Life Changing Icing Trick!

I love cake & cookie decorating but I hate hate hate the clean up.  All the messy icing bags and all the tips... it's just no fun to clean them!  I try to use as few icing colors as possible because I dread clean up.  So, last week I was planning on making some sugar cookies with the hard royal icing.  I was browsing google for decorating ideas, and found a cute cookie website.  The lady had referenced her "life changing icing trick with plastic wrap" and I had no clue what she was talking about but was very intrigued!  Scrolling down a bit further, I found this video she had posted.

LIFE CHANGING people, absolutely life changing!  If you use icing bags/tips EVER, you must watch this video!  (The color mixing part is a no brainer, but it's the bag filling part that knocked my socks off)

I was so anxious to try this technique this weekend and it was as awesome as it looks.  Cleanup took about 30 seconds, and I did a little happy dance about it.  I wish I would have found this video back in 2009 when it was posted because I would have saved a ton of money on bags, but better late than never! 

Happy cake and cookie decorating!

Whitney's Family Baby Shower

Whitney's Family Baby Shower was hosted by yours truly.  The day of the shower wouldn't have come together without the help of Kevin (who played super dad many many days), my mom, my sister in law, and my dad. 

I have really been looking forward to Whitney's trip home.  I couldn't wait to see her belly in person, and I was also anxious to see the end result of all the planning I'd done for the shower.  My parents house was transformed into party central and it looked better than I could have imagined!  Whitney received lots of great gifts for Olive, and many people told me they had a great time.  The planning and work was definitely worth it!!!

Here are a few pictures from yesterday's shower. 

The shower invite that matches her bedding - bought on Etsy.

Momma-to-be and my sis :)

I made a few of these pennants to coordinate with her bedding.  I figured I'd make decorations that she could reuse in her nursery if she wanted to. 

Tissue paper flower balls hanging in the hallway.

We made mini baked ham and cheese sandwiches that weren't out of the oven when I took the pic.  Lots of yummy food!

The cake table

I made the cake (of course) and covered it in fondant to coordinate with her bedding!

I ended up with more leftover material from the pennants than I planned, so I made poppy flower pins for all the guests!  My dad spray painted some sticks in their yard, we dug out an old baby stroller from the attic and ended up with a smashing display, if I do say so myself.

Whitney was chatting with all the guests and ended up not getting to eat much before opening gifts!  You can blame the hostess that was snapping pics for that mess up!

Me & Whit with her cake

Sister-in-law, Sister, Me, & Mom.

3 layer chocolate cake with light pink buttercream icing.

3 layer strawberry cake with light pink butter cream icing.

Bake Easy Non-Stick Spray

Ever make a cake you have to scrape out of a pan?  Or one where just a section of what you made sticks?  It's SO frustrating when that happens, but I have a solution!  Wilton makes 'Bake Easy Non-Stick Spray'.  It's awesome!!!  I made chocolate zucchini bread a few weeks ago and I'm always scraping it out of my pans - but not this time.  I turned the pans over and out flopped my little perfectly detailed loaves of bread.  I've used this spray with cakes too - it's all I use now.  I don't have a single gripe about it.  I love it!  It's with the cake decorating supplies at Walmart, and stores like JoAnns and Michaels carry it too.  If you're a baker, you need to start using this pronto!

Cookie Class

I was invited to a holiday cookie class this afternoon.  I was really looking forward to going because I haven't had much cookie decorating experience.  We had so much fun!  The class was taught by Cathy Webb, owner of Cathy's Designer Cookies.  She also teaches classes at Kitchen Affairs.

Today we decorated 4 traditional gingerbread cookies with royal icing.  She had already made the cookies and icing, so it was really nice to go and do the fun part!  Let's get to it - here are the results:

My 1st favorite is Santa, then the snowman, then the snowflake, then Rudolph. 

I'll have to admit, I'm not a big fan of this kind of icing on cookies, BUT I really enjoyed this gingerbread dough with royal icing (verses sugar cookies dough)!  I'm already thinking of ideas for Christmas cookies this year.

Ladybug Cakes

I was asked a few weeks ago if I would be interested in making a 1st Birthday cake.  I quickly said yes for two reasons.  The little girl who was having the party is just down right adorable!  I also made her mommy & daddy's wedding cake and I thought it was nice they asked me to make this special cake.   First birthday cakes are probably my favorite cakes to make.  So, maybe that's three reasons. 

They had a ladybug theme and this is what I made for them:

White and Chocolate Sheet cake

Smash cake

Strawberry and Yellow cupcakes

This is the 1st time this has happened, but Kevin did the delivering for me!  That is usually one of my favorite parts but the boys wanted to go to Gander and Allie was sleeping, so I loaded up my car for him and sent him on his way (and maybe took a nap instead of doing dishes!).  He says that everyone loved the cakes/cupcakes.  I thought all that red and black turned out really cute!  I have to start thinking about what to make for Kevin's birthday cake - I've got 11 days to get that one planned and made!

Cake, Cake, & More Cake

It appears I've dropped off the face of the earth, but the last 2 days I've been working with one of my favorite mediums - cake and icing :)  I committed myself to making 3 different cakes this weekend.  First, a 4 tier ivory wedding cake.  The bride showed me 2 pictures she liked, and I was supposed to come up with something that was her own, but take away styles she liked from both cakes.  The 2nd was a grooms cake (for the same wedding).  She wanted the cake to have a little Miata on it since that's what the groom drives.  The third was for my neighbors daughter.  They have a Mickey Mouse theme and just wanted a small Mickey cake for the head table, and everyone else was going to eat off a dessert buffet.  She showed me what she wanted so I just had to replicate!
Here's the results:

 

Here is a close up of some details :)

"Just Married"

 

I love this tall layer with 490ish gumpaste flowers

I feel like I haven't seen my kids in 2 days.  I baked all day Thursday while Kevin was with the kids.  Yesterday I decorated and my mom watched them all day.  I couldn't have done it without help, that's for sure!  I'm happy with how all 3 turned out, but I hope the brides and grooms are just as happy!