diaper cake

ducks' pond birthday cake

I started out with plans to make a bottle cap cake, but the kiddo started looking at the cake books and really wanted his dad's birthday cake to have ducks on it.

These were made using the directions in What's New Cupcake?  by Alan Richardson and Karen Tack. We used marshmallows instead of donut holes for the heads and mini chocolate chips for the eyes, but otherwise the ducks are pretty close to their predecessors. We chose the "melted frosting" approach to coating the ducks, which was a success.

The pond is colored buttercream through a star tip, and I used chocolate rocks and confetti sprinkles around the edge of the platter for the shore.

And yes, it looks more appropriate for a baby shower than a grown man, but the Mr. was a good sport about our kiddo's decision to add some ducks into his birthday celebration.

But sometime soon I'm going to try again to make the bottle cap cake I'd planned on. Unless my kiddo's agenda sounds more fun.

Are you working on any non-conventional food lately? Anybody else have kids who like to play art director?

Thanks for reading!

delusions of grandeur part 5: robot cake

We must have watched that Betty Crocker/Howdini robot cake tutorial a hundred times. You know the one; the tutorial that comes up as the top eight hits when you search for robot cake tutorial videos? This one right here. Someone's marketing intern spends a lot of time getting that thing posted EVERYWHERE.

And I was going to make it. I had decided not to go overboard on the cake this year, as last year's Zelda cake had me up till three in the morning. I'm too tired for that. So I was going to make the quick robot cake. The easy robot cake. The fast robot cake.

And then, my almost-three-year-old uttered the words that spelled my certain doom: "I want the robot cake to stand up."

It was innocent, really. But birthday wishes are nearly impossible to deny. I mean, he only has so many years he'll be willing to let me make silly things for him. I'll blink my eyes one day and he'll have sprouted chin whiskers and sarcasm, and my days of making robot cakes are over.

Or at least that's how I justify this year's delusion of grandeur. Cake Boss makes it all look so do-able. I blame Cake Boss.

I hemmed and hawed on whether or not to build this, and in the end, to draw the Mister into the fray with me, I asked him to be the Wielder of the Drill. I found this tutorial on making a cake stand, then simplified it by using pre-cut wooden plaques and dowels from the craft store, plus some super-strength hot glue.

To make it, pick up an 8-inch round plaque  and two 5x7-inch rectangular plaques. Drill holes to fit the 3/4-inch dowel, then glue in place with hot glue. Use a level while the glue sets, and offset the feet to offer a wider base in more directions for stability. Voila!

The video there calls for using donuts to cover the leg dowels. I tried using donuts. Here's some proof, along with the five-layer vanilla buttermilk M&M cake (we call it Pancake Cake) getting a crumb coat of maple sugar frosting.

But I didn't like the way it looked. Especially after a day in the fridge where, even wrapped, the leg donuts started to dry up and show off their seams. Yuck. I needed a plan B, and luckily, I had one in the form of a half a tray of leftover Rice Krispies treats I'd made for the head. In future photos, that's what you'll see (covered entirely in marshmallow fondant) in place of the donut legs.

It went back in the fridge after the crumb coat. Then I started rolling out the fondant . . . and then rolling it out again . . . and then rolling it out again. Four times in all, by the time I'd smoothed the fondant onto the cake without it ripping outright.

And I don't have a lot of photos of the cake in process from this point forward because of the sugar and the sticky all over my hands . . . so let's look at at some more photos of half-eaten cake while I tell you a little bit about it.

First off, the recipes. 

I was looking for something nice and sturdy for the robot cake, since it was going to be several layers high. Regular box mix isn't dense enough (and doesn't taste as good as the recipe I eventually chose . . . trust me. And the family. And the guests at the party. And the Mister's co-workers.) so I went to my stand-by cookbook for tall cakes: Sky High by Alisa Huntsman, Peter Wynne, and Tina Rupp. 

