Category: kids
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Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Easy Ladybug Cupcakes
Today I wanted to share the easy ladybug cupcakes I made for Cate’s birthday. One of my “things” as a mom is making fun birthday cakes for my kids, but this year Anna simply wanted a cake made out of donuts and Cate wanted chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing. While I was a little disappointed to not be making more elaborate cakes, I will admit it was a nice break, especially one week before Christmas.
Then, the day of her birthday, Cate informed me that she wanted ladybug cupcakes. I was like, “Uh, what?” I was completely unprepared, but really wanted to come through for her. Luckily I had some red cupcake liners and a pack of candy eyes in the cabinet and was able to pull these off!
These ladybug cupcakes are seriously EASY.
- Cook the cupcakes in red or black cupcake papers.
- Make a batch of buttercream frosting. Color about 2/3 of it with red food coloring (you’ll need a lot of food color!). Color the rest of the buttercream with black food coloring.
- Frost the cupcakes with red buttercream using a butter knife, spreading the frosting on smoothly (doesn’t have to be perfect!).
- Place the black frosting in a piping bag with a small, round tip. Pipe on the outline of the wings, the polka dots, and a head, as shown in the diagram below.
- Finish off the ladybug with small candy eyes placed on the black icing piped on as the head, right at the edge of the cupcake.
I was able to knock these cupcakes out no problem, and the design is so simple even the non-artistic among us can pull it off.
Click here to get the recipes I used for the chocolate cake and buttercream frosting. (Feel free to use a cake mix, I’m not keeping track!)
Happy decorating!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 3:34 pm 1 Comment
Categories: birthday cakes, kids, Kitchen Tips, sweet things Tags: birthday cake, birthday cake decorating, cupcake decorating, cupcakes, kids birthday cakes |
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Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Another Birthday, Another Cake! Owen’s Anchor Birthday Cake
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I like to make fun birthday cakes for my kids. Before you start feeling guilty for not making fun birthday cakes for your kids, don’t, because I promise there are plenty of other things you do as a parent that I’m failing at. If, however, you are like me and making fun birthday cakes is your thing, I do like to share my cakes with you so you can steal my ideas!
Owen had a pirate themed birthday party this year and he decided he wanted an anchor cake. Nate and I tried to talk him into a pirate flag cake. That would have been SO EASY…just a 9×13 cake with black frosting, topped with a fondant skull and crossbones rolled out and cut into the right shape…if only. But alas, he wouldn’t go for it. Anchors away!
At first I thought an anchor cake would be easy peasy. Shaping the cake was in fact simple, However, frosting the cake was WICKED HARD. So many nooks and crannies around the edge! My frosting skills were no match and this was my worst-frosted cake ever, but it still looked cute enough and 4-year-olds surprisingly don’t notice these things.
Here’s how to make an anchor cake!
- Bake a 9″ x 13″ cake.
- Draw your anchor shape onto the cake oriented vertically by scoring the top of the cake with a sharp knife, then cut the cake into the shape. Make it a nice tall anchor. It’s okay to have the top circle cut off and the side “arrow” thingies cut off because you can…
- …use the large cake scraps to shape pieces to round off the top of the anchor and add to the arrow-shaped sides.
- For the chain, I mixed black food coloring into white fondant to make grey. I rolled out skinny snake shapes and linked them together. The final touch was to lightly brush the chain with metallic edible silver dust from Wilton. That was Anna’s idea and it made the chain look AWESOME. I rolled out a thin white disc for the hole in the top of the anchor where the chain is attached.
Click here for my comprehensive “Amateur’s Guide to Making Super Cute Cakes,” which includes a recipe for chocolate cake and buttercream frosting as well as LOTS of tips for shaping and decorating cakes. And, because I’ve never shared it before, below is the recipe for vanilla cake we use, which was what Owen requested. This recipe comes from my favorite cake book, Cakes for Kids by Matthew Mead. The book is out of print but there are copies on Amazon.
The best part of Owen’s cake had absolutely nothing to do with the cake. The wind blew out his candles while we were singing. Nate quickly relit them all, then the wind blew 3 of the 4 candles out again. Nate went to relight them AGAIN. Instead Owen just rolled with the punches and blew out the one candle. It was super cute, although I suspect that he knew 1 candle was easier to blow out than 4. Crafty guy.
