Bianca's Winter One-derland First Birthday

Well it's official, Bianca is 1 year old! I don't think it has actually sunk in that she is now a toddler and not a baby. I no longer have a baby and a toddler, but a toddler and a preschooler. Ugh, I'm so old! haha

I decided on a winter one-derland theme because it was super cute, and I knew I could do it on the cheap! As soon as the Christmas decorations were out at Dollarama I was scouring the shelves for all the ornaments that were white, pink, silver and snowy. I found a ton of great things, and when I combined that with what I could make, the result was awesome. John hung a few lengths of fishing ling across the ceiling in the living room, then attached all the ornaments to those lines using more fishing line to make them look suspended. I also strung some cotton balls on lengths of fishing line to look like snow. I made the giant snowflakes with cardstock. I actually learnt how to make them in grade 3, but luckily Pinterest was kind enough to provide me with a refresher. Of course no first birthday is complete without all of the monthly photos that I meticulously took, displayer for everyone to see!

In the entry to the kitchen from the living room, John hung another length of fishing line and suspended some of our white Christmas bobbles on it along with some honey comb balls. In the kitchen, we hung bobbles, snowflakes, tissue puffs and honey comb balls from the light fixture to act as a centrepiece. You can find tissue puffs and honey comb balls at party supply stores, OR, you can save yourself a ton of cash and make them yourself! I make these same puffs for pretty much every party I ever have and they are super easy. This was the first time I made the honeycomb balls and it was actually super easy.

Onto the food table! Bianca's birthday was from 10am-12pm so we just had some snack items. Buns, cold cuts, cheese, pickles, veggies with dip, fruit pizza, iced tea and melted snowflake water. For some added fun I put together a hot chocolate bar complete with all the toppings you could want in your cocoa! Candy canes, caramels, mini marshmallows and freshly whipped cream! I also jazzed up the to-go cups with some corrugated paper and a "1" medallion. We had a good amount of food left over, but I'd rather have extra than not enough!

After the kids had some time to run around and play, and the adults had some time to visit, it was time to open presents. If you remember from Roman's 3rd birthday, I've started to go the "no gift" route with birthdays, but since it's Bianca's first I thought she should have the chance to open some gifts. Not that she really opened them anyway, but Roman was there to help with that part.

Of course after presents comes cake! This cake was an experiment of sorts. A new cake recipe, a new icing recipe that I used for filling and a new piping technique. A first birthday probably isn't the best time to test new recipes but it turned out delicious! This is a chocolate chip cookie dough cake, filled with brown sugar buttercream and decorated with vanilla buttercream. It was soooo delicious! If you've read the post about Bianca's smash cake then you'll recognize the flowers and the snowflakes from that cake. If you'd be interested in seeing a post, or maybe a video, on how I decorate some of the cakes I make, comment below and if there is enough interest I'll give it a shot!

Bianca LOVED the cake! I mean, she is my daughter after all so I'm not surprised. I was however a little surprised that she dove in head first. Again, not surprised by the giant mess she made. I have to give all the props to John for the highchair decorations. I totally left this to the last minute and didn't have anything planned, and he banged this out in no time flat!

Even after looking at all these pictures, I still can't believe my little girl is already 1. How did this happen?! We're so thankful to everyone that joined us in celebrating Bianca's special day. The best part of putting together parties like this is enjoying them with our friends and family. Happy Birthday Bianca, I can't wait to see what the next year has in store for you!

Winter One-derland Rosette Smash Cake

It's hard to believe that Miss Bianca is almost one! Well, she will be one by the time this post goes live. It really doesn't seem like it's been a year since she was born but the calendar tells me otherwise. I love birthdays, I love an excuse to make a cake, and since the pictures of Roman's cake smash were so cute I knew I had to do one for Bianca! This was my first attempt at a rosette cake but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out!

 

I started by baking three 4" vanilla cakes and whipping up a batch of vanilla buttercream. I stacked the cakes on top of each other with layers of buttercream in between, and gave the entire cake a crumb coat. A crumb coat is a thin coat of buttercream that essentially locks in the crumbs of the cake so they don't end up in the final coat of icing.

