Sneak Peek!

Well, I'm anxious to get these cakes finished tonight for the big surprise tomorrow, but I couldn't wait to share the beauty of the inside of these cakes!

I'm making two different 8" round cakes for .... well ... I don't feel like I can say just yet. On the offhand chance they find my blog before the big reveal tomorrow... well, I'd just feel awful for ruining it!

But in the meantime.... here are some baking pics of the cakes (the decorations will get finished tonight)

The first is an ombre cake. I've seen a few on pinterest with the frosting in a gradient, but I liked this one the best - almost like a surprise in the cake! 

Only, I chose blue :)

It almost looks like a tin pan of tempra paint!!

And such pretty shades! 

I used Wilton's Gel Coloring in royal blue and teal, with a little mixing in between...

And then once they were frosted and stacked.....

Super fun!

The second cake was decided because I knew the 4 and 5 year olds would love to see the inside!

I let K pick out the colors....I think she did marvelously! 

So, do you know what these three bulls-eyes will make in the stack? 

Check back this weekend to see the inside cuts and decorations!

AAAAAH! Real Monsters!

K's 5th birthday! 

Oh man, 5 years?? 

just craziness!

So, she wanted something pink, and something with googly eyes (Thanks Nana and Poppie!)

We went with monsters.

Here they are:

She wanted strawberry and chocolate - so I complied! 

Shiny pink frosting looks great!

Adding a little purple for hair....eyebrows...beards...whatever sounded fun!

Then we added some mini m&ms for noses:

and added the googly eyes :)

fun and unique!

and then some fun mouths!

Then we started on the purple ones....

SO pretty!

looking silly!

See?

And now for their mouths...

And my personal favorite!

Christmas Snowglobe Cupcakes

I love Bakerella! 

Seriously - if you've never visited her site, go there. Right now. She's fabulous!

So, I desperately wanted to make these last year for my school's Christmas party, but our Wal-mart was apparently sold out of the cool Coke bottles. :(

So, as soon as I saw the cute Coke bottles here, I bought several!

Then, I knew what I'd use them for - Christmas gifts for K's teachers. And they were a hit!

Here are the little fondant bears in process:

And here's the close up of the final product: 

They look fairly real! Even when these things take forever to make, it always seems worth it in the end to see the final product!

OH!!

And, I made spiced cupcakes with eggnog frosting....it was absolutely divine!

Doctor cupcakes!

Another one of Stephen's coworkers was 'retiring' to head off to med school, and I was, of course, volunteered to make something sweet :)

So, I had just found this site and really wanted to try some new flavors. I used #22 (minus the nutella ganache) for these:

And then I also used #29: Strawberry jam filled vanilla - equally delicious (but they only make around 12-13 per recipe!)

So, the final decoration for the future med student: 

Super fun, but actually a lot of work - there were tons of tiny details to work on, and there wasn't a lot of repetition, so I couldn't get a good flow. But I really liked the end product, so it was worth it! 

Thanksgiving yumminess!

I've fallen behind on my posting- sorry!

I've made several cakes since the last post - hopefully I can include them all soon! 

So, our apartment had a thanksgiving get together, and I found a whole bunch of cutesy foods I wanted to try!

K helped me make Indian Corn Cookies:

Reese's Pieces and Fruit Rollups = fun!

Then we made little pilgrim's hats with reese's cups and cookies!

Then for the adults, I picked some more sophisticated desserts.

I wanted to make Chai Pumpkin Spice cookies that I found here but apparently pumpkin kisses are really hard to come by... so I opted for a bag of Dove white chocolate melts. They look like a pad of butter, but they were amazing!

Then I really wanted to try this recipe but we didn't have enough people in our home to eat it, so Thanksgiving was a great time to try it out! The honey and lemon really worked well together!

Next up, I made a few things for actual Thanksgiving, which we hosted our downstairs neighbor (it was so nice to have a guest!)

Stephen is a pumpkin pie fan, so I wanted to make it a little more fun - K really wanted to make a braided crust, so we started out by cutting our crust in a spiral (and yes, that's a store bought crust...when I'm making a whole dinner alone for new friends the first time, I didn't have time for homemade crust!)

Here's how it looked (with a little egg brushed on for browning)

Then I made a cherry pie for me. Oh, how I love cherry pies! and I loved making the design too!

And, because I can't *not* make some kind of cake during the holidays.... I made orange spiced cupcakes with cranberry buttercream frosting - super yum!