Graveyard fun!

I got to make 2 cakes for 2 different cake walks this year. Ethan and I googled Halloween cakes and both wanted to try the graveyard scene since we've never done it. I thought I would simplify by making the same cake twice. I don't think simple is in my vocabulary when dealing with cakes unfortunately. I wanted to do more than tombstones and ghosts and decided adding a haunted house would be fun.

I saw this haunted house picture in one of my treat magazines and wanted to try a new technique called color flow. It is a type of icing that hardens to use as decorations. It requires color flow mix which includes egg whites. I picked mine up at Joann's. To make the house I put the picture of the house under wax paper and traced it with the thick color flow then filled it in with the thin color flow(just added water to the thick.) It had to dry for at least 2 days. I also tried to make a tree but it didn't turn out so well.

We cut a small piece out of the cake and added bones to the inside of his grave. Ethan loved this part.

I didn't get a close up of the Barry D'Alyve tombstone. I made a zombie hand that came out in front of his tombstone. I cut the hand out of a flattened gumdrop added black fingernailS and attached it to the top of a tootsie roll by cutting a slit in it. For the fence I just dipped pretzels in black chocolate.

This is the 2nd one I made. Due to the high humidity (it's been raining like crazy) I had to get up at 5 am to assemble this one to get it to school by 7:30. I couldn't let it sit over night. They were fun to assemble but not in the humidity. It's a miracle the fence and house stayed up while transfering them.
Happy Halloween!

Monster Mash!

This was a little Halloween luncheon we did for playgroup. I was so happy that I got to use the monster stuff I bought last year after Halloween. I love how it turned out so I had to take lots of pictures. I love how creative people got with there food! This is what I love about Halloween- all the fun food, cute decorations and kids all dressed up. The holiday doesn't get better than that.

Nutter Butter ghosts, donut eyeballs, pumpkin shaped pbj's

Ants on a log and mummy dogs (the only thing I can take credit for.) I just wrapped hot dogs with strips of crescent rolls, baked 375 for 20 minutes then added mustard for eyes.

Pumpkin sugar cookies, and spider Ritz crackers with cheese in the middle. How did I miss the picture of the guts. Someone made a big bowl of guts. It was different colors of jello with whip cream and a yummy sauce all stirred up together. Yum! Yum!

I just love this cute little monster. The kids loved reaching their hands in here to grab a treat.

I found these bottles last year after Halloween. My friend Cassie found a website last year to print off cute labels to glue on the jars to display as potion bottles. I couldn't find the website she used and ran out of time so I just used these. (not as cute.) I would like to add more to these next year. It was a fun centerpiece to do.


Happy Halloween to all the little monsters out there!

Apple of Mommy's Eye baby shower

Jill and I did this baby shower together for Jen and Jayna. This was a super fun theme. I saw the idea in a magazine and thought it would be perfect for the fall weather.

We couldn't resist doing caramel apples, it just went perfect with our theme. The different toppings included: heath bar, Reese's pieces (we found mini ones so we didn't have to chop these-we also picked out all the brown ones,)pink and green sprinkles, white chocolate with cinnamon and sugar, almonds with milk chocolate, and M&M's in pink red and brown.

We also served apple muffins (Jill made these and they were delicious,) apple juice with ginger ale,and sliced apples with 2 different fruit dips:
Creamy Fruit Dip
1 cup marshmallow cream
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1 small container strawberry yogurt
1 TBSP orange juice concentrate, thawed

Beat together marshmallow cream and cream cheese until smooth. Add yogurt and orange juice. Blend well. Cover and refridgerate for one hour.

Lisa's famous Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball
Cream together :1/4 tsp. vanilla,
12 oz. softened cream cheese
4 T. softened butter
Gradually add:
3/4 cup powered sugar
2 T brown sugar
Stir in:
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
Freeze in a bowl until firm for 2-3 hours. Remove from bowl and roll in chopped nuts to cover (I like pecans.) Place on serving plate and cover until you serve. Best with granny smith apples.


We had a great time putting these jars together. It was my favorite part. We glittered some apples by using Elmer's Glue to make designs and then sprinkled pink glitter on the glue. The rest of the apples had pieces of ribbon glued around them.

A close up of a few glittered ones. We liked the "it's a girl" one best.


We played the guess how many game with this bottle full of different colored chocolate bottles that I made up the day before. These colors were also so fun to do a shower with.

Jill had this cute red buggy to put gifts in. I love it!

Jayna, Jen, Me and Jill. What a fun day this was. Thanks Jill for putting up with my craziness yet again and for all your help! I love being around you!

Chess Cake

Lauren & I made this cake for her husband's birthday. It was the cake from you know where. I learned a lot from doing this cake, mostly that sometimes you just have to bust out the fondant no matter how much you don't want to because in the end it will save you a lot of time and frustration.

I thought this would have been the easiest cake ever because I found these chocolate molds on line for the chess pieces and the chess board. All we had to do was melt the chocolate and pour right? How wrong I was. The pieces weren't that bad they just took time to make 3D. The way you do that is by pouring the first batch in letting them set up in the freezer for a few minutes take them out, then pour another set and before you place them in the freezer you place the ones you just took out of the mold on top of the wet ones so they will adhere together. The tricky part was the chess board itself. The mold itself was really hard to do so we didn't have the two colors bleed together. Lauren did an awesome job with this (I couldn't have done it any better.) She was a trooper.

As we set the pieces on the cake the cake began to be uneven because of the weight of the chocolates (they all weighed different amounts). Needless to say I told myself if I ever do a cake like this again I will do fondant.

Lauren left 6 hours later with a cake that I wasn't even proud to put on the blog (looking back on the pictures it's not as bad as I remembered, maybe because it was midnight and I only got 4 hours of sleep the previous night so I was being Debbie Downer.) Thanks for listening to me blab. Thanks Lauren for a chocolate fun night. I think I'm still cleaning up chocolate in my kitchen.

Football Cake

I made this for my friend Lety's husband's birthday. It was super easy. We bought the 10 & 4 football pan so we didn't have to cut the shape out. I covered the cardboard in green tissue paper for the turf then wrapped it in Saran. I then frosted the ends of the board in blue and the rest of the writing is just white frosting (I didn't know what else to use to get the white lines, do they have a white marker?) Anyway it was fun and I would do it again for a football party, but just use the colors of the teams that are playing. You can also bake bread in this pan for a fun sandwich or use it to make rice crispies so if your a football fan you should pick one up. I got it at Joann's with a coupon.