Pinecone Place Card Holders

Hello again everyone!  Today I am highlighting the pinecone place card holders originally featured in our 100th post with Thanksgiving table designs.  I had a lot of fun making these, mostly because they were SO easy to do!  I pulled out the materials and from start to finish I don’t know if this even took me ten minutes.

Materials:

• Designer stones with flat bottoms, usually found around the stepping stone area of your local craft store or Wal-Mart
• Glitter in the color of your choice – I used gold to make it look more Autumn-ish
• Pinecones – I just picked mine at the local park! but you can also buy a bag for usually $1 -3
• Spray adhesive (you will also see regular tacky glue in the picture…I didn’t use it)
• Glue gun and sticks
• Container to work on/put glitter on – in our family we use recycled meat and veggie trays as can be seen in Jen’s post
• Card stock

Pinecone Place Card Holders VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Directions:

1. If the bottom of the pinecone is not level, pull or cut off excess pine spokes
2. Pour a small amount of glitter into your container
3. Spray pinecone generously with spray adhesive, coating entire cone
4. Roll pinecone in glitter making sure to thoroughly cover the outside of the cone and allow to dry
5. Using glue gun, put a dime-sized amount of hot glue on the bottom of the pinecone and immediately place pinecone on rounded part of designer stone; hold steady in place until glue dries, usually less than one minute
6. Print out or hand-write the names of your guests on 2 x 3 inch pieces of card stock and place holder at the top of your place setting

At the end of this project, the design was SCREAMING Christmas tree at me, so I guess I will be making these again at Christmas time with green glitter instead.  I will probably still use the orange stones though because they will make great “tree trunks!”

Tags: Marissa, quick., table setting, Thanksgiving

Pikachu Birthday Party Cookies

Hello blog world!  Yes, we are still alive over here at Threaded Together!  Between family trips, work trips, Halloween, and more, we are keeping busy doing all sorts of things that have kept us away from craft posting for a little while.  We’ll try and get back on the blogging wagon though, especially as the holidays approach!

Yesterday we celebrated my son’s 9th birthday! I know, I am getting so old!  For his birthday we decided to play it low key this year and just had a group of boys (12 to be exact) come over to hang out at the house.  We ate pizza, watched movies, colored, and snacked on chips, cookies, and cupcakes.  They DEVOURED the four pizzas and two boxes of wings I ordered and there were only 3 of 24 cookies leftover at the end.

We did not have any a cake at this party.  My son does NOT like cake.  I know, right?  Clearly he is not my son, but I’ll have to figure that one out another day…  Instead of cake I made him his favorite type of cookie, sugar cookies, and decorated them to look like Pikachu from the Pokémon card trading game.  Go figure, he didn’t like the cookies either.  Apparently I didn’t make the right KIND of sugar cookies.  Don’t let this lead you to believe the cookies didn’t taste good.  They were awesome.  My kid just has issues :). 

Instead of walk you through how I did it, check out this great post on Snack or Die.  Apparently, knowledge of this website is a necessity if you have a boy ranging from age 5 to 15 who likes to play video games!  They have cupcakes, cookies, and more, all decorated to look like characters and worlds from video games and shows.  Super cool.

I followed their tutorial exactly, all the way down to the fact that I had to cut the cheeks and chin off of my bunny shaped cookies to round out the faces.  My differences: for cheeks I used red-hots, chocolate morsels for the ears and eyes, and fruit by the foot pieces for the mouth.  I also just used regular butter cream icing spread over them.

Tags: Baking, birthday, cookies, Marissa, Pikachu, Pokemon

Mummy’s Brunch!

Cheesy, I know, but I couldn’t help myself…it is Halloween season, after all!  Today we will be highlighting my most recent entertaining extravaganza (this morning!)….Mummy’s Bruch!!!  (list of setup and design details shown at the end of the post)

A group of my girl friends, mostly from the neighborhood, are always looking for an excuse to get together and have a good time.  Last month, to celebrate our children’s return to school we went out to eat at a local brunchery.  Inspired, we decided to make it a monthly ordeal, but to host it at our own houses.  This month was our first, and I volunteered to start the partying at my place!

