Happy 5th Birthday Big Girl!

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. We just got back from a fabulous, fun filled week at Disney World. Yep, you read that right, a whole week. I was a little hesitant as previously we had only spent a day or two at a time there, but it was great. It was our first time taking our 2 year old but, not surprisingly, she was a rock star.

So now that I'm back home I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I already have one order completed for this week so I figured I'd take some time and show you what I'm been up to. Before we went to Disney World it was my eldest daughter's fifth birthday. I'm always so anal about taking pictures of all the cookies and cakes I make and I completely forgot about taking a photo of, quite possible, the cutest cookie I've ever made. As requested by the birthday girl, I made birthday cake cookies. The only pics I have are from the party on the folded plastic table cloth already wrapped for the party. You'll see that we also gave out those rubber band bracelets with the cookies. They made for cute packaging and boy is someone making a fortune off those somewhere.

And of course I had to make her birthday cake. We bought the cake for the party, I just got too busy with her cookies and other orders that week to put any real effort into a cake. For her family party I made a princess castle cake for her. I've always wanted to try this so I went for it. As you can see, there's a reason why I don't do cakes professionally. They're fun and a challenge, and I think they turn out cute enough, but I wouldn't dream of trying to charge someone for these. Maybe in the future with tons of practice... At least it tasted delicious! It was a marble cake filled with homemade chocolate ganach. Yum!

So, my daughter is turning 5 next week and of course I'm making her birthday cake. She has all these grand plans of what I'm going to design for her, but in my head I was thinking of something a little different. Being a 5 year old girl, what could be cooler than a rainbow colored cake? Not the icing, but the actual cake??? I decided to try it out the other day so make sure it turned out good and I loved it! It tasted delicious too! It's just a quick graffiti design so don't hold that against me. I'll make up for it with her real birthday cake.

And here it is....

May the Force be with you!

I've been dying to decorate a cake for a while. As you may know, I was so desperate to make one, I made my own birthday cake a few months back. My dear, dear friend was so kind to let me decorate her son's birthday cake. I got to do the best part too, just the decorating. As you can see, I do plenty of baking. The baking however, is a necessity. The decorating is what I love. So, here you have a Star Wars themed birthday cake for little Matthew, who will turn 5 in a few days. Happy Birthday Matthew!

Birthday Cake

As promised, I made myself a birthday cake. I've been wanting to try my hand at it for a while now and with no friends or family with a birthday in the near future, I am left to make my own. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It was a three layer cake (2 chocolate, 1 yellow cake) with vanilla buttercream frosting. The yellow cake was my first ever attempt at completely from scratch cake and it was fabulous. I used half of the yellow cake to make my cake pops so I rummaged through my pantry and made the two chocolate layers with a box mix. They both were delicious but the hands down winner was the yellow cake. Here's some before and after pics to make you salivate. I must add that this cake was so enormous that on the evening of my birthday I was driving around my neighborhood with packages of cake for friends and family and still had enough for next-day leftovers for the girls.

And just delicious!