Ballerina Cake

A few weeks ago was John's niece's 6th birthday... Unfortunately, we were not able to see her for her big day because she lives in Florida.  Lucky for us, she came to visit yesterday!! We could not wait to see her and her little sister and spend a week doing fun things like Build-a-Bear, peach picking, amusement parks, and watching every Harry Potter movie Aunt Jeannie has on DVD!!!  (she calls me Aunt Jeannie because she knows that I am going to be it for real one day... her words!). 

Last night we celebrated her belated birthday with a special cake.  Vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream in an elegant ballerina design.  In the spring Miss Maddie had a ballet recital where she wore a light lavender dress, her hair up in a bun and the cutest little pink ballet shoes.  The girls got professional pictures taken before their dances and here is Miss Maddie's pose.

Naturally I decided to recreate the little ballerina in the picture and turn her into a fondant ballerina!!

I matched everything as best I could... The rest of the cake I covered in lavender fondant with little pink and purple fondant flowers.

I added some elegance with white icing swirls to frame out the flowers... and then wrote Maddie's name in script, so that when she looked over her fondant shoulder she could read her name.

Here are overhead shots...

And the cake again, as a whole.

When we brought the cake out to her, she sat there and stared at it for a minute and then said... that's me?? Nana told her that is what she would look like if she was made out of sugar... and then Maddie said... COOL... She also gave me a huge hug, said Thank you Aunt Jeannie, its just lovely!! :-)  She's so cute... She them proceeded to eat the legs right off the ballerina while the cake was being served, and when we turned back to look at her, the head was gone too... the child was high for the rest of the night on pure sugar! haha

I'm glad I got to make her a special cake, and she was super excited to have a "JeannieCake" of her own!!

Meet The Parents Trifle

So last weekend was the meeting between the parents.  My parents came over to meet John's parents, and luckily everything went well!!! You never know how people will get along, even when you couldnt imagine that they wouldnt, you just never know.  John's mom and I planned the menu one night when I was decorating a robot cake. As I was cutting chunks and chunks of chocolate cake off the base to make the shape of the robot, Betty decided there was no way we could let the cake go to waste, so she said... why not a Trifle?!?! So there it was!

It was her idea, so it was up to me to execute... I made 3 layers of chocolate cake, vanilla pudding, sliced strawberries, and cool whip.  It was huge as you can see, and it was amazingly yummy!

Layers of sweet goodness!

SO overall, the meeting went very well... there was a lot of laughter, great stories, and yummy food!  It was a huge relief to know that our parents get along and we're all looking forward to the next get together!

I need to bake and blog more... and I will... I promise!  I have 3 cakes coming up, and I have a few other things to bake as well... so stay tuned!

July 4th Blueberry Pie

John and I went to Tampa for July 4th weekend to visit friends.  We BBQ'd every day and the finishing touch was the Blueberry pie.  It has been a favorite of mine to bake and a favorite of my friends to eat.  There is nothing too special about it other than the love that I make it with.  The highlight was watching my friends little boy Anthony devour the pie like he had never eaten before in his life.

The crust browned nicely... and it was nice and juicy!

Here is the little man cutting in!

Stuffing his face...

He might be in a sugar high

It was a great weekend and I was told, a great pie...