There are two things we KPB girls (yes, we have a name for ourselves) take very seriously in life: 1) our food and 2) our alcohol.  Both must be present in abundance whenever we get together…the majority of us are military wives!  Most of our children are all in school so this was a Mummies only meeting.

I began my planning by putting together a menu of the foods I wanted people to try the most.  I knew I would need some things sweet, some savory, some heavy and some light to make everyone happy and keep the food interesting.  After making the menu I tried to figure out how I was going to lay my house out to hold all the women.  Today there were 13 of us, but there can easily be 30 or more depending on how many of us are able to show up!

My mother would be proud of me…I decided today was finally the day to bust out the good silver!!!  That’s right!  Those boxes came out of the closet and were used (the silver, not the boxes) for the FIRST time since I have had them.  Probably the first time in 20 years!!!  Why you ask?  Well, why the heck not?  All they have been doing is sitting and wasting space in my closet.  You know what I do to things that waste space in my closet?  My family does!  I THROW THEM AWAY!  Obviously, that was not an option here, so I figure I better use them!  They were so gross and tarnished and I was NOT looking forward to polishing them…hence the reason why they have been in their containers for so long!  How do I do it?  Where do I start?  Do I need to have hazmat on speed dial?

Well, when I moved into my house the people we bought it from actually left a container of silver polish in a cabinet.  I have stopped myself from throwing it away a million times because “you never know when I’ll need it.”  And I finally needed it!  I prepared myself for a long night of scrubbing and polishing and sweating, and bleeding and aggravated skin.  Guess what though?  I polished ALL of my pieces in under an hour!  It was so stinking easy and actually remarkably FUN!  I know, right?  But seeing the age disappear from the silver pitcher before my very eyes was amazing.  They shined up like I had just bought them yesterday!  Needless to say, I highly recommend Wright’s Silver Cream. 

Before polishing the silver, I had no plans to do a theme at all.  I was simply going to make some yummy (mummy) food and put it out to eat.  However, after I had all these beautiful pieces lying around I thought, “October!  I HAVE to do a haunted style brunch set up!”  It was so fun!  I spent very little money making it all happen.  I bought the candies webs, bugs, etc. at the Dollar Tree, and since it was brunch, I had most of the items on hand to make the food I was making.  So below I will entail all that I did and  How to Throw a Mummy Brunch!

Theme:

MUMMY’S Brunch! 

Decorations:  

1) “Haunted” silver platters and bowls.  The perfect touch to make the room look like one on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney.  Don’t have silver?  The Dollar Tree carries a plastic type of silver looking stuff (sorry, I really don’t know how to describe it) that really would do just fine.  I would have had no problem using it!

2) Cobwebs on the wall, tables, staircase, and hanging from the chandeliers.  I only purchased one bag at the Dollar Tree and STILL had leftover!

3) Foil wrapped chocolates that looked like eyeballs tossed over the tables amongst the cobwebs. One bag (Dollar Tree) was more than enough for four tables.

4) Wine glasses.  I have had my eyes on these glasses since I spotted them this summer.  They are tall, big, thick and pretty darn sturdy glasses.  Why so special?  DOLLAR TREE!  I had thought about buying the throw away champagne flutes to have fun with them, but those were sold two in a pack for a dollar.  So instead, I spent 16 dollars buying the 16 brand new glasses I have wanted for a while.  Now what to do with my miss-matched Waterford glasses that I never use because I don’t ever want anyone to break them!!!?

5) Three bags of small plastic creepy crawlies (Dollar Tree):

• The long skinny ones were placed in napkin rings with long black paper napkins
• Medium sized ones were tossed around the tables with the foil eyeball chocolates
• Small ones were rings.  These I used to “label” the wine glasses.  These rings are so small they always have slits so you can break them apart in the back.  It was a super easy, cheap thing I came across on accident to wrap around the wine glass stems.

I know this seems like an advertisement for the Dollar Tree, but really, I have become a DT addict!  I never knew I could find so many things there that I need, for my entertaining needs especially!

