May 2014 Wrap Up

May was a busy month for me for baking and decorating. I was up late almost every night working on all my fun and different projects, but I still squeezed in a few new recipes to share with you.

Breads & Muffins

The only muffins I made for the first time were these glazed strawberry muffins (recipe here). They were very moist and delicious and a great way to use up some of the strawberries from our morning of strawberry picking.

Brownies & Bars

I made two versions of a sweet potato breakfast bar. The first version was closer to the original recipe (I used regular sugar and not a sweetener, regular milk, and almonds in place of walnuts, and I didn’t make the icing), but I preferred the second version (I used dried cranberries instead of apricots, toasted coconut chips instead of nuts, and regular sugar and milk).

Cakes & Cupcakes

I didn’t make any cupcakes this month, but I did make several cakes. The first cake I made was a MBA graduation cake for Nubia, and it was the largest cake I’ve ever made! I didn’t put the top tier on until we were at the party because I knew the road was windy and potentially bumpy and I wanted to minimize and chance of anything happening to it!

The following day I made two 11×15 retirement celebration cakes. One was chocolate and one was vanilla, and I provided some details about the baking, leveling, and decorating in the collection link provided above.

Next up was a Minecraft cake for Max’s 9th birthday. I didn’t know anything about Minecraft before searching for inspiration for this cake! I gathered several design ideas, but Max made all the final decisions about the flavor (vanilla), shape (rectangle), design (half grass and half dirt), and toppers (Steve, Cow, Pig, Creeper).

After all of these cakes, I had some leftover icing (chocolate and vanilla), strawberry buttercream filling, and Oreo cookie crumbs, so when we were invited to friends’ for a Memorial Day get together, I quickly baked two cakes in the morning to use it all up. I made a strawberries and cream cake and a cookies and cream cake.

Cookies

The first set of sugar cookies I made was the Ninjago cookies for Noah’s birthday treat to share with his class because he decided that he wanted me to make him some cookies instead of having his mom make brownies! Then I worked on these First Communion cookies for Katelyn, and I used the design and colors from the invitation to create this collection for Nash’s playground birthday party.

It was fun to try out both new and old cutters and designs for a collection of beach themed cookies, and these ice cream cone sugar cookies were what I chose to make to keep with tradition of making Leighton a special dessert to celebrate his last day of school.

Decorations and Toppers

I made two sets of toppers to top cupcakes and a cake that I wasn’t baking, and then I worked on three projects for cakes I was making. My first project was vehicle themed cupcake toppers for our friends Lori & Michael’s twin boys, and my second was the peony wedding cake toppers. You can see how the final cake looked with my peony toppers here.

Next up were all the toppers I would be using for my own cakes. My friend Nancy requested an owl topper for Nubia’s graduation cake. This was the first time I had worked with rice krispies as the base for a topper. It kept the topper so much lighter than all fondant, and I will definitely use that method again in the future. I considered using it again for the toppers (Steve, Cow, Pig, Creeper) for Max’s Minecraft cake, but decided it would be easier and neater to work just with fondant for them.

The last set of toppers were the books for the librarian retirement cakes. I had made the closed ones before, so it was fun to try something new by adding some open books.

Other Goodies

I was excited to try making something I had never made before for a Friday night family BBQ with friends. I wanted to make something with fresh berries but not the strawberry shortcake I’ve made so many times before. I decided to try a pavlova for the first time (recipe here). It was a breeze to make, but it cracked a bunch in transit. I was covering it with fresh whipped cream and berries, so it didn’t matter, anyway. It was delicious and is something I will definitely make again.