Vanilla CakePrep timeCook timeTotal timeThis is a great basic vanilla cake recipe from Matthew Mead's "Cakes for Kids" book. I've re-written the directions in my own words.Author: Jane MaynardIngredients- 2½ cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for pans
- 2½ teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ⅔ cup butter at room temperature
- 1¾ cups sugar
- 2 large eggs, room temp
- 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1¼ cups milk
- 2 teaspoons grated fresh orange or lemon zest (optional)
Instructions- Preheat oven to 350º F.
- This recipe works for 24 cupcakes, 2 8-inch or 9-inch cakes, or 1 9x13 cake. If using cupcake liners, place liners in muffin tin and set aside. If using cake pan(s), lightly grease the bottom of the cake pan, line it with parchment paper, then grease the parchment paper and the sides of the pan. Lightly flour the pan. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the 2½ cups flour, baking powder and salt.
- Using a stand mixer, beat butter on medium-high speed for 30 seconds. Scrape down the bowl.
- Leaving the mixer on medium speed, add ¼ cup sugar. Beat for 3 minutes. Keep adding sugar ¼ cup at a time, mixing for 3 minutes between each addition until you've added all the sugar. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then beat on medium speed for 2 more minutes.
- Add eggs 1 at a time, beating at medium speed for 30 seconds between each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- With the mixer on low speed, add ⅓ of the flour mixture, then half of the milk, then ⅓ of the flour mixture, then the rest of the milk, then the rest of the flour mixture, mixing until just combined for each addition. If using zest, add it now.
- Scrape down the sides of the bowl then give the batter one more mix at high speed for 20 seconds.
- Spread the batter in the pan, filling cake pans or cupcakes ⅔ full with batter.
- For 8- or 9-inch cakes, bake for 30-35 minutes. For 9x13 cake, bake for 35-40 minutes. For cupcakes bake for 10-12 minutes. Toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean when done.
- Cool cake in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Using a knife, cut around the edges of the cake, then invert the pan over the wire rack, lift pan to remove cake and peel off parchment paper. Let cake cool completely on the rack. For cupcakes, let cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing.
Posted by Jane Maynard at 11:16 am 7 Comments
Categories: birthday cakes, fab faves, featured recipes, kids, Kitchen Tips, Recipes, sweet things Tags: anchor birthday cake, birthday cake, birthday cake decorating, cake, cake decorating, vanilla cake, yellow cake |
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Friday, March 6, 2015
Friday Show and Tell + Choosing Paint Colors for the House
Happy Friday, everyone! Today I want to talk about some house stuff, namely choosing paint colors, a process that stresses me to no end!
You may remember last summer we had to repipe our entire house thanks to old plumbing that had seen one too many leaks. The repipe company fixes the drywall after putting approximately 3 billion holes in your walls, but they don’t paint. Which means we have had giant white splotches all over our house for well over six months (case in point). I FINALLY decided to get my act together and have started choosing paint colors for the house.
As I choose colors and start painting I will share the colors with you. If I’m going to put all this legwork into finding good colors, I may as well have other people benefit, too! But before we get to actual colors, I wanted to share my best tips for picking out colors!
- Get a color swatch book. Just going to the paint store and looking at the paint chips in the pretty display on the wall is not helpful. Get the whole darn swatch book and bring it home. It was so much more helpful than bringing just a few little color cards home and then not having them be what I was looking for. Plus, with the full swatch book, you get EVERY shade of every color family, which the little paint color cards can’t offer.
Photo credit: Frette- Look for color inspiration in other places. I recently discovered a luxury bedding company online called Frette. They have gorgeous linens and the site makes me just want to climb in bed and read a book all day! I found that looking at their different sheet sets was actually very helpful in getting a feel for the kind of color schemes I liked or was looking for. Plus many of their linens are quite neutral, which is perfect for paint colors. (Also, now I think I need new bedding. I didn’t know I needed it, but now I do. ;)) Whether it’s a linen company like Frette, a plant in your yard, or just constantly analyzing paint colors when you’re watching TV shows (yes, that’s what I do!), always be looking for colors you like even when there isn’t a paint swatch to be seen!
- Talk to friends. Anyone who paints goes through the agony of finding paint colors, so talk to your friends, look at their walls, see what they used, find out what they sampled. This has been incredibly helpful to me through this process!
