annika picked out. 

I dressed up some white paper bags with a little bit of dog paw scrapbook paper before writing their names on them. 

Probably the funnest activity of the party was the Treasure Hunt.  I wrote little riddle clues and printed them out on dog paw graphics and hid them in their proper places around the yard (under a picnic table, behind the grill, in the playhouse, in the mailbox, etc).  Each clue led them to the next one - and the final clue led them back inside to find their goody bags hidden under the dining table.  :)  The girls LOVED it. 

I found this Photo Collage Banner idea from this blog - and absolutely adored it. She gave perfect instructions on how to do it - I'll be making more for my other kids' birthdays.  I wish I had taken a picture of Annika's face when she came downstairs and saw this on the wall - she was soooooo delighted.  

The cake table - also decorated with dog bones that we used for a "Musical Bones" (instead of musical chairs) game.  I taped them on the floor and when the music stopped, the girls had to get on a bone.  Nobody got eliminated, but as I removed the bones each time, the girls had to cram onto the remaining bones.  It got pretty funny by the end when there was only 1 bone left. :) 

Annika got baby pug (Otis Jr) that morning before the party - and she decorated a box for his doghouse and set both of her pups on the table with some of the bone cookies.  So cute!

Happy Birthday to our sweet girl! 

Perfect Chocolate Party Cake

If you've been around here for awhile, you know that I am a dedicated baker of the Hershey's Especially Dark Chocolate Cake - it is truly my favorite chocolate cake just for eating.  That being said, I don't make it for cakes that I intend to stack and frost for a birthday for a couple of reasons - first, it's a very moist cake that could crumble easily and not be the most sturdy; second, it can be pretty crumby - which makes frosting it with a white or light frosting very difficult.

I have tried several different chocolate cake recipes in search of a favorite for decorated cakes -
and this is the winner. Not only is it nice and sturdy, not super crumby, and easy to bake, it's still moist and absolutely delicious.

I've made it twice now - the first time was for the rather large cake seen above, made for my niece Christine's 14th birthday.  Since I was expecting about 22 people at the party and certainly did not want to run out of cake, I made a double batch of this recipe - for a grand total of 18 cups of batter - to fill two 12" round pans.  (I actually made an additional chocolate cake mix for the heart on top and some cupcakes - another niece can't eat dairy and I wanted her to have cake too.  She ate unfrosted cupcakes)   That cake ended up stretching further than I thought - it provided dessert for at least 16 people twice and there was still a huge hunk left over.

The second time I made it was for my nephew Jonathan's birthday, seen below - this time I made two 13 x 9" layers, so I made 1-1/3 this recipe, to make 12 cups of batter.  It was filled and frosted with chocolate buttercream and was wonderfully scrumptious.  He was absolutely delighted with it, and again, it really did feed a lot of people.

I'm so happy to have found this recipe - it's just perfect for party cakes. If you have a chance to make it, let me know how it turns out for you!

Chocolate Party Cake

from Kitchen Simplicity

Makes Three 8-inch cakes (9 cups of batter)

For 6-inch cakes fill each cake tin with 1.5-2 cups batter and check for doneness earlier then the suggested time.  For 10-inch cakes fill with 5-3/4 to 6 cups batter and bake for longer than the suggested time.

3 cups packed brown sugar

1 cup butter, softened

4 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

2-2/3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 Tbsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1-1/3 cups sour cream

1-1/3 cups boiling water

Cream together brown sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated. Add vanilla; turn beaters to medium-high; beat until light and fluffy.  Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Add in three additions, alternating with sour cream, starting and ending with the flour mixture. Mix just until combined.  Stir in water until evenly blended.  Pour into three 8-inch round cake pans buttered and lined with parchment paper. Bake at 350° F. for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Let cool 10 minutes before removing from pans and peeling off the parchment paper.  Allow to cool completely before frosting.

Puppy Cupcakes - our Girl Turns 7

Tell me these aren't some of the cutest cupcakes you've ever seen.

Go on, tell me.

Ha.  I knew you couldn't.  :)

I took the idea for these straight from Hello Cupcake (which I borrowed from a friend) and Marissa, our little dog lover, couldn't have been more delighted.  The other little girls were pretty excited about them too.  

They're really simple, and not as time consuming as I anticipated.  

Since I don't want to violate any copyright laws or anything, I won't give all the instructions on how to make them.....but I will tell you that you use miniature cupcakes for the heads - and miniature marshmallows for the ears and shaping the nose.  For the tongues, I used tiny bits of pink Mamba candy (Starburst would work just as well), and the eyes and nose were mini Reeses baking bits.  

They were very fun to make and the girls sure had fun eating them!

