Our Boy Is Six!

Yesterday, we celebrated sweet Conor's 6th birthday.

It still stuns us that he has so quickly evolved from a tiny baby with jet black hair to a little dude who loves music, building with Legos and blocks, playing any kind of sport, dancing with a huge grin on his face, and so much more. That said, he's still MORE than happy to crawl up on our laps for an early morning snuggle as he shakes off the night's cobwebs and gears up for another day of playing and living life to the fullest.

Upon waking, we asked him if he felt any different, to which he replied, "Yeah! I feel bigger and stronger!" Later in the morning, while sitting on the couch, he said, "Hey! My feet reach the coffee table now that I'm 6!" (Eric didn't have the heart to tell him that the table had been moved closer to the couch.)

Lucky boy, his birthday landed on the first day of spring break, so he got to stay home all day at home with Eric and Annika ... lounging in his PJs, playing, and soaking up all the glory that is being a 6-year-old-boy. To celebrate his big day, Conor requested waffles and sausage for dinner; I was fully expecting a request for eggs Benedict, so feel like I lucked out in terms of time and labor on that front!

After dinner, he opened his presents (Thank you to his very generous aunts, uncles, and grandparents -- your thank you notes are in the mail) and told us he wanted to go to Menchies for dessert. That was until he realized he would need to leave his new (and newly beloved) Transformer toys at home for said dessert. Umm... not so much. Conor decided to have a little ice cream at home instead, so he could have uninterrupted play time. As a plan B, Annika and I popped up to 7-11 (yeah, we're THAT fancy) and got some ice cream treats for the birthday celebration.

Conor declared that his birthday was "AWESOME" .... can't get any better than that!

Conor hugging his new stuffy

Opening gifts

Daddy helping Conor read the card

Conor and Annika figuring out the Transformers

A couple of weeks ago, Conor had a co-birthday party with his classmates. What is a cp-birthday party? Well, it is the brain child of his classmate's mom who realized her son and Conor are both March birthday boys and suggested we combine forces and have a shared class party. Brilliant!!! We booked it at a local Lego cafe (seriously, what is better for a group of kindergarten children??) The kids had a blast building and building and building to their little hearts content. We had snacks and Lego-themed red velvet cupcakes (fondant Legos cupcake toppers!) and balloons, but the kids loved the Legos the best! One of Conor's little buddies even lost her tooth during the party, making the day that much more memorable!! Conor even had a special (albeit very tired due to a VERY early morning flight) guest ... his big cousin Robert happened to be popping through Seattle en route back to Pullman. How much better can that get??

Conor, Lego engineer

Mama and her pretty girl

Mama and silly Conor

Lego cupcakes

Shhhh!!! Robert's sleeping! 

January 2016 Daring Bakers' Challenge: Cake Design

I'm pretty sure that this month's Daring Bakers' challenge was created with me in mind. We were challenged to decorate a cake or cupcakes with fondant or gum paste. When I read the challenge brief, I'm pretty sure I smiled from ear to ear and did a little happy dance. Talk about something being right up your alley!! I was so excited about the challenge that I had a hard time falling asleep that night because cake ideas and visions were zooming around in my brain. 

Eventually, after considering many designs (including a beach scene, a person soaking in a bubble-filled bathtub, a Lego-theme, and a baking theme), I opted to try a book cake: A William Shakespeare anthology, to be exact. (Yes, I really am THAT big of a literature geek!)

Once again, my artistic director (aka Eric) was a huge help and gets a lot of credit for how this cake turned out. His engineer skills were incredibly beneficial when it came to figuring out how to approach the cake (linear thinking at its best!!) and when it was time to rough out the templates for cutting the cake and bookmark.

My two favorite Shakespearean plays are "Taming of the Shrew" and "Much Ado About Nothing", so we showcased both plays by having the finale of "Shrew" on the left-hand page and he beginning of "Much Ado" on the right page.

This cake makes me smile so very much. It represents my love of literature and how some of my loved ones had a hand in creating it. Can't beat that!!!

Eric putting his knife and sculpting skills to work

Conor helping me smooth the fondant

A book you can REALLY sink your teeth into

Much Ado About Nothing page

Annika's Birthday (pt 3)

On Saturday, we had Annika's third of three birthday celebrations... the family party.

The night before, Eric and I worked on her cake, which according to Annika, needed a dinosaur and an egg. OK... gotcha! Fortunately for our little girl, her daddy is quite the artist and sculpting a dinosaur out of fondant didn't send him into cold sweats, which it certainly would have done to her mother! While Eric conquered the fondant work, I took care of stacking and frosting the cake. We let the fondant creations dry over night and then Eric used my airbrush to paint the dinosaur, baby, and egg the morning of the party. I must say that we were mighty pleased with how the whole thing turned out. We were a bit stressed about how we'd get the mama dinosaur onto the cake (Eric used an empty cake pan as his modeling platform) but it worked out!

Around 3 o'clock, the family started rolling in and the associated noise and fun ensued. There were 12 of us in all, yet we probably had enough food for about 25! We had bratwurst, cucumber salad, spinach salad, garlic bread, tuna pasta salad, and (of course) dinosaur cake!

Between dinner and cake, Annika opened her much-anticipated presents. We have one very fortunate girl to have such generous family members!! She received a variety of books (math, mazes, kindergarten skills, Junie B. Jones), wonderful clothes, an art kit, and Hello Kitty pajamas. The girl couldn't have been happier if she tried.

Eric sculpting the mama dinosaur

Finished cake

I love how Eric decided to have the mama's legs wrap around the edge of the cake

Eric helping Annika read the cards

What is it?? What is it??

DRESSES!