- Talk to an interior designer. I am lucky enough to have an awesome friend named Emily who has an interior design business. She has been helping me with colors and her input has been invaluable. Interior designers are perfect for helping with this process – they have an eye for it and they work with paint colors ALL THE TIME, making them very familiar with the paint options that are out there. I highly recommend talking with an interior designer (Emily is awesome, hire her!), even if it’s to simply pull together paint options.
- Do lots of sample colors on your wall. Emily pointed out that people tend to only get 2 paint samples, but she said that’s simply not enough! The paint samples are only $3-4 a pop, so get 4 or 5 colors. Be sure to paint the swatches in lots of places in the room and in every room you plan to paint, to account for different lighting. You can’t sample too much!
I personally think picking colors is a huge stressor, but Emily keeps reminding me it can be fun! So, I’m trying to remember that! 😉
Okay, so color #1 that I want to share with you! This first color is for our hallway, which has very little light, and the master bathroom. I wanted to find a fairly light color, but one dark enough to contrast with the white baseboards. For our house we needed something with a warm tone. That said, I love grey and think that has a more modern feel. Emily found a Sherwin Williams color, SW 7011 Natural Choice. I tried a few whites and this one was just what we were looking for! It very subtly contrasts with the white baseboards and is the warm, slightly gray color I was looking for – not too brown, but definitely not cool like most grays tend to be. Anyway, it’s a great, light neutral color that I am loving! I painted the bathroom yesterday and will be tackling the hallway later this week! (Note: I used Behr Marquee paint – Home Depot has the formulations for the Sherwin Williams colors.)
Photo credit: Julie BlannerI actually don’t have anything published on other sites this week, but I DID see this awesome no-sew teepee tutorial from fellow blogger Julie Blanner that I had to share with you. How ridiculously cute is THAT?! We are going to have to do this for our kids one day!
Show and tell! Please share!!!
Today’s post was partially sponsored by Frette.
Posted by Jane Maynard at 7:07 am 14 Comments
Categories: around the house, kids, new house fun, show and tell Tags: around the house, frette, house painting, paint |
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Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Anna’s Deep Dish Pizza Cake
It’s birthday season in our home, which means I’m busy whipping up cakes for the girls! This year Anna requested a deep dish pizza cake from Cakes for Kids by Matthew Mead. I am absolutely delighted with the results and wanted to share it with you!
This cake was actually quite easy to put together. Here’s how to get it done!
- Use a 9-inch cake. After you remove the cake from the pan to cool, wash the pan. When you level the cake, take off about 1/8-1/4″ so that when you put the cake back in the pan for display, there is space between the top of the cake and the top of the pan.
- Once the cake is back in the clean pan, frost the top with red-tinted butter cream for the sauce. I used red, a bit of orange, and a smidge of green to make the red color. Pipe the “crust” around the edge with buttercream that has extra vanilla extract mixed in (to make it a little more brown). I just used a ziploc bag with the corner cut to make the fat pipe with the frosting. Use cinnamon to add brown spots to the crust, rubbing in lightly with fingers.
- Marzipan is the key to the beautiful veggies on top! For one 9-inch cake you need a 7-ounce package of marzipan, found in the baking aisle at the grocery store. Divide the marzipan into 4 equal parts. When you roll out the marzipan, place parchment paper both underneath and on top when rolling. For the mushrooms, roll out the marzipan thin and cut mushrooms freehand, using a bit of cinnamon to add color. For the bell peppers, knead in green food coloring with a bit of brown, then roll pieces of marzipan out into a skinny snake shape, make circles and then crimp the circle like a pepper. For the pepperoni, knead in red and a bit of brown food coloring into the marzipan and then roll out thin. Using a small circle cutter, cut circles and then texture with a pastry brush (genius!). I used the rippled edge side of my round cutter for the pepperoni. For the onions, roll out the marzipan then use concentric round cutters to make the onion shapes.
- Unsweetened shredded coconut worked perfectly for the cheese! I sprinkled most of the cheese directly on the “sauce,” then placed the veggies and sprinkled a bit more “cheese” on top.
Voila! Deep Dish Pizza…that tastes like cake! It was seriously funny all afternoon with the cake sitting on the counter. It really looked like a pizza!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 3:39 pm 6 Comments
Categories: birthday cakes, kids, Kitchen Tips, sweet things Tags: birthday cake decorating, birthday cakes, cake decorating, deep dish pizza cake, kids birthday cakes, pizza birthday cake, pizza cake |
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Monday, November 24, 2014
Fun Learning During the Thanksgiving Break!
