Happy Birthday!

This past weekend we celebrated our youngest's 7th birthday. Shamefully, her birthday was earlier this month, but this was the first opportunity we have had to host a party for her. She was very excited to celebrate her birthday on Halloween afternoon and the possibilities that that offered for her party theme. Her only request for her cake was that it not be "spooky". Cuz "Mommy, spooky is no fun and it's my birthday. So it should be a happy cake with all the colors but no ghosts or spooky stuff." Her simple request made my heart swell and gave me even more determination to make her a beautiful and fun, Halloween themed birthday cake.

The bottom layer of her cake was chocolate fudge with buttercream filling. Very simple flavors, but we're talking about young girls taste pallats here. I didn't think they would appreciate some extravagent flavored cake with a fruit or fanciful filling. Simple is often times better, especially with youngins'. We decided that this layer would be wrapped with purple fondant and decorated with moons, pumpkins and witch's hats. This year Lauren chose an adorable little witch costume and when I told her that the hats on the cake represented her costume she thought that was pretty cool! :)

The top layer was milk chocolate with buttercream filling. One of Lauren's favorite Fall candy is Candy Corn. So I wrapped the layer with orange fondant and draped it with yellow and white "ribbons" of fondant and then rolled the ribbons to make a large bow for the top. She LOVED it!!

The birthday girl with her cake.

 

Another view of Lauren's cake

We also wanted to have special party favors for all of her friends and Lauren asked if I could make Halloween cookies for everyone. Well, when I bake cookies for everyone else who asks, and my husband and kids always come first, this was a no brainer....I geared up and baked and decorated 5 dozen cookies. The birthday cake cookies are inspired by, and a direct copy of, cookies I saw on Bridget's blog. If you enjoy decorating sugar cookies, you MUST check out her amazing blog!! She is so inspirational and offers so many "how-to's" for decorating. Thanks Bridget for sharing your talent and inspiration with all of us!! The birthday cookie was Lauren's favorite and she thought it was so cool that each one had 7 candles on them. :)

I think this little bucket of goodies turned out to be my favorite treat for all the girls! Why? Well, as I was rolling fondant and decorating the cake Lauren came to me and asked if she could do anything to help. One of the best advise I've ever received  has been to embrace and accept help from my children as often as possible. To learn to let go of my desire to have things perfect and cherish the opporunities of working alongside my kids. So..I melted the chocolates for the pretzals, stood Lauren on a chair at the stovetop, showed her how to cover half the pretzals with the chocolate and sprinkles and......stepped away. I wish I had taken a picture of her as she worked diligently at her task. She was so precious to watch with her serious little face as she worked on her task and I loved watching her tiny fingers twirl the pretzals in the colorful chocolate. But the best moment was when she turned to me with a HUGE smile of success after filling two baking sheets with cooling chocolate covered pretzals and said, "Mommy, I'm all done with my job. Is there anything else I can do?" Priceless!!!

I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial of our precious daughter's birthday celebration. I know she'll be beyond excited when she sees her pictures on the blog and any responses that you may write.  :)

From the heart of my kitchen to yours, may your experience be fun and the food always flavorful. Enjoy!

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Cake

This past weekend my friend Sarah's son (Josh) celebrated his 3rd birthday. Josh is a huge fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I mean, the boy LOVES Mickey Mouse Clubhouse! Did I mention that Josh Loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse? I did? Oh...okay. Sorry. Can you guess what the theme of Josh's big party was? Here it comes.....wait for it....almost...there....Mickey Mouse Clubhouse! Yay-you guessed correctly! You're SO smart!

Well, anyway, I was thrilled when Sarah asked me to help her with creating Josh's birthday cake. When she showed me her plan for the cake I knew we would have so much fun baking and decorating together. She baked the cakes, I prepared the fondant and we got together Friday night for the fun. Between giggles, pizza, six kids and two husbands we completed Josh's cake. I must say that we were pretty pleased with how it turned out. But, more importantly, the very special birthday boy LOVED it and that's all that counted!!

From the heart of my kitchen to yours, may your experience be fun and the food always flavorful. Enjoy!

Hello Again!!!

Hello again to all my fellow foodie friends!! I know that it has been an extremely long time since I posted any fabulous food on my blog, but I hope to change that pattern really soon. I wanted to briefly catch you up on the happenings of our family this summer.

First off-our son, Nathan, is blessed to be part of a travel baseball team, and the majority of the beginning of our summer was spent traveling to several tournaments in Indiana as well as a Mid-West Regional tournament in St. Louis. Most of the boys have played together since they were 6 years old and have developed not only their incredible baseball skills as a team, but also amazing friendships with one another. I do have to brag for just a moment on the success of our team.....the picture on the right is from a tournament that the boys won declaring them State Champions and the picture on the left is from the St. Louis tournament where they became the Mid-West Regional Champs!!! What an incredibly successful season for these 9 year old boys.....and their families!!! Way to go Avon Attack!!!

Our daughter, Megan, also celebrated her 12th birthday while we were in St. Louis for baseball. Let me just say, we heard several times how she has spent the LAST 4 years of her birthdays sitting at baseball games!! So, we agreed to allow her to have several girlfriends over for a pool party/sleep-over to celebrate her birthday. The girls swam most of the afternoon and evening and then enjoyed an outdoor movie shown beside the pool.


Megan had picked out these adorable popcorn cupcakes from "Hello Cupcake" but still wanted a cake too. My friend, Sarah, and I brainstormed together about what kind of cake would tie the cupcakes with Megan's outdoor movie experience. Sarah's brilliant plan was to create a cake that resembled a movie theater popcorn bucket!! As you can see, the finished product was absolutely perfect and sooooo adorable! The girls LOVED it!!! Also, we were incredibly proud to debut our first Decadent Dreams Bakery ORIGINAL!!! Sarah and I will be posting more about this cake on our blogs really soon!!

Finally, last weekend we hosted the season-ending party for the baseball team. It's always great fun to get all the families together for a cookout and enjoy backyard baseball, swimming, corn-hole and share in laughter and fun! Here, the boys are awaiting Coach Chris to talk with them and to receive their year-end goodie bags....as if two championships weren't enough!!! :)



This is the cake that Sarah and I baked for the party. It was a double chocolate chip cake with chocolate mousse between the layers and covered with delicious butter cream icing! The baseball is dark chocolate cake wrapped in homemade marshmallow fondant and the laces are piped on with butter cream. Again....more to come on this cake as well!!! Many thanks to my friend Angie for her inspiration and ingenuity on the design!!


I think that pretty well wraps up our summer so far. I have desperately missed catching up with all of you and also have been incredibly touched by the concern many of you have shown by checking up on me with my lack of foodie posts!! I'm still here...still baking...still cooking....and waiting with baited breath to share with you many fun and fabulous dishes! ;-)

From the heart of my kitchen to yours, may your experience be fun and the food always flavorful. Enjoy!