6) Table cloths that match my normal rooms.  These really made the silver POP!  I found the BEST tablecloths at Bed Bath and Beyond.  They feel soft and look nice, but they are totally stain resistant!  When you spill something on it, the water literally beads up and doesn’t soak in.  Any food that was spilled, I had NO problem wiping up with a sponge.  I am SO excited to have these now!  And they are made out of recycled plastic bottles.  Good for the environment too!!!

Mummy Menu:

Drinks:

1. Bloody Mary’s
2. Bloody Mummy Mimosa’s: 2 bottles champagne mixed with almost one full carton OJ and a splash of pomegranate juice in each individual glass
3. Brainy Bellinis: 1 bottle Prosecco mixed with 2/3 cup white peach puree
4. Coffee with the option of Bailey’s or a fall tasting creamer (cinnamon, caramel, etc), also make sure you have regular milk and sugar out for it
5. Sparkling water
6. OJ, Cranberry Juice, etc

Appetizers:

1. Cheese and crackers (I had a goat cheese, smoked gouda, pepper jack, and rosemary)
2. Garlic Olives (these were torn up…I try to always have something out that people can just pop)
3. Fruit and fruit dip (strawberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, grapes)
   1. pull the grapes off the stems before you put them on the platter…people will be more likely to eat them
   2. fruit dip: one small container of marshmallow fluff and one package of cream cheese (8 oz?) – put them in a bowl and beat the heck out of it on high until it’s nice and creamy…YUM

Mains/Sides:

1. Brunch Strata (made a perfect amount…two or three more people and there would have been no leftovers)
2. Pumpkin Scones/Bread served with sweet potato butter
3. Tomato Basil Tart – a tradition of my mom’s…I’ll have to post another day
4. Maple Bacon Cupcakes

On a side note….Garrett, from Vanilla Garlic comment on my Maple Bacon Cupcake last night..  His taste buds must have been tingling because I received a text from my sister who is aware of my little bloggy blog crush.  Literally while I was in the middle of baking the same dish for my brunch: “Vanilla garlic left a comment on your bacon cupcake post!!!  I know u r swooning right now lol!”  My response: “Please catch me while I fall!”  :)

Dessert:

1. Monkey Bread brought by a friend of mine, but her recipe is pretty similar to mine – again, I’ll have to reserve another day of posting for this one, even though it is super easy and quick.

Well, I fear this post has already turned into a novel.  I’ll let you go now and leave you to your own mummification.  Don’t forget…use the junk you’ve got sitting in a closet.  What’s the point in having the beautiful extras in life if you aren’t ever going to use them?  ANY occasion can be made special enough to dust the china off for!

Linking up to:

Tags: brunch, drinks, Entertaining, food, Halloween, hosting, How to throw a Mummy Brunch, silver

PREGGERS!!!

What a FUN new cake I made today!!!  A friend in the neighborhood is pregnant with her second child…a boy.  Gee, imagine that…me with a pregnant friend!  She has an older son, but there are several years between the two children and she and her husband are starting fresh with all the fun goods and excitement with baby number two!  Today is her baby shower and my wonderful friend who is throwing it, enlisted my services to make a baby shower cake.  We looked in books and magazines and just couldn’t really decide what to do.  Our friend, J, is not doing the uber baby theme for the little guy.  No pastels, no ducks, no choo choos.  Though I would be the exact same way, it also made it a little hard to choose a cake!

My friend spoke to J’s sister and after they did some searching online they decided on this pregnant belly cake.  I have to admit, at first I didn’t think it would be something down J’s alley, but sis knows best!  As I started working on it, my first thoughts were “Oh, I don’t know that this is going to come out as pretty as the pictures they found!”  As you can see in step one with the chocolate belly and yellow boobs, it wasn’t exactly the shining example of a beautiful cake shape.  But lo…I trudged on and continued to the next few steps.

I was very proud of my awesome buttercream crumb layer and proceeded to make my usual marshmallow fondant.  I died it with plenty of Wilton Teal food coloring and draped it over the figure.