This post is sponsored by the National Education Association (NEA) and reflects a collaboration with NEA’s Raise Your Hand for Student Success campaign. All thoughts and opinions are, of course, my own. Be sure to visit the NEA Parents’ Page for great resources for parents!
My kids have this entire week of Thanksgiving off from school. I remember back in the day only getting Thursday and Friday off, leaving you with just a few days to enjoy the holiday. I actually really appreciate having three extra days to relax with our family and enjoy some time off together. But having the whole week off means almost 10 days of no school!
I’m not one to buy workbooks and pull out the flashcards on school breaks. Honestly, I love getting a break from the homework grind. But just because homework and class time are on hiatus doesn’t mean learning has to be. Here are a few things we’ll be doing this week as a family to facilitate fun learning during the Thanksgiving break!
- COOKING! Of course we’ll be cooking up a storm this week and you can bet the kids will be involved. Not only will having the kids cook with me help form lasting memories, but there are ample learning opportunities in the kitchen, especially around math. Anna even got up this morning and made up her own “recipe” with yogurt and milk, so she is ready to go in the cooking department!
- READING! I am lucky that we have kids who love to read, so they’ll do plenty of reading on their own over the break. But even if kids don’t love reading, Thanksgiving break is a good time to get them excited to read. I always buy Christmas books during this week and we kick off the holiday season by reading those books together as a family. We also have fun Thanksgiving books to share together, too.
This is our newest Christmas book, which I bought just last night!- DAY TRIPS! We have passes to the Natural History Museum in LA as well as the San Diego Zoo. We will be visiting one of those spots for sure this week! Museums really are a great way to mix learning with fun!
- CRAFTS & LEARNING ACTIVITIES: My Anna loves science more than a million ice cream scoops, so I’m sure we’ll break out our Green Kid Crafts science kit and do a science project together. My friend Marie also has about 1 billion projects on her website Make and Takes, so I’ll be seeing what ideas she has for us, too!
What do you have planned this week with the kids? I’m sure you all have all kinds of creative ideas, so please share them with the rest of us!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 1:17 pm 6 Comments
Categories: holidays, kids Tags: fun learning, kids, national education association, NEA, play, sponsored |
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Friday, September 26, 2014
How to Make an Airplane Birthday Cake + Friday Show and Tell
Okay, so there’s a lot of “mom stuff” I don’t do. I’m not crafty. I don’t make baby food from scratch. I am a terrible gardener. The list goes on and ON. But I do absolutely love making my kids’ birthday cakes. Every year they tell me what they want and I figure out a way to make it happen! For Owen’s 3rd birthday he requested Ripslinger from the movie Planes, or as Owen put it, “the green bad guy plane.” I was a little nervous but I pulled it off! The best part was Owen loved it and today he’s asked multiple times to see pictures of the cake. (That splash sound you hear is me turning into a puddle on the floor.)
This cake was one of the easier ones I’ve done, so I have to share the step-by-step with you. Here’s how to make an airplane birthday cake!
- Bake a 9″x13″ standard cake. I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe (which you can find in this linked post) and it made for a nice tall cake, which gave the plane more height. I doubled the frosting recipe in that same post, which gave me enough frosting for the crumb coat and final coat with a bit left over.
- After you bake the cake, freeze it. Once it’s frozen, make one cut as shown in the diagram below, then flip one of the pieces so it lines up with the other piece perfectly when you stack them.
- The fat end of the triangle you created is the front of the plane – the smaller end is the back of the plane. Shape the front to round it off. Once the cake was done, I wished I had also angled the back end of the plane down a bit so that the entire plan had an upward slant towards the front of the plane, instead of just parallel to the ground (know what I mean?). Feel free to play with the shape or just keep it super simple like I did.
- I used one of the pieces of cake I cut off the front when shaping the nose of the plane to create the cockpit on top.
- Frost between the layers, and then follow the directions in my cake-making guide post for frosting (freezing cake, crumb coat, etc.) The beauty of this cake is you only need ONE COLOR OF FROSTING! Save a bit of white for the window, but other than that you can just make all the frosting one color.
- For the wings and things, I used cardstock! Just cut them into the shape you like and then stick the shaped wings and things right into the cake. You can get colored cardstock or just color white cardstock with a permament marker the color you want he wings to be. (Since I was making Ripslinger, I also made the flames out of cardstock colored with permanent markers and stuck them to the side using frosting as glue.) Don’t worry, no marker transferred to the frosting anywhere!
