Unicorn Birthday Party

Unicorns seem to be the craze at the moment for young girls, so I wasn’t too surprised when Little Miss M asked for a Unicorn themed birthday party. I have being loving all of the unicorn cakes that come up on my feed, so was quietly excited that I got to make one.

Her birthday cake was a 7” chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, and covered in fondant. The unicorn horn was made from yellow coloured gumpaste, and then painted with gold edible paint. Little Miss M picked out the colours for the mane and I piped the buttercream onto the cake using a Wilton 2M tip.

When I made the unicorn horn for the cake, I also made little unicorn horns for the cupcakes and cakepops. I left these for a few days to harden and painted them also with the gold edible paint. The ears for the unicorn cake, cupcakes and cakepops were made with fondant and a little bit of Tylose mixed in. These were also made a few days ahead of time to give them time to harden, as I didn’t want the buttercream to make them soft.

The vanilla cupcakes were iced with buttercream coloured with Americolor Soft Pink and Americolor Avocado . When I pipe with buttercream I always put the buttercream on plastic wrap, roll into a tube and then put this in the piping bag. Then when I have finished I pull the plastic wrap out and dispose of it, and the piping bag is still relatively clean. In this instance I made two small plastic wrap tubes - 1 pink and 1 green and put both into the piping bag. Then when I was piping it swirled the two colours together.

I was dreading the cake pops as I knew trying to get the unicorn horn and little ears on them was going to be a fiddly job. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had thought, as I used melted white chocolate to put the horns and ears on, and they stuck like glue. In fact, the cakepops were my favourite thing on the dessert table.

On our trip to the gold coin shop to get supplies, my daughter found the green and white polka dot popcorn cases to use as the goodie bags. We put some tissue paper in them, and filled them up with some treats for her friends.

I found the following printables on Pinterest - 

Unicorn Poop – I printed the tag onto sticker paper, cut them out, and then peeled and attached to Tic Tac containers.

Rainbow Seeds – I used skittles to fill little bags and then printed and stapled the labels onto the bags. When I was filling the bags I had them on kitchen scales so each bag had exactly the same amount of Skittles, so no need to count them.

My Baking Buddy

Even after having trees around the house cut down, my kitchen is still quite dark, small and cluttered. I do dream of a nice modern clean Pinterest kitchen with perfect light, but alas it is what it is. My Mum has a beautiful white modern kitchen with lots of light and windows, and I do take the kids around there when we make gingerbread men at Christmas to take photos.

So…I was getting ready to bake my nieces 16th birthday cake when my daughter asked if she could help. Cake decorating is also a hobby, and I can get a little OCD on how things are done.

But this time I said yes, and how can you say no when she comes out in her cute little apron and Hello Kitty whisks.

I’m happy to report there were no egg shells in the mixture, most of the flour went in the pot, and as per usual when it came to clean up time she was nowhere to be seen.

Still mixing everything together with her Hello Kitty whisk.

I told her that she could make cupcakes from the left over cake batter.

The butter has melted, and mixing everything this time with the big whisk.

All mixed together, and in the cupcake liners.

This is when she disappears and I'm left to do all of the cleanup...hmmmm

Pink, White, and Gold Birthday Party

Last year I planned to do a cute ballerina themed birthday party for my daughter.  I had pins on my Pinterest board with pink themed dessert tables, pink ballerina cakes and other pink food goodies.

Planning was going well…until my daughter attended her friend’s birthday which was Frozen themed.  So of course, my daughter wanted a Frozen themed party as well……sadly I had to say goodbye to my pink décor and embrace the blue!!

This year she didn’t mention anything about a particular theme, so I decided to go with Pink, White and Gold which seems to be popular at the moment.  The good part was no figurines to make, as they are not my strong point.

I decided to go with a 7” chocolate cake, layered with vanilla buttercream, encased with milk chocolate ganache and covered in fondant.  The top layer was a 5” white chocolate mud cake, also layered with vanilla buttercream, encased with white chocolate ganache and covered in fondant.

I used Americolor Dusty Pink to colour my fondant, and cake board.  The gold was brushed on using Metallic Light Gold edible paint by Rainbow Dust.  For the name plaque I used the Vladimir Script font in Microsoft Word, flipped it horizontally, and printed it out.  I then traced it with parchment paper using a pencil.  After rolling out my fondant and using a circle cutter, I flipped my name to the correct side and traced this on the fondant.  You can then see the outline of the font, and then use edible paint or an edible pen to write on the fondant.   In this instance I used a black edible pen.  

The gold balls were made a couple of days before I assembled the cake, and didn’t work out well.  They were made with white fondant, left to harden and then painted with the same Metallic Light Gold edible paint that I used on the cake.  As they were hard they would not stick to the cake, and kept falling off. So I made new balls out of white fondant, and while they were still soft stuck them to the cake.  When they dried I then painted them gold, and the next morning gave them another touch of paint.

For the cupcake toppers a couple of days before the party I rolled out white fondant mixed with a bit of tylose, and cut out heart shapes.  The night before I painted them with the Metallic Light Gold edible paint, and left them to dry.  They were then nice and hard the next day, and wouldn’t go soft while sitting in the buttercream on the cupcakes.

