Space Shuttle Cake

OK, so I’m months behind on this one. The Wee One is also not so wee.

This was January in front of Mission: Space.

He turned five a couple months back, and today I noticed he is taller than my elbow. He’s more than 2/3rds of my height! I’m going to be looking up at him before the end of elementary school! And he’s still under 40 pounds.

So I need a new nickname.

And he needed a space shuttle birthday cake.

Space shuttle cake construction – easy. Bake a cake in a 9×13″ pan. Cut off the two top corners and stick them on the bottom sides.

Space shuttle cake icing – almost easy. Freeze the cake first, and less crumbs come off in the icing process. But buy a cake board bigger than 13×9.

Space shuttle details – um, hard. I suck at piping. Google images has much better examples. Some with candy! Candy probably would have tasted better than black icing, too…

Maybe Twizzlers out of the bottom as fire… Man, this one could have been a lot cooler.

Zebra Cupcakes

The Wee One’s birthday fell on on Z week at school, and his teacher issued me the challenge of zebra cupcakes. She doesn’t know my sister is talented in the cupcake cake arena. A quick bit of Googling led to this post on Cupcakes Take the Cake. No, I don’t think anyone knows what the heck is up with the egg and bacon cupcake with it.

It starts with a cupcake iced in white…

…stick a mini Nilla wafer in…

…pipe black icing all over the Nilla, stripes on the sides and a thicker stripe on the top…

…hand it over to your soon-to-be-five-year-old with regular and mini M&Ms. Tell him to use brown (regulars) for the ears, brown (minis) for the nose and colored (minis) for the eyes…

…realize that soon-to-be-five-year-olds are fascinated by colors and you should just be happy to get the right number of M&Ms on the cupcakes.

30th Birthday Cupcakes

The sweet, angelic creature that I carried for nine months (two with unbearably itchy rash), gave birth to after 13 hours of induced labor and raised for the past four years, refused to say happy birthday to me without some concrete evidence of a birthday. That, to him, was cupcakes.

Nevermind that his dad is TDY (and has been for my last five birthdays, one of which the sweet, angelic creature gave me viral pinkeye) and this was my THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY, which according to all my friends, makes me really old.

The boy wanted cupcakes and he was prepared to withhold his love.

So I bought Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Butter Recipe Golden Cake Mix. I thought it sounded better than “yellow cake.” It actually turned out quite chiffony-cupcake-ish. Yum! Maybe because you beat it for four minutes? Thank goodness for Kitchenaids!

I added two tablespoons of orange juice instead of some of the water, and some orange zest. Subtle flavor, but nice. For the icing, I made butter icing from the recipe in my Betty Crocker Cookbook, but split the milk into half milk, half orange juice. And added some more orange zest. Tried using my cookie press to pipe icing on, but it made a mess – I think it was a bit too soft.

And then I went all out with the design!

Cake decoration – Race Car Cake

The Wee One was pretty dead set on a Speed Racer birthday party. Like, since August. Didn’t change his little three-year-old mind once in seven months. Unfortunately, his mother didn’t get the cake decorating genes in the family. I can’t even ice a cake without making a huge mess, never mind shape it like a race car. And Lord knows, I’m not going to buy a specially shaped cake pan that will get used once.

So I did what every good mother does – invited a couple grandmas out to make the cake.

The Wee One and Grammy consulted the Internet for a design. I was thinking something in a race car cupcake arrangement, but the race track from Family Fun won immediate preschooler approval.

The cake pan Mommy bought from Baker’s Secret won zero approval. The ripples on the bottom made it impossible to get the cake out. Luckily it only broke on one side which we trimmed anyway for the cake. Also luckily it was on clearance and only cost $4 and still works for other foods. Just not, um, cakes.

Since we’re transient hobos and only had one (sucky) cake pan, Grandma decided to bake one big cake which was frozen then cut in half. The Wee One chose chocolate cake because he likes seeing Mommy gag. All baking credits go to Grandma – and most everyone else said it was tasty.

Grammy gets the credit for shaping and icing. We didn’t bother with the green sprinkles or cookie crumbs from the recipe and did the white lane dividers in icing instead of candy. But we did manage to find a little race car candle set – and there were four candles in it ! Perfect!

Did the finished product satisfy the birthday boy? Of course!

Resourceful Grammy even managed to light a piece of spaghetti on the electric stove when we realized the transient hobos had no lighters. I guess that’s one bonus for the gas stove at our new house.