Rainbow Cake with Lots of Sprinkles

Our friend's daughter turned three over the weekend and I got to make the cake. The party theme was rainbow, so I was very excited to contribute the rainbow cake (and cupcakes - see yesterday's post).

Last year for my birthday, I made an elaborate rainbow cake that used two cake mixes, was six layers tall, and used almost three cans of icing. It was completely over the top! My friend Amanda commented "How will you ever top this? All other cakes will pale in comparison."

Elaborate cake!

I wanted to do something a little more manageable this time around, so I made a four layer rainbow cake, using only red, yellow, green, and blue and needing only one cake mix. It also only required one batch of icing, for which I used my all-time favourite, Marshmallow Buttercream. 

I sometimes get nervous when I'm cake decorating for other people, as I mostly just wing decorating and hope it works out. My friend Betony had some great decorating ideas that were well within my range of abilities, so I didn't have to stress too much. The inspiration for this cake decoration came from this blog that was linked to on Pinterest. All I had to do was make a sprinkle number '3' for the top and sprinkle up the sides. 

4 layer rainbow cake - pre-decoration

Decorated!

How fricken' adorable is this cake? I love the use of sprinkles. It is so festive! At first the sprinkles didn't want to adhere to the sides of the cake, so I wore a food prep glove and forced fistfuls of sprinkles to stick to the sides. I had a pan under the cake to catch any falling sprinkles, which worked great for reusing them and keeping them off the floor.

Now that is a lot of sprinkles!

For the sprinkle '3', I placed a homemade cookie cutter on the top of the cake and filled it with sprinkles. I pressed the sprinkles down gently to adhere them to the frosting and then carefully removed the cookie cutter.

Homemade Cookie Cutter '3'

Sprinkle '3'

This cake was very fun to make and decorate and everyone at the party enjoyed it. Win!

Rainbow Cupcake Toppers

Our friend's daughter turned three over the weekend and she had a rainbow themed birthday party. Because my friend knows I love making rainbow baked goods, I got tapped to make the cake and some cupcakes. I was pretty excited about it and decided to make some fun cupcake toppers (I got to use my glue gun!). I'd never made them or used them before, but now I'm totally in love with them, and am obsessed with all wonderful things I am going to top my cupcakes with. Seriously, any excuse to use my glue gun!

I have a lot of scrapbooking supplies, so this craft was pretty easy to create.

First I punched some 1 1/2" stars using card stock in rainbow colours (red, yellow, green, blue). Then I punched some 1 1/4" stars in white card stock. I free hand wrote the number 3 (the birthday girl's age), in coordinating colours on the white stars.

Next I used a glue stick to stick all the numbered stars to the colourful stars.

Using regular toothpicks, I used my glue gun (so fun!) to adhere the stars to the toothpicks.

These were simple and fun to make and were a festive addition to the cupcakes.

Cookie Cutter Collection

I celebrated a birthday last month, and my awesome friends Brendan and Colleen, surprised me with a gift of baking supplies. They know I enjoy baking, as I often take treats to their house for gaming night. It was so thoughtful of them to think of me. They picked a wide assortment of cookie cutters, an amazing gift, as my previous cookie cutter collection consisted of just one cookie cutter. I'm looking forward to taking some cut out cookies to gaming night soon, as I have lots of options to choose from!

Here is the awesome collection of fun shapes, picked out by my fun and dear friends.

Hand Me Down Santas

Last year I posted about all the snowmen decorations that take up residence in the house in December. I still have them, but have added a number of Santa figurines to my collection, as Mom cleared out a lot of her Christmas goodies and handed them down to me. Some of these figurines I grew up with so it is nice to see them.

Now if I could just get my ass in gear to decorate the house for Christmas... I'm normally a December 1st decorator, but because I think it's still June, I am slow moving this year.

Santa Figurines "from around the world". 
I loved these growing up. 
Mom would place them on the bookshelf on a bed of fake snow. 
When these guys went up you knew Christmas was on the way.

