Disney Fairy Silvermist Cake

From Disney's Tinkerbell movies, Silvermist

Saying that my girls love the Tinkerbell movies is probably an understatement. They love all the characters but my oldest daughter decided she wanted a Silvermist dress cake for her fifth birthday. I honestly didn't know how this was going to turn out until it was done. I should have had a plan and drawn out what I wanted her dress to look like but I didn't! I was seriously nervous for this cake.

I made the gum paste flowers ahead of time to make sure they were dry. I didn't know how many I would need or what style I wanted.. So I made a whole bunch of all the kinds I liked in different colors and sizes so I had plenty to choose from. All I knew is it was going to be blue and yellow.. This is the picture I was kind of going by.

The blue gel coloring I had was dried out so the blue icing didn't turn out quite like how I wanted it to but it worked. I have since bought a new blue... 

I had also planned on making the dress cake by cutting round cakes like this tutorial, it's long but really helpful.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=IUI7Sn0X_7k&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DIUI7Sn0X_7k

At the last minute my husband told me he didn't want me stressed if I didn't get the cake to work so I bought the Wilton Wonder Cake Set which is basically a Barbie Dress Cake Mold. It worked pretty well except it baked about 20 mins more than my recipe calls for so when I opened the oven thinking it should be cooked the cake fell in the center. Oops.. After it was cooked through I cut the bottom off and it was fine. 

As you can see this cake did not go as planned... Or not planned...since I just didn't plan at all...

So here's the basics of how I iced it.

There's a little hole in the center so I just put the doll down in there. I put her hair up and wings off (not in the picture) so they didn't get frosting on them. The cake should go about to her hips. Don't worry you will build up the top of the dress with frosting.

Give the cake a crumb coat so you don't have crumbs in your top layer. Refrigerate it and put another coating of frosting. It doesn't have to be perfect, you'll be piping over the top.

Then you're ready for piping. Color the frosting and have all your tips ready. I used a star tip and a circle tip. For the back I used a circular motion with the star tip and varying blue and white to make rose like circles. In the front I left a slanted space for the yellow.

For the yellow...Start at the bottom with the star tip and do little teardrops across the base. Continue with the teardrops up the dress the next layer slightly overlapping the top of the last layer to the top.

For the bodice continue with the star tip in yellow with two teardrops on the stomach and one across the chest to one shoulder. With the star tip in blue outline the yellow to finish the strap on each side and around the back.

To finish use the circle tip and blue to make dots where the blue and yellow meet. Add gum paste flowers where you like them, put her wings on and hair down and you're done! 

It was a hit! My second daughter wants a Rosetta cake like this for her fourth birthday.. So you can expect more dress cakes to come!

Dinner and Dessert Crepes

Crepes aren't nearly as scary as they might seem. It's basically a flat pancake.. so if you can make a pancake you can make a crepe and they are so yummy with all sorts of this stuffed inside.

 Like this one.. a grilled honey mustard chicken (recipe coming soon) with provolone cheese, red onions, spinach and honey mustard drizzled over the top. It was delicious! I love the slight sweetness of the crepe with the saltiness of the chicken.. and even if you don't like red onion (like me) it really makes the dish pop with flavor so give it a try. You can roll it up and eat it with a fork and knife or with your hands like a burrito. It's a great meal for the whole family.

Crepe Ingredients:
Recipe adapted from Betty Crocker's New Cookbook

1 1/2 Cup Flour
1 T Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
2 Cups Milk
2 T Butter, melted
1/2 tsp Vanilla
2 Large Eggs

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a small bowl whisk wet ingredients together, then add to dry ingredients. Whisk together until completely smooth.

Lightly butter a 8-10 inch pan on medium heat. When bubbly add a little less than 1/4 cup of crepe batter and immediately turn the pan to coat the bottom and sides.

 Allow it to cook until golden brown and flip to cook on the other side.