While the cake chilled in the freezer for a few minutes, I filled a piping bag fitted with a 1M tip, with some of the buttercream. Making a rosette cake is super easy. To make each rosette you want to write a 6 with the icing, but start in the centre instead of at the top like you typically would. Pipe a row of rosettes along the bottom of the cake. For the second row, stagger the rosettes in between the first row. You can the rosettes to overlap a bit and cover up the entire surface of the cake. Continue staggering rosettes until the entire cake is covered. I decorate the cake a few days early so I popped it into the freezer. The buttercream seals in the cake so it will taste fresh when it's time to eat it!

You can't have a winter one-derland cake without snowflakes! I decided to use royal icing to pipe snowflakes. Now I am not very good at free-handing anything, so I printed off some snowflake silhouettes I found online. I placed the images under a sheet of parchment paper and trice right over top with the royal icing. I did the same for the number 1 cake topper. They all turned out great! Make sure to make extra snowflakes because you will have casualties. Once the 1 was filled in, I laid a lollipop stick on the back and covered it with more royal icing. They took a good 12 hours to set but they turned out perfect.

The day before the cake smash, I took the cake out of the freezer and let it thaw on the counter. Once the buttercream softened up a bit, I attached the snowflakes to the cake with a small amount of royal icing and stuck the topper into the cake. Now it's time to smash!!

Bianca had a blast smashing her cake. At first she was a little hesitant like she wasn't sure if she should be touching it or not, but that didn't last long. She snapped off the topper and then went to town. After Bianca had a good go at the cake we let Roman get in there too. The pair of them had a blast chowing down on cake and screaming with delight. I would make a cake every week to see them both this happy.

Now that the cake smash is done, it's time to get ready for the main event!

Roman's smash cake: http://spontaneouslycreative.blogspot.ca/2014/07/a-cake-without-future.html

Double Chocolate Banana Bread

I love banana bread, but if I can add chocolate to something I will. The original plan was to turn this into a red velvet banana bread by adding red food coloring. But despite adding almost a teaspoon of gel coloring it didn't change the color of the loaf at all. Luckily this loaf is so delicious it doesn't even matter. This would make a great addition to your sweet trays over the holidays. It has banana in it, it's basically a fruit really.

Double Chocolate Banana Bread
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1t baking soda
1/4t salt
2 over-ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup apple sauce
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1t vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips
Holiday sprinkles (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan OR line it with parchment paper. *TIP - if you wet parchment paper it becomes extremely pliable. Hold it under running water for a few seconds then ring it out like you would a towel. You can then lay it right into you pan and your loaf is guaranteed not to stick!

 In a bowl sir together flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl combine bananas, apple sauce, brown sugar, egg and vanilla. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until well combined. Fold in chocolate chips.

 

Pour batter into prepared pan and top with holiday sprinkles. Bake for 60 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean.

I would recommend letting the loaf cool before you cut into it, as the chocolate chips with still be warm and liquidy for awhile. If you, like my kids and I, don't care then cut into it as soon as you can touch it. I had great plans for a beautiful photo of the loaf, partially sliced and laying on a cake stand. As you can see, that didn't happen. Instead I got a photo of a mutilated loaf sitting on the ziplock bag it was being store in. You know it's a winner if you don't even have time to get a photo of it!

Original post

How to decorate a Pokemon cake

The last of the summer babies in our family has now had their birthday. My brother Selby recently celebrated his birthday which means, cake! If you ask Roman any question about birthdays the first thing he says is; cake? Now that's my boy! This wasn't a huge party, just cake with the family so my mom was going to pick up a cake for him at the grocery store. FOR SHAME!! I may be busy, but I will always find time to make a birthday cake! In light of the recent Pokémon hunting adventure mom, Selby, Bianca and I went on after Roman's family cake day, I decided to make Selby a Pokeball cake!

For this cake I used my "chocolate cupcakes from scratch" recipe. I don't know if I would necessarily recommend this recipe for cakes, because it's so fluffy it sinks a bit in the middle, but it's so good who really cares. Plus you can just fill the dip in with more icing! Mmmmmm buttercream icing...

