Cake Pops!

I made my FIRST 'official' cake pops!

I've never caught on to the secrets of how to make 'smooooooth' cake pops until I tried a handy little trick I learned from HomemakerChic. 

Before, all my little cake balls looked sad and deformed as I would roll them in chocolate with a spoon.

Now.. I bought some handy little sticks at WalMart in the Wilton section, and made them into little cake POPS!

I followed the easy steps from HomemakerChic's blog, and found myself with some cute little yellow cake pops. They were supposed to be little bumble bees... But the chocolate was running too quickly out of my piping bag to get the black stripes look cute and 'bumbly'. So I have for you.. Yellow cake pops with black stripes! I'll go for that!

I got tired of rolling out little balls.. So I just went with a variety of sizes since it was just for fun and no particular theme.

Dip the sticks in chocolate before putting them in the cake so that the chocolate forms a sort of glue. Who woulda thought that was such a brilliant idea to keep the cake from sliding down the stick!

My first one was a little.... Yeah... I had to be fast on my feet to get the stripes to resemble something cute.

I hope I have inspired you to go make a cute batch of cake pops now!

Thanks for reading!

Flooding Cookies!!!

I decided I wanted to make some super cute sugar cookies, but I wasn't up for the idea of trying to make things work with piping decorations on my cookies, and finding cute shapes to cut out.

So, I went with the easy route of plain circle cookies, and tried my hand at Royal icing!

I must say this was so fun and easy, that I don't think I'll ever frost sugar cookies any other way again!

After doing a little bit of searching on Google and different blogs, and watching several YouTube videos, I finally found a Royal icing recipe I liked from SweetSugarBelle. It didn't taste so great though, so next time I'm going to use more almond extract as flavoring.

I had my little helper with me, and we got busy rolling out dough and cutting circles.

And then we waited until they all baked and cooled before we got busy decorating!

I went and bought these cute little bottles at WalMart for three bucks, and they were perfect for the Royal flood icing method. 

Then I just went to town! I came up with random little swirly's and polka dots in these cute colors.

When they dried over night, I was able to stack them on plates and take them around to friends around town. Everyone loved them, and I have definitely found a new way to decorate my sugar cookies!

Thanks for reading! 

Owls, Owls, Owls!

Whooo could resist an OWL cake? I think they are so adorable! So anyways, I normally will just glance at the magazines at the check out stands in line at WalMart, but there was a magazine by Better Homes and Gardens with a big owl on the front cover. Upon taking a closer look, I seen it was a cake! A Mama owl, and a baby owl next to it as a cupcake! I showed my mama, and she enthused about it with me for a minute before we decided we were going to buy it and try it out. Thus starting my baking adventures this summer!

For no particular reason, I chose to make my owl cake and cupcakes last week while I had a day off from work. I got a 9X13 pan out and baked a white cake for my Mama owl. After it baked and cooled for a little bit, I put it in the freezer for about 15 minutes so it could harden enough for me to cut it. While that was freezing, I baked 24 cupcakes for my Baby owls.

I should have taken a picture of my mistake, but I wasn't thinking properly when I was cutting the top of my Mama owl. The directions told me to cut out a crescent shape from the top, creating the peaks for the owl's ears. It then said to cut the crescent shape in half... horizontally. I stood there for about 5 minutes, trying to figure out what that meant. It was only AFTER I cut my crescent right down the middle, that I realized I needed to cut it in half, horizontally, from the side of the crescent. So before I freaked out and did something stupid, I just told myself to find some marshmallows and powder sugar, and make up some fondant to use for my Mama owl's wings. It was quick and easy since I had watched Kara make some fondant for Elmo's eyes and nose just the weekend before.

After all the assembling was done, I used a can of chocolate frosting to decorate my Mama owl's face and wings, and used a butter frosting with yellow coloring for the belly. I used powder sugar doughnuts with a Whopper candy in the middle for the eyes; pink Starburst for the bows, and orange Starbursts for the nose and feet. For the feathered look, I used sliced almonds. That was time consuming... placing each almond in line with the others!

And walahh! My finished Mama owl! I'm proud of it!

My baby owls were frosted the same way as the Mama owl, but I used up the rest of my fondant for the eyes, and then I used brown Reese's Pieces for the eyes. I tediously placed the sliced almonds on their bellies, and used the orange Starbursts for the nose and FEET. The men I work with kept calling them teeth, so I had to reassure that they were feet. 

They just bring a huge smile to my face every time I look at these pictures! 

With one more addition to this post, I almost forgot to add some other owl cupcakes I helped my Mom make for a bake sale Costco had on Monday. She baked the cupcakes while I was in New Castle, getting my hair done with Kara, but she saved the decorating for me when I got home!

With the help of Pinterest, I found these adorable little owls on Hostess with the Mostess: 

How simple are these!?! And so cute! So I changed my icing to a teal color, and I cursed all the Oreo cookies that were broken in the package as I tried to scavenge ones with cream on them. My Mom had to come in and save me, fixing what cookies she could as she scraped the cream up and glued cookies together before we placed them on the cupcakes. We used M&Ms and Reese's Pieces for the eye centers and the noses! 

They're just so adorable, and they make me smile big every time I look at these pictures! I hope you all liked my little owls! Come back and check out my next adventure.. A dragon cake for a little boy turning 11!