 Place on wax paper under a plate until ready to serve. I doubled the recipe because I was feeding 7 adults and five kids dinner and dessert crepes and the recipe doesn't say how many it makes... but it was enough with about 6 leftover. I have no idea how many people ate though.. if I had to guess I'd say it made between 25 and 30 with two batches. So one would make 13-18 or something. I'm planning on making a BLT variety this week so I'll be better at counting them so I can let you know.

For  the dessert crepes the options are endless.. this particular one is filled with a Dove Chocolate Mousse that my mom had a packet for and bananas. The topping is powdered sugar, fresh blackberries, strawberries and blueberries and chocolate fudge drizzled over the top. Amazing! My husband and sister also made some with butter and honey that were really good as well. So experiment with the flavors you like and let me know what you did and how you liked it! I'd love some suggestions!

Super Moist Chocolate Cake

This has to be the simplest and best chocolate cake ever. People can't believe it came from a box when I tell them. So if you haven't tried this you definitely should.

1 box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Chocolate Cake Mix
1 6oz box JELL-O Chocolate Pudding (The small 3.9oz box is good too but the big one makes it that much more dense)

Then you just follow the directions on the box for the rest of the ingredients and baking time. I have made this with round pans for birthday cakes and I make it in a bundt pan ALL the time. Try it!

Minnie Mouse Cake with Marshmallow Fondant

 This was the vision I had for Aubrey's 2nd...2nd birthday cake...yes I made her two separate cakes for her two little get togethers. I have way too much fun making cakes :) This cake was a little more involved than my other Minnie Mouse cake, you can see how I made that one here. But it basically came out exactly how I wanted it to and I couldn't be happier!

 To start I made a whole batch of white cake pops with my cake pop maker. Aubrey was happy to steal as many as she could. And I let her... because, well it is her birthday.

 

Next I made a chocolate cake in two 9" round pans putting a little batter on the bottom of the prepared pan and placing the white cake pops all over the bottom almost touching each other. I was only able to do one layer but if you have enough batter to cover them in two layers...layer it up! Then cover the pops with the rest of the chocolate batter. Bake as usual. Then using a cake leveler I cut the tops off.. this is what they looked like.

 Then I made Wilton's chocolate buttercream frosting adding a little extra milk and about 4 T cocoa powder rather than the 3/4 cup it asks for so it wasn't quite as dark and a little smoother for spreading.

I spread it between the cake layers and around the cake as you normally would for a crumb coating since we're going to be putting fondant on it. Put the cake in the fridge while I made the marshmallow fondant.

 Here are a few pictures of the cute birthday girl!

You can find the shirt I got for her here along with TONS of other cute designs for basically anything you can have embroidered she's got it :)

 

For the fondant I used this recipe from mycrazyblessedlife.com. It had it's pros and cons.. it was a little stiff to work with but stayed softer for much longer.. I might have added a little too much powdered sugar or something but I would definitely use this recipe again! All you need is powdered sugar, marshmallows and water, it's pretty sticky until you have all the powdered sugar in there so if you don't want a mess stick with the store bought stuff. But everyone said they liked this recipe better than the Wilton premade fondant. It's definitely worth a try and you decide if you like it or not.

Moving on... So I colored the marshmallow fondant red, which took a while and a lot of dye! Then I rolled it out and put it on the cake. I had some premade white fondant I needed to use from a previous project and that's what I made the polka dots out of cutting them out with a cookie cutter. I used a little bit of water to adhere the polka dots to the cake.

 Next I made the Minnie ears and head. I used the same method as in my Minnie Mouse Chocolate Bundt Cake, because these cakes were made within a day of each other I actually used the same batch. I adapted this recipe from here.

1 whole container of crushed up Oreos (using a food processor cream and all)  3/4 of a bag of miniature marshmallows
4 T of butter

Put the marshmallows and butter in a microwave safe bowl and heat for about 45 seconds, stir, and heat until it is all melted and smooth. Add oreos... it's a little hard to stir so thankfully I had my husband there. Next I rolled out the oreo mixture and used a circle cookie cutter to cut the ears out and pressed the rest of the Oreos into a small bowl for the half circle. Using melting chocolate I "glued" candy sticks to the back of the ears and pushed the sticks into the half circle.