I chose the Vanilla Buttermilk Cake recipe. I wanted something kinda plain because I planned to add M&Ms to the batter. It tastes like the very best pancakes you've ever eaten, but more cake-y. I'm going to link you here to a VERY similar recipe at Sweetapolita, but I still recommend picking up a copy of this book. I've used at least five recipes from it, and they've all been really, really satisfying. You know what I mean. Sometimes desserts look or sound better than they taste. The recipes I've used from this book live up to your expectations.

I made two full recipes for a total of six layers (but only used five for the final cake). Instead of using the chocolate icing recipe included with this cake recipe in the book, I made maple cream cheese icing. Well, semi-made. 

I mixed four tubs of store-bought cream cheese icing with food coloring and maple flavoring (to taste; I think it was two teaspoons) in my Kitchen-Aid. I recommend it. The combination was pretty darn good.

The cake doesn't develop much of a dome as it bakes, so I didn't have to do any trimming, and the amount of frosting I mixed up was just about the right amount for sticking the cake securely to the robot-legs cake stand, frosting between each layer, and crumb coating the entire stack.  

The cupcakes were simpler.  Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cakes, made with a double-chocolate cake mix doctored with extra eggs and buttermilk as recommended in Hello, Cupcake. I added peanut butter chips in, too. A lot of them. Bwa-ha-ha! Birthdays rule! (Until the diabetes sets in.)

Peanut butter cream cheese icing, of course, like last year, because it's so darn good. Half a cup of peanut butter to one tub of cream cheese icing. 

Because I was busting these out while my kiddo and the Mister were out on the town, I didn't have anyone around to snap photos while my hands were covered in stuff you shouldn't get on a camera. And at the party I was flying around and didn't get a chance to snap as many photos as I would have liked, so the only images I have of the finished cupcakes are in shots like these, where you can almost make them out in the crepe streamers.

Rar. The green peanut butter icing had blue and green sugar crystals dusted on the rims. Some of the cupcakes spelled out my kiddo's name in silver fondant letters; others had individual fondant robot parts painted with food coloring and dusted with pearl dust, and were arranged to form whole robots. (Surely someone has a photo. I'll update this if one pops up.)

Speaking of fondant, I've worked with marshmallow fondant before, and I still can't get it right. There's some technique I'm missing, wherein the stuff doesn't rip and tear and pull apart when you're trying to drape it over a simple round cake. 

So I did it four times. The second time, I was this close, and then the weight of the fondant itself pulled a tear right along the top edge. The third time, it stuck to the table. Arrgh.

I finally got it on there, but as I'd worked it unto death, there are the tiniest micro-fractures in it. Of course, because I'd spent so much time rolling everything out, by the time I finally had it good to go, the crumb coat wasn't sticky any more. I brushed a little corn syrup on the sides of the cake to help the fondant stick. It worked like a charm.

In the comments section of the marshmallow fondant recipe I used, a few people imply that this recipe isn't awesome for making decorations, but that wasn't my experience. It set up fine, just like other recipes I've used. The flat decorations stuck easily using a paintbrush + lemon juice/water to glue them in place, and the round balls on top of his antennae firmed up very well. I had just as easy a time cutting the rolled fondant with a knife as I did with cookie cutters or the pizza cutter. Other than the draping, it was very easy to work with.

In some places, like the eyes, I had several layers of fondant decorations stuck on top of one another. They stayed in place perfectly. 

The head is made of the standard Treats recipe on the back of the Rice Krispies box, molded in a small, buttered Pyrex bowl. When it had set up in the refrigerator, I slipped it out, iced it (with the leftover peanut butter icing, as I'd used up all of the maple) and covered it in leftover fondant . . . which this time did NOT rip apart. 

The rivets are made using the same drinking straw punch-out method I used on last year's Zelda cake, pressed on using lemon juice/water glue. There are just fewer of them, thank heavens.

I'd pressed the leftover Rice Krispies treats into a cake pan and didn't really have a plan in mind for them until the donut plan went to pieces (literally). I've never used them in an application like this before, and so it was a really happy discovery how well they worked to cover the legs.