Toy Maker Santa Figurine

Cool Santa Shelf Hanger. 
This guy sits and hangs over a shelf. 
I always thought he looked so laid back and cool. 
He fits in at our place. :)

Wooden Snowmen

Tree Ornaments. 
I'll set them out as figurines.

Santa Moon Figurine. 
It lights up.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I love this time of year and no matter what is going on in life, there is always so much to be thankful for. I do a lot of celebrating on Thanksgiving weekend (mostly in the form of eating wonderful food) and I have many reasons to celebrate.

This weekend we celebrated with a 7 lb chicken that my brother raised. We feasted yesterday and are having leftovers tonight. Very thankful to be able to cook and enjoy such wonderful food.

We also celebrated our car-niversary this weekend. We've had our little baby car for four years now. She still gets us where we're going and without too much complaining either. Very thankful she is still going strong.

Thanksgiving weekend is also the anniversary of when I met John. So another excuse to have a big dinner and celebrate all we are thankful for. Also a great excuse to bake something. I made some plain butter tarts and we ate them cold from the fridge. Pecan butter tarts are great, but these plain ones were fantastic.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Let's Go Blue Jays!

I got pretty interested in Major League Baseball this year. My hometown team is The Toronto Blue Jays and I had a lot of fun watching them this season. Even though they didn't make the playoffs, they had a lot of great games and moments and I was happy to be watching. I also got into live-tweeting games (which I'm still doing for the postseason), as it adds an extra element of fun and community to the game.

My awesome friend Bryan is also really into baseball and he recently found some Blue Jays items in his closet that he thought would fit me. It was such a wonderful surprise and I absolutely love them.

Bryan awesomely gave me two jerseys:

And two t-shirts:

Even though the Jays season is over, I'm going to be wearing these all winter long. I already had some Jays talk with a nice old man in a waiting room last week, who looked at my jersey and said "I like your shirt - but what happened?" Our conversation ended with hopes that 2015 will be a postseason year.

A million thanks to Bryan for these awesome additions to my wardrobe!

Things I Love About October

I love the autumn months but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that they are here. I'm so shocked that it's October that I didn't get it together to change my calendar over until yesterday. And when I flipped it, it said October and not June. I know I lived it, but I'm not sure summer really happened.

But here we are in October. A month I actually really love so I'd like to point out some of the things I love about it. Kick off the month with all the little joys this season has to offer.

Pumpkin Spice. I love pumpkin spice drinks (latte, tea), and pumpkin spice baked goods (pie, doughnuts, muffins). I love that so many people get into it this time of year.

Autumn Leaves. I have fond memories of returning home from university for Thanksgiving, and seeing the trees that lined our country road changed to so many different colours. October always feels like a homecoming for me.

Sweaters. I love sweaters. Besides socks and undies, this is the clothing item I have the most of. A wonderful bonus is that Gary (the cat) also loves sweaters. So this time of year cat cuddles increase exponentially.

Thanksgiving. Turkey. All the fixins. Baked goods. It's a beautiful time of year.

Halloween. Especially Halloween Simpsons episodes and fun sized chocolate bars. Also love seeing what my nieces and nephews dress up as. Always the cutest!

MLB Postseason. I have always loved baseball but this was my first year of really following MLB as an adult. And what a year to get into it! The postseason has been incredible so far, with so many of the the games going into extra innings. Lots of fun!



What are some of the things you love about October?

Butter Tarts - A Canadian Tradition

This past Canada Day I was feeling festive and tried making butter tarts for the first time. I used some pre-made tart shells and Mom's recipe for the filling. They were delicious and really easy to make. They were the perfect addition to my Canada Day. I'm really excited to make these again - I just love them.

If you want to learn more about this fun little dessert, check out the Wikipedia page which has lots of great info.

Butter Tarts
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup corn syrup
3 tbsp soft butter
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup pecans (or walnuts or raisins or nothing)
12 pre-made tart shells

Combine sugar, corn syrup and butter until mixed. Next add egg, vanilla, salt and pecans. Stir.