First step, cover the entire cake with icing. Start by dropping a good sized blob of icing in the middle-ish of your cake. Using a small icing spatula, push the icing over the edge of the cake. Holding your spatula vertically, slide your spatula back and forth to spread out the icing. Clear as mud right? That's why I recorded this part because I had a feeling it wouldn't be very easy to explain in just words, and taking photos while icing isn't exactly easy. Once the sides are coated, use an offset spatula to cover the top with icing. The goal for this step is to get just enough icing on the cake to cover the cake itself. Don't worry if you get a few tiny crumbs in the icing, we'll take care of that soon. If you do get some larger ones, just scoop them off with something other than your icing spatula. You don't want them getting back into the icing. Once your first layer of icing is on, pop your cake in the freezer for 2-3 minutes, just to set the icing.

Because the icing is made with butter, it will firm up a bit, which means you can put on a second layer of icing without dragging up crumbs. Once the second coat is on, pop it back into the freezer for another 2-3 minutes. Now for the tricky part, piping a perfect circle. I am completely incapable of such feats, so instead I found an object (a small plate) that was the right size and traced around it with the small spatula. I did the same thing with a small glass and a cap for the inside of the pokeball. Finally, I drew the line through the centre of the pokeball with the offset spatula.

Normally I would tint my own buttercream for the decorating, but this time I decided to give the Wilton prepackaged icing a shot. I screwed on a Wilton 8 tip and went to town. It was actually super easy to use and gave me a decently smooth line, once I got the hang of it. Once the black was all done, I cleaned out the tip and switched it onto the red icing. I piped rows around one side of the Pokeball, then I spread out the icing with the small spatula to make it a solid, smooth color. Cleaning the tip once again, I attached it to a piping bag and filled it with some of the buttercream. I used the same technique with the white as I did with the red. To finish off the cake, I piped balls around the base of the cake to finish off the edge.

Considering I banged the cake out in an hour while Bianca slept and Roman was at camp, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I made this cake the day before we were having the birthday and I was a little disappointed by the way it looked the next morning. The black icing bled into the white icing a lot. I didn't treat this cake any different than I've treated any other cake I've made, so I think it had something to do with the premade icing being made with oil. So if you aren't planning on eating this cake the same day you decorate it, I would recommend taking the time to tint your own icing so you don't wake up to a mess. Luckily, nobody around here cares, particularly not Roman, who was just exited that we were having cake!

Construction Birthday Cake

This cake was so much fun to make! Originally I was just going to make an average square cake with a construction site on top of it, but I decided to up the cool factor a bit. I'm not going to lie, I was a little concerned about making this cake when I first started, but it actually turned out to be easier than I thought! By far the best part of this cake is that it's supposed to look like a construction site so the icing doesn't have to be perfectly smooth!

I start out by baking a 9" round vanilla cake. I thought for sure that Roman would want a chocolate cake, but apparently not. Once the cake was completely cool I turned it out onto a cutting board to start making it look like a 3. I started by cutting the came in half with a bread knife, which seemed to work fairly well.  I'm not one to free hand much when it comes to cakes, and heaven knows I wouldn't be able to cut a smooth half circle, so I found a cup to use to trace for the centre of the 3. I then used those inside pieces to cut pieces to fill in the centre of the 3 and to give the ends a bit of curve.

 Now the delicious and fun part; icing and decorating!! The chocolate buttercream I used for this cake is literally the best icing I have ever had in my life! It tastes very similar to the premade frosting you get at the grocery store but without that oily/fake taste the premade stuff has. I actually froze the leftovers to use later on because it's THAT good!

I start by putting a good sized blog of icing on the pieces I had cut out and sticking them to the body of the cake. Then I slathered the entire cake in a generous layer of chocolate frosting. I found that the cut pieces were crumbling on me a bit, so I popped the cake into the freezer to set up a bit. Just a few minutes was enough for the cake to become firm enough that it didn't crumbled when I was spreading the icing.

