The Doctor Will See You Now

So, I'm about a year and a half behind on my cake blog.  It's not that I haven't been making cakes, I just haven't been posting them.  I also lost my computer (it died an untimely death), so that has made it difficult to keep up with the blog.

So, I'm going to try and do a bunch of posts in the next few weeks.  I also finally figured out how to get the pictures from my Ipad onto my Surface, so hopefully that will no longer present a problem.

My niece, Chloe, turned 2 in December of 2014.  We didn't celebrate her birthday until January of 2015 (that sounds so much better).  At the time, she was a huge fan of Doc McStuffins.  It was so cute when she said Doc McStuffins!  So, I decided to make her some doctor cupcakes.

We started out with the chocolate cupcakes.

And then added pink frosting.  Pink and purple are Doc McStuffin's colors.

Next I made some bandaids out of fondant.  I basically just cut some rectangles, added some lines with a knife and made the holes with a small tip.

I also made some doctor bags, a stethoscope, and Doc Chloe out of greyish blue fondant.

Doc and the stethoscope went on one cupcake and Chloe went on another.

In Doc McStuffins, the bandaids have hearts on them.  So I added those.

And then the bags and the bandaids went on the cupcakes.

Close up shot.

 I also made some reflex hammers.

I tried to get a picture of Chloe in her new shirt with the cupcakes, but she was so busy looking at them, she wouldn't look at the camera.

 This was the best I could do.

Chloe loved her cupcakes.  Some of the adults felt that the bandaids were a tad bit too realistic and therefore not so appealing to eat . . . . .

 I can't believe that this was already a year and a half ago!  That girl is growing up too fast!

Under the Sea

If you ever need an event planner, look no farther.  No, not me.  My friend Hillary is amazing at this stuff.  She was in charge of this shower for my sister-in-law and it was probably the best decorated shower I have ever attended!  Seriously, she has a gift.

So Hillary asked me to make some cupcakes for the shower.  The theme was Under the Sea - a Shellabration.  She found these super cute turtle cupcakes on Pinterest.

But I didn't really want to make 48 turtle cupcake toppers.  So I decided to do some starfish and shell cupcakes as well.

The shells were easy.  I used the Wilton shell candy mold and made sets of light blue, dark blue, green, and "sand" (aka peanut butter flavor) candy shells.  They turned out great!

The starfish were also really easy.  I used a star cutter and cut out thick orange fondant stars.  I used the wrong end of a piping tip to make the smiles.  I let the stars dry on the flower drying rack so that they would be slightly curved.  For the eyes, I dipped a toothpick into black food coloring and the stuck it into the star.

The turtles were slightly more complicated, but they were very cute.

I used the circle cutters for most of the turtle.  The small one made the feet.  I just had to cut off one side and reshape them.

I used the large cutter for the blue background and the medium cutter for the head and body.  I just made the head smaller.

I used the wrong end of a piping tip to make the smiles.  I used gum glue to attach the turtle to the blue background.

Then I added the legs.

I used piping tip 3 and cut the circles in half to make the little spots to go on the turtles back.

I also used a toothpick dipped in black food coloring for the turtles' eyes.

They dried overnight and then I just had to add them to the cupcakes.

I got a new cupcake stand that holds more than my old one and is a platform.  So we put brown sugar on it to look like sand and added a few candy shells.

We also placed some cupcakes on the tables as part of the centerpieces.

The cupcakes fit in great with the decor!

Edible Diapers

Unless you have absolutely no contact with babies or people who have babies, you probably are aware that cloth diapers are all the rage right now.  When my parents had us kids, they used cloth diapers.  But back then it was just the rag that you pinned together.

Nowadays, they have all these fancy diapers, with inserts, that come in all sorts of fancy colors and sizes.  My sister-in-law was due at the end of March.  She and my brother decided they wanted to use cloth diapers, so they registered for these:

Bum Genius Diapers

Super cute!  But who wants to give one diaper for a shower gift?  And yet, they are probably the most needed items on the registry.  So my mom threw a diaper-themed shower for our side of the family.  (Annnnnnd we are finally getting to the point here.)  Naturally, at a diaper-themed shower, one must have diaper themed cake, or in this case, cupcakes.