You can see in the picture below how much chocolate I used, it probably wasn't necessary but I wanted to be sure! haha.. And really I think if you can make your oreo ears thick enough you could probably push the candy stick into it without using the chocolate on the back but I rolled mine out too thin and was too rushed to change it.

For the bow I just drew a template of what I thought Minnie's bow looked like. If I would have had ink in the printer I would have printed one out so they aren't perfect but like I said, it wasn't a big deal. 

I melted Wilton red melting chocolate and put it in a condiment bottle. Then I put the template bow under parchment paper and traced the bow. I made three just in case they ended up breaking easily.. I'm happy to say not one broke. After outlining the bow fill it in. You have to work kind of quick because you have to put the sprinkle pearls on for the polka dots before the chocolate sets. After the sprinkles were on and the chocolate has set I went around the outline again to make the edges pop out.

 When the chocolate is completely set turn the bows over and put plenty of chocolate in the middle, lay a candy stick in the chocolate and cover the top of the stick with more chocolate. I put my bows on a cookie sheet and into the freezer because I'm impatient and wanted them to set up quicker but they will do it at room temperature too.

Next I colored my leftover chocolate frosting black and using about an 11 round tip piped little dots around the base of the cake and the base of the Minnie head.

 Then using the red melting chocolate I looked up a Disney font and copied the letters for her name onto some parchment paper. I did two of each letter because they're pretty fragile.

 And here are the polka dots inside of the cake! I kind of wish I would have done red frosting between the layers of cake but I wasn't about to make a whole batch of white frosting for one layer... if someone was paying me I would have.

 I was a little worried about the chocolate and white cake together and what it would taste like but it was actually awesome! I wish I had some right now ;) Good thing Annalee's bday is coming up soon! Tinkerbell cake here we come!

My mom found those adorable black and white polka dotted candles that were perfect! It's definitely my favorite cake to date!

Easy Minnie Mouse Chocolate Bundt Cake

 I knew we were doing two little get togethers for each side of the family for Aubrey's 2nd birthday this year. She LOVES Minnie Mouse so I knew that had to be the theme. We didn't make it a big deal but I still wanted her to have a cute cake so I came up with this idea of a chocolate bundt cake with ears and a bow. It ended up looking kind of like those Minnie and Mickey hats you get at Disneyland. I was really happy with it!

So first I made the chocolate bundt cake and let it cool. 

For the ears I used 1 whole container of crushed up Oreos (using a food processor cream and all) 

3/4 of a bag of miniature marshmallows
4 T of butter

Put the marshmallows and butter in a microwave safe bowl and heat for about 45 seconds, stir, and heat until it is all melted and smooth. Add oreos... it's a little hard to stir so thankfully I had my husband there. Next I rolled out the oreo mixture and used a circle cookie cutter to cut the ears out. Easy!

For the bow I just drew a template of what I thought Minnie's bow looked like. If I would have had ink in the printer I would have printed one out so they aren't perfect but like I said, it wasn't a big deal. 

I melted Wilton red melting chocolate and put it in a condiment bottle. Then I put the template bow under parchment paper and traced the bow. I made three just in case they ended up breaking easily.. I'm happy to say not one broke. After outlining the bow fill it in. You have to work kind of quick because you have to put the sprinkle pearls on for the polka dots before the chocolate sets. After the sprinkles were on and the chocolate has set I went around the outline again to make the edges pop out.

 

When the chocolate is completely set turn the bows over and put plenty of chocolate in the middle, lay a candy stick in the chocolate and cover the top of the stick with more chocolate. I put my bows on a cookie sheet and into the freezer because I'm impatient and wanted them to set up quicker but they will do it at room temperature too. I did the same thing on the back of the Oreo ears but I used two sticks on each.

 The only thing left to do is put them in the cake! I put the bow right in the middle and I put the candy sticks angling inward toward each other. So like an X behind and below the bow to make sure they didn't move.

And that's it! Super simple, quick and easy. She loved it.