I found the small plastic construction equipment at Dollar Tree and they were the perfect size for the cake. I filled the cement mixer with icing and left a bit hanging out the top. I then filled the back of the dump truck with icing and chocolate rocks that I found at Bulk Barn. I decided to use the same technique with the loader bucket so it looked like the loader was filling the truck. A bit of icing on the wheels of the truck was enough to hold it in place. I crushed up chocolate cookie wafers and sprinkled them onto the cake to make a bumpy road of sorts and had the roller "smoothing them out" while another dump truck looking thing dumped the crumbs onto the cake. The chocolate covered caramel balls between the candles was a bit of a throw on because I had them, and felt like I should use them. This is why you should never buy you decorating materials until you know what you're doing. Now I have an entire bag of these balls that I'm going to have to eat. Oh the horror! I finished off the cake by lining the base with chocolate rocks. I really liked the way it love the way it looks, and it saved me from having to bust out the piping bag at 9pm!

Roman was PUMPED when he saw his cake in the morning. He pointed out all the equipment and was really excited that he could eat the rocks. I love making cakes like this for Roman (and soon to be Bianca) because I love the reaction I get from him. There is nothing better than seeing his eyes light up at the cake I've spent so much time on.

Do you make your kid's cakes? What was your kid's favorite cake and what was their reaction?

Construction Birthday Party

Roman is 3 years old!!! Going on 16 if you were to judge by his attitude. Three-nagers are no joke yo! He has grown into quite the little man and right now he is obsessed with everything construction. He is in his glory right now with all the summer construction every and is constantly pointing out cement trucks, excavators, bobcats, loaders, not to mention the "working men" that run them. I recently explained to him that there are also "working women" and his mind was pretty blown.

It was really no surprise when I asked him what kind of birthday he wanted, and he responded with "a construction birthday!". Well, technically his first answer was cake, but the second answer was construction. This was a blat of a party to plan, and super simple. All you really need for an amazing construction birthday is construction equipment and large quantities of substances that can be moved; sand, water, dirt, as long as it can be scooped, loaded and dumped, you're golden!

Since Roman's birthday is in July it's pretty much a given that we are going to have all the water activities out for the kids to play with. It might not actually mesh with the theme, but the kids love it and sometimes I don't think the kids even realize that parties have a theme at this point. This year John came up with the idea to build a second sandbox of sort and he filled it with a ton of topsoil. We lucked out and actually found some free topsoil, and the boards were leftover from other projects, so this didn't cost us a dime. The kids had a BLAST playing in it all. Even the night we put it together, it took some work to get Roman to take a break from "building a construction site" and come inside for supper.

I kept the decorations pretty minimal, just a few yellow and black balloons tied to the fence with fishing line. I did however pick up a 3ft tall cardboard excavator because how do you have a construction party without one? Now that the party is over, I'm going to stick it up on Roman's wall with some Command tape so he can enjoy it for as long as this obsession lasts.

This year I decided to keep the food simple and just have snackie type foods. The party was from 10am-12pm so it's a bit of an awkward time when it comes to food. Do you serve breakfast? Snacks? Lunch? These are the things that keep me up at night. As I've done in the past, I like to serve the birthday boy's favorite foods, so this year we had:

• Ham & Cheese pinwheels
• Pizza twists
• Strawberries & blueberries
• Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, peppers
• Chips & salsa
• Water and juice boxes

Roman loved the loader plates and hauler napkins. I always wrap my utensils in a napkin and secure them with piece of paper. It just makes it easier for people to grab when they are filling their plates, and they won't forget their napkin, like I always do.

Now for my favorite part of a birthday; cake! I was a little surprised that Roman requested a vanilla cake, but that's what he wanted so that's what he got. He always wanted vanilla frosting but that wasn't going to work with the cake I had planned in my mind, so he had to make do with chocolate. This chocolate frosting is the most amazing chocolate frosting I've ever had! Think pre-made frosting from the grocery store without the oily, fake taste. So amazing! If you want to see how I made this 3-shaped cake and where I got all the decorations from, check out this post. (I'll link it once I've published it). For the frosting recipe, click here. Roman was super pumped to blow out his candles, but it was really windy so he had to pretend. He still blew them out and cheered for himself so I don't think he minded at all. I also made some emergency chocolate cupcakes as well because I was scared there wasn't going to be enough cake. We didn't end up using them for the party, so John, Roman and I ate them over the next few days. They were amaze balls!