The biggest activity at the party was cake decorating. 

I had gotten the idea from Glorious Treats months ago and just HAD to do it for Marissa's party.

I baked little cakes for each girl - most were 5" layer cakes, a couple were 4" cakes.  I frosted them with white vanilla buttercream and then set out various sprinkles, candy (I knew those Easter M&Ms I got on clearance would come in handy!), and bags of colored frosting with various tips for the girls to decorate their own cake to their heart's content.

It was SO. MUCH. FUN. to watch them and to see their personalities reflected in their work.

One little guest started out very meticulously working on a design - but by the end she had thrown all caution to the wind and just piled the frosting and candy on as high as she could.  It was hysterical.  

Marissa was very proud of her cake.

All the girls - Marissa, Natalee, Annika, Lydia, Anna, Esther, and Elizabeth. 

An awesome group - just lovely.  

And their cakes were lovely too.  

Here's a look at the food table.

Yeah, not a lot of healthy stuff there.  But they sure enjoyed it!

Honestly, it was one of my favorite parties we've ever had at our house.  

Children in this age range are just a blast to have around.  

I just wish our kids weren't growing up so fast.  

And for the record, I wouldn't recommend having three children born in the same month -  if you can help it.  Not only is it a lot of work planning and pulling off three parties, it's really hard to not gain like 10 lbs with treats like Cinnabon Popcorn and Puppy Chow sitting on my counter.  Not to mention the cake and ice cream. 

Great, now I need to diet going right into the holidays. 

So now we have a *short* 1 month break until the next child's birthday.....

Linked to Trick or Treat Tuesday

Chess Cake - and our Boy turns 9

So for Corban's birthday this year, he just couldn't decide what he wanted the theme to be.  He's already done Legos.  Swimming.  A skateboard.  Although he loves soccer and basketball, he wasn't interested in either of those being the theme.  Hmmmm.

Finally, after pondering it for days, I presented the idea of a Board Game Party to him.  He loves playing games and never gets the chance to play them with a group of friends - and he was instantly sold on it.

Although he is not super knowledgeable about chess, he does enjoy it and I thought doing a chess cake would be fun.

I got inspiration from Cake Central - and ordered molds for the playing pieces and the board off of Amazon.

From there, it was really very simple.  I used chocolate candy coating - white and dark - to make the pieces. To make them 3D, I had to "glue" two halves together with more chocolate.  I had a few mishaps and had to melt and re-do a few of them, but it wasn't too bad.

The checkerboard was trickier - because keeping the white and dark chocolate from getting into each other's spaces was a lot harder than I anticipated.  The end result was FAR from perfect, but I don't think 9-12 year old boys really care.  ;)

So I made the pieces the week before and stored them in the fridge and freezer.

I baked a 14" square cake (use ~13.5 cups of batter - I made homemade chocolate cake).

Then I just made Chocolate buttercream - a double batch, to which I added some sifted cocoa powder to make it darker brown.

I frosted the cake - put the mold pieces on - and then piped on some accents.  I used the Wilton #17 star tip for the shells and the swirls - and a  #4 round tip for the border around the checkerboard.

Oh, and the cake board is just foam board from the Dollar Tree - cut to a 16" square and covered with foil.  Cheap and easy!

The only downside to the party was that Corban wasn't feeling too well.  He had just come down with a head/chest cold and was just feeling tired and cruddy.  In fact, he didn't even taste his cake until 2 days later.  He just didn't have the appetite.  So sad.  But he loved his party and spending time with his friends.

They started off the evening playing a little basketball.

A good game of Apples to Apples Jr. - listening to them was so funny!

We had a Connect 4 Tournament.....

Corban had a little helper.  What a good big brother.

Isaiah was the winner!!

Corban with Seth and Caleb (brothers).  He had that Lego set built the next morning - despite feeling sick.

Israel and Corban - those Nerf guns are pretty fun!

Will and Corban - and some really cool camping gear. 

Joseph and Isaiah (brothers) with Corban - and a new Superbook video.  Awesome!

Happy 9th Birthday to our Corban! 

Linked to Crazy Sweet Tuesday and Trick or Treat Tuesday

Cupcake Pull-Apart Cake

I can hardly believe our baby is now 1.  Seems like just last week we were headed to the birthing center.  If you missed it before, you can read her birth story here.  

Here are a few things to know about Miranda:

1. She is our only baby that didn't like a pacifier.  Major bummer. 

I can't tell you how many times I wish she would take one.

2. She got her first tooth at 7 months and now has 8 teeth.  She got 4 on the bottom,

then two canines on the top, and finally her middle top teeth.  Corban had exactly the same pattern.

