In honor of the Pokemon Go craze, thought I’d post all of my Pokemon Cakes on one page together!
Pokemon Ball with Pikachu Birthday Cake
Wailord Pokemon Cake
Click to read Wailord Pokemon Cake Post
Jirachi Pokemon Birthday Cake
Tepig Pokemon Cake
Click to read Tepig Cake Blog Post
Spheal Birthday Cake
Celebi Pokemon Cake
Frog Birthday Cupcake
This was a quick project. A friend’s party and my sister’s birthday converged on one particular Saturday. My friend was celebrating a presentation she had given entitled “The Frog and the Princess.” My sister has always loved cute cartoon frogs like Keroppi. Perfect! I could make frog cupcakes for both of them!
I used a few shortcuts:
Purchased candy eyes. Lashes added with edible ink marker.
Green candy melts purchased from candy supply store.
Remember the Panda Cupcakes? I took inspiration from them to make these frog cupcakes.
Eyes were easy peasy! Made from green candy melts (candy supply store) and purchased candy eyes (great deal from Hobby Lobby). For the lady frogs, I added eye lashes with a black food decorating pen.
Cutting out party hats from fondant. I used a circle cutter and divided the circle into 6 pieces.
Here’s the fast assembly steps for cupcakes:
Press sprinkles into fondant to decorate.
Piped frosting
If I had more time, I would have liked to play with things like different mouths, froggie tongues, eyelashes using fondant, funny noses, different shapes and decorated crowns, and accessories like eye glasses.
Girl Frog Birthday Cupcake
Birthday Party Frogs
Happy Birthday, Sis!
Frog Prince and Princess Cupcakes for my friend who inspired me to start my blog!
Drum Major Bear Cake
Every Christmas eve for the last 4 years, I’ve made a birthday cake for my cousin’s daughter, Natalie. This year, Natalie is one of the drum majors of her high school band, so I decided to make her a teddy bear cake dressed in her drum major uniform.
Natalie in her drum major uniform
Bear Cake Mold
I used the Williams-Sonoma Build-A-Bear cake mold and instructions. I modified the Santa Claus and Soccer Player Bear patterns to make the drum major outfit.
The cake is baked in two halves and put together with a layer of buttercream.
First, anywhere that won’t be covered with fondant gets covered in “fur.” The bear’s “fur” is created by sprinkling turbinado sugar over a sugaring glaze.
Then the bear gets dressed!
I bought white, black, and blue fondant. When you add a lot of gel color to fondant it just gets really sticky. For intense colors, it’s better to buy the pre-colored fondant. I added some navy and black coloring to the blue fondant to deepen the hue.
For the hat, I had baked a cupcake and then covered it in fondant.
The gold accents were white fondant with gold painted on. You can get the gold dust at a cake supply shop. Sprinkle some dust in a small dish and add just little bit of clear alcohol like vodka or almond extract. The buttons were cut out using the small end of an icing tip. My daughter Allison helped me with some of the details.
Allison painting the gold eagle ensignia
I think Natalie really liked her drum major birthday cake!
Natalie and her cake
Chocolate Panda Cupcakes
My aunt was throwing a farewell party for her son who is moving to China. Since the party was a drop-in buffet dinner event, I thought cupcakes would work much better than a cake. People, especially kids, can easily serve themselves. And you don’t have to worry about when to cut the beautifully designed cake, messing up the presentation for people who join the party later.
I
wanted to make something with a Chinese theme and saw these adorable mini-cupcakes on Bakerella’s site. Can you believe these are made with MINI chocolate chips?! I decided to make full size cupcakes for my cousin.
These cupcakes were easy to make because I was able to find the items I needed: black chocolate melting wafers at the local cake and candy supply shop, candy eyes at Hobby Lobby, and dark chocolate expresso beans at CVS (yes, the pharmacy!).
Here are some cupcakes I decorated, experimenting with different techniques for the fur, eyes and ears.
The decorating steps are pretty self-explanatory:
It was fun to make subtle differences in the faces like moving the eyes up or closer together, using big or small noses. I wasn’t able to make as many funny faces as Bakerella since I didn’t have a mouth. Next time I hope to find something to use for the mouth.