 

One of the most irritating parts of Roman's birthdays for me are the presents. Everyone always asks what he wants or needs, and while he wants a lot of things (as does every kids) he truly doesn't need anything. He has more than enough toys to keep him occupied for months, tons of clothes in his closet, and his snack cupboard is well stocked. But some people aren't so lucky. So this year I stole an idea from a friend of mine (thanks Lisa!), and instead of gifts, we asked that everyone bring a donation for the food bank. I know there are some people that might think that I'm depriving Roman by not letting people buy him gifts, but the truth is that he still received gifts from family and that was waaaaay more than he even needed. John and I explained to Roman that some people don't have food, or enough money to buy food, so his friends were bringing some food for us to give to those people. Roman really seemed to think about this and you'll be happy to know that he didn't miss opening gifts at all and was really excited by all the great donations his friends had brought him. Today we took the donations down to the local food bank, where he promptly reminded me that some people don't have food so we were giving them this food. He also told the lady working at the food bank where the food had come from and why we were donating it. I'm not going to lie, listening to my little man tell this woman what he was doing brought tears to my eyes. I'm so blessed to be raising such an amazing little man that has empathy for other people. Unless that person is trying to take one of his toys, then he's out for blood.

I went simple with the take way gifts for the kids this year. Each construction worker got their own personalized hard hat as well as a pylon cup. These cups were just too cute to pass up. However, major mom fail on forgetting to give the cups to the kids before they left, so I had to deliver them after wards but that's OK.

After everyone had left and Roman was down for his nap, John took to setting up our gift to Roman. We don't normally buy such large gifts, but I found this gem on sale and it wasn't outrageously expensive. Plus, when you factor in the wear and tear this will save the couch and Roman's bed, I think it's well worth it.

Roman had an amazing birthday playing with all his friends and we are so thankful to everyone that was able to spend it with us!

Want to have a construction party of your own? I found all of the awesome construction items at Oriental Trading!

Coconut Cake with Coconut Frosting

This isn't just any coconut cake. This is John's absolute favorite cake. I used to make this cake every year for John's birthday but haven't for the last few years, on account of being pregnant, having Roman, and being pregnant. June is also a super busy birthday month for our family (John on the 21st, me on the 26th, and my mom on the 29th), so we usually just have one cake for all of us. But this year is different! This year John is on holidays the week of his birthday and Bianca is a champion napper, so that means that I have time to make the coconut cake!

If you like coconut you are going to love this cake! I don't believe is subtle flavour when it comes to cake. If it's supposed to be a coconut cake I want the coconut flavour to smack you in the face and then kick you in the shin! I came across this recipe many moons ago on AllRecipes.com but have tweaked it a bit to make it absolutely perfect. Of course I couldn't just top the cake with my regular buttercream icing, so I whipped up some coconut buttercream, then topped the cake with shaved coconut. There should be no questioning what flavour this cake it!

Coconut Cake with Coconut Frosting
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, softened
5 eggs
2 cups flour
1 1/2t baking powder
1/2 cup coconut milk*
2 cup shredded coconut
1t coconut extract**
Coconut Frosting***

* If you've never used coconut milk before it can be a little confusing. When you open the can it looks like the milk is solid, but if you dump it into a bowl and whisk it up if will become more of a cream texture. To thin it out a bit you can add some water, or to keep the coconut theme going, add some coconut water, which is what I did.
**I used Lorann Professional Kitchen Coconut Bakery Emulsion. This extract isn't as artificial tasting as others I have used, so if you can find this one I highly recommend it.
***For the coconut frosting I used my go to buttercream icing recipe but replaced the vanilla with coconut extract and the milk with some of the coconut milk I mixed up for the cake. I made it fairly soft so it was easy to spread over the cake.
I swear that's the last * for this recipe!!

Preheat oven to 350° and grease a 9" round baking pan. I, or should I say Roman, used Wilton's cake release to grease the pan. This stuff is amazing and I've never had a cake stick if I use it.

In a large bowl, or a stand mixer named Martin if you're me, cream together butter and sugar. *TIP - the more creamed the butter and sugar are the smoother your cake will be! Fold in eggs one at a time, allowing each to fully incorporate before adding the next. Add flour, baking powder, coconut extract and 1 cup shredded coconut, making sure to scrape the sides of the bowl to ensure all the flour is mixed in. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan and bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Or if you're power goes out while you're outside, which you don't notice until you come back in an hour later, 2 hours!

