Baking – Planet Plan-it!

A Barbie Birthday

April 21, 2021April 6, 2021 kierstynrae

My girls both have summer birthdays and during our 2020 COVID-19 summer I thought it best to coordinate decorations for the small bubble of people that would be attending. My oldest requested a Barbie birthday for her quarantine birthday. So I got hot pink decorations and tableware for a Barbie and Watermelon birthday. I did an infusible ink shirt, tulle tutu, Barbie cake and cake pops to make the theme more obvious.

The Barbie cake was no small feat. I used a Barbie that she already had, washed her and put plastic wrap on her hair while I decorated. I made a pink bundt cake and an 8″ round purple cake.

The icing almost filled in all the awkward bits that the first layer of chocolate icing missed.

Here’s the happy Barbie birthday girl in her outfit.

I had lots of leftover cake from trimming down Barbie’s dress and icing. I decided to mix them up to make cake pops (which was really nice for distancing friends).

Baking

Mermaid Cake!

August 14, 2018August 14, 2018 kierstynrae

Ok, so my daughter is two now. But she doesn’t have the communication skills to tell me what she’d like as a theme for her birthday. And then there’s my husband who will say, “Why do we need a theme?!” She’s just soaking everything up like a sponge right now and I was overwhelmed with ideas for birthday ideas.

Then there was the fact that my birthday is 4 days earlier.

So this year I decided to pick turquoise and purple decorations and come what may. But while I was in the process of picking out decorations I noticed a mermaid theme emerged from my choices. So you could kind of say that her cake picked me…

Or not.

So my family is arriving and I’ve only given her cake a crumb coat. Do I compromise and finish the cake quick? No, I do not. I am so proud of the time and effort I put into this sucker. And it was eaten so fast that I’m lucky I got pictures in time.

In the back of my mind I was thinking of a pin I’d saved from years earlier here. I thought instead of petals, I could make mermaid scales.

I picked 3 colours and iced dots of each colour on the sides. Then I used a spoon to smooth down the right side of each dot. Then I wiped excess icing on a paper towel. It was time consuming but not at all difficult. Here are my steps.

Baking

Tie-Dye Cupcakes

August 3, 2018August 3, 2018 kierstynrae

About the time that everyone wanted to start a bakery I was also trying out my skills as a baker. My brother went to school and played hockey in the U.S. so my parents crossed the border to visit all the time. My mom would find fun things all the time and bring them back to me. One time, she found a Duff cake box for tie-dye cake!

The instructions were very clear and the box came with everything I needed. It would be really easy to do it again. Make cake mix then separate to add the colours.

I mixed them by hand to save doing dishes.

Six colours in total! Remember your ROY G BIV (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)? Oops. No indigo.

I decided to make cupcakes instead of a layered cake. I poured the red cake in first then orange and so on. I tried my best to pour into the centre but the great thing about tie-dye is that it’s very forgiving of mistakes.