Lastly, I decorated a small 6-inch cake so I could write a message wish to my cousin. I think he really liked the cupcakes!
Panda cupcakes with 6″ cake
Peanut Butter Treats – Clockwise from top left: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies Cups, PB&J Cookies, Peanut Butter Cup Brownies
I love the flavors of peanut butter and chocolate together. When I saw Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups at Trader Joe’s (TJ’s), I had to buy them! Then I had fun incorporating them in some easy baking projects. 
And there you have it!
Chopped peanut butter cups on brownie dough
Peanut Butter Cookies with Jelly Centers
Cupcake Cookie with Sprinkles
Cupcake Cookie Cutter
I had made some sugar cookie dough a few weeks ago and froze the dough because I didn’t get around to baking the cookies. I had a cupcake cookie cutter and thought it would be fun to decorate the cookies as cupcakes. For tips and tricks on baking and decorating cookies with royal icing, see my post on Baby Girl Cookies.
Cupcake sugar cookies?!
After I carefully rolled out the dough on parchment paper and cut the cupcake shapes out, I popped a tray into the oven. I was dismayed to see how much the cookies spread in the oven! 😦 They weren’t recognizable as cupcakes at all! Oh, well, I thought, it’s a good thing that I was not making these for a particular event! (After I finished decorating, you’ll see that the shape didn’t really make too much of a difference in this case. Still, I will used a different recipe next time I make shaped cookies!)
I continued on, making the royal icing while the cookies cooled. I made royal icing from pasteurized egg whites. You can buy the egg whites ready to use from the grocery store. I’ve like using egg whites better than meringue powder because my icing comes out softer. I don’t like really hard icing for cookies.
The advantages of buying the egg whites in the carton are 1) You don’t have to separate them from the eggs yourself, 2) They are shelf stable for some time so you can buy them ahead of time and they are ready to use when you want them, and 3) You don’t have to worry about salmonella because the egg whites are pasteurized.
Three steps to decorate cupcake liners
I decorated the cupcake liner first, outlining the bottom of the cupcake with white icing, then flooding it with thinned colored icing. (I used more of the pasteurized egg whites to thin the royal icing for flooding.) The tip of a chopstick works well to spread the icing to the edges and into the corners.
I decorated the liners in various ways. For some I piped white stripes to imitate the accordion fold of basic cupcake liners. When the lines were piped right away before the flood icing set, they sank into the flooded icing, giving a nice integrated look. For some, I dipped a chopstick tip into thinned icing of contrasting colors to make polka dots. For some, I drizzled lines of contrasting thinned icing and ran a toothpick through the icings to swirl them.
Piped Lines
Polka Dots
Swirled Pattern
The last step was to add the frosting tops. I used a variety of star tips to pipe luscious-looking mounds of frosting on the top of the cupcakes. When I ran low on frosting, I used a knife to spread the frosting to look like a homemade frosted cupcake. Colored sprinkles added a festive touch!
Cupcakes or Cookies? You decide!
Cupcake Cookies
Baby Shower Favors
Last week I made cupcakes for a coworker’s baby shower party favors.
Wilton Color Cups
I decided to make chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling. I used Ina Garten’s chocolate cake recipe. The cakes were delicious and moist. The special ingredient is a cup of coffee. The coffee intensifies the deep chocolate flavor. The batter was very thin and the cupcake tops ended up being flat. That would be good for making layer cakes; I would have preferred to have more rounded tops for the cupcakes. Next time I’d try cutting down on the liquid to have a thicker batter.
Important! Use foil-lined color cups for nice presentation!
Left – black paper liner with colored dots; Center – white foil-liner with colored spots; Right – white paper liner
Foil Lined Cupcake Liner
These cups are lined with foil on the inside so the cupcake color and oil don’t show through to the outside. I baked a few cupcakes with some regular paper liners to show you the contrast. You can see how much brighter the colors of the foil-liner are.
Cut a circle from the top of the cupcake.