Of course, she had to put one of the new dresses on right away

Hello Kitty pajamas that she has worn each night since her party

Awaiting the arrival of her cake

The candles were out before Eric had the cake on the
table ... our girl doesn't waste time when cake is involved!

Cheese!!

Collective nouns: A gaggle of geese, a pack of wolves, a pile of cousins.

Our 3D Dump Truck Cake

Awhile back, we asked Conor what kind of birthday cake he wanted. After seeing a picture of a dump truck cake, he knew exactly what he wanted. Even a few weeks later, he still wanted a dump truck cake. Eric, aka my artistic director, sketched out a wonderful design. I called my cake store guru and asked her for cake pan recommendations. She suggested an extra long loaf pan and then we could sculpt the cake from that. Cool!

I made a triple batch of the Velvet Devil's Food Cake from Cooks Illustrated (recipe to follow) which was amazingly wonderful. I'd never used the recipe before and think I've found my new go-to chocolate cake recipe. It is moist (to the point of being borderline fudgy) and very flavorful. Winner! I bought the red and black fondant (those colors are REALLY hard to mix); all the other fondant used was my homemade marshmallow fondant (much better tasting!).

Thank goodness that Eric is (a) artistic and (b) an engineer, because there's no way this project would have turned out nearly as well (or at all!) without him at the helm. Our one major issue? We assembled the cake on the warmest day of the year thus far and the buttercream started to melt and ooze (whoops!!)

After carving (again, all the credit goes to Eric) and stacking the first group of pieces, and then me gluing the layers/pieces with the soon-to-be melting buttercream. it was time to cover the cab and lower portion of the truck bed with the red fondant. Up next was stacking/covering the yellow dump truck bed. After that, the real fun began ... the details, which included Rice Krispy treats covered in black fondant for the wheels, fondant windows, headlights, and a "Conor" license plate. Last, but not least, we filled the bed of the truck with its load: jellybeans. Oh no, we didn't just toss some jelly beans on the back and call it good... we glued each bean in place using piping gel so we could ensure they stayed put and would stay mounded. Eric had the brilliant idea of adding dirt to the cake board to make the truck look even better; his first idea of coffee grounds didn't pan out once we put 2 and 2 together and realized the coffee grounds would blow around with the slightest shift in air flow, so we decided to crumble up the extra cake parts and it worked beautifully.

It took quite a few hours to complete the cake, but it was definitely time well spent!!

All baked, carved, and ready to stack

 

Eric piecing the cake together

Red fondant ... check!

Me adding dye to make the yellow fondant
Two by two ... hands of blue! (quick: name that movie reference)

Let the kneading begin!

I'm so weird!

The final product

The birthday boy admiring his cake

Velvet Devil's Food Cake (Cooks Illustrated)

• 1/2 c cocoa powder
• 2 tsp instant espresso or instant coffee
• 1 c boiling water
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 12 T butter, softened
• 1 1/4 c sugar
• 2 eggs, room temp
• 1 1/4 c all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

1.  Adjust oven rack to center position and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease two 8 by 1 1/2-inch round cake pans with vegetable shortening (I used Pam instead and used the extra long loaf pan, not two rounds) and cover pan bottoms with parchment paper. Grease parchment paper, dust cake pans with flour, and tap out the excess.
2. Mix cocoa and instant coffee in a small bowl; add boiling water and mix until smooth. Cool to room temperature, then stir in vanilla. 
3. Beat butter in bowl of electric mixer until shiny and smooth, about 30 seconds. Gradually sprinkle in sugar; beat until mixture is fluffy and almost white, 3 to 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating 1 full minute after each addition.
4. Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl. With mixer on lowest speed, add about 1/3 of dry ingredients to batter, followed immediately by about 1/3 cocoa mixture; until ingredients are almost incorporated into batter. Repeat process twice more. (Note: I did additions differently: 1/3 flour mixture, 1/2 cocoa mixture, 1/3 flour mixture, 1/2 cocoa mixture, 1/3 flour mixture). When batter appears blended, stop mixer and scrape bowl sides with rubber spatula. Return mixer to low speed; beat until batter looks satiny, about 15 seconds longer.
5. Divide batter evenly between pans. With rubber spatula, spread batter to pan sides with smooth top. Bake cakes until they feel firm in center when lightly pressed and skewer comes out clean, 23 to 30 minutes. (It took closer to 40 minutes in the extra long loaf pan.) Transfer pans to wire racks; cool for 10 minutes. Run knife around perimeter of each pan, invert cakes onto racks, and peel off paper liners. Reinvert cakes onto additional racks; cool completely before frosting.

Jungle Cake

Annika's little friend Gage had his 5th birthday party this past Saturday. Gage's mom is a good friend of mine and asked if I'd be up for making his cake. Ummmm..... an excuse to bake? Count me in!! Unfortunatley, a few weeks later, I volunteered to help with the Bite of Broadview and was going to be manning the dunk tank all Saturday. So, I didn't get to attend Gage's shindig. That didn't stop me/us from getting the cake made. The party had a jungle theme, so the cake had to follow suit.

The cake was a multi-day project. I baked early in the week and froze the cakes; it consisted of a 10" tier (comprised of 4 cakes) and a 6" tier (comprised of another 4 cakes). Thursday night, I stacked the cakes and then covered them with the green fondant. After that, I did the work on the palm trees. On Friday, Eric (aka, my amazing artistic director and sculptor extrordinaire) helped create the animals. While he sculpted, I did the painting for the animals that required paint (zebra, giraffe, snake). Our house was really warm on Friday, so we ran into a little difficulty with the fondant/gum paste... it kept slumping. ACK! We wound up using toothpicks as internal support and we rotated the animals in and out of the refrigerator, just to keep them cooler.

All in all, a huge success!!