Whoo, whoo

I recently made these owl cake pops for my friend Heather's baby shower.  I really like how they turned out.  Super cute and they matched the baby shower decor.  I used candy from a candy necklace for the eyes, chocolate covered sunflower seeds for the wings, miniature colored chocolate chips for the beaks, and sprinkles for the feet.  For full instructions on how to create these cake pops check out Cake Pops by Bakerella.

Congrats Heather!  You will make a great mother!

Pink Rosette Ombre Cake

This is one of my favorite cakes that I have made. I love the ombre look, and the rosettes are simple, yet elegant.  The inspiration for this cake came from Ross Sveback.  The recipe and instructions were posted in the Minneapolis, MN Star Tribune News Paper prior to Valentine's Day.

Start by mixing your cake batter.  Depending on how many layers you want your cake to be, remove part of the batter.  Add food coloring to remaining batter.  Remove another portion of the batter.  Add more food coloring and remove more of the batter.  Continue this pattern until you have the batter divided into enough portions to bake as many cake layers as you want.

Here is an example of how your batter should look.  Each layer should be slightly darker than the previous layer.

Mix the frosting for your cake and color the frosting in the same way that you did for the cake batter.

Bake all of the cake layers.  Here are the results of the different colored cake layers.

Stack the cakes and dirty frost to hold in all of the crumbs.

Using a 1M decorating tip and the darkest color frosting create rosettes around the bottom of the cake.

 Continue creating rosettes using the 1M tip, using lighter shades of

frosting as you go towards the top of the cake.

This is what the final cake should look like.  Both the cake layers inside and the frosting on the outside should go from a dark to light shade of color.  This is a very elegant look and simple to create.  Try it out!

Super Bowl

Super Bowl is my favorite day of the year and I love celebrating with family and friends.  Unfortunately for me (and the Patriots) the team I was cheering for lost, but we still had a great time. 

Here is the dessert/appetizer table from our Super Bowl Sunday celebration.

Marinated Tomatoes

These are so delicious, you must try them.  Recipe courtesy of The Pioneer Woman.

 Cucumber Rolls

Find the recipe at Good Life Eats.  (this was one of my finds on Pinterest, anyone else addicted to Pinterest?)

Walking Tacos

These are great for parties.  Buy small bags of chips, crush the chips, open the bag, and add the taco meat and toppings right to the bag.

 Oreo Football Truffles

These are always a party favorite.  For step by step instructions check out Bakerella's blog.

 Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Another delicious treat.  I purchased the Football Cupcake Wrapper printout from Spaceships and Laserbeams.  Check them out, they have a ton of cute party decorations for boys.

 Lil' Smokies

A football party is not complete without these.

Chocolate Dipped Pretzels

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

What better way to celebrate than some sweets for your sweetheart.

Whoopie Pies

After the cupcake craze came macaroons and whoopie pies.  I found this Pillsbury mix for whoopie pies and decided to try them.  They turned out great and my girlfriends loved them.

Before mixing the whoopie pies, cut a piece of wax paper the size of your baking sheet.  Using a permanent marker, draw circles on the wax paper.

Mix according to directions on the package.

Put the mixture into a piping bag and pipe the whoopie pie mixture onto the baking sheet using the circles on the wax paper as a guide.  This will ensure all of the whoopie pies are the same size.

Bake the whoopie pies.

Mix the frosting and place a dollop onto the bottom half of the whoopie pie.

Place the top half of the whoopie pie onto the bottom.

Roll the edges of the whoopie pie into sprinkles

Enjoy!

New Year's Resolution

So I have been missing in action for awhile.  My New Year's resolution is to update my blog at least bi-weekly.  We'll see how that goes.  I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!  May 2012 bring joy and happiness!

BUNCO

I recently made cake pops for a family friend's BUNCO get together.  I thought it would be fun to make dice cake pops to go with the BUNCO theme. This was somewhat of a challenge as I have never made cube cake pops before.

 Start by mixing your cake crumbs with 3/4 can of frosting.

Press the cake mixture into an 8x8" pan.  I wanted my dice to be approximately one inch in size, so I pressed the mixture into the pan so that it was one inch thick.

 To compact the cake mixture and get a smooth top, place a piece of parchment paper on top of the mixture and roll with a small rolling pin.

 Place the pan into the freezer for approximately 15 minutes.  Remove the pan and cut into cube shapes.  Or if you live in Minnesota, like I do, place the pan outside in the freezing cold winter.

 Place a stick into the center of each cube.  Dip the stick into melted chocolate first.  This will help keep the cake pop on the stick when dipping the entire cake pop into the melted chocolate.

 Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate and let dry.

 Use sprinkles or frosting to decorate the dice.  Enjoy!