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Mount Dinocake

Posted on August 19, 2008 12:05 pm by TheAngelForever

As previously mentioned, NHL asked for a dinosaur and volcano cake for his birthday. We practiced making it with the giant cupcake pan and then made the real thing this weekend for his 5th birthday party with our family on Sunday.

Rather than tease you, I will play nice (this time) and reveal Mount Dinocake. . . .

Of course since it was a birthday party and we had lots of family over, so additional food was also prepared. JL and I stayed up late Friday and Saturday night making sure everything was made. The only items we did not do ourselves were the pizza, flat bread, hummus, and rolls. We made the vegetarian "meatballs" in sweet and sour sauce, peanut butter pasta with broccoli, edamame and red pepper, along with the cake/cupcakes and zucchini bread. Here they are for you to view:

This is all that remained of Mount Dinocake when everyone was finished.

NHL had a fabulous time playing and talking with everyone there for his 5th birthday. He loved the attention and posed for photos with a lot of our family. It was his idea since he wanted photos of everyone for his photo album. Below from top/left to bottom/right: NHL with (1) Aunt S and Uncle M, (2) Cousin B, (3) Uncle J, (4) Uncle M, (5) Mimi, and (6) Cousin H.

Between lunch and cake NHL opened his presents. He received fabulous gifts. Here are a few photos of him opening items.

Meanwhile as he was opening his gifts all of the "kids" were playing and keeping busy (yes this included my two adult cousins).

Before we knew it the end of the party had arrived. NHL was quite sad to see Cousin B and Cousin H leave early. It was so cute to watchhim interact with B. He keeps talking about him and wants to know when he will see them again. For now he will have to settle with photos like this:

Then Bubbe and Grandpa left and eventually Uncle I, Aunt M and Cousin S. Here is Nana saying goodbtye for now to S. Next time we see her will be her first birthday in September.

I am still in denial that I have a five year old son. Two weeks from today I take NHL to meet his kindergarten teacher. It truly does seem like he was an infant just yesterday. Where did my baby go?

Categories:
birthday family food glorious food fun nhl photos yummy

Mount Dinocake practice

Posted on August 11, 2008 12:05 am by TheAngelForever

As previously mentioned, my soon to be five year old son, NHL, asked for a dinosaur cake with a volcano on it. Rather than run and hide, I decided to make it . In my last post, I showed how I sculpted the volcano shape from our giant cupcake mold. It was not too horrible, but the real challenge would come in finding the right decorating tools to make it really look like a volcano.

We bought whipped milk chocolate frosting to go on the complete outside of the volcano mountain. I have found that the whipped variety spreads much easier. In addition to this, it works nicely in my decorating tools if need be. Below is what it looked like after covering the volcano shape completely with this frosting.

Please note that JL and I were acting like kids. We quickly realized what the cake also looked like and did impressions of Mr. Hankey.

Next we had to decide which of the items to use for the lava coming down the volcano. We had purhased two items after researching this online. They were:

Since we were unable to locate plain strawberry Fruit by the Foot I tried the Berry Tie-Dye one. It did not work! The red icing was set up using the star tip and I was ready to go. As you will see, a volcano was quikly born.

Once this was done I made the cupcakes to take to NHL’s birthday party with a friend that was today. I used the extra red icing and some sparkle sugar sprinkles. Photos of those to come with details of the party. I also decided to use the remaining chocolate frosting to make the excess giant cupcake remnants into something more pretty. Here is a before and after.

Next Friday I will bake another giant cupcake, freeze it until Sunday to take to NHL’s family party where I will construct another volcano with dinosaurs around it, officially naming it Mount Dinocake!

For now my project is to figure out how to get this volcano cake to JL’s work on Monday. At least that is the plan now.

Categories:
birthday food glorious food fun laughs messy nhl photos yummy

The volcano cake challenge

Posted on August 10, 2008 9:48 am by TheAngelForever

What do you do when your four year old son requests a dinosaur and volcano cake for his fifth birthday?

These are a few of the options. Do you. . .

hide under your covers and pretend you heard nothing?
run to the nearest store and order a cake for a lot of money?
search on Google for volcano cakes and get fabulous ideas in your head?

Here in Angel Land, I immediately envisioned using the giant cupcake pan to make said volcano into a reality. I most definitely did a Google search to see what others before this had done. Did I have a clue what I was going to do beyond that? Not really, I am quite good at making things up as I go. Of course JL and I bounced ideas to each other and I even opened it up to people on Twitter for thoughts.

In the end we opted to use the giant cupcake. I figured in order to make it more of a volcano shape I had to use the bottom as the top, and the top as the bottom. Got that? I am serious, the shape of the cupcake flipped around like that could quite possibly work. You will see how it worked in the photos below.

