CINCO DAY JAE-JAE !!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Today is my daughter Jaelyn's 5th Birthday!!! Although she had her family party at home today, over the weekend she celebrated with her friends. After two consecutive years of partying at Chuck. E . Cheese ( yes TWO!) Jaelyn finally decided on another fabulous location to host her 5th Birthday Party which was the bowling alley. After months and months of probing Jaelyn about exactly what kind of cake she wanted for this party, the answer remained the same " A chocolate cake with gummy bears and candy all around it " Would you like anything else a little more fancy ? I would ask her, "Nope !" she would say "Just all chocolate with gummy bears" So here you have it

Jaelyn's Candy Mountain Cake !

This is a chocolate cake filled with chocolate butter cream and sprinkled with ghiradelli chocolate chips. I then iced the cake in alternating layers of chocolate butter cream and rich chocolate ganache. The cupcakes are swirled with Mexican vanilla butter cream and are topped with marshmallow fondant cherries and strawberry-lemon marshmallow twists. The cake is adorned with various sweet candies hand picked by Jaelyn herself, some of her favorites include swedish fish, red hot dollars, dots and of course one of her top favorites Gumballs.

When your mommy bakes just one cake won't due, so I made Jaelyn her own personal cake which was cascaded with more of her favorite goodies.

To go along with the candy theme of the cake I made two baskets filled with sweet candy kabobs along with cupcake candy favors filled with m&m's topped off with more of those marshmallow fondant cherries. Both of these goodies were later packaged with soda pop bubbles for all of her friends to take home !! It was a sweet ending for a sweet little five-year old girl !

Uptown Teal Wedding Gown !

I made 45 of these cupcakes to be given away as favors for a bridal shower. The flavor was a variation of "Uptown Cupcake Brown" which is a chocolate cake filled with raspberry jam, dipped in a smooth chocolate-raspberry ganache. The cupcake is then swirled with a rich white chocolate buttercream sprinkled with white chocolate chips then drizzled with a double dose of raspberry and chocolate sauce and chocolate shavings. The cupcakes that I made for the bridal shower were exactly the same but the client decided that she would like the frosting to match the wedding colors which was a teal blue and to add just a simple sprinkle of chocolate shavings to add a slight more elegance. The transformation of the cupcake required a new name which I lovingly decided to call " Uptown Teal Wedding Gown ".

ROWEN LOVES MICKEY !!

The same day I had to make another celebration cake for a little boy named Rowen's 3rd birthday. This one was a replica of the clubhouse from the television cartoon, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Everything from the top of Mickey's head all the way down to his feet were completely edible !

Green Day !!!

At least that's what my daughter Jaelyn was calling the Irish heritage celebration better known by many including my well versed kindergartener Bianca. as St. Patrick's Day Jaelyn was convinced that since all the stores, candy clothes and toys were all decked out in "green" that "Green Day" was indeed the name of this holiday. Bianca on the other hand knew better, as she recently learned all about the meaning of St Patrick's day in Mrs. Anderson's kindergarten class and had been telling me every since the week before that " Tuesday is St. Patrick's Day Mommy" and that I had better not even attempt to put anything green near her body before Tuesday, because she was saving her absolute favorite green dress shirt for that day.

Of course because she had already picked out a perfect outfit I couldn't see sending her to school without a sweet accessory!!!

Bianca's Go Green!! and Sweet!! Marshmallow Kabobs!

We scoured our local grocery store for all candies coming in green, although we didn't find a lot of candy dedicated specifically to St. Patrick's Day we did find a bulk candy bin section in the grocery store. I must confess it took almost 20 minutes to sort through 4 0r 5 bins of assorted color gummy candies but we eventually were successful! We didn't even have any run-ins with grocery store employees telling us that we couldn't pick out the colors we liked, but we needed to purchase all colors. Yea!!!

In the end we used alternating candies including (mint milkyways, green gummy bears, green swedish fish (yum!), green chick peeps,green gumdrops and we topped each kabob off with little green gummy hats. I later learned from reading the label that these gummies were appropriately called " Mexican Hats".

We tied ribbons on the bottoms of each skewer, stuck them in a lime green bucket and another holiday bit the leprechaun dust!!!

Happy, Happy Day of Love!!

Well Valentine's Day has come and gone yet these sweet goodies have been trapped in my camera. These are Valentine's Day candy cups made soley for a special little Kindergarten class.

I used little plastic cocktail cups and filled them with all different kinds of Valentine's day candies (m&m's, cinnamon sugar jelly hearts and swedish fish). I decided not to bake for this holiday but decided that chocolate would be more appropriate, so I melted red, white, pink and of course milk chocolate and poured them into my "grande" hershey kiss molds. I mixed different chocolate combinations for each mold so that every child got their own personal multi-colored kiss.