Place mixture into 12 tart shells, aiming for 2/3 full.

Bake at 425°F for 8 minutes. Lower temperature to 350°F and continue baking until filling is set and pastry is cooked, about 18 more minutes.

 Enjoy!!

500th Post...

After 4 years of blogging, I have reached my 500th Post!!

I actually reached the milestone earlier this week, (this is actually my 505th post), but I wanted to celebrate anyway.

Thanks for reading! :)

Celebration Pie

My Dad turned sixty-five in April so I made him a pie to celebrate.

I had success carving a pie crust top when I made my pi day pie, so this time I tried carving numbers.

It mostly worked, but the berries did leak a little. The pie was enjoyed just the same, as it was raspberry pie (my favourite) and one of dad's favourites too.

I also got to test out my pie crust shield and it seemed to work just fine.

'Easy As Pumpkin Pie' Sweet Potato Pie

Last month I tried making sweet potato pie for the first time. One bite and I was in love. It had the consistency and flavour of pumpkin pie, but with its own unique sweetness.

The recipe I used for the sweet potato pie was excellent, but it had a lot more steps than my usual pumpkin pie. The thing I love most about a pumpkin pie is just how easy it is to make. Whisk the few ingredients together in a bowl. Pour into a pie shell. Done.

I wondered if sweet potato pie could be just as easy.

So I did an experiment where I made my usual easy pumpkin pie recipe, but used sweet potato puree instead of pumpkin puree. I really hoped that it would bake and taste the same, as sweet potatoes are cheap and available year round. If it tasted awesome, I would never have to buy canned pumpkin puree again.

Not only did this substitution work, it worked awesome! The pie was easy to make, tasted great, and because the sweet potatoes are a little sweeter than pumpkin, no whipped cream was needed for the top. Just completely perfect on its own. Rad. So from now on, all pumpkin pies will be sweet potato pie.

'Easy as Pumpkin Pie' Sweet Potato Pie, recipe slightly adapted from Eagle Brand.

2 cups sweet potato puree (about 3 small sweet potatoes or 1.5lbs)
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp salt
1 unbaked pie crust (9 inch)

To make sweet potato puree, steam sweet potatoes until soft. Cool slightly, then add to food processor and puree until smooth.

In a large bowl, add sweet potato puree, spices, sweetened condensed milk, and eggs. Mix with a whisk until blended.

Pour into pie crust.

Bake for 15 minutes in 425°F oven. Turn oven down to 350°F and continue baking for 35-40 minutes. Pie is done when knife inserted 1 inch from crust comes out clean.

St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes

This past weekend I wanted to make a treat for gaming night that had a little St. Patrick's Day flare. Cupcakes are always a great go to for me, and I took to Google for some ideas, as I didn't have any shamrock accents (sprinkles, cookie cutter, etc.)

I found a fun recipe on allrecipes, that had a burst of colour inside a white cupcake. I had my winner.

I started with a white cake mix, which I substituted unsweeted applesauce for the oil. I always do this when I make a cake mix and I love the flavour of the finished cupcakes/cake.

After mixing up the batter, I put 2/3 of it into baking cups (about 21 baking cups).

The remaining third of the batter I dyed green and piped it into the middle of the cupcakes.

Using a resealable bag as a makeshift pastry bag, I snipped off the end and added a baking tip, so I could accurately squeeze the green batter into the center of my cupcakes. I actually used a baking tip that was far too wide for this purpose, and the green batter rushed out faster than I was expecting. Because of this, adding the green took very little time but some of the cupcakes got green batter on more than just their middles. I decided I could fix it in post (with all the icing on top, I was sure no one would really notice).

I made my favourite icing, marshmallow buttercream. If you haven't tried it yet, do give it a shot. Really, really, good.

In the baking cup

Unwrapped

Surprise! It's green inside!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Hope you are having a great day!