I just cut rectangles to fit, and the treats molded easily in my hands to fit around the dowels. My only caveat is that the marshmallow fondant can look a little lumpy over the treats. I think this can be alleviated by adding an extra layer of icing before applying the fondant; lesson learned for next time.

Okay, this is getting legendarily wordy, so let me sum it up with a couple detail photos from the postmortem.

Oh man! I can't believe I finished that whole post! A doozy for sure. Thanks for sticking with it. I learn so much every time I make one of these cakes, and I hope I've anticipated some of the questions other novices might have.

If you have any other questions, ask 'em in the comments and I'll do my best to answer. Otherwise, you can make these photos a bit larger by clicking on them, and get a bit more detail that way! And a big thank you to my sister-in-law M and the Mister for thinking to capture a few photos to add to my few. You guys rock!

delusions of grandeur part 4: cartoon portrait cupcakes

I won't lie: I've been a bit overwhelmed. The past couple of weeks have been an absolute marathon of projects. Not only was I competing in So You Think You're Crafty?, but I've also been making a ton of stuff for my kiddo's birthday and trying to keep up with book covers at work. And so, last night, with the party over and the party mess carted from the community center back to our living room and kitchen, I went to bed at 10:30 pm for the first time in months.

But let's back up for a minute:

First, I was eliminated from the competition last week, with my upcycled Sunburst Mirror project. Now, I don't really feel like my project deserved to do as poorly as it did, but admittedly, I was ready for competition to be over (so I could focus on birthday stuff). So when the other competitors ratcheted up their voter drives on the last day (don't ask me how), I maintained radio silence and decided to let the chips fall where they may. And fall they did.

And so I worked on robot decorations and cakes and giant crepe paper chandeliers and . . . well, let's just say there are a ton of party posts in our future, readers.

Now, my kiddo's party was all about robots, but he also has a thing for cake lately. He can't get enough of the duck cupcakes on the cover of What's New, Cupcake, for example. So we had to make a batch of cupcakes for our monthly play group last week.

After carefully studying all of the cupcakes in Hello, Cupcake, my kiddo kept coming back to the funny face cupcakes. When I asked if he wanted our cakes to look like him, I got an emphatic, "Yes!"

We used the recipe in the book to doctor a cake mix using buttermilk and eggs, then tinted cream cheese frosting and used a mix of candies for the faces (he picked green shoelace candy for the mouths).

Finally, to cartoon-ify his crazy hair, I filled a Ziploc bag with a mixture of white chocolate and butterscotch chips + two drops of yellow food coloring and melted them together. Then I snipped a corner and squirted out some wild hair squiggles onto some parchment paper. When they'd hardened, I cut slits into the cake and poked in the hair.

Ta-da! Pretty quick and easy. And he was one happy kid, looking at all those little cartoony hims.

Anyway, I like to do a little warm-up cake project before doing a big all-day cake (like last year, when I made the rainbow cupcakes before the Zelda cake) and these guys fit the bill. I'll be posting the robot cake soon . . . it was a little more time-consuming than these cuppies, but you might like it anyway. :)

Thanks for reading!


p.s. you can make these photos larger by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that! clever you.

chocolate stout birthday cake

This year, unlike in past years, the mister requested a specific cake flavor, instead of a cake theme (like the Fallout cake here, the Zelda cake here,  and the Skyrim cake here). This year, he wanted a chocolate stout cake, like the one an old friend of ours made for his own birthday a couple of years back.

Now, I'm not as good a baker as our friend, but I can fudge it. (Ha!) I used Jamie's recipe from My Baking Addiction, with a few alterations.

First: I halved the recipe to make a 6-inch, 3-layer cake instead of an 8-inch 3-layer cake. All that high school math served me well (thanks, Mr. Tutland!) as I was calculating to see if a half-recipe would be enough batter; it was close enough for my purposes, so I went ahead with it. I did this because chocolate stout cake is very rich (the "icing" is just chocolate and cream, for heaven's sake) and we were only needing enough for five people . . . and still only ate half of it on the mister's birthday. A 6-inch cake is just enough for a couple of days, without anyone getting sick of cake.

