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.

Blue Cheese and Bacon Burger #FoodPicFriday

When Mom sent up all that cheese last week, one of the flavours was Danish Blue Cheese. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but we were talking about having burgers for dinner and I knew they had to have blue cheese on them. And bacon, obviously.

We made homemade beef patties, buns, and had homemade fries on the side. It was absolutely delicious! The blue cheese was so tangy and it paired with the beef wonderfully. We had enough for leftovers too - so I got to eat this deliciousness twice!

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.

Slippers for Him and Her

The cold weather hit and so did my urge to knit. I'm always knitting dishcloths, but I really get excited for new patterns in the wintertime. John and I both needed new slippers, so I spent far too many hours on Ravelry looking for a free pattern at my skill level. I found one that looked quick and easy and even found a Knit-along on YouTube in case I ran into trouble.

John got a pair made with Super Bulky (#6) chunky yarn, using one strand of yarn.

My slippers were made with Medium (#4) worsted yarn, so I held two strands together. I had leftover yarn from my Harry Potter Gryffindor scarf, so I made myself some Gryffindor slippers.