Orange You Glad... Birthday Gift

I made this little gift to give away... I've seen tons of variations on Pinterest. I had to mail this gift so I opted for less chocolate and more mailable items.

Super easy and versatile gift that can be made to fit any person. Basically you just have to collect "orange" colored items.

Here's some orange suggestions:

• Orange notebook 
• Orange pen
• Orange tube of Mini M&M's
• Trident gum (Tropical Flavor- with an orange package)
• Orange Crystal Light
• Burt Bees Chapstick
• Orange Nail Polish
• Orange Slices Candy
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or Reese's Pieces
• Kit Kat Candy
• Soda/Drinks (Orange Crush)
• Orange Tic Tacs
• Goldfish
• Cheetos
• An actual real orange
• Orange cup
• Orange Ribbon
• Orange Stickers
• Anything Orange! Walk around and see what Orange things you find.

Then you add a little tag and it's done! Ta dah!

Here's a free printable of the orange tag for a Birthday gift.

And another tag for other gifts... Teacher Gift, Visiting Teacher gift, neighbor gift, just because gift! You can make the gift big or small depending on how much stuff you put into the collection.

 Right click on the image that you want and save it to your computer, then you can print out, cut out and attach it to your gift.

Here's another idea...

It's a plastic mason jar straw cup with a lid (and it even has an orange on the glass itself). I filled it up with a bunch of Orange candy, gum, Tic Tac's & Burt Bee's chapstick. I bought the cup at Wal-mart and after filling it with the orange treasures, I wrapped a ribbon and attached the tag.

Sunshine Cupcakes

So the sun's not shining much these days....Blech. **big sigh**

It's killing me to see the days getting soooo short. Sunrise is about 7:30 AM and the sun is going to bed way too early, around 5 PM. Oh that is not okay with me. I LOOOVE me some sunshine, so these cupcakes were perfect to add a little brightness to a otherwise un-sunny day. You don't need the sun shining to make you smile... these cupcakes will just make you feel happy inside and out.

These require the candy corn candies which are only available to buy during the autumn months, so I think they are the best way to bring some summer sun into the mi.

For Young Women’s I have been making a yummy treat every month to celebrate the girl’s and leader’s birthdays that month. They have to come up front, we sing to them and then everyone gets a treat. This month I made these A-DOR-ABLE sunshine cupcakes. I’d found an image of them on Pinterest, but no tutorial. Not that a tutorial is really needed. I created my own then. I made them suuuuper simple.

1-Boxed yellow cake mix, made as directed on the box. Made about 22 cupcakes.

2- Then I used a container of pre-made white vanilla frosting, colored it yellow with some food coloring and spread on a nice layer using a knife.

3- Next I had a bag of candy corn and using about 9 candies, I put them around the outside edge of the cupcake to represent the rays of the sun.

4- 2 mini chocolate chips are the eyes. I pushed the pointy end into the frosting of the cupcake.

5- I had leftover yellow frosting that I added more red food coloring to, and it became a pinkish orangey color. Instead of putting it into a cake decorating bag with a tip that would have to be washed, I put it into a plastic ziploc sandwich bag and snipped a teeny tiny hole in the bottom corner and used that to pipe a cute little smile on the cupcake.

6- Then they were done! See Super Simple! and SUUUPER Cute!

Edible Image on Cake

For my Grandpa's 80th Birthday we decided to celebrate with a birthday party. It's not every day that you turn 80. I was making a cake for the party and wanted to do something different. I had a picture of my Grandpa when he was younger and serving in the air force. He also worked his career and retired from Disney Studios. I took the picture, scanned it into Photoshop, added some balloons, a Mickey Mouse & some words. I took the picture to our local grocery store, Harmons and in their bakery section they printed the picture out on their edible printer (someday I want to get me one of these). On the left side you see the picture and the frosting edible image on the right. It is an 8x10 image.

You can tell the edible image is not as vivid as the printed picture and it ended up a bit smaller than the 8.5x11 inch image that was printed. 

However it is a great duplication... and went onto the cake nicely. (Check local grocery stores or bakeries for the option to have your image printed cause it makes for a super easy & personalized cake!)