Second: I substituted a mixture of lowfat milk and whipping cream for the sour cream in the original recipe, and didn't notice any lack of richness, taste, or texture.

Third: I left off the decorative chocolate curls and used sprinkles to decorate instead. (And it's kinda pretty, but I wouldn't recommend it. The crunchiness of the hundreds-and-thousands detracts from the experience of the icing.)

So here's the recipe I used. You can find the original here.

Six-Inch Chocolate Stout Cake with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

for the cake

3/4 cup Chocolate Stout (Trader Joe's makes a great one, which I used)

1/4 cup strong black coffee

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup whole wheat  flour and 1 cup all-purpose)

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. salt

2 large eggs

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/3 cup whipping cream

1/3 cup milk

for the icing

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 pound chopped semisweet chocolate (I used chocolate chips)

Directions for the Cake

1) Set oven to 350 degrees F, and grease three 6-inch cake pans. LINE THE BOTTOMS WITH PARCHMENT PAPER. Very important. The cake is very moist, and you'll need the parchment to help get the cake layers out of the pans.

2) Melt butter in a medium saucepan with the chocolate stout and coffee until simmering. Stir in the cocoa powder and whisk till smooth. Remove from heat.

3) Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. 

4) Using your electric mixer (or a lot of elbow grease) beat eggs, vanilla, milk, and cream together, then add the COOLED stout mixture. Add flour mixture and beat on low speed until combined. Divide batter between the three pans. Bake until cake tester comes out clean; approximately 35 minutes. Transfer cakes to cake rack to cool.

Directions for the Icing

1) Simmer the whipping cream in a small, heavy saucepan. Remove from heat and whisk in the chocolate until melted and smooth. Refrigerate until spreadable, approximately two hours.

2) Use a small smear of frosting on the cake plate to stick first layer in place, then spread a small amount of frosting over it. Top with second cake layer, and spread with more icing. Repeat for third layer, then spread remaining icing over top and sides.

I used a stencil cut from parchment paper to get the sprinkles to stick in a specific pattern.

As noted in the original recipe, this cake tastes best fresh the first day, but it can be refrigerated and warmed for leftovers. 

Thanks for reading!  Enjoy your cake!

ultimate robot party etsy treasury

I'd been planning a tiki pirate party for the kiddo's next birthday; I like to start planning early so I can collect seasonal things that might not be available later (like the spider cupcake holders I picked up on clearance after Halloween last year, and later used for the Tektite cupcakes for our Zelda party, or the silicone tiki ice trays I picked up at the end-of-summer clearance, both at Target).

Well, I'll save all the pirate and tiki party goods for another year, because toddler interests are fluid things. He's really into robots right now, and it was getting to a point where I just couldn't ignore the little voice in my head telling me that the pirate / tiki thing (which seemed so perfect a few months ago) was not where his heart was anymore.

So okay. I start over at the beginning. And it's okay, really, because I hadn't gotten down to the hand-making yet, so the only energy spent has been spent shopping.

I started a shopping cart on Etsy last night that quickly spiraled out of budgetary control, so I thought I'd make a treasury list out of the items instead. I also added in a couple of things to the list specifically because it's a party treasury (like invitations and cake toppers) that I wouldn't personally buy because I'll be making those things myself, but I thought fellow robot party planners might find them perfect for their own parties.

Anyway, here it is. Click here to visit my treasury page!

Thanks for reading!

july again

A very merry unbirthday to you, darling Alice. Wish you were here.

all - time top and bottom five posts -- part one

The Blogger "stats" layout is a really handy way to feed my obsessive compulsive tendencies. I can check on how many hits per day/week/month my blog is getting, what countries the hits are coming from, and what URLs are referring people to my blog. I can also see which individual blog entries are drawing the most (and least) traffic.

This is both interesting (to my stats-obsessed mind) and informative (in that it lets me know what readers might be interested in, how they're finding my blog, and where I should focus more/less of my time and energy).

So here's a little glimpse at my top and bottom five all-time posts, and a little of my thought process into figuring out why certain entries are doing so much better than others.

