"Monster High" cake

For my daughter's 8th Birthday she told me she did not want cakepops.
Nor cupcakes.
She wanted a cake.
(And of course she wanted a cake that has no Wilton shaped cakepan that would have made it easy on Mom.)
But me, being the excellent Mother I am, told her I would make her the "Monster High" cake she was wishing for!
Monster High is a line of fashion dolls that are monster teens (think Barbie meets Halloween). Not only is it dolls, but they have online games, webisodes & have had a cartoon movie for Halloween.

After scouring the internet for a shaped cakepan (no such luck,) I got some ideas from other cake photos posted. I used my daughter's Monster High t-shirt as a guide.  I knew I wanted to do the skull with a bow- I figured it shouldn't be too hard...
So first I baked my cakes... since the skull was relatively small (for a party of hungry kids) I decided to make a double decker cake with a layer of frosting in the middle, so it would serve more peeps. I just used the confetti (boxed) cake, then spread some (store bought) chocolate frosting in between the 2 stacked cakes.
 Next I traced the skull from my daughter's shirt, cut it out & used it as a guide to carve the cake.

Since piping the icing on with a star-shaped tip seem to be the most forgiving, I decided to cover the cake with them, instead of smoothing on icing. I was really happy with how well it came out!

Next to add a little color & to liven up the tray that I was serving the cake on, I used some cookie cutters to cut out diamonds from fondant. Then I made an argyle type pattern of teal & hot pink diamonds.

And lastly, I made Count Fabulous, the pet bat of one of the Monster High characters (Draculaura). I had both sugar paste & fondant. The fondant seemed to hold it's shape better- so I ended up using that. I think the bow & eyes are sugar paste however. *I can't remember exactly, because it has been a month since I made this!...shoulda blogged sooner!*

Ta Da!

This was my first attempt using fondant & I was so pleased with how easy it was to mold a character! My hands did get really stained from hand-mixing the wilton color into the fondant, but no biggie. I definitely want to use fondant again, but probably not to cover a whole cake because it doesn't taste that great. But the kids did enjoy eating the diamonds. :)

Santa Hat cakepops

For my childrens' school bakesale, I made Santa Hat cakepops! I was really pleased with how they turned out. I followed the directions in Bakerella's Cakepops book... the only thing I changed was the "pompom" on top. I think it called for a white gumball, I substituted it with a mini marshmallow that I cut in half.

I also spruced up the display by covering the styrofoam block with Christmas wrapping paper!

I also used Christmas colored curling ribbons to tie off the treat bags that were placed on each hat.

And lastly, to satisfy the school's requirement I added a small note on allergen information.

American Alligator cupcakes

For my son's 5th Birthday I made him an alligator made out of 2 dozen cupcakes...
It was pretty easy when I followed the instructions in the Hello, Cupcake  book.
All that I needed to decorate it was icing, green tint, yellow banana-shaped runts, marshmallows, oreo (100 calorie) thins, 2 jr. mints, and 2 green jellybellies. The hardest issue that I ran into was having a surface large enough to display (& transport) this big guy!  (I found a large pizza box opened flat worked well for display!)

Cakepops!

Found a new book, Cakepops by Bakerella. This book is right up my alley! Creative yummy balls of cake & frosting dipped into candy melts, and stuck on a stick.

Here are my latest creations!

After baking a cake, crumbling it, and mixing it with frosting- I rolled them into balls. Then after chilling them in the freezer for 15 minutes, I shaped them into a "cupcake" shape using a flower-shaped cookie cutter. Next placed them back into the fridge to keep them from losing their shape while I melted the candy melts.

 I dipped the bottom of the "cupcake" into the melted chocolate candy melts...

Then I quickly dipped part of the lollipop stick into the chocolate and pushed it about halfway into the cakepop.

After the chocolate was dry, I dipped the top of the cupcake into the a different color candy melt. I did a batch of white & one of pink.

Then topped with sprinkles & a skittle!

Then I put each into a bag and tied it with a ribbon.

I also made Owls (for my daughter's 3rd Birthday)...