The other 3 girls all got their 2 middle bottom teeth at 9 months and no more teeth until they were 15 months.

3. She is our only baby who refuses to crawl on all fours.  She scoots on her bum and leg.  She gets

around really fast that way and the seat of her pants is always dirty.  Her knees stay clean, though. 

4. She adores her daddy more than any of our other babies.  For several months now, as soon as she

hears his voice when he comes home from work, she starts squealing "Da da!" and waving her arms and bouncing around.  She thinks he hung the moon.  He, in turn, is completely wrapped around her little finger. 

5. She gives the BEST. BABY HUGS.  Seriously.  She will wrap her arms around your neck and squeeze. 

None of our other babies did that at such a young age. 

6. She doesn't like bread/muffins.  

The only exception is cheese pizza.  She loves beans (especially spicy Mexican flavored ones), lentils, cheddar cheese, grapes, blueberries, kiwi, strawberries, pineapple, and cheese crackers.

And she was pretty fond of her cupcake frosting and ice cream. 

7. She LOVES our dog.  Pretty much any animals, really.  Grant takes the credit for that,

as he has encouraged her to pet Monty and play with him since she was born.

8. She also loves the dog's food and water bowls.  Her favorite thing to do is stick her right foot into 

his water bowl and splash around. I don't think Grant encouraged that.   

9.  She has a killer scowl when she's upset with you.  I'm pretty sure she gets that from me.  

10. She is a pure delight and joy to us.  We cannot imagine our lives without her.     

So I had decided to make a cake out of cupcakes for her birthday several months ago, and had a general idea what I wanted to do, but I actually got my final inspiration from this cake on the day of the party.  I had already baked cupcakes (using this recipe, minus the raspberry filling) and just needed the frosting.

I made a batch of buttercream and tinted part pink, a smaller part purple, and left the rest white.  

I arranged the cupcakes in the general pattern I wanted and chilled them in the fridge for awhile so they'd be easier to frost.  Some people recommend putting a dab of frosting under each one to "glue" it to the board, but I didn't do that and I had no problem with them moving or anything.

You can see here how I just frosted over the whole top just like it was solid cake.  The gaps don't really matter. 

So I frosted the bottom first, then the top with white, then I piped around the edges and did the sprinkles and writing.  Very simple and quick - and it turned out so cute!   

Sneaking a dab of frosting before we sang to her. :)  

Yeah, I think she likes it.  

We took her cute dress off for the real cake eating.  Getting messy was fun!

Ummmmm.....fistfuls of frosting.  Made for a happy baby!

Linked to Trick or Treat Tuesday and Crazy Sweet Tuesday

Horse Pasture Cake - and the Party Fun

Our sweet little Annika turned 5 on Thursday, September 6.  We had her

birthday party with a few friends last Saturday.

Since her favorite thing is horses right now, that's what she wanted for the theme....

and she was very specific that she wanted a "Horse Pasture Cake".  

Okay.  Got it.

If you ask Annika what her favorite color is, she'll reply, 

"I love all the colors in the world (or in the rainbow), but green and blue are my favorite."

That worked out perfectly with a horse pasture cake.  

I decided to make things easy on myself and make the decorations on top of the cake one of her presents, so I picked out a super cute Playmobil set to be the main attraction. 

Toys R Us was having a great sale on Playmobil - Buy 1 get one 40% off.  In addition, with ordering online, I got free shipping with an order over $49, so I took advantage of that and bought few different sets to have for the girls for their birthdays and maybe Christmas. LOVE getting bargains!

The cake is chocolate, made from scratch (recipe coming soon!) and is 15 x 11". 

I made it a couple of days in advance and froze it for easier frosting. 

I made a large batch of buttercream, ending up with a bit too much....but I'd rather have that than run out.

I left one bowl white, for frosting the sides.  I did that first.  

Then I tinted a bowl green....and frosted the top, leaving the corner unfrosted. 

Another bowl was light blue - and that became the pond.

Then I used the Wilton 4B tip for piping large blue shells around the base. 

The yellow border was a Wilton tip 18.

I placed the Playmobil set all over the cake how I wanted it - and then finished up with grass details using the Wilton tip 233 (grass tip). 

Finally I wrote the birthday message with Wilton tip 2 in yellow.

Super easy - fast - and thoroughly delighted Annika.  

I'd call that a success.

Her reaction at first seeing the cake.

The girls inspect the cake.  

Marissa was so excited to help decorate by setting up toy horses everywhere. 

One of the party games was "Stomp the Fly", where they had black balloons tied to their ankles and had to try to pop others' balloons before getting their own balloon popped.  Probably a game more suited for boys, as a few of the girls were afraid of the balloons popping....but it was hysterical to watch them play.

