Sofia's Birthday {Tangled}

Fall is finally upon us which means this mama is constantly BUSY! Both kids started sports for the first time so we are still adjusting to the new schedules... Anyway, my sweet daughter turned 5 and the day couldn't come soon enough for her. She was so excited to finally celebrate her birthday along with her friends. We so wish to be able to invite everyone but this year she picked her friends and we ended up with about 23 kids total! So blessed!
Our friend Mistie, one of Sofia's friend's mom, took some great pictures for me. I came across a site called Paint the Moon. Annie, the photographer, sells some awesome photoshop and elements Actions which I used to edit Mistie's pictures. Miss Sofia wanted a Rapunzel (Tangled) party so this was my first attempt at 1. Making a tower and 2. Making, said tower, with rice krispie treats. Ok, enough talking... Here are the pictures (lots of them!):

And here is a list of the different vendors I used:
Dress ~ Little Blue Boo
Hair Bow ~ Petal Patch Baby
Paper Straws/Balloons/Tissue Daisy ~ Polka Dot Market
Bottles ~ Specialty Bottle
Candy Rock/Gumball ~ Party City
Fabric Flowers ~ Leila's Flower Garden
Letter S ~ Decorated by me but purchased from Say it with letters
Cookies ~ Made by me but printed in edible paper with a design I bought on Etsy
Paper ~ Basic Grey 
Cake/Birthday Banner ~ Me :)... The Cake was a three layer cake (vanilla and chocolate mud cakes). I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the banner (by the way, there is a new machine available now! Just an FYI for all my crafty friends) and bought a 36"x48" canvas that I painted to use as a background to hang it from.
That's it my friends! It was fun working on this project for my sweet girl... Looking forward to the next year :)
XOXO!

Super Fast Tutorial

Well, it's been a busy and HOT summer in Texas. I'm from the equator (Colombia) but this is a little overboard! Anyway, as my title says I wanted to post a very quick "tutorial"... I don't think falls under the tutorial category but here we go. In Colombia we have a very traditional cake called Torta Negra (black cake) and it's primarily used for special occasions like weddings, first communions, etc. The best way to describe it is like a spice cake with alcohol (usually wine, rum or brandy or all the above LOL!). I'm still trying to find the perfect recipe because to be honest I still have not been able to make it just the right way -or perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. So I decided to make my quick version of Torta Negra. All you need is:

Any chocolate cake box will work

And some red wine. Basically instead of using water, use red wine -any brand works. I also grab some raisins and let them soak on wine at least 24 hours prior to making the cake, strain them and add them to the batter. And there you have it. This version is obviously more on the chocolate side but will not disappoint you :).

Give it a try and let me know how it goes! Hope you enjoy it ... And as September get closer, it only means I'm a month away from daughter's birthday. She has requested a Rapunzel cake! Oh, boy... I'm starting to work on the little bitty flowers I will be needing for the cake

And last... I got to play with my new bootie cutter from JEM

So cute!

Thanks for stopping by!!

Purple Cake!

I made these cupcakes and cake for my friend's daughter who loves the color purple! I used this opportunity as an excuse to make my first gumpaste peony... And I think I'm in love with this flower :). I hope to make more of them in the future.

Toy Story 3 {Birthday Party}

My son recently turned 3, so along with one of his little friends, we had a toy story 3 birthday party. The boys went swimming and everyone had a great time. I had so much fun getting ready for it and I hope you like it as much as I did!

I made a 3 layer cake (yellow, chocolate and strawberry) filled with Duncan Hines strawberry icing... It's SO delicious!

Except for the figurines all the decorations were made out of fondant. I made the "Toy Story 3" sign by cutting it first on card board with the help of my Silhouette Machine

I was trying to recreate "Sunnyside"

The table set up!

I made the sign as well with my cutting machine!

Yummy chocolate covered cookie Oreos. I wish I had taken a better picture of the cupcakes and the toppers :(

And some sugar cookies and gumballs :)

I can't believe my baby is 3!!!

Baby Shower Cakes

I just wanted to share a couple of cakes I made earlier in the year for a couple of baby showers. They were both inspired by Andrea's SweetCakes -I love her cake work! Amazing!

Thanks for looking! And I hope everyone is staying cool... It's HOT in DFW!!

Happy 4th of July!!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful 4th of July celebration with friends and family! I recently (last Thursday lol :)) came across this wonderful cake idea from Glorious Treats.

Isn't it wonderful? After getting inspired by it, I decided to give it a try myself.

I used yellow cake and mixed it with blue berry jell-o plus a little bit of blue food coloring to make the blue part and Red velvet for the Red stripes. 

6" and 8" round cakes

Instead of using white cake for the white strips, I used a generous layer of white butter cream icing

And the finish product!

It got a bit messy when cutting the cake, but it was a hit with our friends :)

Everyone have a fantastic day full of delicious foods and yummy treats! God Bless our troops who fight for our freedoms every day and God Bless America!!!

I'm Back !!!

Hi Everyone!! I'm still alive :)... The last 2 months, almost 3, have gone by so fast and kept me so busy that I ended up neglecting my little blog so I'll try to give you a quick long update as to what has happened in the last few weeks...
So I finished my fondant lessons:
Class #4 was about stencil. It's really easy to do on top of cake but it take more practice to do it on the sides. I did fall in love with this new color called Salmon Pink:

Lesson #5 was supposed to be during Super Bowl weekend but as you may recall, DFW had a "winter blast" so we had to postpone our class for week. Anyway, this was a grand finale. I made a 6" square cake on top of a 8" round cake -I should had used a 10" round cake at the bottom instead. I still loved the colors. The bow was made on our first class so that's why it looks a bit over sized. One of the teacher's from my kids school was leaving so we ended up using the cake for her farewell party at the school so it worked out great!

After this, my full time job just kept me B.U.S.Y.!!! On the plus side I had a business trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina. After Colombia, it's by far my favorite country in South America. I love the food, the people, visiting my sweet friend Joha and off course Tango!

First time dancing Tango. This is during my lesson with my friend's husband Robert!

Then it was back to more work and work but I did had a great chance at making a couple of special cakes:
My lovely husband's birthday was in February. His favorite cake is Carrot Cake and so I made one in  like 3 hours thanks to Cooks Illustrated recipe that I found in this book.

My sweet friend Desi's soon was turning 4 and she allowed me to make his cake. Mr J is a big Star Wars fan and I was so excited to try this out! I found an awesome Darth Vader cake pan on line. Because of its size, I had to use a 12"x12" cake pan. This was a heavy cake but it worked out great. Also, my friend purchased the Star Wars cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma which I used to make the cupcake toppers. And last, but not least, Michelle captured this cool image of the cake!

Sorry for the long! I hope everyone had a blessed and wonderful Easter. I've Mother's day, my birthday and teacher appreciation week so I hope to have at least one new post soon! As always, thanks for checking :) XOXOXO