Don't act like you're not impressed: Minnie Mouse Cupcakes

Yes, we are still celebrating my daughter's birthday a week later. Isn't that how we all like our birthdays to be? Today we held a party for her and some of her little friends at one of those indoor moon bounce places. It seemed to be a hit with most of the kids and the best part was that I did not have to clean my house before or after the party. The only effort I had to put forth was making up some goody bags and making these cupcakes.

I actually saw this idea on http://acupfullofcake.blogspot.com/2009/08/minnie-mouse-themed-cake-and-cupcakes.html

and decided to try my hand at it. I used chocolate cake mix and made per the directions on the box, iced them, and made Minnie's bows out of bite-sized Twizzlers and the ears were Oreos, sans the cream filling. Unfortunately, the Oreo "ears" got pretty soft overnight, and they kind of broke off, so I had some repair work to do this morning, but otherwise, they were a big hit and tasted delicious!

Cake Boss Wanna-Be

Happy New Year, Internet!

I was not nursing a hangover this New Year's Day because I am 31 1/2 weeks pregnant, but I did enjoy sleeping in this morning. The child also slept in until 9 (!) which was a gift unto itself, especially since she has been getting over a nasty cough/cold. So today we are headed to an aunt's for some traditional New Year's Roast Pork and I offered to bring a birthday cake for J because the whole family will be together and her birthday falls on 1/5. I feel a little bad lumping her birthday into New Year's, but I figure she's too little to know any better. :)

So my project for this morning involved making a Minnie Mouse-inspired cake. As you can see, this was a very amateur effort. Basically, I used 2 boxes of cake mix and made two cakes in 9-inch pans (4 altogether). One cake turned into the "face" and the other, I cut in half for the "ears." If I ever have to do this again, I would probably just invest in some smaller cake pans b/c icing the "ears" was pretty annoying. I used some pink fondant icing from a tube from AC Moore, and made Minnie's bow with those fruit slice jelly candy. The Minnie image is actually stickers that I just laid on top of the icing - not edible! If I ever have more time (ha!) I will play around with fondant. Cake Boss, I am not! I think my soon-to-be 3-year-old will like this regardless.