Here is the cake right after I finished decorating. I made a simple chocolate layered cake, covered in a basic white buttercream (had to be a light color so the image would show up). Before I added the blue star border I peeled the image off the backer paper and applied it onto the white background. So easy! Peel & Stick! The edges were super noticeable at first but with time the image blended into the frosting more and more. I didn't really know what I was doing, but it turned out. When they printed the image, there was an ink blur at the bottom and it transferred as well... I should have cut that off. I could have trimmed around the image as well since the cake was bigger than the image and I didn't put the border next to the edge of the image.

I used a large wide open star in blue tinted buttercream for the border.

Grandpa (and Grandma) loved the cake! And that's all that matters. I had bought some camouflage material to use as a tablecloth for our party. The cake cut up nicely when it was time to eat it. I made sure I got a piece with the edible image and it tasted like sugar.

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Fluffy Pink Cake

While I was making a Piglet cake for a birthday party, I had a leftover 8x8 chocolate cake and lots of pink frosting (Recipes for the chocolate cake and buttercream frosting found here). I wanted to make the cake into something cute and girly, but incredibly simple. What's better than big pink flowers?

I filled a large pastry bag with the light pink frosting and then added a huge flower tip (Tip #864)....

Starting on top first, I piped big huge stars all over the top of the cake. I almost left it like this... It's cute right?!

But I still had frosting left over and decided to just go for GOLD and cover the whole cake with yummy pink buttercream frosting.
All the girls that saw this cake, LOVED it! It turned out cute! Simple! and very EASY!

Piglet Cake

I made this piglet cake for my niece's first Birthday party. It is her smash cake.

First I made two cakes in 8x8 cake pans from this Chocolate Crazy Cake recipe. It is a waaaaay yummy and moist chocolate cake! It has never NOT turned out. Mmmmm.... Plus it is a good recipe to keep on file because it doesn't require eggs or milk. It is FABULOUS and of course CRAZY!

{{Crazy Cake}}

3 cups flour

6 tablespoons Cocoa

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x13 pan. Whisk and combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then make three holes in the flour for the liquid ingredients.

2/3 cup oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons vinegar

2 cups water

Pour oil, vanilla and vinegar each into a separate hole. Then pour the water over and beat together until almost smooth. Pour batter into a prepared pan and bake in oven for 30 minutes or until tested done.

While the cake was baking, I cut out a piece of paper that measured 8x8 (since that was the size of pan that the cake was baking in). On that piece of paper I drew a rough draft of a Piglet. As simple as I could and labeled the colors that would be piped onto the cake (black for outlines, light pink, dark pink and a little teeny tiny bit of red on the tongue).

At first I thought I would just pipe the outline on the cake and leave the whole cake to be a full square, but decided instead to cut up the cake into the shape of piglet and cut him out of the cake for a more 3-D effect.

I simply laid the paper on the cake, and cut around it. I had two cakes that I was going to layer on top of each other, but decided that it would be too much cake for a sweet little one year old and just made the cake one layer, and I didn't even torte it or fill it. Simple, sweet, chocolate cake.

I stuck the cake into the freezer to chill it while I made the buttercream frosting.

{{Buttercream Icing}}

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
2 tablespoons milk

In a large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all of the sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use. (Yield: 3 cups of icing)

I doubled this recipe. I'm always nervous that I won't have enough frosting. So I made extra... there's always something to use frosting on... graham crackers, kids fingers love when it is piped on there, another cake, cupcakes, etc.

First I made a small amount black (about 1/2 cup) using the Wilton black icing color.

I covered a rectangle cake board with aluminum foil taped in place on the back. Placed the cake on top and then filled a pastry bag with the black frosting and topped it with Decorating Round tip #5. Using the drawing as a guide, I piped on the outline of the Piglet.

I put the cake back in the freezer to firm up the outline. Meanwhile, I took the pink decorator icing color and made the rest of the icing light pink.

I pulled out about 1 1/2 cups of frosting out and added more of the pink color to make it a dark pink.

Finally, I pulled out a teeny tiny bit of the dark pink and made it red using Real Red icing color.

I took that teeny tiny bit of red and put it into place on the tongue of the Piglet. Then it was time to start piping.... I used a small star tip (#13)for the pink frostings. I started with the light pink and slowly started to fill the areas. It was a slow process since I had chosen to use such a small tip. After filling the light pink areas on top, it was time to start filling the dark pink areas. Next it was time to fill the sides. Continuing with the color that was on top, I switched the tip to a larger star (tip #18) and made a zig zag motion up and down the side of the cake.

