Friday, May 3, 2013

Vrooooom!

Hi, all! Boy, did Hope and I have fun with this next one! Bunny Peep Racecars!


These were so simple! And Hope LOVED helping me! All you need are twinkies (or equivelant,) big marshmallows, bunny peeps, and twist pretzles. Cut a slit out of the twinkie to fit the peep, slide a pretzle in as the car's steering wheel, cut the marshmallows in half, then attach them with a little bit of white decorator icing. Boom. Thrilled kids! The kids in her third grade class flipped out when they saw these little beauties!


Mmm-mmm overload!

My wonderful sister-in-law loves to send me pins from Pinterest. (Side note: I'm now on Pinterest. Follow me! Cakesncupsnc) Naturally, when she sent me a picture of a brownie cupcake with the message "I would DIE if you made these for me!" really left me with no choice but to experiment. Thus, the Brownie Peanut Butter Oreo was created.

Let's just take a moment to view its awesomeness...


Oh yes. It is awesome. It is a brownie mix on the bottom, topped with an Oreo, then a peanut butter filling, then another Oreo, followed by MORE brownie mix. They are baked to perfect before being topped with a homemade peanut butter icing and drizzled with chocolate sauce.

NOTE: I've since found the recipe on Pinterest, but I like the way I made mine better. I combined about 3 different recipes to come up with it and it tastes DIVINE. Seriously. It is almost indescribable.

Edible Fire!

So, now that I'm a Girl Scout leader, I took it upon myself to get Outdoor Skills certified...that meant a really long but fun weekend learning what the heck I was supposed to do outside while camping! Waaaaay new experience for me! But, one of the really fun things I learned was how to make edible fire...


Simply take pretzle sticks, mini marshmallows, potato sticks and red-hots (not shown) and put them in piles.



Then just assemble your fire! Sooo cute!

Personally, I didn't like the red-hots. They didn't "chew" like the rest of the ingredients. If I were making this for myself, I would much rather use Hot Tamales candies instead. They have that gummy texture that is easy to chew. These red-hots had to be sucked on until they softened and I didn't like the texture with the other components. That's just me though...

Valentine's Day!

Ahhh...the day of love, romance, and sweets?! Why, yes, yes it is!

For Hope's school party, we made cupcakes with pudding icing and topped them with chocolates. The kids LOVED them! I didn't like the consistency of the icing, but we were down to the wire on time and I didn't have the ingredients to remake it. The kids didn't care. They were blown away by the flavor. Kids. Easy to please when something is full of sugar. LOL.


My Valentine had school on Valentines' evening, so we couldn't do anything too special. So, I decided to make chocolate covered strawberries for him and his classmates...




I got a little crazy and added some red candy as well. I didn't like the effect. It seemed overdone.




We also made some cute Valentines Day buttons out of pretzles, candy melts, and M&M's to give out to teachers.


Because I can do more than just make cakes...

My hubby loves cheesecake and I didn't want to take all the time and energy to make a "real" one. So, I made this little beauty from Bisquick! It had a thicker texture, but hubby loved it anyway! I topped it with his favorite topping...strawberries!

My First Cake Job!

I'm so excited! I got PAID to make a cake! My friend has tasted some of my work previous and wanted to know if I could make a cake for her for a big birthday bash and I said, SURE!!

Here is the cake...


And since she was having kids at the party, she wanted cupcakes as well. Of course, these aren't your average cupcakes! They are devil's food cupcakes, covered in a dark chocolate ganache and topped with buttercream. Yuuummmmyyyy!



Here's the final set-up. Doesn't it look terrific??


It's the most wonderful time of the year...

For sugar, anyway! LOL! This year for Christmas, I made some super cute snowmen doughnuts! They were so easy, a caveman could do it. :) I also made reindeer doughnuts but unfortunately, I didn't get a pic of those. Oh well...


On Christmas morning, I made a cinnamon roll Christmas tree! Everyone LOVED that!

German Chocolate Explosion!

As you know from my previous posts, I make a German Chocolate cake every year for my mother-in-law. Well, this year, I decided to change it up a bit! This is a standard German Chocolate cake, but on the top is brownie cut into chunks and drizzled in a rich chocolate sauce. It was a hit!


It ended up getting a bit messy because I didn't let the icing set up enough. You live and learn...

Turkey Cookies

Thanksgiving again...this year, we made turkey cookies. They were super easy to make with just some sugar cookies, chocolate icing, and a little creativity!


As you can see, I forgot to take a picture of the actual cookie, but Hope's Elf on a Shelf, oddly enough, NAMED Cookie, helped himself to one! Aren't they cuties?

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Just a cute lil bug...

Hope would have a fit if I didn't include this cute little grape caterpiller she made. So, since this blog is a photo journal of some of the cutest and best things I've made, I have to include her little snack...

His eyes are little chocolate chips held on by a dab of vanilla icing. How sweet! (And healthy!)