Let the cake to cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning it out onto a cooling rack, and allow to cool completely. Once cooled, slice the cake in half using a bread knife, or one of those fancy cake slicers if you have one and can find it. Line the outside of the cake plate with strips of parchment paper and set half of the cake on top (you'll see why in a minute). Spread a good amount of the frosting on the cake on the cake plate using a offset spatula, and sandwich the other half on top. Don't be cheap with the frosting, nobody likes a cheap froster! Spread the remainder of the frosting all over the cake. Don't worry about being too perfect with it because once it's covered with shredded coconut you won't be able to see your mistakes. You can press or throw the shredded coconut onto the side of the cake, whichever you prefer, and then sprinkle some on top. You're almost done!

Gently, very gently, slide the pieces of parchment out from under the cake to reveal a perfectly clean cake plate. Best magic trick ever and you look like a frosting wizard!

I made this cake a day early, so I had to wrap the cake in plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge. I was a little concerned that the frosting was going to stick to the plastic, but it didn't and all is well in the world. John, Roman and I all enjoyed the cake today and it was delicious. It's super rich so this cake will feed a ton of people because you really can't eat too much in one sitting. And that's saying something coming from the girl who used to eat pie filling from the can!

Choolate Cupcakes from Scratch

The best part of any party is the cake, especially when it comes to a birthday!  So when a friend of mine (and Roman's girlfriend) recently had a birthday I decided I wanted to give her a dozen cupcakes.  Of course they had to be chocolate because who doesn't want chocolate on their "29th & holding" birthday?

I quickly ran into a problem when I realized all my gooey chocolate cupcake recipes required ingredients I didn't have at home.  I didn't have time to run out to the store, so I headed to Pinterest.  After hunting through the recipes I finally decided on this one.  Unfortunately I didn't pin it so I can't even give credit to the baking genius that came up with it!  This scratch made recipe produces a moist, fudgey cupcake that will please every chocolate lover!

Chocolate Cupcakes from Scratch
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup flour
1/2t baking soda
3/4t baking powder
1/4t salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup oil
2t vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk*

*If you don't have buttermilk simply add 1/2T of vinegar to 1/2 cup milk and let it stand for 5 minutes; until it starts to thicken a bit.

Preheat oven to 350°.  In a large bowl stir together, cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  In a separate bowl beat eggs and mix in sugar, brown sugar, oil and vanilla until well combined.  Stir half of the wet ingredients into the dry then mix in half the buttermilk.  Add the second half of the wet ingredients and then the remaining buttermilk; mixing until just combined.  Fill the muffin tins 1/2 full with batter and bake at 350° for 18-19 minutes.

I topped the cupcakes with my go to buttercream frosting and some silver nonpareils that I found in my baking cupboard.  Roman was very excited to deliver the cupcakes to one of his favorite people in the whole world.  Unfortunately he got a little too excited and smashed one of the cupcakes, or maybe he was just trying to put his own special touch on them?  Also, please don't judge me on the re-purposed delivery box...

Heart Shaped Valentine's Day Brownies

I am the first to admit that Valentine's Day is just another day in the Giuliano house.  I've never been big on Valentine's Day, except in elementary/high school when friends could send each other chocolate because that's obviously amazing.  Flowers are expensive and get eaten by the cat and chocolate makes me fat so John and I usually skip the gifts altogether.  Blasphemous to some I'm sure but it works for us.  Or at least it did until Roman came around. 

For some reason the little turkey makes me want to celebrate even the smallest of "holidays" just for his sake.  On a recent Mom only shopping day I came across some super cute heart shaped tins at Dollarama.  At the time I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them but I knew I wanted to make something for Valentine's Day.  The other day it finally hit me, brownies!!!  Who doesn't love brownies?!