And turkeys for Thanksgiving....

Monster Cupcakes

For my daughter's 7th Birthday I made her "Monster Cupcakes" from the What's New Cupcake? book.

I got the height for the monster by attaching a mini cupcake to the top of the unfrosted regular cupcake. The eyes of the monster were made by stretching a gummy peach ring over a Dum Dum lollipop. Then I used a tiny bit of vanilla frosting to attach a mini- M&M to make a pupil for the eye.

They were really easy to make, once I fixed my frosting issues. To apply the tinted frosting I put the frosting into a ziploc bag and then snipped off a small piece of the corner.Then I just let the frosting drip in "strings" over the cupcake while moving it around to cover the mini cupcake & regular cupcake.

When I used my tinted Duncan Hines Rich & Creamy- it was WAY too soft & melty. Here is the first cupcake I made, it turned out ok- but after sitting for 20 mins or so, it turned into a smooth melty blob!

I ended up using some of the Wilton's White Decorator Icing (which has a nice stiff consistency) - mixing it into the already tinted Duncan Hines. This allowed me to also make some furry monsters (see the above green monster.)

The hardest part of these cupcakes was transporting them because they were tall & top-heavy! But the Birthday girl loved them!

Freshly baked- Cherry Pie Cupcakes

For my Mother-In-Law's Birthday, I decided to try out a new cupcake from my NEW cupcake book, What's New Cupcake?
Cupcakes shaped like little pies! (Perfect for my mother-in-law who is the pie-baker for our family holidays).

I baked chocolate cupcakes (from the box) but modified slightly.

Then I tinted the vanilla frosting with yellow food coloring & unsweetened cocoa powder to mimic the color of pie crust.

Then all I needed to top the cupcakes with were some M&Ms. I bought a bag of all red ones at our local Michaels. I was planning on getting blue ones for "blueberries" but they were all out!

The finished product! Closely spaced "Cherries" covered over with piped lines to look like the lattice on top of a pie. I think they turned out well :)

burrr, it's cold outside: Penguin Cupcakes

For my daughter's 2nd Birthday, I made the Penguin Cupcakes from the Hello, Cupcake book. I was a little worried that these would be a big fat pain, like the shark cupcakes were... but alas, these went much smoother.

To get the shape of the penguin on the top of the cupcake, I bought mini-doughnuts & doughnut holes. First I cut the mini-doughnuts in half. (The book called for plain, but I couldn't find any- so I got cinnamon flavored ones. I think that the plain would've been ideal, as the icing would have probably stuck to them better than mine, but mine still worked!)

Next, while I was waiting for my cupcakes to finish baking, I did some prep work..... making the penguins' bellies by cutting 1/8" off of the end of a marshmallow.

Then I cut the top off of those, so that the belly would have a straight edge.

After my cupcakes cooled, I iced them with thinned Wilton's decorator icing. Then I attached the cut mini-doughnuts, cut-side down.

Next I plopped a dolop of icing to the top of the doughnut, so that I could affix a doughnut hole there..

After sticking a doughnut hole ontop of the hole of the mini-doughnut, I reinforced my penguin's body with more icing to fill in the cracks.

Next, into the freezer to set, for about 15 mins. I found it helpful to have them in a muffin pan, so that they wouldn't fall over in the freezer.

While they were freezing, I tinted some chocolate fudge icing black, with Wilton's tint. Then, just before I got the cupcakes out of the freezer, I warmed the icing in the microwave so that I could dip the penguins to coat their bodies. Then I attached cut pieces of Famous Chocolate Wafers as flippers and stuck on the belly.

The feet and beaks were cut from yellow Starburst candy.

Then I attched the beaks to the head, just above the belly. For the eyes, I piped white icing and then stuck a mini-chocolate chip into it. And then I piped a tiny dot of white icing for a highlight in the eyes. The feet were stuck onto the outside of the cupcake liner with some icing.

To go along with the penguins, I had some cupcakes made to look like icy buckets of fish... complete coconut shavings, with small fish candy and rock candy ice.