Soccer Girl's Favorite Things Cake

Do you know what a moving up celebration is? I didn't, but maybe that's because my kids are still too young to leave elementary school and "move up" to middle school, but now I know! "Soccer Girl" loves the color green, and also loves monkeys, music, camping and, you guessed it by her nickname, soccer. This cake fit the bill. The cake was vanilla bean with green vanilla buttercream frosting and all the decorations are made from gumpaste and royal icing.

Her mom (and my online marketing idol) Ellen, wrote about the cake today on her blog, Confessions of an IT Girl. It's a great read, even when she isn't praising my cakes!

Cupcakes with kids

I bake cupcakes for kids, but am not really good at baking cupcakes with kids, including my own. I get pretty ocd when I'm baking - things have to be done just the right way, in the just right order, etc., etc., and even thinking of adding lots of little hands into the mix makes me nervous!

Self-analysis over. My friend Debbie Koenig, the talented chef, teacher, blogger and food writer, may have shown me the light. She emailed me yesterday looking for inspiration about how to make Flicker cupcakes for her son. Since Flicker is a Disney character and we're a 100% Noggin household, I had no idea who he was. Turns out he's a very cute flashlight guy and is just perfect for piping on a cupcake.

I gave her my favorite vanilla buttercream recipe and some decorating ideas and the rest is baking-with-kids magic. Check out her post about the whole adventure here. Just might have to give it another try sometime:)

Jesse's Curious George Cake

Jesse turned 2 last month and had a Curious George themed party. The cake was vanilla bean with vanilla buttercream frosting. Decorations made from gumpaste and royal icing.

I realized again that noses are really hard to draw! Fortunately the rest of it looked enough like George that the nose didn't matter.

Talia's Swimming Pool Cake

Talia turned 5 last week and had a pool party, so naturally she wanted a swimming pool cake, and she specifically asked for one with a slide. I sent her some ideas from flickr and the favorite was this one made by the wonderfully talented Kelly O'Brien of Glass Slipper Gourmet.

411: vanilla bean cake with vanilla buttercream and raspberry buttercream filling (my new favorite flavor!) decorations made with gumpaste and fondant

9" and 8" cakes joined together, then I sliced a bit off the top of each top layer and cut out a smaller circle out of it to make the sides of the pool. Buttercream makes great glue!

Ready for chilling overnight (by this point it was 2am!)

I used a parchment template to help cut out the gumpaste for the water, making it much easier to fit it onto the cake.

Cake with water! I love the way the color isn't completely mixed in the gumpaste, so it looks a little more realistic.

The beach ball was a last-minute addition. I didn't have time for painted food coloring to dry, so I used powdered food coloring and petal dust for the colors.