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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

Heigh-ho the cherry-o . . . a picking we will go

Posted on July 10, 2008 6:00 am by TheAngelForever

When I think of summer I automatically picture the fruits of the season. Watermelon, peaches, plums, nectarines and cherries to name a few. Talk about tasty healthy snacking. When the weather is so warm and nothing sounds good, fruit is always perfect and hits the spot.

My favorite fruit by far is the cherry. I love cherries! I have fond memories from my childhood of buying bags of cherries from the store to gobble up. One fun recollection is from a summer that my two cousins came to spend time here from the west coast. Cousin M and I went to the store with my mother and we stood there for a LONG time picking out the perfect cherries. We filled up an entire bag with probably 4-5 pounds or possibly more. When we went to our house we stood outside with my father and had a cherry pit spitting contest. I do not recall who won, but I know we had fun eating and spending time together as a family.

It is only fitting that this past weekend while visiting my brother, sister-in-law and niece that we made some cherry memories for our children (I wish Cousin M had been there). We heard that there was a cherry picking place not too far from their house that had dwarf cherry trees. Those would be perfect for all of us to pick from.

We all got into my car and wandered out into territory that nobody had been to before. After a while we finally arrived to cherry land. From the parking lot you could see the amazing trees ready to be picked. Our mouths were watering from the view. We had hardly had cherries this year thanks to the ridiculous price ($4.99 a pound and up for the bing variety). We slathered everyone with sun lotion and went to get buckets for collecting our fruit.

Then we were off to find the fields with the sweet cherries. Quickly we were walking in a cherry wonderland.

It was absolutely amazing. There were cherries everywhere. Hundreds of trees chock full of cherries ready for us to pick. We set up a place and I stayed with JSL and Cousin S. Aunt M, Uncle I, JL and NHL set off to fill our buckets.

The two little ones were quite content sitting back and watching everyone. At one point S wanted to hold JSL’s hand. He was sweet and played with his little cousin. This was also where they taste tested some of their first cherries. JSL was quite partial to the white cherries that tasted much like peaches inside.

NHL was really good and asked if he could try a cherry from one of the trees. We told him it was fine. He was too cute selecting just the right one, and then finding the perfect place to taste test.

After a short time both buckets were approximately half filled with both cherry varieties. We had no real clue how many pounds we had, so we figured it was best to stop at that point and check in. We got all of our things together and went to the line to check out, weigh in and pay. As you can see cherry picking made NHL quite thirsty!

And for your viewing pleasure, I present you with our gorgeous cherries. All 22.4 pounds of the juicy summer goodness!

Those buckets are very deceptive in the amount they can hold. We were quite impressed with our haul and went back to the house to eat more cherries before giving the kids tubs and ordering our dinner.

What will our next picking adventure be? Perhaps veggies next time! Do you have any memories of summer time fruit or veggie picking fun? If you do please share.