Watercolor Fish Cake

My in laws came into town the other weekend to celebrate my father-in-laws big 66 birthday. That's the retirement age and a "big" deal. They live in Eastern Washington about 2 hours away, so it is always fun for them to come over to the "big" city and play. We lucked out weather-wise fortunately.

 My mother-in-law asked me if I would make a special cake for him for his birthday and of course I said yes! He is very much into fishing and so I started brainstorming ideas for the cake. Obviously I wanted it to be watery. I have seen a lot of techniques using fondant to make the waves or a ruffle in buttercream around the cake. I love the ruffle look but I thought maybe a bit "girlie"

Watercolor cake- Top of the cake

Naturally, I started my research on pinterest. I looked up "fish themed cake" and I saw this really cool one of a fish (made from fondant or gum paste) jumping out of the water...BINGO! That is what I wanted to do. 

The "Big" One Fish Themed Cake

 If you haven't noticed my quotations around "big" in this post then I am pointing them out now because this indeed is a "big" birthday. I loved the play on word of "big" as it relates to fishing.

For dinner we went to Ivar's on the piers to even suit the fish themed birthday even more. Unbeknownst to him as it was a bit of a surprise cake. I love the look on his face in this picture! He is thinking of his birthday wish but is just so tickled with joy at the same time! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Princess Party Themes

What little girl doesn't think she is a princess? That precious age where they run around in play dresses and singing songs like the princess in the movie. My favorite Disney Princess was Belle mainly I think because she looked like me - brown hair and up in a pony tail.

This blog post is dedicated to all the princesses out there from pink, purple and sparkly to frozen elsa's. Let me wave my magic wand and "bippity boppity BOO"

Never has a Disney theme been more popular than the hit movie Frozen. I love watching all the latest Disney movies. I loved Tangled and Brave. Frozen was just o.k to me. It had some weird "Barbie" dialogue as I call it...you know what I mean? That prissy, sissy comment...I don't know maybe it was just me, Olaf is adorable though and I have to admit the plot was not what I was expecting it to end up.

2 tier Frozen Themed Cake

 I have been getting better at my cake styles. I will have to say that fondant can be such a pain but man did I have fun making this cake. I used fondant snowflake plungers to make the accent snowflakes as well as alphabet cutters to make the name - so much easy. Then I laid extra white fondant over the top of the layers to give it the "snow drift" effect. This part was actually tricky that I thought it was going to be. .

Frozen Themed Crown and Snowflake Cookies

Pink and Purple Princess Cake Pops

Nothing says "girlie" more than a pink and purple princess themed party. I am so lucky to have a Michael's craft store about 5 minutes from my house. I made a venture there and found these adorable Wilton Princess cupcake toppers that would be perfect with the theme. These cake pops might just be my favorite. I dipped them in Wilton Melting Chocolate and then covered them in clear sprinkles (also by wilton) to give them that sparkly look. Next I dabbed a little more chocolate on top to get the crowns to adhere and voila! They turned out perfectly.

Pink and Purple Princess Crown and Wand Cookies

Now with the below cake pops, I was curious to see if I could get a little crazy and shape my cake pops. Normally I just so a ball shape because they are easy, but I got to thinking that maybe I could use a small cookie cutter and CUT them into a star shape instead of molding them into a star by hand. It was a little tricky to do and they were a little finicky to dip BUT they WORKED. And again I dipped them in chocolate and covered them in clear sprinkles.

Princess Wand Cake Pops

Tips with doing this though, have a knife hand. I found the star shape to be too fragile to tap the excess chocolate off. So I used my straight metal spatula (the kind for cakes) and scrapped off the extra chocolate, it took a little bit more time, but it seemed to work well to accentuate the shape. Otherwise they would have been a big blog.

So what little princess do you have at home? What is her favorite princess theme? Oops looks like the clock is striking midnight! Got to go!