Happy Birthday, Baby!

This is a sort of reverse ag.gray.gate post wherein I created a cake pop collage for the blog, forgot to post it here, and this past week posted it to Pinterest instead! Sacrilege, I know. What can I say? Pinterest has swept me away...for the moment at least!

For Jack's birthday we made Ice Cream Cake Pops as per his request. They turned out fantastic and were really simple. The poppets were thrilled!

A little about the pops...
-The pics don't show us mixing the buttercream icing into the crumbled cake. The texture should be that of raw cookie dough. Roll and chill.
-Having access to american style Almond candy bark makes all the difference in the world. Anything else will ruin your day. Trust me.
-Melt the bark in a double boiler. Dip cones and place on chilled balls. Chill again before final coating.
-I was lucky enough to find mini cones with flat bottoms, which meant I didn't have to fashion or find some sort of mini ice cream cone holder.
-Sophie Wong took the gorgeous inset photo. Mad skillz, that woman.

Ta da. Birthday magic.

Happy Birthday

Today is my Mom's birthday! Happy Birthday Woman!!!!! I wanted to take this time to share just how incredibly blessed I am to have this wonderful woman in my life. My mother is strong beyond compare, hysterically funny, humble, gorgeous, amazingly personable, spicy, selfless and brilliant.
Now as many things as I could say I found the following quotes, all of which made me a little verkelpt,  to be so accurate and succinct I could do no better. These excerpts are so true about my Mom I think they really must have been written as an homage to her alone.

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.  ~Rajneesh  


A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving 



One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.  ~George Herbert


Who fed me from her gentle breast
And hushed me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My Mother.
~Anne Taylor


A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self.  And mothers are their daughters' role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.  ~Victoria Secunda


A mom reads you like a book, and wherever she goes, people read you like a glowing book review.  ~Robert Brault


Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds.  Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world.  ~Kate Douglas Wiggin
I love you Mom - Happy Birthday xoxo.

A Cake for Isla

I have not a clue as to how a little girl who has virtually no exposure to the Wonderful World of Disney has such an enormous affection for all things Tinkerbell, but she does. Isla's heart on for the tiny beast appeared one day out of the blue and here it has stayed.

So, of course, for Isla's birthday I endeavoured to make a Tinkerbell cake. I had seen the photos online. I might have shown them to Isla, and now her mind was made up. It looked really difficult. The combined potential brutal honesty of two preschoolers sent shivers up my spine. It was gonna have to not suck. I was scared.

Now being cable-less has left me at a disadvantage. As far as gleaning useless information from TLC to be recalled at convenient moments I am now at a loss. Internet to the rescue! I Googled how-to videos on 5 different kinds of fondant and how to apply it. The term 'crumb coat' kept coming up...so I Googled that too. Down the rabbit hole I went.

I really wanted to make marshmallow fondant from scratch. It tastes better and doesn't have as much crap in it...then went and bought Wilton pre-made and added food colouring. The Wilton site itself was a wealth of information and I used their butter cake recipe in the end. And despite cautionary cries in chat rooms everywhere, I used my Kitchen Aid mixing bowl as a cake pan. It worked like a chizzarm!!!!

Ice Cream Cake Pops by Bakerella

Long story short, the cake did not suck...it was all kinds of awesome, nowhere near as difficult as it looks, but every bit as pretentious! Fondant is absolutely my new favourite thing! Oh, and my three year old :)

For Jack's Birthday I plan on successfully trying my hand at these Cake Pops...