“Okay, maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”

I trimmed the edges and added a little bit of detail before dealing with the brown fondant.  I have recently discovered that making brown fondant, and any brown icing for that matter, is not an easy task.  Basically, if you want a dark brown, you need to add chocolate to the mix.  The brown icing coloring is just not enough to do the job.  Some recommend melting chocolate and kneading it in to your fondant.  Others say to add cocoa powder.  I chose the former and boy was it messy!  I’ll try the latter next time, just to be able to compare easy of mixing.  I used the chocolate to create the trim on the pregnant cake’s bustline, as well as to add some accents to the dress.

I. AM. SO. HAPPY. with the way this turned out as you can see at the top of the page.  It if weren’t 1:20 in the morning right now, I would be sending pictures of it over my phone to everyone I know!  I cannot wait to bring it to the party tomorrow and I hope everyone loves it…especially J!

Linking up to:

Tags: baby shower, cake, fondant, Marissa, marshmallow fondant, pregnant, pregnant belly cake

Tailgate Party Food – Jill’s Hamburger Dip

It is a tailgate party without football!

In honor of football season (we take our football very seriously here in the South!), Kathy, the owner of  Needle Delights, declared that “tailgating” would be the theme of this September’s All Night Stitch.  While the party activities were atypical – not a television or football game in sight, just a lot of cross-stitch and needlepoint going on! – even the most hard core football fan would have been comfortable with the menu:  all of the fixings for make-it-yourself sub sandwiches, pasta salad, hot wings, and lots of chips and dips (I think I even saw a few carrots and celery sticks), along with plenty of desserts to satisfy everyone’s sweet tooth.  

My contribution was Jill’s Hamburger Dip. I originally got this recipe from my dear friend, Jill, when she had a group of wives and kids to her home for some kind of party when all of the husbands were on deployment. We were living on base in California so it has to be before 1991. Since then it has been one of my favorites (who needs chips, just give me a big spoon!), and I often bring it to casual get togethers/potlucks. Especially during the fall and winter I try to keep these ingredients on hand — you never know when there will be a last minute get together to watch your team crush their opponents (or not!). I have heard this hot dip called many things, including Dog Food (thanks, for that one, Sherry!).  I guess it does look a bit like gourmet dog food, but I will always think of it as Jill’s Hamburger Dip, and have sweet thoughts of Jill and fun memory-making times every time I make it!

 Here are the basics:

 Ingredients:

 2 lbs. ground beef, browned & drained (I also rinse mine with hot water)

1 large box (16 oz.), Velveeta, cut into chunks (I tried to use a cheap substitute once and it just wasn’t the same!)

1 large jar of chunky salsa (your choice:  mild – hot)

Directions:

 Mix all ingredients. Either microwave until cheese is melted and serve in a bowl on a warming plate, or place all ingredients in a crockpot on high until the cheese is melted and then turn down to low or warm. Keep the dip warm up until and during serving because as it cools it will quickly thicken (then you’ll need a grout trowel instead of a spoon or a chip).  Makes:  A lot!

This is the basic recipe. Some options:

• Substitute sausage for the hamburger
• Substitute Rotel tomatoes for the salsa
• Add chopped onion, green pepper, tomatoes, etc.

 Not sure how appetizing this looks (guess it does look a bit like dog food!), but it is yummy! Serve with tortilla strips, Doritos, or corn chips.

And, I’ll leave you with this thought, GO GATORS!!

Tags: Cooking, cross-stitch, Debbie, Tailgate Party

Homemade Birthday Treat Bags

To continue with a post about my daughter’s birthday, I wanted to share with you the treat bags I sewed.  This was not a project I had intended on completing for the party.  I did not want to buy the cheap little plastic bags to put the treats in for the guests, but I also thought I would be able to find something cute to put them in!  While I was searching for inspiration, I found some wonderful small canvas bags online that had drawstrings to pull them closed.  Alas, I was doing this mere days before the party and would not have enough time to order them.  I went to every craft/fabric/grocery store in my area and they did not have anything close to what I was now bound and determined to have for the party!  So, I did what any other Martha Stewart mom would do and decided to make them myself!