The balloons were tough to pop - even with kids sitting on them and bouncing!

Lydia, Natalee, Marissa, Annika, Elizabeth, and Hannah.  What a sweet bunch of girls.  

Annika loves her new umbrella.  

The other popular activity we did was to make Stick Horses.

I had printed out a template for a horse head here  and enlarged it, then traced around it on poster board 16 times (I needed 2 for each horse).  I bought long sticks for a dollar each at JoAnn's Fabric store and hot-glued each stick to a horse head, then used rubber cement to glue the other horse head on the other side.

The girls got to glue on googly eyes, yarn for manes, etc. and color their horses.  They all turned out so cute.  

The party favors were their horses on sticks, some Cow Tales candy, and a jar of Cowgirl Cookies Mix.  

Recipe coming soon!!

Back to School Cake

Today was our first day of school....and I decided to start a little tradition.

Cake for breakfast! 

Oh, I know I've served cake for breakfast before, with our Breakfast Cake or Blueberry Breakfast Cake -

but this now, real chocolate cake with buttercream frosting...I've never gone that far.

I baked the cake from scratch from start to finish yesterday afternoon while the entire family was watching Olympics on the telly....and much to my surprise, not a single person realized that I was doing it. 

We have a very open floor plan, with the kitchen, dining area, and living room all in one big space.  I was watching stuff with them while working.  

How did they not smell it, at the very least?

I have no idea.

The funny thing was,

after the kids went to bed last night and I started to make the frosting to decorate it, Grant asks, "Where did that cake come from?"

Anyways, I was really happy about their lack of observation, because it made the surprise this morning that much better.   

I started out with a 13x9" chocolate cake (Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake),

which was obviously cooled.  Wish I had had time to freeze it so it wouldn't be quite so crumby for frosting, but oh, well.

Then I made a batch of Buttercream -

2 sticks of room temp. butter

1/4 cup shortening

4 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2-3 T. cream or milk

I had a little less frosting than I would have preferred, very nearly ran out when I was piping, in fact, so I would recommend using at least 1-1/2 times that much, if you want to have larger borders.

I just used some storebought piping gel for the letters, paper "holes" and apple.

(oh, and in case you don't know, CMAEM is the first initials of all the kids.)

The cake was a HUGE hit and so much fun.....and made the start of school definitely a celebration, which is always a good thing.

Linked to Trick or Treat Tuesday

First Holy Communion Cross Cake

I had the privilege of making a First Holy Communion cake for Corban's friend (and our neighbor across the street) Cort last month.  His mom and I poured over ideas for a few weeks, mostly on my favorite cake inspiration site (Cake Central) and finally came up with this idea. 

The breakdown:

Base: 12 x 18" white cake, frosted with blue buttercream.

Cross: 11 x 15" chocolate cake, cut into sections to make the cross.  I did have some leftover cake from that.  Frosted with white buttercream. I actually made the cake on a Wed. and froze the whole thing.  On Thurs. I carved it and coated the sections with a light crumb coat of white buttercream.  Back into the freezer they went!  On Saturday, after I had the white cake baked, cooled, and frosted, I brought out the cross sections and laid them on the cake. 

Helpful tip: I have used wooden dowels for cake supports before (on this graduation cake), and that works just fine - but this time I discovered something much easier. Large straws.
Yep, like the ones you get at McDonalds.  You can just cut them with scissors to the length you need and they go through even frozen cake pretty easily - and the cake pieces stay in place. 
You can see one of the holes made by the straw on the left section of the cross below, and on the bottom as well. 

After the cross got a nice covering of white buttercream, I got to work on the most time-consuming part, the detail work.

I used the Wilton tip 199 for all the shells around the border of the blue cake and around the top of the cross. (love that tip....it's the one I used for the Petal Cake also!)

I used the Wilton tip 7 for the dots around the base of the cross and the dots forming the inner cross outline.

The Wilton tip 2 was used for the lace-looking piping on the cross.  The technique is called Cornelli Lace.  Mine wasn't perfect, but it worked well enough.  I also used this tip for the writing. 

I honestly can't remember if I used tip 2 or tip 4 for the white dots around the top edges of the blue cake.  But it was one of those.

The chalis was made from Wilton Candy Melts, yellow obviously.  I drew an outline of a chalis on paper with pencil....layed wax paper on top of it, and traced over it with the melted candy in a ziplock bag.  Filled it in, refrigerated it to set up, etched in some details with a toothpick before it was set completely, and then brushed over the whole thing with gold petal dust.  That was fun!

The rosary and the cross with the boy kneeling were decorations purchased by Cort's mom for the cake.