Brownies
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1t vanilla
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup flour
1/4t salt
1/4t baking powder

Preheat oven to 350° and grease heart shaped tins.  Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat.  Remove pan from heat a whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Mix in cocoa powder, flour, salt and baking powder until well combined.  Pour batter into tins and bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes, do not over bake.  You want some of the batter to stick to a toothpick when inserted into the centre.  This way you'll have a delicious gooey brownie!

If you don't have or can't find the heart shaped pans you would also bake this recipe in an 8x8 baking dish, lined with parchment paper, and use cookie cutters to cut shapes from the brownie.  The best part of this option?  You can eat all the "leftover" bits!

I decided to amp up the yum factor a bit with a little bit of buttercream icing but the brownies are delicious even without it.  Hopefully this will be the only brownie I eat from the batch since I'm still recovering from the Christmas food gorging.  I plan to pop the rest of these ad boys into the freezer where they will wait for me until I need a chocolate fix.  So probably later tonight...

Puffed Wheat & Rice Krispie Cake

 It's a two for one blog post!  For me puffed wheat cake and Rice Krispie cake go together like peanut butter & jam (or peanut butter and eggs as Selby just texted me), I can't imagine one without the other.  When I was little Mom always made these two delicious treats at the same time and always around Christmas time.  Granted there isn't anything particularly Christmasy about puffed wheat or Rice Krispies (unless you get the Christmas box), but sometimes it's all about the tradition!

Puffed Wheat Cake
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup corn syrup
1t vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
3T cocoa powder
10 cups puffed wheat

Measure the puffed wheat into a large bowl and butter a 9x13" pan.  Combine all ingredients except puffed wheat in a pot and bring to a boil over medium high heat stirring constantly.  You don't want to boil it too long or your cake will be extremely hard once it sets.  Once the surface of the liquid starts to look bubbly like an Aero bar, remove it from the heat and pour it over the puffed wheat.  Stir the puffed wheat until it is completely covered with the chocolate mixture.  Pour the puffed wheat into the buttered 9x13" pan, pressing it down with a spatula.  Allow to cool, slice, and enjoy!

Rice Krispie Cake
1/2 cup butter
6 cups mini marshmallows
1t vanilla
10-11 cups Rice Krispies

Butter a 9x13" pan.  Melt butter in a large pot.  Add marshmallows and cook, stirring constantly, until marshmallows are almost completely melted.  If you over cook the mixture it will set up hard as a rock, so remove it from the heat when there are a few lumps left and stir in vanilla.  Pour in Rice Krispies and stir until they are completely covered with the marshmallow mixture.  Press Rice Krispies into the buttered 9x13" pan and allow to cool (if you can wait that long).  Slice once cooled.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, my cakes didn't last very long.  Most of the Rice Krispie cake was done before I even had it sliced.  Although the puffed wheat cake managed to get cut into squares, I didn't get it into the freezer fast enough and I ended up eating most of it in the first few days.  I realize this stuff is meant to be eaten but maybe not all in a week.....by a single person.....

Roman's First Birthday Party!

The day that my little baby turns one is getting closer and closer (by the time this goes live he will officially be 1!!), so today we celebrated this amazing little man with a spectacular jungle themed birthday party!  I absolutely love planning parties and since this was my first crack at a kids party I was super enthusiastic from the start!  Maybe a little too enthusiastic depending on who you talk to....

I'm quickly becoming known for my over the top decorations and outlandish ideas.  It does take a lot of time to put a party like this together but I love it, and when it's for my little guy, nothing but the best will do!  I had been collecting pieces for this party for months and to be honest I wasn't completely sure what all I had until I opened the boxes up again the day before the party.  I had a feeling we were in for a long decorating session, and to save my marriage (my decorating tends to drive John batty) I enlisted the help of my Mom and Mother-in-law.  It took the four of us a couple of hours but I think the result was well worth the effort!

Our living room has these great brown beams that lend themselves extremely well to imitating tree trunks, so I decided to use them to my advantage.  We twisted two different shades of green streamers together and then draped them along the beams.  To make it look more authentic we weren't concerned with them being symmetrical, much to the joy of John and my Mom!  I purchased a few stems of leaves from a local craft store and removed the leaves from the stems.  Then I punched a hole in each leaf and we strung them onto fishing line.  These were then taped to the beams to give us some jungle foliage.  We also used two different shades of twisting balloons to all some fullness to the beams.  John came up with the great idea of curling the darker green balloons and I absolutely love the way they turned out!  The look was completed with some paper monkeys strung on fishing line, tissue puffs around each end of the trunks and last but definitely not least, an inflatable parrot.  Unfortunately my 5 foot monkey had some inflating issues and was pretty much flat by the time the party started.  He was still an interesting addition, even if he was a little two dimensional.

