Alexia's Birthday Cake

For Alexia's birthday Libbey asked me if I would be willing to make the birthday cake. The only parameters that she gave me were that it be chocolate and girly (I was a bit bummed with the chocolate requirement--I was hoping that I could do an ombre of pinks, you know the ultimate girly). I immediately started having ideas in my head of what I wanted to do. My original plan was to make chocolate flourishes that I could stand up and make 3D on top of the smash cake and when I went to search I found this other great idea instead. It's actually pretty simple (I would highly recommend having a second person to help press and wrap the chocolate cage around the cake---you can find my post on how it's made HERE) and can be quite pretty and add such a nice touch to the cake. 

I was a little disappointed with the butterfly, I had tried coping a rhinestone pattern (which was absolutely gorgeous!) but the pearls that I used were a lot larger than the design and they used 3 different sizes in the original so I ended up just doing the outline of the butterfly and then dropping pearls randomly. 

I was quite nervous driving to their house with the cake, I held the plate the whole time saying to the cake "Please be careful, please don't break" and other things of the like. 

So I didn't do complete chocolate, I had to get some kind of surprise in (I hadn't told them I was doing the pink cake and they didn't know about it until the cut into it!)

The Fun in a Cake

Somehow all of my interactions with Candace and Anna involve food (it IS a great world :D) I had a Friday off and sort of invited myself down to their place to play and have fun. Candace was awesome and made a super yummy pineapple upside down cake (I'm not sure I had even had that before), we watched a movie, talked tons, played some cards, slept, went shopping, and had just as much as ever. I love these two girlies and am so grateful they were my roommates this last year and that we can still keep up the friendship!

Candace making sure the product was going to be good :) (or maybe just cleaning out the bowl)

I'm not sure with Anna (of course we never are)

Candace with the CAKE!

The beautiful finished product :)

Jacob Turns 4!

Wow! I can't believe that Jacob is already 4, where have the years gone?

Libbey and Erick made the cake, it looked awesome! Jacob LOVES Cars so of course it made it's way onto the cake :D Jacob also got to pick what was served at the dinner, so we had pizza, corn on the cob, salad, and I think I'm missing something?

Libbey lighting the candles and bringing the cake to the living room.

Big Boy! He can blow all of his candles out!

Cute little Claire (watching the present opening action)!

Jacob got lots of cool presents, his neighbor friend gave him a Steelers blanket.

Aunt Sonia, Uncle Ben, and family gave him lots of cool activity books. Every time he would pull out something new he would go "Wow!"

What did he get from Mom and Dad?.....a scooter!

Giving Grandma a hug for her present (a super sweet book about tractors with a puzzle in it)

Putting the puzzle together.

Trying out his new scooter.

He also got a couple of kites, at one point he had the kite tied to his handle and would ride really fast so the kite would fly behind him.

Cake Collection

There are so many different kinds of cakes that you can get here in Taiwan and just as many different designs. I have decided to make a collection of just the birthday cakes that I have at the school.

Alice P.

(Ice Cream Cake)

May 25, 2010

Jason

May 10, 2010

Elaine

April 21, 2010

B. Ethan

April 9, 2010

Sandy

April 8, 2010

Ray

March 26, 2010

Rain

March 15, 2010

Sam

March 2, 2010

Strawberries for Birthdays!

Have you ever noticed that when you spell Strawberry backwards the end of it says WARTS? I just did when I was trying to come up with a creative title for this post. Tuesday was Sam's Birthday and we celebrated with a super yummy, super big cake! To say that there was strawberries on the top is understatement...there was STRAWBERRIES! on the top of the cake, all neatly and beautifully placed.

Strawberries

Yesterday we were talking about strawberries. When I was doing a google image search for strawberries and quickly glanced at this picture I thought that it looked yummy and then I opened it and realized that they were made of paper! Isn't this beatiful and looks almost real? I thought about teaching the kids to make the strawberries but it had a lot of steps that I thought might be too much for the kids.