Cute Little Cake

This cake was for two beautiful little girls who were having a small family birthday party.  Happy Birthday Abigail and Ellie!

 

This is the last cake for me for two or three weeks. I am taking some time off to enjoy the last bit of summer vacation with my kids and to get my boys ready for school.  

Very heavy heart right now, thinking about some precious family members going through some extremely difficult times. Praying and relying on our Comforter and Healer today!

Baby Shower Petit Fours

Petit Fours for a baby shower and the Mommy-to-be is having a little boy. I was asked to match the invitations and the other decor at the shower and also, to put the baby's initial, O, on some of them. They were made from cream cheese pound cake with a lemon mousse filling.   

This was my first attempt at petit fours. I have to admit, that I was a little scared and intimidated after reading many other blogs about how hard they were to make and how most of them said they would never do it again.

I did my homework and read everything I could find about petit fours and then mapped out my plan. Of course, nothing in my kitchen ever goes as smoothly as planned. For instance, I had to make 4 batches of poured fondant when I only needed 2. The first batch was a total disaster and went straight in the trash. The second was perfect but not enough, so I made another batch. The only problem was that the color of the 3rd batch did not match the second one, which had already been poured over half of the cakes. So a fourth batch was made to add to the 3rd to get the right color. Lesson learned, make ALL of the poured fondant at one time if it has coloring in it so the color will match.

And the pouring..... oh my is it messy! And I am a messy baker to begin with. And actually pouring did not work for me. I ended up dipping the sides, then spooned some over the top. It sounds easy,...but it's not and it will still make a mess. I could not have done these with out the wonderful tutorials from bakerella.com and veganyumyum.com. Anyone who wants to give these a try should definitely read their blogs first. 

And as messy and challenging as it was, I would do it again. I made all my notes about the problems I encountered this time so I could avoid those next time. This was a GREAT experience for me and I learned soo much!

I received the sweetest email saying how much everyone at the shower loved them. I can't even begin to say how good that made me feel. I already had my concerns over these petit fours. I wanted to be able to spend more time decorating, but I ended up spending most of the time just making them. I was feeling like it was not my best decorating job, so that sweet email meant the world to me.

Thanks Renee! I appreciate you trusting me with these when you knew I had never made them before. And thanks again for all of your kind words!

M&M Cake

 

This cake was for one of my babies,...my sweet Gavie Bear! It was Gavin's 6th birthday. (Wow,... how time flies!) This was the perfect cake for Gavin because he loves candy!  I've always called him my little candy man. I had 9 1/2 large bags of M&Ms poured around these two cakes. So we are stocked up on M&M's for a while. If I ever have to make this again, I have figured out a couple of different ways I could have done it that would not have required ALL of those M&M's. Of course, my usual method of learning,...I figure out what NOT to do the next time. But none of the kids complained about the M&M's, so we're good! 

Gavin enjoyed his party with some family and a few of his really good friends from school. His party was just as it should have been, all about HIM enjoying his day and having a great time! God answered my prayers and blessed us with a beautiful day! It has rained all week so this truly was a blessing. After hot dogs and cake, we went swimming in the pool, so the sunshine was very much needed and we even had a cool breeze for the moms. 

Gavin helped me come up with the flavors for these cakes. The yellow one is a vanilla cake with mini-M&M's baked in it. It is filled with peanut butter and chocolate ganache. Yum Yum

The red one is a chocolate cake filled with buttercream icing and, of course, big surprise,.... M&M's.