I really don’t know where the time went. One day he was a baby and the next he is 4. When I was in the midst of diapers, nap-time, breastfeeding, and spoon feeding I though that the baby days would never end. Days dragged on and I waited not so patiently for my husband to get home so that I could get a few moments to myself. Now with a preschooler and a child in grade 2 life revolves around school drop off and pick-ups. We will however, continue to celebrate each passing year as it marks the growth that we have all achieved and of course take loads of photographs.
cupcakes
Cupcake Sliders
If you are heading to a BBQ this weekend, or hosting a BBQ what are you serving for dessert? How about cupcake sliders? These are a great conversation starter, plus you might fool the occasional guest into thinking that they are actually meat burgers.
Use your favourite cake recipe or boxed cake mix for the vanilla buns and chocolate patty. If you happen to have a silicone cupcake tray use it, because it means that there are no paper wrappers to remove.
Canada Eh!
Canada Day is a special holiday for me aside for the fact that it’s Canada’s birthday, its the holiday that I spent with my Nana. Sure we spent lots of holidays together, but rarely did we have holiday time without a whole pile of other family. On July 1st my grandparents would typically be at their cottage, and once I was able to get there independently I would call up a few days ahead of time to reserve my room. She would always tell me that it was ready and waiting.
Minion Cupcakes
I am that mom that sends cupcakes to school for her kid’s birthday, please don’t hate me, I like baking. One of the kids in my son’s class asked him how many days it took me to make them! Honestly as you might be able to tell these were very quick, from start to finish it didn’t take more than 2 hours including baking time.
I challenged myself to make and decorate cupcakes without going to the grocery store. It’s beginning to look like Michael’s in many parts of my house and it’s about time that I used some of the supplies I have. Believe it or not I had minion cupcake wrappers, no doubt I saw them somewhere cheap one day and bought them (then forgot about them). So Minion’s were the theme. With cake mix, frosting, food colouring, eggs, oil, white lifesavers, and chocolate chips on hand I got to work. Here was the result.
On the second day of Christmas
On the second day of Christmas my true love made for me two types of reindeer treats, and a veggie tree.
Frightful Tricks and Treats
Halloween is one of my favourite days of the year. With little ones it’s easy to get caught up in all of the excitement. Here are a couple of projects that we made for the holiday.
Mummy Cupcakes
We went to a Halloween party and brought these mummy cupcakes as dessert. They are chocolate cupcakes with white icing, and red M&M’s for eyes.
Pumpkin Rice Crispies
These treats went to one of my boys classes for a Halloween party. I found the instructions here. I took some liberties with the recipe and added pretzels for stems and green frosting leaves.
Halloween Wreath
I copied my own idea from last years Christmas wreath and made a similar wreath for Halloween with orange and black washi tape.
As a pretty passionate maker you might think that I would be making the kids halloween costumes but I don’t. The reason why is that it’s just too expensive. I do however make my own costume every year. This year I was little red riding hood. I didn’t make it into any of the photos this year 😦
BBQ Cupcakes Hot off the Grill
We headed to a potluck BBQ on the weekend and wait for it, we brought cupcakes. If you have been following my blog for a little while you might have noticed that every other post is about cupcakes. I have been altering the posts between brain tumours and cupcakes just to keep the content light and fluffy.
I started taking a cake decorating class and I was quite bummed when it got postponed because the instructor had to go in for surgery, the class will resume some time in August and I am hoping to be healed from my surgery in time to participate. During the last class the young girl beside me managed to get frosting in her hair. I will have to remember to keep my distance from her as frosting in my healing skull probably wouldn’t be “just what the doctor ordered”.
In keeping with the BBQ theme I stole this idea from my favourite site. In case you want to copy from me copying from Pinterest here are the instructions:
Instructions
- Bake chocolate cupcakes (just follow the instructions on a boxed cake mix) or get really wild and bake them from scratch
- Frost the cupcakes once they are cooled with chocolate frosting, they don’t have to be perfect because you are going to cover them in sprinkles (aka fire)
- Dip, roll or sprinkle the cupcakes with any combination of red, orange or yellow sprinkles (I used red and clear sugar sprinkles because that’s what they sell at the dollarstore and I am cheap)
- Draw on a BBQ grill with black frosting
- Add on a few “Hot Tamales” or red Mike&Ike candies (aka Hot dogs)
- Draw grill marks on the candy
P.S. if you decide to send your husband to the store for hot tamales and he happens to have been born in another country where he wouldn’t have had access to these treats explain to him exactly what you want or you might end up with hot peppers.
Eating Beavers
For our Canada day celebrations I made beaver cupcakes for the little cannucks, or at least that is what they are supposed to look like. For some reason when I made them they did actually resemble the animal, now looking at the pictures I wonder how much wine I consumed while baking. Either way the kiddies ate them up.
If you want to take a run at them this is what I did, perhaps you can improve on it.
- baked and iced cupcakes with chocolate frosting
- for the tails I used lady finger type cookies cut in half
- the flag is helping the tail stand up
- ears are M&M’s
- eyes are fondant with brown food colouring dots
- teeth are white fondant
- the nose is the last step and it a red M&M
Canada Day Cake
I haven’t posted anything in a little while because I have been on a baking frenzy and I am supposed to be studying for exams. I write the first exam of three on Wednesday of next week. I just can’t let a holiday pass by without some sort of festive treat. We had a party on Canada Day to celebrate the birthday of our fantastic country and I made a cake, no real surprise there. I also made some festive cupcakes for the kiddies, I will reveal those tomorrow. We had a great time and the kids had a blast with water guns, and water balloons. Here is little L sporting his new Canada Day shirt for the occasion.
Historically I have made a sheet cake frosted with white icing, and decorated with strawberries in the shape of a Canadian flag. I thought that I would mix things up a bit this year. I have wanted to try making a cake with more than 2 layers. So I made a red, white, red layered cake to resemble the colours and pattern of the Canadian flag. It was more like pink than red but after a few drinks who could tell the difference. I did my best free hand maple leaf on the top. My free hand technique could use some work, but the taste is the same regardless of drawing ability.
Sunbathing Beauties
My oldest graduated from Kindergarten this week and I couldn’t pass up the chance to bake some cupcakes for the celebration party. In the process I learned that you can make and ice about 60 mini cupcakes from a standard boxed cake mix and tub of frosting. These bathing beauties were vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, dipped in light and dark brown (sand) sugar. Topped with a strip of fruit roll-up for the towel and a gummy bear. Garnished with a paper parasol these were a hit with the kiddies.
Ingredients
- Boxed cake mix
- eggs
- oil
- Tub of frosting
- gummy bears
- light/dark brown sugar
- fruit roll ups
- paper umbrella
Instructions
- Bake the cupcakes as per the box instructions
- Ice once cooled
- Roll iced cupcakes in the sugar
- Cut the fruit roll up into towel sized pieces (I did 1″ pieces for mini cupcakes)
- put a dab of icing on the top of the cupcake to attach the towel (fruit roll up)
- Put a dab of icing in the middle of the towel and attach the gummy bear
- decorate with a paper umbrella
Making A Life 