I have tons of leftover fabric from previous projects/projects I never finished.  Since it was a princess party I went with pink fabric for the girls and green fabric for the boys.  Initially, I was going to throw the things together, sew them really quick up the side and tie a ribbon around them.  After speaking with my super sewing mom, I was talked out of that!  She convinced me of how easy it would be to take a few quick extra steps to make the bags look cute and better put together.

First, rip the fabric into elongated rectangles, about 10 inches by 16 or 18 inches.  Fold in the edges of the two elongated sides, approximately 1/4 inch, and iron (this is to create a clean edge).  Fold the rectangles in half along the short sides, with the right, or front sides, facing each other.  Iron along fold.  Fold down the top of each side so there is approximately a 1.5 inch “cuff” at the top of each side. 

*to save time to not have to feed a drawstring through later, I tied the knot in my cording and tucked it under the flap on one side.  Leaving a 1/4 inch edge, sew across one side of the cuff.  Flip the bag around and repeat on the other side, tucking the cord under the flap and sewing across.  Make sure you are not yet sewing the two sides of the bag together!!!  OR you can just sew across each cuff and feed the cord or ribbon through later.

Last – holding the folded piece of fabric together, sew up each long edges to close the bag, stopping just at the seam on the cuff.  Turn bag inside out and have some fun! 

This, of course, still does not produce an amazingly well made bag, but the kids loved them, the adults thought they were great, and it only took me watching the entire movie of Moulin Rouge to finish 24 bags from start to end!  Thanks for the help mom!!!

Tags: birthday, Craft, Homemade, party, recycle, Repurpose, Sew, Treat Bags

Little Princess Birthday Cake

Finally the time has rolled around this year that not only did I get to make another fun cake, but it was for my very own little girl!  Little K turned 5 this year and was DYING to have a big party with all of her friends.  Her birthday is in the middle of the summer and everyone was on vacation at one time or another, so we decided to wait and celebrate right before school started.  We are so blessed with the amazing friends we have who pitched in to help set up, celebrate, and clean up!  Especially with my hubby gone!  The party was princess themed and it was the perfect opportunity for me to get to doll up a cake.  There were over 40 people at the party when you include the kids and the parents (I told you we are blessed!) so I went big with a 3 tiered cake. 

I covered the cake in pink rolled marshmallow fondanton two layers (both chocolate) and white in the middle (yellow cake).  The stars and stripes cut outs and the balls along the bottom were also fondant.  The “bling” around the bottom of the top two layers is rock candy.  I searched everywhere until I remembered the best place to buy something like rock candy is Cracker Barrel!  I also put some “bling” in the middle of each star on the cake.  Last but not least, the crown.  I tried to make a fondant crown and it was actually quite cute!  Unfortunately, as soon as I tried to move it from the wax paper I had it drying on, it broke :(.  This was definitely a foreseeable problem, so I had a back up plan and simply placed a tiara on top of the cake.  It probably ended up looking a lot cuter!!

So, there you go!  A cute little princess cake.  I was very please with the results, and apparently everone else was too because it was almost gone!  Okay, so I might have been cutting the pieces a little big, but not that big. 

Oh, and thank you to all of the friends who stayed behind and helped me jump my car after my battery was dead!  You’re the best!

Happy Birthday Baby!!!

Tags: birthday, cake, Marissa, marshmallow fondant, party, princess

Anniversary Cupcakes…Completed!

Yay!  The day is here!  The cupcakes for my friend are done and they were a big hit at her anniversary party!  Today I am going to show you the process of putting them together.  This was a super fun project and I cannot wait to try more new things with cupcakes!  I definitely stretched the limit with how many different things you can do to one cupcake, but I think they still looked cute!  I little busy, but still funky and fun.  I was so happy to be able to make these for J on her special day.

First I iced the refrigerated cupcakes (super chocolate with chips recipe…YUM!) with the basic buttercream icing recipe.  One batch was enough to cover all of the cupcakes and still have enough to color pink and put the dollop on the top.  After I put the white icing on, I dipped the top of the cupcake into white sugar sprinkles.  Just make sure to put enough of the sprinkles in a bowl and dip the cupcake top in before the icing hardens.

