What Happens When I'm Bored and Alone

For some reason that I can't remember, my family went out of town and left me at home alone. Now, if I were a stereotypical teenager, I would have immediately contacted all my friends and thrown a party while my parents were gone and probably destroyed the house. Lucky for my parents, I am not a stereotypical teen and they returned to a house that was still standing and not a complete disaster. Instead, I made a mess of the kitchen and created not one but two cakes. It was shortly after Mother's Day and since I didn't have the time before to make Mom a cake, I made one after. It was lemon cake with lemon flavored frosting. Both came store bought I'm pretty sure, but I made the purple frosting to practice my roses, writing and borders. The roses and writing still need a bit of work, but this cake turned out pretty good and Mom loved it. 

 

 

 

 

My brothers and my dad are picky and don't like lemon cake so I made them their own yellow cake. Being boys, and my heroes, I decorated theirs in a superhero theme. My dad and my youngest brother like Superman and my second youngest brother likes Batman. It was a simple design but I think it turned out awesome. And the boys were happy that this time the cake was for them and not leaving the house for someone else.

 

Bow Tie

Remember the friend with the top hat? For her next birthday, I made her a bow tie cake. It's always fun to make cakes for this friend. So, to do it, I took my smallest hectagon cake pan for the middle and a square pan cut diagonally to form the outsides. I ran out of time to cover with fondant, so I just frosted it with canned frosting from the store. To decorate, I placed green and purple circular sprinkles around the edge. It turned out great. I just love doing this!

Culinary Class

I'm taking culinary arts this year in high school and I am loving it. I'm learning so many new things that I can't wait to try at home. This past unit, Mrs. H. had us do cakes. I was jumping with excitement when she told us and all throughout the instruction. I did learn new tips and tricks to cake decorating, which was awesome. Though the assignment was really simple, I still had a great time with it. I passed the unit with flying colors. I wanted to do something cute and fun, so I chose to pipe a duck on my cake. Mrs. H. gave us a star tip and a circle tip to work with. 

The Birthday of a Videogamer

My best friend's little brother was having a birthday and she threw him a surprise party and came to me for the cake. After racking my brain and deciding the easiest thing would be to make cupcakes for the teens, and using his love of video games, I came up with this:

 

I simply took my brother's PS2 controller and put the 24 cupcakes in that shape and frosted with chocolate frosting. Then I cut out the buttons from black construction paper and added them. It was a piece of cake!

Trying out Pinterest ideas

I have recently become aware of this awesome site called Pinterest where people post different things under different categories and share ideas of crafts and baking and hair and weddings and it's so amazing, but a bit of a time waster. Anyways, I was scrolling through Pinterest one day and came across someone's idea for ice cream cupcakes. They were so darling and I decided that would be my next project. So I got out my mom's cake bowl that I've taken over to do my mixes in and got busy making the kitchen a complete mess. I experimented with the cake mix a bit and added drops of extract to flavor it. I started with a yellow cake mix (from a box. I'm sooo original, I know) and split it up so I could do four flavors: chocolate, strawberry, mint, and "vanilla"(it was just the yellow cake, no extract).

I also put some extract in the frosting to help add flavor to the cupcakes when they came out. I grabbed some cake cones we had in the pantry and arranged the cupcakes as if they were scoops of ice cream. The cupcakes were frosted with a knife and then I piped at the bottom to give it a cartoon-y ice cream look. Topped them off with sprinkles, butterscotch candy, and even an Andes mint I had gotten from someone. I really liked how they turned out, and my family did too. They were awesome, waiting patiently all day for me to be done creating. When I told them I was done, they all swooped in like a flock of vultures. Pretty sure they were all gone within the week. 

Picnic Cakes

We recently had a change in our Young Women presidency and got a new Young Women president to run things. I already love this lady a lot. I met Audrey a year ago at girls camp when she came up as craft coordinator. That camp was a lot of fun and I will never forget the things I learned from my Young Women's leaders.
Audrey and I are kindred spirits because we both use Pinterest for EVERYTHING. So for one of her first mutual activities as Young Women's President, we had a picnic theme and she went all out. She spread picnic blankets out in the young women's room, brought all sorts of picnic foods and planned a lesson that had to do with picnic ants. I don't quite remember all the details of the lesson, but we are encouraged to be hard working like the ant and remember we have a purpose.
Audrey remembered that I love decorating cakes and asked if I would do some for this mutual activity. I love it when people come to me for cakes instead of me going around asking if people want a cake. Since we have such a big group of girls, I decided to make two cakes so everyone could have a piece. One was vanilla, one was chocolate.

This was the vanilla one, shaped to look like a picnic blanket with fondant ants on top. It is kind of sloppy, but my fondant skills are improving. 

This one was chocolate and my favorite. I've decided I like working with frosting rather than fondant. I taught myself how to do the basket weave by looking at a picture in one of my cake magazines. The handle is a black pipe cleaner. This one was really fun to work on. 

A close up of the fondant ants I made to add to the cakes. 

Look Out, Here Comes Audrey Two!

My junior year of high school, we performed the musical "Little Shop of Horrors." For those who don't know the story line, it's about this alien plant from outerspace that comes to Earth and is adopted by an outcast. The plant grows bigger by consuming human blood. Audrey Two (the plant) ends up eating the whole earth and our finale was the whole earth as dancing zombies. It was lots of fun. To celebrate all our hard work, I made a treat for cast and crew. I thought long and hard about what I was going to create. At first I wanted to do this big cake but I knew it probably wouldn't all be eaten plus it would just be a big hassle in everybody's costumes and make-up and such. I decided cupcakes would be the easiest thing for cast and crew to eat, so I made Audrey Two and the cupcakes were the vines. The head was rice krispie treats shaped and covered in fondant. I made two seperate pieces of rice krispie, the top and the bottom. This made it easier to put teeth in. Then I just baked and frosted the cupcakes with green frosting and arranged them in a vine like way. Audrey Two was a big hit with everyone and it was a fun experience for me.

 

 

My Friend's 17th Birthday

For one of my really good friend's 17th birthday, I asked if I could make a cake for her. Or basically told her I was going to. Her favorite color is teal and, being a typical girl, she loves chocolate, her favorite kinds being Kitkats and M&M's. After thinking about these three things, this is what I came up with:

 My parents are awesome and brought the cake to me at school at lunchtime so I could give it to my friend without either of us having to carry it around all day. This is what it looked like at the beginning of lunch

And this is what it looked like at the end of lunch. I guess everyone enjoyed it!

This is my beautiful friend with her fabulous cake on her birthday.

Happy New Year!

To ring in the New Year, I threw a New Year's eve party for my brothers friends and my friends. Turns out, my friends already had plans by the time I invited them so just my brothers young friends came. Which was totally fine; we ended up having a blast. And, being me, any occasion was a good one to have cake. So I made one. It was an idea I took off the internet and adjusted a little bit. Then to make it a New Year's cake, I printed off the words "Happy New Year" and attached it to skewers. I think it turned out wonderful!