Assemble the Minions!

Sometimes when you are least expecting it, inspiration strikes. That's what happened when I came across another blog that talked about minion cupcakes. Actually, there were two different sites with the same idea: the first was Confessions of a Cookbook Queen, and the second was I Sing in the Kitchen. Both were really cute, so I called my niece and talked her youngest son into letting me make minion cupcakes for his birthday. Let the fun begin!

I baked a little fleet of cupcakes, filled them with whipped cream, frosted them in blue, put half a Twinkie on each one, then put them in the fridge and went to work teaching art for the day. That was my only major error. The refrigerator sucked all the moisture out of the Twinkies and made them like little petrified rocks. Bummer! However, I was able to cut black licorice into little hairs, poke a bunch of holes into the Twinkies and stuff the licorice in for hairs, then use royal icing to glue the Smarties together and glue them to the Twinkies. The eyeballs were made with food markers. The trickiest part was using the black glitter gel to outline the goggles and make straps and mouths.

I ended up sitting at Peter Piper Pizza with my husband and niece helping me assemble the last of the minions. We ended up drawing a bit of a crowd, and they were definitely the hit of the party. I loved "Despicable Me" and the minions remain my favorite part of the movie. Happy 8th birthday Calvin, and I hope you had as much fun as I did!

The Red Baron Celebrates Jack's Baby Shower

A fun cake I made last summer was a Snoopy baby shower cake for a friend who had a long awaited baby boy. Jack's baby shower was themed around Snoopy so I gave the mom a Red Baron book I had and asked her to choose an image. She liked the one with Snoopy sporting a big cheesy grin. What a great cake to create!

The base cake is a fresh raspberry and buttermilk cake in a large petal pan shape. I left it unfrosted and put little crowns of fresh whipping cream and raspberries on it instead. On top of that I built Snoopy on his dog house. The house is a white cake, and Snoopy is fondant with a gum paste scarf. It was challenging to make the house to the same proportions as the original drawings but I got as close as I could. I ended up painting details on it to make it look more like the drawings by Charles Schultz. I like the cheesy grin, and I'm sure when Jack is older he will have the same sort of grin on his face!

Young Marines 10th Anniversary

I ran into a friend of mine at the courthouse plaza a while back (didn't do any damage though...), and got to talking about what we were doing with our lives lately. I told her about making cakes occasionally and she perked right up. The Central Arizona Young Marines were celebrating their 10th anniversary and she needed a special cake. Well, that's certainly something I could help her with!

The top two tiers were patriotic, with red, white, and blue dyed vanilla cake. The bottom tier was plain white and it all had buttercream between and outside. The most fun was the gum paste letters and topper. I used little craft sticks, cut two of each letter, and sandwiched the stick between the layers. This made cool looking and sturdy letters. The topper was an eight inch round of coroplast covered in several layers of gum paste to look like the Young Marine's logo. I piped the Iwo Jima depiction in the middle and the flag was a combination of piping and gumpaste. It looked great, the kids were enthused, and everyone enjoyed cake!

UPDATE: The event was published in the Prescott Daily Courier.