- The propellors were 2 popsicle sticks colored with black Sharpee marker, broken in half and then stuck in the front. I should have put a black circle of frosting or a Junior Mint on the front in the middle of the propellors. I didn’t, but you can!
- White frosting and black piped frosting made the window in the cockpit, and chocolate chips, stuck pointy side in, served as the eyes.
Show and tell time! I just have one quick share today. I put together a really fun post for Babble of CRAZY stuff my friends’ kids have eaten. It’s pretty awesome. Be sure to click through and check it out!
As usual, feel free to share anything you like in the comments, it’s show and tell after all!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 1:01 pm 9 Comments
Categories: birthday cakes, kids, Kitchen Tips, sweet things Tags: airplane birthday cake, birthday cake decorating, birthday cakes, cake decorating, friday show and tell, kids birthday cakes |
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Thursday, December 19, 2013
The Girls’ Birthday Cakes + Chocolate M&M Frosting
One of the only over-the-top-Mom things I do is make fun cakes for my kids’ birthdays. Cate and Anna had both of their birthdays this week so I’ve been a busy baker! Anna opted for a vanilla cake shaped like a fish. Cate decided to go with chocolate cupcakes topped with M&M frosting. I wanted to share the cakes with you, since I always do, as well as the recipe for the frosting because it was YUMMMMMMMMM.
Anna’s cake was inspired by a goldfish in the Cakes for Kids book by Matthew Mead that we love so much! The cake is essentially a 2-layer cake (8 inches or 9 inches works) with a thin crescent cut off the top or each layer before frosting. Those crescent pieces become the fins. The frosted layer cake gets tipped up on its side and and then the fins are added, with toothpicks securing the top and back fins. I think this might have been the hardest cake I’ve made so far, surprisingly. It didn’t come out as cute as I’d hoped but it did come out better than I expected! 😉 Anna was completely happy with the cake and that is all that matters!
I think what made this cake so tricky was that I made the fins a different color than the body (to look more like Flounder from The Little Mermaid), but it’s hard enough attaching those fins without having to worry about the frosting colors mixing. Bottom line: this cake was hard but we made it work!
Cate took it easy on me and just wanted chocolate cupcakes with M&Ms. I decided an M&M frosting would be good and took inspiration from a recipe on the blog Cookies & Cups. I changed the recipe to a chocolate buttercream frosting and made it a little thinner. The frosting was fudgy and crunchy and oh-so-delicious. Quick note: when the frosting is just made, the M&Ms are still crunchy, but as it sits, the M&Ms get softer. This is not a bad thing, but it goes from crispy M&M fudge frosting to chunky-chocolate fudge frosting. Just wanted to set expectations properly! If you can whip up the frosting last minute, that’s what I would do! This is not to say that we haven’t happily enjoyed the leftovers!
If you’d like to see the misadventure I had when I started to frost the cupcakes, click here. Fair warning, it’s scary! Moral of the story? Always use a star tip when piping chocolate frosting. And that’s all we’ll say about that!
Chocolate M&M FrostingPrep timeTotal timeAuthor: Jane MaynardIngredients- 2 sticks (1 cup) butter, softened to room temperature
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons milk
- ⅓ cup cocoa powder, sifted into the bowl
- 1 cup M&Ms, processed to a coarse dust in the blender
Instructions- In a stand mixer or with beaters, beat together all of the ingredients on medium-high speed until well-mixed. Spread on cake or cupcakes and eat immediately! M&Ms will be crunchy at the outset but will soften as the frosting sits.
Posted by Jane Maynard at 1:27 pm 7 Comments
Categories: birthday cakes, featured recipes, kids, Kitchen Tips, Recipes, sweet things Tags: birthday cake, birthday cake decorating, buttercream, frosting, kids birthday cakes, m&ms |
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Thursday, October 24, 2013
How to Make Spooky JELL-O JIGGLERS (It’s really easy!)
Making JELL-O JIGGLERS with my mom as a kid is a very clear and happy memory for me. I can picture the kitchen and the JELL-O like it was yesterday. For some reason making those JIGGLERS was super, duper exciting. I mean, what kid doesn’t like JELL-O, but JELL-O that you can make into shapes and then eat with your hands? For a six-year-old, that is living the dream.