Finally using Round Tip #5 and the light pink frosting, I put the name and Birthday information. Then switching to dark pink frosting, I added dots to all of the letters, and added a squiggle line around the Piglet cake.

Then the cake was done! Ta Dah!

M&M Cake Directions

The day before the party I made a three layers of a simple yellow cake mix in the Wilton 6 x 2 in. Round Pan and two layers in the Wilton 10 x 2 in. Round Pan. Cooled the cakes completely and then wrapped them in plastic wrap to be used the next day.

I made a sugar cookie and the cut out a giant number one with a knife and then baked it. After it came out, the cookie was puffy and rounded (you know the way sugar cookies do), so while it was still warm I cut the edges of the cookie to make sure it was straight and even. The next day I decorated the sugar cookie with a Wilton Open Star Tip (#19). I piped the stars around the edges and then added a mini M&M into the center of the star. Using Wilton Round Decorating Tip #3, I wrote Morgan's name on the cookie.

Finally I made the star burst picks. Using the Stampin' Up Star punch, I punched out stars from cardstock in a variety of bright bold colors. I glued two stars together and alternated the points. Then I hot glued one set of two stars to one side of a bamboo skewer and then two more stars to the other side to create these star bursts.

The morning of the party I made a chocolate frosting and put that between each layer of yellow cake.

Here's the recipe...

{{Chocolate Frosting}}

1 cube butter, melted
2 Tbsp Dutch Processed cocoa powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
3-4 Tbsp milk
1 pound powdered sugar

Melt butter and add cocoa powder; mix until smooth. Pour into mixing bowl and add salt, vanilla and milk. Then add powdered sugar and mix well.

*** As an aside... let's learn about Dutch processed cocoa powder. It is a more mellow flavored chocolate and has a darker chocolate color. It is unsweetend and will taste bitter if tasted alone. However, you can substitute a normal unsweetened cocoa powder.

It is a soft frosting, so you can add more powdered sugar to make a thicker consistency.

I was in a bit of a rush and didn't take pictures of the process as I was making the cake, so here is the written directions for now.

First I cut out a cardboard circle that fit the 10 inch layer and another to fit the 6 inch layer. Scoop a dollop of chocolate frosting onto the cardboard and place the first layer of cake on the board. Spread the chocolate frosting on as a filler, then place the second layer. There were 2-ten inch cakes and 3-six inch cakes. After filling the cake, it was time to frost the outside. The cakes were partially frozen to make for easier handling. I had put them into the freezer for about 2 hours and since I was going to be putting Kit Kat candy bars on the outside, I didn't I didn't worry about a crumb coating, I just frosted the cakes. The best part of the decorating process came next. Using the full size Kit Kat bars (not the snack size since they are shorter), break them into two part sections, and then press them into the side of the frosted cake. Use any sort of ribbon and tie it around the cake to finish off the "basket" look (plus the ribbon helps to keep the cake from falling apart in case the Kit Kats don't want to stay on the frosting). After doing this to both the large and small layers, I placed some dowels into the larger cake where the smaller cake was going to be placed. I decided that instead of having the smaller cake in the center of the cake, I would off set the cake towards the back of the larger round cake. I used about 6 dowels to support the weight of the second layer cake on top. After the dowels were in place, the small 6 inch cake was placed on top.

Now... open a bag of M&M's (I chose plain) and pour them onto the top of the large 10 inch cake, filling them to the top of the Kit Kat Basket.

I put the number 1 cookie on top and then the star bursts. Finally it was time to fill this cake basket with more M&M's. Ta dah! Ready to go!

Here was the smash cake for the baby. I used only one 6 inch yellow cake, frosted, and then using a sharp knife I cut the Kit Kats in half, pressed them into the frosting, tied the ribbon, put the candle on top and then poured in the M&M's. Don't you love how quick and easy it is! And so stinkin' cute! It was a hit amongst all the kids (and adults) at the party! They loved seeing all that CANDY!

Pirate Cake

Here is the bottom layer of the cake. I didn't pull out my camera soon enough to capture every step of the cake making process. The bottom while plate is a rotating turn table. then the pink and black layers are from IKEA. They are just think plastic sheets that I added under the cake for some color and decoration. The cake is a Chocolate Crazy Cake. Here is the recipe:

{{Crazy Cake}}

3 cups flour

6 tablespoons Cocoa

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x13 pan. Whisk and combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then make three holes in the flour for the liquid ingredients.