Next I placed the pink icing I colored into a piping bag with a decorative tip.  Anything with a larger opening will do.  I made a quick pink swirl on the top of each cupcake.  It is so tempting to just swipe those right off with your finger and eat them!

After I put the “cherry on top” I CAREFULLY placed a candy heart in the middle of each cake, gently pushing the long bottom into the cake like a pick.  These are incredibly fragile, so be gentle!

I then put each of the “D and J” fondant pieces on each cupcake, making sure it didn’t over crowd the candy hearts too much! 

Last, but most certainly not least, came the homemade cupcake wrappers!  How FUN!  These were such a blast to make and I think they came out so cute!  I placed them in a white cake box (with a cardboard piece in the bottom) for transport.  The only thing that I really had to learn with this project: make sure your cupcakes aren’t too tall when they are finished!  The hearts were already pushing on the top of the box and then when I had to slam on the breaks on my way to dinner….at least 1/3 of the heart pieces broke.  The great heartbreak of 2010.  So sad…but the ones that were still together were still awesome.

Happy Anniversary D and J!!!

Tags: anniversary, buttercream, Cupcake Toppers, Cupcakes, Hearts, icing, sprinkles

Make Your Own Cupcake Wrappers/Liners

Oh. My. Gosh.  I have had WAY too much fun crafting this evening!  Just call me Martha!  Why?  Well, in the next couple of days I will be making cupcakes for a friend of mine.  We are having a Girls’ Night Out to celebrate her 7thwedding anniversary.  A fellow military wife, J suffers what we must deal with on a regular basis.  Her hubby is out on the ship with mine and is not here to celebrate their anniversary together.  Not only that, but she is VERY preggo and will be giving birth before her husband returns home. 

Needless to say, I wanted to do my own little part to make this a special day for her even though she is celebrating it sans husband!  After talking to her about making a cake, the hamster wheel in my head started turning and I decided I wanted to have a little more fun with it.  I changed my mind from a cake to cupcakes and decided to go the full mile when it came to making them super cute.  So tonight is the first post related to the anniversary cupcakes.

Okay, enough of the background…what did I do tonight, you’re asking?  I made homemade cupcake liners, or wrappers, or whatever you would like to call them.  I have seen the super cute wrappers in the store but just haven’t been able to bring myself to spend the money on them and really, none of them have been EXACTLY what I wanted.  So I decided to take on the task of creating them myself.  I did a little research online and found a few other ladies who have tried the same thing.  Why reinvent the wheel?!   This template that I found on Skip To My Lou is the one I used to begin my own.  However, I extended the top of mine another centimeter or so because I wanted the wrappers that extended above the top of the cupcake.  I also inserted a tab so I would not have to have tape on the outside of my wrapper.  With the tab, I was able to put the tape inside.  I also did not print the wrappers directly onto the colored paper.  There are only two templates on the given paper.  I cut one out and traced it four times on larger paper.  This, of course, was a little bit of an added pain (multiply by 24), but saved paper and came out the way I wanted it to look.

***important suggestion – use paper that is colored on BOTH sides.  It does not look nearly as nice when you have white paper on the inside.  Even if you are cutting the paper to normal size, the white will still most likely be seen.

After tracing the templates onto the paper I used an exacto knife to cut them out.  This requires a steady hand, but it is important to know it does not have to be perfect.  It is going to be wrapped around a cupcake for goodness sakes!  The last thing people will be checking is if it is 100% symmetrical!  The first couple were definitely rough around the edges, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and started to breeze through the cutting process.  Since the only two sided paper I had was plain, I decided I would use my stamping materials to embellish the paper.  SO FUN!  Put some paper down (or you can stamp prior to cutting) under the cutouts and make sure the stamp overlaps the borders of the paper and especially both ends where the tab and insert are.  This helps hide the imperfections of the cutting job!

Insert the tabs, tape the inside and voila!  Homemade cupcake wraps!