But no one has ever done diaper cupcakes before!  Okay, so I finally found one person on etsy who sells diaper shaped fondant cupcake toppers.  But that's it.  I could not find anything cake-related with diapers.  There are the creepy baby cakes where the babies are wearing diapers.

Trust me, they get a lot creepier than this.

 And the diaper cakes/cupcakes that are actual diapers.  I would not recommend trying to chow down on these.  So, what to do?

Cute, but not the taste I was going for.

I had ordered two diapers for the shower and when they arrived, I realized how simple it would be.  I would make cupcake toppers that look like the packaged diapers!

So I rolled out some different colored fondant.  I eyeballed a T-shape with a knife, then folded it up like a diaper.  I made the buttons using tip 12 and the stitching with my roller tool.

The only tools I needed (besides a knife).

Fastest fondant item I have ever made!

Some close ups:

 I whipped up the cupcakes, put on the diapers, and they turned out great!

We put them in a "B" for baby.
At the time, we didn't know her name.

Passing out the cupcakes . . .

Elisa is enjoying hers!

Kylie is here now and let me tell you, those huge cloth diapers look very cute on her little bum.  Love you Kylie!

May the Force be With You

One of the great joys in life is introducing young children to good science fiction.  It's that moment when this little person sees something for the first time that you know they will love and that you have loved for many years.

My nephew has fallen in love with Star Wars.  I watched the first movie with him and my niece (they had already seen it a few times at this point) and they kept telling me all of the awesome things that were going to happen.  "Wait, you've seen this before, Aunt Joy?  Do you know what happens next?"

By now he's probably seen those movies more times than the rest of my family put together.  So naturally, for his birthday, he requested a Darth Vader cake.

I don't know why, but for some reason, both he and my niece love Darth Vader.  Maybe it's the voice.  I don't know.  But I was not loving the idea of making a Darth Vader cake.  I mean, it would be cool.  But do you know how much black fondant I would need?????  Way too much.

Fortunately, when I presented the idea of Star Wars cupcakes with ALL of the characters instead of just one, he was on board.

I made chocolate cupcakes and sprinkled some gold sprinkles on top to look like, well, stars.  I know, clever.

That was the easy part.  Now I had to make all of the characters.  Suddenly that Darth Vader cake wasn't looking so bad . . .

While doing some research, I discovered these star wars cookie cutters.  There are a few different versions (including one with ships) but I got the one that included Yoda, Darth Vader, a Storm Trooper and Boba Fett.

Now I was a little nervous about these.  Some of the reviews of the product said the cutters were hard to use and they couldn't get the dough out of the cutter.  However, I found that they were extremely easy to use, at least with fondant.

First I cut out some storm troopers in white fondant.

I made a lot of these because as any Star Wars fan knows, the storm troopers always far outnumber the good guys.  Good thing none of them can hit the broadside of a barn.

\

They look pretty cool just like that, but I wanted to add the black as well.

Next I made Darth Vader.  I know that there is only one Darth Vader, but since I knew both Peter and Elisa would want that one, I made two.

Wilton has this new product - it's like edible modeling clay.  I used this instead of black fondant because it was a little bit cheaper.  It's fairly similar to fondant, but it seemed to be less sticky.

I love Yoda.  Too many Yodas, you never can have.

I had to make the rest of the characters without cookie cutters.  The first one (and my favorite) was C3PO.

I used yellow fondant and just cut out the shape with a knife.  I used the small round cutter to cut out the eyes.  Then I dusted it with gold petal dust to give him some shine.

I thought he turned out great!

I used the medium circle cutter to make the faces for Han, Luke and Leia.  I also used it for Luke's hair.  Han and Leia's hair - frosting.

I just eyeballed R2D2.

Chewbacca was a little darker than I intended.  I just used the grass tip for him.  There was another cookie cutter set that included him, but everyone recognized who it was supposed to be.

Leia's close-up.

It's the good guys vs. the bad guys.

Vader and his army.

The good guys.

Who doesn't love robots?

These were his favorites.  Of course he picks the bad guys.

Happy birthday Peter!  May the force be with you!