Knights and Unicorn Party

We decided to host a joint birthday party for my two oldest, whose birthdays are a month apart.  My daughter wanted a unicorn party, and my oldest was easily persuaded to have a knight theme.  I thought a castle cake would be fun.  Since this is the third of five cakes I need to make over a six week period, I wanted the cake to be simple.  Pinterest can be helpful as well as dangerous.  This time it was super helpful.  I found a cake that was easy to make.

The cake is made of a 9x9 square two layer cake and a 6 inch round layer cake.  I used some silicon cupcake wrappers and sugar cones for the towers.  The door and windows are made from a Hershey's Bar.

I also made these two bean bag game covers for the game we already owned.  I drew the castle based on my son's design and he drew everything in the sky.  It was great to have him involved.

I confess that I did  not draw this unicorn free hand.  I traced it from an image that I saw on Pinterest. Both I painted using acrylic paints.

The kids also had fun finding dragon eggs.

Summer Cake

I am in the middle of creating five cakes.  My son's teacher asked me to bring in a cake to celebrate all the summer birthdays.  I'm sure I could have just bought one, but that would be too logical.  So I made this beach themed cake based on ones I saw on Pinterest.  (I cheated and used a King Arthur Flour cake mix and I bought ready made Betty Crocker frosting.)  I think I spent more time tracking down drinks umbrellas and gummy rings than I did on the rest of the cake.

The sand is made from a mixture of graham crackers and brown sugar, pulsed in the food processor until it looks like sand.  I used the same idea to make the kids' pirate treasure map cake last summer.

The tricky thing will be transporting the cake safely to school.  I read a tip about putting a larger cardboard ring around the cardboard that the cake is sitting on.  I had cut the cardboard base out of a pizza box, so I just cut a ring around the circle I had already cut out.  Simple.

Ladybug Birthday Cake

For my daughter's fourth birthday, she wanted a ladybug theme.  Together we looked at some of the ladybug cakes on Pinterest, and she liked about half of them. In my dreamworld, I could probably make one of those fondant cakes, but in the reality of two kids and a baby, that wasn't happening.  When she later said that she wanted a cake with green frosting, purple sprinkles and ladybugs, I thought I could do that and still go to bed before midnight.

I made the ladybugs out of gum paste, based on a tutorial that I saw on YouTube.  I used a black food marker to make the spots and the pupils on the eyes.  I made a template out of a cereal box for the number four and held it over the cake while sprinkling the sanding sugar.  It wasn't perfect, but when a sprinkled more sugar over the top of the cake, it looked fine.  My daughter loved it, which is the most important.