Linking up to :

Tags: Cupcake, Cupcake Liners, Homemade, Marissa, Paper Craft, Stamp, Wrappers

Super Mario Bros Cake

Today marks the completion of my most elaborate cake yet!  I had such an awesome time working on this!  The creation went off really without a hitch.  I did burn one cake because I forgot to put the timer on.  This, of course, went in the trash.  I also made several fondant pieces in advance but did not put them to dry on a curved surface.  I had a feeling this would be a problem, but tried anyway.  The result was a whole lotta fondant that was flat and stiff as a board.  With the inability to flex around the curved edges of the cake, it went in the trash too.  I am still a little worried that Mario might pass out and fall backwards on the cake.  Heat exhaustion maybe!  Really, he is definitely top heavy in the back of his head and I will be very happy to find out that he stays standing all day tomorrow! (see bottom of post for more pictures)

Other than those minor things, it really was an enjoyable experience.  I learned so much about my own abilities and different techniques working with fondant.  I used two different types of fondant – rolled fondant to make the creatures and marshmallow fondant to actually cover the cakes.  I have found that the rolled fondant works much better when it comes to molding things than the marshmallow.  But the marshmallow tastes so much better (in all the opinions of the people I have polled) so I prefer to use it to do the covering.  As usual, I made all of the fondant myself, which I still prefer doing as well.  The extreme heat made it difficult to work with the fondant at times.  I felt like the Cake Boss when the edges of his Empire State Building were falling off in the heat.  My A/C is already working double time with it being 104 degrees outside though, so there was little I could do about it!

I would have to say that Mario was the most difficult to make (go figure, the one I wanted to have the most detail!) and I had the most fun making Yoshi and the mushroom head guys.  My 8 year old was ready and willing at all times to tell me what creatures I should be making, what they should look like, and what I was doing wrong with them!!! :)  Credit is also due to my husband who thought of making the warping pipe (the green thing off to the side).  I had extra cake and didn’t want it to go to waste!  It became a cute way to show that little E is turning 5!

So now that I have sufficiently de-Crisco-d my kitchen, I can officially say I am done!  The cake is ready to go to its Super Mario home tomorrow and I am sure little E will love it.  His mom came over today and she thinks he will too.  That is the most important part and I cannot wait to find out. 

Since I was covered in Crisco every step of the way, I wasn’t able to take pictures of the process.  Probably a good thing since I tried to get the messy parts out of the way while my husband was gone!  The last thing I need is proof of how the place looked!  I will give you a quick run down of how it all went.  We estimated the entire process took about 16 hours from start to finish.  I used:

• 4.5 bags of powdered sugar
• 2 bags of marshmallows
• 1 container of glucose
• .5 containers glycerin
• A LOT of Crisco (makes everything not stick to everything else until you want it to!)
• The equivalent of 4 cake boxes (but I made mine from scratch)
• A lot of icing color
• 1 box of unflavored gelatin
• 12 eggs
• a few cups of oil
• I think that about covers it

I modeled the figures by their colors.  I started with red and made the heads of the mushrooms and the backs of the turtles, etc.  Then picked the next color that I would need on the most things that had red so I could build onto those pieces.  So on, and so forth.  Then I baked the cakes and let them chill before making the icing to top the cake.  I put a crumb layer of buttercream icing on all the layers before putting them together and chilled them until the icing was set.  I then colored and put the marshmallow fondant on top of each layer.  Here is where I built the layers, putting measured and cut plastic dowel rods into the bottom layer which then supported the tiered plastic plate holding the top layer.  After the layers were built I started placing the figures, really wherever they would sit!  By the way, these were all dried by the time I did this.  If I had ten people working for me, I would have tried to do this cake in a matter of hours, unfortunately that is not possible as a one-woman crew!  After it was all done this evening, into the refrigerator it went!

I really do hope little E thinks it is the best cake ever and I hope to get many more opportunities to make such awesome cakes!

I should also say my husband is happy the cake is done because he has felt neglected this week when it comes to my baking.  Apparently, the 36 scones I made him the other day have not been enough to put an end to his baked goods hunger.  Sheesh!

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Tags: Baking, birthday, buttercream, Cakes, fondant, icing, Mario, Marissa, Super Mario Bros