I found this great mural at a local craft store as well and I knew I wanted to incorporate it somehow.  I ended up wrapping it around our entertainment centre (since wall space is at a premium in our house) and using it as a photo backdrop.  It added a little extra jungle pop and also gave us a place to hide some of those last minute clean up items that you always seem to miss!  Along the top of our entertainment centre I staggered shimmer palm trees, honeycomb palm trees, and inflatable beach ball animals.  The animals also doubled as favors for the kids attending the party.  I don't have a photo of them but the kids also took home animal tails that clip to your clothes, they were a huge hit!

To complete the living room décor, I hung an 8 foot cardboard tree palm tree from an exiting hook in the ceiling (I guess it does serve a purpose) and sat an inflatable palm tree in the corner.  As you can tell from the photo the inflatable tree didn't last very long and we ended up having to tie it to the blinds.  If I learnt anything from this party is it that you can never count on the quality of an inflatable.  Good thing I decided to get the cardboard palm tree or we wouldn't have had one for the party! *gasp*

Finally after all many months of painstakingly trying to get Roman to sit still for his monthly photo I was able to share the fruits on my labor.  It's amazing how much Roman changed from one month to the next especially when I'm with him every day and don't necessarily notice the changes.  How did such a tiny dark haired baby turn into a big blond toddler so quickly?!

Now for every one's favorite part, the food!  For birthdays I think it's a fun personal touch to have a menu consisting of the birthday boy's, or girl's, favorite foods.  After all, it is their day!  For Roman's birthday meal I made:

Baboon Burgers
Hyena Hot Dogs
Hungry Hippo Hummus
Viper Veggie Pizza
Elephants Eggs (deviled eggs with avocado mixed into the yolk)
Macaw Mac & Cheese Bites (baked mac & cheese balls)
Fruit Tray (I dropped the ball on this one and didn't have a clever name for it)

Now obviously hot dogs and hamburgers aren't one of Roman's favorite foods, but I didn't think our guests would want tuna sandwiches for lunch.  Roman devoured a lot of food at lunch, but the hands down favorite for him was the hummus.  He got a little messy but I was actually impressed by how clean he was.  I guess it helps when it's all his favorite foods, not much hits the floor that way!

I love these plastic table cloths from the dollar store.  They fit my table perfectly and I can just ball them up at the end of the day and toss it into the trash.  After a long day of partying, who wants to wash a table cloth?  The fringe I picked up at a craft store but you could also use several grass skirts attached together.  Space is always at a premium on a buffet table so I decided to pre-wrap the utensils with the napkins so they would take up less space on the table.  To hold them together I made napkin rings to match the theme the jungle theme.  I also use the same idea to make these super cute water bottle labels.  I thought they were a fun way to dress up the water bottles to make them more appealing rather than just plopping plain water bottles on the table.

 

 

I always look forward to cake at a party, and this one was no different.  I kept with the theme of making Roman's favorite foods and made Roman a lemon blueberry cake with Whipped Cream Frosting.  I took my inspiration from this cake I found on Pinterest.  Now obviously this cake was going to be a large undertaking for one person, so I decided to enlist the help of my Mom.  Between the two of us we managed to pipe this entire cake in no time flat.  We used the #67 Wilton tip for the leaves and the #233 Wilton tip to make the grass around the base of the cake.  We spread a layer of frosting onto the cupcakes and topped them with these adorable palm tree picks I found at PartyCity.

When all was said and done everyone had a great time at Roman's birthday party.  Roman particularly loved playing with all the other kids and running rampant through the house.  The food was gobbled up and much to my surprise I managed to keep the quantity at a normal level this time!  We were very blessed to get to spend this special day with our family and close friends, and had a fantastic time visiting with everyone.  Let the planning for the next party begin!