Yesterday we went out and bought the cake mixes (yes I cheat that way), frosting, red icing for possible lava, and Fruit by the Foot (another possible lava although no strawberry was to be found). After the kids were in bed JL and I baked the giant cupcake and eight little ones with the remaining batter.

This morning, after leaving the cake the chill during the night, I set out to create the volcano. Here is the giant cupcake before anything was done.

Next it was time to cut off excess cupcake that was not needed for the volcano. Please note, no fingers were lost in the making of this cake!

And some more here

Once all of the giant cupcake pieces were just right it was time to figure out how to put it back together as a volcano cake. First we simply put the top piece down for the bottom, and put the large bottom on top of that. It looked like this:

Soon we realized that the bit that was taken off the top of the original cupcake would make a perfect topping for Mount Dinocake.

The construction was complete and it was time to decorate to really make this cake look like a volcano. Those photos will be shared later on. Sorry for the tease, but it is time to get the troops ready to head out. Today we are taking NHL and his friend I. out for a birthday celebration. NHL selected a spot that he wanted to go to and after that we will likely head out for pizza together, followed by cupcakes that I baked. The real Mount Dinocake will be made next week for our family party on NHL’s actual birthday in a week.

Categories:
birthday food glorious food nhl photos yummy

A sushi and cookie cake kind of day

Posted on August 5, 2008 12:05 am by TheAngelForever

As previously mentioned, Sunday was my husband’s birthday. We all woke up early and I had a horrible headache. After eating breakfast the little guy and I went to take a nap. This gave JL and NHL time to play some Nintendo Wii and take a shower. Once I was up we got dressed and went to Moe’s. Thanks to kids eating free and JL’s free birthday burrito our lunch cost $7.55 for all four of us! Next we went shopping at BJ’s and then went back home since the little guy was getting tired.

After resting for a little while it was time to take the boys to my parent’s house. Mom and Dad had said that they would feed the boys dinner so JL and I could go out together. JL decided on a Japanese/Chinese restaurant. We ordered a bunch of different things. Both of our meals came with Miso soup. Then we ordered two appetizers and also received a free sushi roll. We picked out Agedashi Tofu (not horrible, just nothing to write home about), Eggplant Yaki (fabulous), and Salmon/Avacado sushi roll (my favorite part of the meal). Then we ordered two items that we have never had. Thanks to a recommendation from a friend I decided on the Veggie Tempura. It was quite good, but I am not used to fried food. JL decided to get a Veggie sushi roll platter. It had a seaweed salad roll, cucumber roll, and a squash roll. Here is a photo of the amazing platter thanks to JL’s cell phone.

When we finished eating we called and found out that my parents, grandmother and the boys were still having their dinnner. We went to Walmart to look for a new outdoor garbage can. We wandered around and then went back to my parent’s house for some cake.

JL requested a cookie cake . . . voila!

My mother had NHL’s gummy worms out.

I am unclear as to why, but eventually some of the worms ended up on the cake like so:

Not to worry, the creepy critters did not upset anyone from devouring the cake. Below is NHL figuring out a plan of attack and JSL already digging in.

Yummy!

It was a very nice day, minus the headache. Thanks to Mom and Dad for watching the boys. We loved the restaurant and hope to go there again soon.

Categories:
birthday family food glorious food jl jsl messy nhl photos yummy

Another 6 pound strawberry adventure

Posted on June 21, 2008 10:38 pm by TheAngelForever

Today it was beautiful so we opted to head out and get more strawberries and meet up with friends. Believe it or not, hardly any strawberries remain from the 6 1/2 pounds picked last Sunday. The boys did an amazing job gobbling them up. JL and NHL have had them everyday in their lunch, JL found a yummy recipe for Stawnana bread (see photo below), and we made some jam.

This is the strawnana bread that JSL actually asked for by saying "Dada Yum!"

The containers of jam that we made quickly on Thursday evening. Thanks to everyone for all of the recipes and suggestions.

These are a few photos from today. Be sure to hover over the photos to see the captions.

The fields were amazing today. The berries were huge, red and everywhere. JL and I were amazed with the number of people there today and all of the strawberries being picked. JL did most of the picking today and finished in less than 40 minutes!

Please note that NHL picked this shirt out at the store!

NHL was allowed to have one strawberry out in the field.

Had to taste test at least one

Yes, these will do

NHL was not as into picking today. I think it was too close to going last week, plus he had a friend that he wanted to play with. The fields and their flowers were more interesting today. Here is one he picked for me.

We had a great time out in the gorgeous weather picking another six pounds of strawberries. Tomorrow thanks to rain, JL plans on making more strawnana bread, possibly making more jam, and figuring out other things to do with the berries. I on the other hand will be busy doing laundry that was never touched all week.