The cake pops were made using leftover cake and ganache.  I dipped them in pink coloured white chocolate, and when the chocolate was set I painted Metallic Light Gold edible paint on them.

On Pinterest I found a tutorial on how to make the tassel garland.  They were very easy to make, the hardest part was trying not to burn my fingers with the hot glue gun!!

Mason’s Ice-Cream Party

This year we decided to have Mason’s birthday party early, as his birthday is in January which is in the middle of the summer school holidays here.  So all of his friends go away, and he doesn’t have anyone to come to his party.  We had his party the day after school finished for the year, which worked out really well as all of his friends came.  He didn’t want a birthday cake this year, and as he loves ice-cream I decided on an ice-cream dessert table.  

I brought the ice-cream tubs a few months ago on sale, and then found some digital paper that was similar to make the bunting on the table.

A few hours before the party I pre-rolled the ice-cream, put on a baking sheet and then put in the freezer.  Next time I would do this the night before as they were still quite soft.  This made it a lot easier when you had a line of hungry boys lined up waiting on ice-cream.

The chocolate sundae cupcakes were chocolate cupcakes covered in buttercream, drizzled in chocolate sauce and topped with a glace cherry. Even though cherries are in season here they are very expensive.

The ice-cream cake pops were really easy to make, and looked great on the table.  When I asked some of the boys what flavour ice-cream they wanted they pointed to the cake pops, as they thought they were real ice-cream in cones.  

Ice-Cream Cake Pops

I made extra cupcakes when I made my chocolate sundae cupcakes, and put the extras in a food processor and made into fine crumbs.  You can also use cake scraps as well.

I then added a couple of Tbsp of the leftover buttercream, and pulsed until it was all combined. You should then be able to form into balls, if not add more buttercream until you can form balls.  

You will need your ice-cream cone now to check the size of the cake ball.  I used twice the amount of cake ball that I would normally use if I was putting them on a stick.  Roll your cake ball and check that it fits inside the ice-cream cone.  Place on a greaseproof lined tray.  When you have rolled all of your cake balls put them in the fridge to harden up - about 20/30 minutes.

Now they have hardened melt your chocolate (melts or candy melts), and with a spoon drizzle just inside the cone where the cake ball will sit.  Then place one of the cake balls in the cone.  Continue until you have all of the cake balls in the cones.  Put them back in the fridge for 15 mins for the chocolate to harden.

When the cake balls have set in the cones re-melt the chocolate again, and dip each cake ball into the melted chocolate.  Then spoon sprinkles over top and leave to set.

Bacon and Maple Syrup Canadian Cupcakes

Recently it was the Rugby World Cup, and as a rugby mad nation it is all that is talked about in New Zealand when it is on.  At work we do a sweepstake where we pick 2 countries out of a hat.  At the end of the world cup we have a potluck lunch where each person brings along a dish from one or both of their countries.  This year my countries were Scotland, and for the second time in a row I also got Canada. Unfortunately Canada didn’t get out of the pool matches, and Scotland lost to Australia in the quarter finals.  

As I’m known as the cupcake person at work, I once again made my Bacon and Maple Syrup Cupcakes as my Canadian dish.  I love bacon and cupcakes, so it was a match made in heaven to combine the two.  I used my favourite Vanilla Cupcake recipe and adapted it to include the bacon and maple syrup.

Recipe

3 rashes of bacon

Cook bacon in a pan and put the fat/drippings in a container to put in the cupcakes.  Chop bacon and set aside for the topping.

Cupcakes

125gm butter + reserved fat/drippings from cooked bacon rashes

125gm sugar

2 eggs

1 Tbl maple syrup

125gm self rising flour

2 Tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 190C

1. Cream butter and bacon fat together until creamy.
2. Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
3. Set the mixer to low and add the eggs one at a time.
4. Add the maple syrup and continue beating until combined, scraping down the bowl as necessary.
5. Alternately add the self raising flour and milk in two batches, starting and ending with the flour until just combined.
6. Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for around 12 mins.  I always use a toothpick to check they are cooked in the middle.

When they cooled I also heated 2 Tbs of maple syrup until it was runny (20 secs in microwave), and brushed these onto the cupcakes.  This gave them more of a maple syrup flavour, and also keeps them moist for longer.

Buttercream Icing

This is the buttercream icing that I use for all of my cupcakes and cakes, but I have replaced the  1 tsp of Vanilla Essence for 1 Tbsp of maple syrup for these cupcakes.

This recipe is enough to ice 12-15 cupcakes.  

250gm butter

3 Cups icing sugar

1 Tbsp maple syrup

1-2 Tbs milk

1. Cream butter until creamy.  
2. Add icing sugar one cup at a time until combined and light and fluffy.  
3. Then add the maple syrup, you can add more or less depending on how sweet you want the icing.  
4. Add the milk if the buttercream is a bit stiff.

Pipe or spoon icing on cupcakes, and then decorate with chopped bacon and drizzle with maple syrup.