40th Anniversary Celebration

Okay. NOW I feel like I've accomplished something! Here it is...my in-law's 40th wedding anniversary cake!





This is me. Proud of the cakes I made!

Girl Scout Celebration!

Hope is a Girl Scout Brownie and at their end of the year troop celebration, I made the cake. This was my first time using a stencil and it turned out really well. The icing and cake gave me issues, (notice the cracks in the icing) but it tasted delicious! I decorated the outside with Girl Scout Shortbread Cookies also. I was quite pleased with the end result!

Hope's 8th Birthday!

Man! It seems like only yesterday she was 2! Where did the time go?!

For her 8th birthday, she wanted a Hello Kitty themed party. And she wanted chocolate icing! With pink! And blue! Oy vey. Anyway, she and I managed to figure out just exactly what we could do and this is the end result...


It's a heart shape, with a small platform for Hello Kitty to stand on. The blue and pink are melted chocolate and we made rosettes out of Fruit by the Foot. All in all, a tasty number that she got a kick out of because she got to ice it and help Mommy decorate it!

For her "friends" party, I don't have a really good picture, but we made Kool-Aid icing for her cupcakes, which were chocolate and butter flavored. We made Strawberry Kool-Aid icing and Grape Kool-Aid icing. They were both AWESOME!! It was super easy to mix the packet in with vanilla frosting and the colors were really neat too!

Here's the birthday girl, wet from her swim (it was a pool party at our fitness center.)


Jackson's 1st Birthday!

My lil J-man...he has grown too fast!! In January, we went to Disney World, taking Hope for the first time. And even though J was only 9 months old at the time, he still had fun. So, naturally, we had to have a Mickey Mouse birthday for him, including his own Mickey smash cake! Boy was he a mess! Yikes!


See what I mean?!


Thanksgiving 2010

Turkey Time!!

Around here, Thanksgiving is a BIG deal. We've got huge turkeys cooking, TONS of food, LOTS of family members, and a GIANT creative streak!

Voila! Little candies turned into turkeys!



Well, we can't let the candy have all the fun, so, Hope and I made turkey CUPCAKES, too!




Hope made a cute sign to go with them that read "we aren't turkeys, we're cupcakes!" She's such a lil stinker. Gotta love that girl!

Also...for the sake of argument, if you don't WANT to make turkeys with the candy, you could always make a barnyard full of animals. Hope made a pig, a dog, a cat, a reindeer, a caterpiller, a butterfly, and something I'm not sure even SHE knew what it was. But these are a few I managed to snag a picture of...

German Chocolate Birthdays

Happy Birthday Barb!

Here's a cute little ditty...

Every year, I make my mother-in-law her favorite cake, German Chocolate. Hope took it a step further this year and decorated that bad boy! Didn't she do a great job??


The following year, Hope decorated again! I'm telling ya, I've got a mini-me in the making! She did it herself, words and all.



Christmas Traditions

Nothing says "Christmas" like Grandma Coley's Chocolate Chess Pie!

My dad's side of the family were some SERIOUS cooks. Growing up on the farm, out away from town, they had to be! So, naturally, my dad learned to cook and he taught me and his mom made the best chocolate pie EVER. She passed away when I was younger and I didn't get to see her very often growing up, but I do remember her making this. One year she gave Dad a copy of the recipe and I've held close to it. It truly is THE best chocolate cake around and when you get the merangue just right...mmmmmmm...heaven.


A Wesner tradition is making Buckeyes. And let me tell you what, if you've never had a buckeye, you do NOT know what you're missing. Oh man...it's like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup on steroids. It's like nirvana, like a party in your mouth, like sweet temptation on your tongue. Like...well, you get the picture.

We usually have to make TWO batches and they're gone within a few days (if they last that long!)


 

Hope's 7th Birthday

Hope's 7th birthday!

Hope's 7th birthday came just 13 days after the birth of her baby brother, so Mommy didn't feel like doing much, however, I HAD promised the girl a Littlest Pet Shop birthday cake, and I am NOT one to back out of my promises!

She came up with the color scheme and design of the cake, all I had to do was ice it. She even put the characters on it EXACTLY where she wanted them to go! The "H" on the top was just a cute little extra I picked up...



We had her "friends" party a week later and this one, I DIDN'T make, but I'm adding it anyway, because, let's face it, I could totally do this! How simple is a cupcake-cake anyway? Puh-lease! I have to hand it to Wal-Mart, they did a cute job with it, though!


Happy Fourth of July 2010


HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! (and happy day after birthday to me!

Every year we go to David and Brooke's house to celebrate our nation's Independence Day and this year I was in charge of desserts. Mmmm...yummy pound cake topped with whipped topping and fresh berries to resemble a flag!


This was a new one for me...I made a "cookie pizza" and topped it with sweetened cream cheese, fresh blueberries and cherry pie filling. It was delicious!


 LET FREEDOM RING (and the dinner bell too!)