Now, the surprise inside – peanut butter filling! The filling was based on Martha Stewart’s peanut butter filling recipe. It’s basically butter, peanut butter, and marshmallow creme. I really like the light texture of the marshmallow creme combined with the peanut butter flavor to cut down on the sweetness. I used Trader Joe’s unsalted creamy peanut butter which has a rich peanut flavor.
To fill the cupcakes: Cut out a circle from the top of the cupcake. Save the top. Hollow out a bit more from the inside of the cupcake to make room for the filling.
Hollow out the middle of the cupcake.
Fill with peanut butter filling.
Use a piping bag or small spoon to fill the cupcake. Replace the top and you’re ready to decorate!
The frosting is swiss meringue buttercream, colored blue with a combination of royal blue, sky blue, and turquoise colorings. I used a large round tip “6PT” to pipe a simple icing top.
Wilton Royal Icing Monkeys
I found these cute royal icing monkeys made by Wilton. They were perfect for the jungle animal theme of the baby shower..
Yummy!
Snowflake Birthday Cake
Each year I make a birthday cake for my cousin’s daughter Natalie whose birthday is on Christmas Eve. This year she turned 16 and I made a snowflake cake.
Snowflake plunger cutters
I chose to make the snowflakes out of fondant using these plunger cutters. I really like the detailed shape and design on the plungers. I let them dry overnight and dusted them the next morning with sparkle luster dust. I also cut out two large snowflakes from the fondant using a regular snowflake cookie cutter. The sparkle was very subtle. Next time, I think I would roll out the fondant and dust before it dries, and then cut the shapes.
Snowflakes dusted with sparkle dust
I baked two 8-inch round cakes, leveled them and cut each in half to have four layers. Natalie likes chocolate, so I filled them with chocolate buttercream. Then I covered the cake with white buttercream tinted a light sky blue.
Four chocolate cake layers filled with chocolate buttercream
I used a round #5 tip to do the edging around the bottom of the cake and then placed the snowflakes on the top and sides of the cake. I piped “Happy Birthday Natalie” using the same blue buttercream.
Snowflakes on the top and sides of the cake
I thought the cake looked a little plain and wanted to add some more sparkle. I tried brushing the luster dust on the cake, but the sparkle was very subtle and didn’t brush on evenly. Then I added some small silver dragees…and they really did the trick!
First slice! Yum!
Last weekend, I held my first cake decorating workshop. The workshop was part of a crafts event at church which where ladies could take classes to make items such as greeting cards, fabric pumpkins, mini-glitter houses. I had eight students ranging from 7-years-old to seniors. We all had a great time, and I was so pleased and proud of each of the beautiful and unique creations!
For each student, I provided:
two six-inch cakes
filling
frosting
offset spatula
handout with basic instructions and icing techniques
I also provided:
piping bags
couplers
tips
icing color gels
other miscellaneous tools
I demonstrated basic steps for filling and frosting a cake, and decorating techniques using a star tip and round tip. Lastly, I showed them how to make leaves with tip #352, and how to ice cupcakes.
I think the pictures speak for themselves!
Shower cake for Baby Boy
A coworker requested a cake for his wife’s baby shower. They are expecting a boy. I asked them to send me some pictures so I could get an idea of what they wanted. Here are the pictures they sent.
These pictures gave me a good idea of what their tastes were like. I knew I should do a tiered cake in fondant for that classic look, and have baby booties on top.
Cut out shoe part with detailing
Directions for making baby shoes can be found on the web. I saw the most adorable baby high tops, but I thought this cake would be better with a more traditional baby shoe look. Many thanks to the Cake Journal for their Baby shoe tutorial which I followed more or less. I used a mixture of half fondant and half gum paste. The gum paste gives strength and the fondant gives pliability to shape the shoes before they dry too fast!
Assembling the shoes
When I saw the mother-to-be after the shower, she told me that she was so happy with the cake. She said it was the first time that she asked for a cake and got what she wanted! She didn’t get the cake she wanted for her wedding cake or birthday cakes, but she did for her baby shower! So I was very pleased that I was able to meet her expectations!
Here is a picture of the mom-to-be and the big-sister-to-be at the baby shower. They are very sweet!
Mother and daughter with baby cake
Shirlee Goodness Cakery 