Even though it’s such a fond memory from my own childhood, I have never made JIGGLERS with my own kids…until yesterday! I finally got my act together and we jiggled it up Halloween style. I told the girls the day before that we would be making Halloween JELL-O JIGGLERS and they talked about it non-stop for over a day. It made me so happy that the charm hasn’t worn off from generation to generation.
JELL-O has some fun recipes and projects you can make, so I went browsing the site for inspiration. I liked the idea of just making our own shapes, like these hands, but I loved the color of these creepy crawly JIGGLERS. I decided to make a sheet of the “black” JELL-O and was going to have the kids design shapes for the cutouts. When we actually started making the JIGGLERS, however, we decided to just use our Halloween cookie cutters. It was a lot easier and just as fun!
So, we grabbed our tin of spooky cutters and got to work. The girls divided up the cookie cutters between them and did a great job taking turns. Fitting all the shapes into our square pan was kind of like doing a puzzle. The girls were so happy the entire time we worked on the project, it did my heart good.
I hope this ends up being a lasting memory for the girls – I know it will be for me! The only thing more fun than being a kid is to be the parent watching the kid.
Spooky JELL-O JIGGLERSAuthor: Jane MaynardIngredients- 1⅓ cup boiling water
- 1 package (3 ounces) JELL-O Grape Flavor Gelatin
- 3 tablespoons JELL-O Lime Flavor Gelatin
- 8×8-inch pan
- Halloween cookie cutters
Instructions- Mix grape and lime gelatin in a bowl. Add boiling water and mix for 2 minutes, until sugar is completely dissolved. Poor directly into pan and refrigerate for 3 hours or until firm.
- Press Halloween cookie cutters into JELL-O, making sure to push all the way through to the bottom of the pan. Carefully remove cookie cutter – the JELL-O shapes should come out easiliy with the cookie cutter. Pop out onto a white serving platter (for high impact with the dark JIGGLERS!) and eat with ghoulish intent!
The girls aren’t very ghoulish, but they sure are cute!
This post brought to you by JELL-O, making Halloween more wiggly for everyone. Check out more Halloween recipes here: JELLO.com/recipes. This post was sponsored as part of the DailyBuzz Brand Ambassador Program.
Posted by Jane Maynard at 10:33 am 10 Comments
Categories: featured recipes, holidays, kids, Recipes, sweet things Tags: cooking with kids, halloween, JELL-O, kids recipes, sponsored |
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Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Little Blue Truck Birthday Cake
I love making my kids’ birthday cakes. The tradition stems from my childhood. I remember so many of the cakes my mom made for me and I also remember being sooooo excited for each of those cakes. They made me feel special and like my mom could work magic. My brother and I have both continued the tradition with our own children. It’s one of those things that I really love to do for my kids.
Each time I make a cake I share it on the blog (let’s be honest, I like to show them off!), but I never get around to explaining how I put the shapes together. I thought I’d give a quick rundown of how I assembled the Little Blue Truck cake.
First and foremost, be sure to read through this post to get lots of tips for successfully decorating cute cakes. The instructions below mostly focus on how to create the shape of the truck, but the tips in that post are just as important!
I decided to make Little Blue just a day or two before Owen’s party, so it was pretty last minute. I was planning to do a 2-dimensional cake in the shape of Little Blue as he appears on the cover of the book. While the cake was cooling, Anna found a 3-dimensional truck cake in our favorite book Cakes for Kids and plans changed!
In Cakes for Kids, the truck cake utilizes loaf pans to create the shape, but since I had already baked a standard square cake for my 2-dimensional version, I went with my own design. It actually worked really well, so here’s what I did!
- Bake an 8-inch square cake. (When I am baking cakes to cut into shapes, I like to use a pan with very straight, right-angled edges. Also, use cake strips so it cooks flat.)
- When cake is completely cool, cut it into three pieces as indicated by this diagram:
- Find something to use as a “lift” for the cake – I used four blue duplo legos (I should have used white or black). Cut a piece of cardboard that is just a smidge smaller than the largest piece of cake. On your cake board (the final board the cake will be displayed on), line up the legos (or whatever you’re using as a lift) underneath the cardboard cutout so that the legos are near the edges and placed where the wheels on the truck would go. Set the cardboard cutout aside, then secure the legos to the cake board using frosting. Freeze so frosting gets hard and legos stay in place.
- Put a dab of frosting on the cardboard cutout, then place the largest piece of cake on the cutout, lining it up so you can’t see the cardboard. Frost cake with crumb coat then freeze.
