Tractor Birthday

My nephew turned 2 years old this month. Since he can't tell me what kid of cake he wanted his mom and dad choose the theme of tractors.  This kids loves tires and anything that has a motor, really...  I attempted to make a 3-D shaped tractor.  It didn't work out quite like I had hoped- One of my nieces said it looked like a "race-car-tractor".  O.K.  I'll take that... She also told me I was "The best cake maker in the whole world"... O.K.  I'll take that too... :)

Can you see by the pans below how I would use them to make a tractor?

Lindsey helped me "glue" some tires on...

 The rest of the gang helped as well...

Blowing out the candles...

Everyone got into helping...

Here is the birthday boy chowing down on one of his tires...

Super Cute birthday boy! 

Apple Tart

I made something a little different for Thanksgiving this year.  Thanks to pinterest,  I stumbled upon these beautiful apple tarts's that looked like roses.  I knew instantly that I needed to try them.

For details on how to make the rose apple tart visit Tikkido's website here: http://tikkido.com/node/750

She provides great directions and even a video to make sure you core the apples the right way to assure you have one side of the apple slice with skin, to give the apple tart I nice rose color.

Here are some pictures of my assembly:


I did learn that I needed to microwave the apple slices for about 30 seconds in small batches to make sure they could bend as needed to wrap around each other in the tart pan...

 I added some butter and brown sugar to the bottom of the pan to give it more of a caramel flavor..

Here they are all ready to go in the oven...

Right before they went into the oven I decided to add some cinnamon and brown sugar to the top as well- Just a little bit...

 Here they are all bubbly and warm... They smelled so good and tasted great as well!

70th Celebration

 My Uncle turns 70 Years old this month. Tonight was his surprise party and boy was he surprised. It was so nice to see our family together tonight.  The cake was inspired by one that I saw on cakecentral. My cousin's helped to decide between the many different styles of hunting themed cakes that were out there.  This hunting scene was fun to make.

Deer assembly...

 Making rocks...

I love his camouflage pants...

 Adding the eyes makes a big difference....

The "pieces" getting ready for transport...

 The water is piping gel with blue color added.

A Witch's Birthday Accident

My niece turns 6 years old this year. Can't believe how fast time is going... As my nieces are getting older their cake requests are getting more specific.  This time she asked for a cake with a chiwawa with a Witch's hat on top. She also loves her neighbor' Halloween decoration of a witch running into a tree.  I found a great tutorial on mycakeschool.com's blog to help me figure out how to re-create the witch's accident on the cake.  This week there have been some amazing cakes on the various cake blogs I follow and I fell in love with the cobweb cake from half baked at the cakeblog.com.  So to make everyone happy I made the witch fly into a cake covered in cob webs and placed the dog on top with a witch's hat... I love the way it turned out!

The birthday girl....

Celebrating with her sister...

 Pieces of the cake waiting to be assembled...

 Cob Web Cake...

Cob Web Cake with piped on witch...

Grads and Fireworks

Celebrated the graduation of my cousin from high school as well as the 4th of July this weekend.  I can't believe by little cousin- who I baby sat over the summer when she was 3 month to 6 month old is now graduating from High school.  Yikes. 

The bad news about the cake is that during the transport I had my second cake wreck of all time.  I guess that isn't too bad of a track record considering I drive about an hour every time I go to a family function...
The good news is that the leopard print on the inside of the cake worked!  yeah...
Here are pictures of the cake, the cake wreck and the aftermath...

This is the only before picture I have...

The after...

 

 

 My attempt at leopard print on the inside...  Thanks to mycakeschool.com

 

 Good thing I made cookies too...