2/3 cup oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons vinegar

2 cups water

Pour oil, vanilla and vinegar each into a separate hole. Then pour the water over and beat together until almost smooth. Pour batter into a prepared pan and bake in oven for 30 minutes or until tested done.

Then I made a Basic Buttercream frosting (below) to coat the cakes and tinted it pink using Wilton Pink Icing...

and then covered the frosted cakes with a homemade Marshmallow Fondant (below).

Basic Buttercream Icing

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening

1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract

4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar (approximately 1 lb.)

2 tablespoons milk Makes: About 3 cups of icing.

(Medium Consistency): In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.

For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use. Refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. Rewhip before using.

For thin (spreading) consistency icing, add 2 tablespoons light corn syrup, water or milk.

Marshmallow Fondant

16 ounces mini marshmallows (buy the best quality and brand you can find if fondant will be eaten, if used just for decorating, a cheaper marshmallow can be used)

2 pounds powdered sugar, sifted (important to sift because it will remove the lumps that won’t go away during mixing)

4 tablespoons water (if making the fondant to be eaten, replace 1-2 tablespoons of the water with vanilla)

shortening for greasing everything, bowl, spatula, mixing bowl, dough hook, countertop, etc.

1.Put the marshmallows and water in a large microwave-safe bowl that has been greased with shortening. Microwave on high for about 1 minute, until the marshmallows are all melted. The mixture will expand. Stir to incorporate. (After mixing the marshmallows smooth, this is a good time to add coloring if you want to have colored fondant.)

2.Grease the dough hook and bowl of your mixer really well with shortening.

3.Put about 3/4 of the powdered sugar to the mixer bowl and add all of the melted marshmallows.

4.Mix on low speed for a few minutes then check the consistency of the fondant. It will probably still be a little sticky at this point. If it is, add some of the remaining powdered sugar and mix again for a minute or so. Repeat this step until the fondant is firm and neither dry or sticky.

5.Turn out on to a clean, firm work surface that has been slightly greased by shortening and knead by hand just for a minute until there are no flecks of dry powdered sugar remaining. Wrap in cling wrap and let the fondant rest for at least an hour before using.

We rolled fondant balls in both pink and black to add to the base of the cakes. I had made a full batch of white marshmallow fondant and then dyed a small portion pink and an even smaller amount black. The balls are all supposed to be shaped irregularly, and then left the rest of the fondant white.

We rolled out and cut the fondant. Here is the pink fondant that we are cutting into strips using a pizza cutter.

First we cut 3/4 to 1 inch strips...

Then smaller 1/4 inch strips in between.

Here's the second layer, frosted with pink buttercream and then covered with white fondant. Then we used pre-made black frosting from a tube to write the number 9 and the trails for the "treasure map" portion of the cake. Pink fondant are the "X" marks the spot.

Finally we cut a circle of black fondant for the cake topper. I was going to make a skull out of fondant and then I had a new idea. I had a Stampin' Up rubber stamp set (Just Jawing) that I had been using for her invitations, party favors and other such things, I pressed the stamp image into the top of the cake and it left an impression. Stamps aren't just for making cards anymore!

I followed the impression with frosting and essentially drew the skull on top with cute heart eyes. Now it matched everything else at the party! YAY!

To finish it off we added one simple rose to the top of the skull. It is of course a girl skull for a GIRLS pirate party! I thought it was perfect. I wrote her name at the top and Happy Birthday on the bottom.

TA DAH! I think it LOOKS MARVELOUS!!

Birthday Cake with a Marzipan Bow

Here is my daughters 7 year old birthday cake and what do you think she requested! A wedding cake!!! Seriously! Well, I didn't want it to be TOO elaborate, but still wanted it to be fun and special that would somewhat honor her request.

I started with a chocolate cake and made 4 cakes so that each tier had 2 layers. Covered the cake in pink buttercream frosting and then piped on some lacey accents. Finally, I had some ready-to-use Wilton Rolled Fondant (available at any craft store) and I made the bow for the top of her cake. The instructions were on the back of the box that the fondant came in. Basically you roll out the fondant into a thin sheet and then cut it into strips. Fold them in half, add a little water to adhere and start stacking them on top of each other, and then all of a sudden it becomes a bow...