- Place one of the smaller pieces on top of the frosted cake, where the cab of the truck would be, making sure to use frosting to attach it to the cake below. Spread a layer of frosting on top of the small piece you just placed, then add the second small piece on top. Shape the two small pieces using a knife so it’s narrower at the top. Apply crumb coat of frosting and freeze.
- Frost cake with the pretty layer of frosting.
- Use white rolled fondant to make the windows, bumper, headlights, license plate and grate. I added a smidge of black food coloring for the bumper and grate and a smidge of yellow and orange food coloring for the license plate. Windows and headlights stayed pure white. I used a black edible pen to draw in the eyes on the headlights and lines on the grate.
- To get the right size and shape for the windows/etc, I held up a piece of cardstock to the cake, estimated the size for each piece, then drew out the pieces and cut them out of the cardstock. I adjusted the templates where necessary then traced the shapes on the fondant with a knife, then cut the pieces out. Be sure to roll the fondant out quite thin or it will look too bulky on the cake (some of my windows were a little thick!).
- Place truck on top of legos on the final cake board, securing with frosting.
- Dab a bit of frosting on the edge of an Oreo cookie then stick to the sides of the cake, covering up the legos from the side, for wheels. If a little frosting squishes out around the edge of the Oreo, use a toothpick to clean it up.
- If I had planned ahead a bit more, I could have filled the back of the truck with animals, but I didn’t, so Little Blue had a light load that day!
There are some fancier Little Blue Truck cakes out there that are sooooo cute (you have to check out this one – thanks for the link, Hillary!). But my simpler version worked just fine and Owen was ecstatic about his cake, crying out “Little Blue Truck!” every time he saw it. Plus, it is a pretty generic truck so you could make whatever color truck you want!
A quick note on the big green toad cake: I simply cooked an 8-inch round cake and then cut a few pieces out around the edges to make a shape of the toad’s head, with fondant for eyes. Super simple!
My various birthday cake links if you’re interested!
- Click here for tons of tips for decorating birthday cakes, as well as the buttercream and chocolate cake recipes that I always use and love.
- Giraffe Cake
- Princess Crown Cake
- Hello Kitty Cake with Cat Cupcakes
- Elephant Cake
- Ghost Cake
- Spiderman Cake (my first successful cute cake!)
- My first successful layer cake (boring but cute)
- My first birthday cake post on this blog that shows just how far I’ve come and proves anyone can make cute cakes!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 10:56 am 12 Comments
Categories: birthday cakes, kids, Kitchen Tips Tags: birthday cake, birthday cake decorating, kids birthday cakes |
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Sunday, September 22, 2013
Week 348 Menu
Yesterday we hosted a simple birthday party for little Owen, who is turning 2 this month! My mom and sister were in town so we decided to seize the moment and celebrate Owen’s big day with them. Owen is obsessed with the book Little Blue Truck. I love making fun cakes for my kids’ birthdays, so I decided to give the truck a try. I had no plan going in and thankfully it all turned out okay! I’ll do a quick post this week explaining how I put the cake together as it was quite simple! Owen loved the cake and thoroughly enjoyed his party – although we had to stop singing “Happy Birthday To You” halfway through because he burst into tears with all the attention! So sweet.
Another week, another menu! I actually made everything on last week’s menu, so I can’t carry any items over. Bummer! I have to think of new things! 😉
MONDAY:
– Chili
– Corn chipsTUESDAY:
– Tuscan Tomato Soup
– Grilled cheeseWEDNESDAY:
– Kitchen Sink Quesadillas
– Chips and Guacamole (just remembered this is my birthday, so I may relax and order out!)THURSDAY:
– LeftoversFRIDAY:
– Barbecue Chicken PizzaSATURDAY:
– Take outSUNDAY:
– Pot roast (I haven’t made this in AGES!)
– Mashed potatoes, gravy and a veggieLooking forward to seeing your menus! As always, they are great inspiration when planning each week! Please share no matter what your menu looks like!
Posted by Jane Maynard at 9:34 am 47 Comments
Categories: kids, weekly menus Tags: birthday cake, dinner plans, meal plan, menu plan, weekly menu, weekly menu planning |
Hi! My name is Jane Maynard and you've landed yourself on my blog, This Week for Dinner™. Every Sunday I share a weekly menu...and count on you to share yours! You'll also find other deliciousness that I hope you'll enjoy!
