Sports Car Cake

Lucas turned 2 a few weeks ago.  When asked what kind of cake he wanted, he said, "Car!"   His favorite color is yellow. 

 

I decided to look up ideas on the internet and found a great post on how to make a Lightning McQueen Cake.  I took the principles and scaled it down to spending less than an hour carving and decorating the cake:-)  I also used the recipes (chocolate birthday cake and butter cake) found there and found the cakes were great to carve.  They were very dense, but still moist.  We learned that small pieces go a long way.  It was a very heavy cake, but had a good flavor.    

Here is the cake cut for serving.  I would highly recommend anyone giving this a try for your own racer’s birthday or special event!

Cheap Batman Birthday Ideas

 

Cake:  Bake 2 9 x 13 rectangle cakes and cool completely.  Stack them on top of one another with icing in the middle.  Cut the corners of the cakes off to form an oval.  Roll  out yellow marshmallow fondant to be 17 x 21 at least and cover cake. Cut around edges with pizza cutter.  Take a batch of black marshmallow fondant and mold freehand into bat shape or roll out and then cut out a bat figure.  

Goodie bags:  I made these capes as a take-home gift in place of goodie bags.  The kids painted the emblem on at the party.  I made the capes out of felt that I got on clearance towards the end of winter.  No need to finish edges.  I purchased velcro squares and sewed them on the neck straps.  Very easy.  

 

I made a template out of a cereal box to paint the emblem on at the party.  I found a logo I liked online and printed it out and used it to trace onto the cardboard.   I then cut into the cardboard only in the yellow part of the logo and cut the logo out so that I had a rectangular piece of  cardboard with an oval cut out and a cardboard bat that fit inside it. I just taped the cardboard down onto the felt where I wanted the batman design. The kids painted the capes with paintbrushes dipped in yellow fabric paint. When the kids were finished, I just removed the cardboard. Let dry before using :)

Food and Drink: Lemonade is yellow (perfect!)  I made sugar cookies and used marshmallow fondant to cut out yellow circles and black bats to form the batman emblem. 

 

Invitations:  I used evite which is free and you can even design your own invitation.  I chose a dark background and then added batman images I found online. 

Marshmallow Fondant

I decided to make a couple of cakes for my Mom's 50th birthday and tried out marshmallow fondant for the first time.   It was very easy to make, after the mishap with the first batch (as described later). 

I think that the cakes turned out fairly well.  I was wanting a black and white cake, but ruined the black fondant by adding too much powdered sugar, then all of the black  gel.  It ended up being a pile of gray goo.  I changed plans and bought some gold ribbon on clearance.  I used gold ribbon on the devil's food round cake and pure white fondant on the rectangular white cake with blackberry filling.  It was a lot of fun playing with the fondant, although I like the taste of butter cream icing  much better. 

Christmas Pancakes Anyone?

I decided to make some special pancakes for each of the boys for Christmas Eve.  Each boy had a pancake in the shape of his initial and a Christmas tree pancake.  Find your favorite recipe for pancakes, place in a bottle with a nozzle (kind of like a restaurant ketchup bottle). I found one at WalMart in the cooking section for less than $1.  Warm up the pan and make the shapes that they want.  It's pretty easy and they loved it! Yummy!