Tin Foil Dinner

Tin Foil Dinner

 

 Ingredients:

1 lb Ground Beef

5 Large Carrots, peeled and chopped

4 Potatoes, peeled and chopped

Tin Foil

Season Salt

Pepper

Dehydrated Onions, or fresh onion, chopped

Cooking Spray

 

These are so easy and you can prepare them this way and take them with you in a cooler to go camping, or through those winter months when you wish you could go camping just make them in the oven!

I made three large tin foil dinners with all of this but depending on how much your family eats you can kind of guess how much to put in each one.

Pull off 6 sheets of tin foil about 18-20 inches. Using two pieces per pouch lay them flat, spray the inside one with cooking spray and fill the middle with ingredients. Sprinkle seasoning throughout.

 Wrap foil around to the top and fold over to seal it. Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until potatoes and carrots are soft and meat is cooked.

You can eat it right out of the foil or pour it into a bowl. The kids like to dip it in ketchup and my husband likes A1, personally I just like it the way it is.. :)

If you're taking them camping make your fire and let it build up a lot of hot coals. Place the pouches directly in the coals and shovel some coals on top. Let it cook until the potatoes and carrots are soft and meat is cooked. Cooking time with vary with how much heat you have and the temperature outside.

Root Beer Cake

Root Beer 21st Birthday!

 Now this cake isn't really root beer flavored, it's chocolate because that's what the birthday girl wanted. Not that I had any reason to complain because I absolutely love chocolate cake. I got some of these ideas on Pinterest here and here, but we put a spin on them and made them our own!

We'll start with the individual cakes. Shelby and David found these cute little glass mugs at the dollar store. All I did was bake 12 cupcakes without baking cups (so make sure you spray the cupcake pan well with baking spray) and let them cool. If you find cups that are oven safe you could definitely bake the cake directly in the cup but I didn't know if these were and didn't want to take the chance of a huge mess.. And really these cups could have fit two cupcakes on top of each other so I ended up just breaking the cupcakes into little pieces to fluff them up a bit.

You can see that I crumbled some extra cake under the cupcake but they ended up being different colors and I didn't like the look so I just crumbed the cupcake up too.

Then my mom (thank goodness for her) made a double batch of Wilton Butter Cream Frosting and a double batch of Wilton Chocolate Butter Cream frosting. You can get the Butter Cream recipe here. And the Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting here. We then used this swirling method:

You'll need 3 piping bags, 1 with the tip you'll be using (we used a very large star tip) and the other two without a tip. Put chocolate frosting in one bag and the white frosting in the other being careful not to fill them up to much because you will then put both of the frosting filled bags into the bag with the tip. It took three of us at a time to pipe this much frosting because we were in a hurry and filled the bags up as much as we could! I wouldn't do that again. (Thanks Shelby, my husband and my mom). It was a TON of frosting but it sure did look cute. To top it off we just cut the end off of a regular straw and stuck it in whichever way we thought looked cute.

 For the birthday girl's cake, her husband David engraved the giant mug they also got at the dollar store. For the cake inside I baked what was left from the cupcakes I made and put it in a 8x8 baking dish that I sprayed and lined with parchment paper. After it was cooled I turned the cake out and cut out circle pieces to fit inside the giant mug.

 After the cake was in all I had to do was pipe in frosting... a LOT of frosting... and of course the bottle pouring in.. The bottle was really heavy so we ended up putting a dowel the length of the bottle and all the way down to the bottom of the mug. We used a Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Rolled Wafer to cover the dowel and swirled the frosting around it and down the sides like root beer foam!

So all of these shot glasses are full of different brands of root beer. NINE different kinds of root beer... David had this idea and set all of this up for us to try and guess which root beer was which brand and also which root beer was our favorite just from trying it. Let me tell you.... it was hard! I love root beer but after the first three they all tasted the same. I had to eat a breadstick to try and cleanse my pallet. I guessed terribly. I only got one right, but at least I got my favorite one right which is A&W. My husband and my brother got five out of nine so I'd say that's pretty good. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE SIS!