#1: Skyrim Birthday Cake

This is a fairly recent blog entry featuring a birthday cake I made for my husband's birthday last fall, based on a video game (Skyrim) he was playing frequently at the time. It shows up pretty high on a Google search for Skyrim cakes, but I know the cake everyone is really after is this one by Charm City Cakes. It's also of a dragon perched on a rock, but their dragon is incredibly skillfully made and detailed, whereas mine is . . . well, you know the saying about how if you can't say anything nice, don't leave any blog comments? Yeah, me too.

#2: Spoon Sunburst Mirror

I completed this project for the Young House Love/Bower Power Pinterest challenge back in August, and they're still my number one and two sources of hits for this project. Pinterest is right up there in the top five, as well. I've checked recently and this project has been repinned in the neighborhood of 40 times (to find out what's being pinned from your website or blog, use this:

http://pinterest.com/source/nightgardendesign.blogspot.com/

replacing your URL for mine).


#3: Delusions of Grandeur

This one is all about the Vault Boy cake. For certain. Because I always have "Vault Boy Cake" and "Fallout Cake" pop up on my list of Google searches that direct people to my blog. Again, my cake posts get a lot of traffic, but not many comments. But I hope they're inspiring some people, despite that trend!

#4: New Year, New Things to Love!

Due to the overwhelming popularity of those matryoshka measuring cups , and the single solitary sale on yardage for my shorts design, I'm calling this one for the Russians.

#5: Lampshade Re-Do with Upcycled Milk Jug

This one is still one of my favorite projects and blog entries, and has also made an appearance on Pinterest. I think it's been popular because of its use of plastic milk jugs, and because it's a lighting project (which tend to do pretty well across the board).

So there you have the top five all-time blog entries on the Night Garden Blog! Stay tuned for an entry coming up about the bottom five all-time blog entries. Guaranteed to show you a few you haven't seen yet!

(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)

zelda party round-up

For anyone looking for all my Zelda party posts in one easy-to-navigate post, please enjoy this:

Zelda Party Round-Up

Zelda Party Hats






Zelda Birthday Cake




Rupee Crayon Party Favors




Zelda Party Invitations




Large Cardboard Character Cut-Outs




And several party details I haven't blogged yet, including

Building cardboard forts with Make-Do connectors




This large picnic pavillion




Stringing balloons with a needle and thread instead of using helium (thanks to friends!)




Making treasure sacks from ultra-suede




Printing fabric on Spoonflower and making iron-on patches for party favors




Letting the guests try out their new rupee crayons on a large butcher paper banner






There you go! Now you're all caught up!

(some photos on this page were taken by family members. thank you!)


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


Linking up to:

I Should Be Mopping the Floors

delusions of grandeur part three : the legend of the zelda birthday cake

If you were someone with a lot of time on his/her hands and a cake to make, and if you were someone who loved repetitive, detail-oriented tasks, then, and only then, would I recommend the project I'm about to show you.

Behold, the pixelated Legend of Zelda birthday cake I made for my kiddo's second birthday.




The Link figure, shield, and flag (which featured his name on one side, and the Hylian phoenix graphic on the other, painted on with food coloring) are made of dyed gum paste.








Cake is banana cake with Nutella filling and peanut butter cream cheese icing, covered in colored fondant. The "pixelated" image on the side of the cake is made from dots of colored fondant, cut with a straw and released with the aid of a chopstick. (Thanks for the help with the dot cutting, E!)




Tektite cupcakes (the spidery guys) are butter cake with maple cream cheese icing. The eyes, teeth, and spots are made of fondant. The spider cupcake holders were picked up on Halloween clearance at Target.




Total time spent (including baking, modeling figures, cutting dots, and assembling/decorating cake): approximately 12-14 hours.

Not for the faint of heart, but worth the labor of love for my sweet pea.

Follow me on Pinterest (button at the top of the column on the right) to see a couple of much cooler Zelda cakes on my Party Planning pin board. I used those for some much-needed inspiration for the top of the cake.


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(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)