Switchfoot Themed Chocolate Coffee Cake Balls - November 2014

I made these chocolate coffee cake balls for the band members of Switchfoot and their crew as part of the Switchfoot Baking Club.  (I also made some coffee sugar cookies and some deconstructed chocolate chip cookies; you can click here to see those.)

More details to come... 😊

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Music Themed Cake Balls - March 2014

My son's band was having a cake ball sale; so I made these music themed cake balls to donate to it.

More pictures to come... :)

I used white candy melts to pipe the music notes, treble clefs, and bass clefs out onto parchment paper.  I let them harden and they were ready for when I needed them to decorate the cake balls.

To make the basic cake balls I followed Bakerella's instructions.  You can find them here.

Right after dipping the cake balls I topped them with some yellow nonpareil sprinkles and one of the white music themed candy decorations.  You have to be ready and work quickly so the chocolate doesn't harden before you get everything on it.

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Switchfoot Themed Cupcakes - March 2014

These are cupcakes that I made for the band members of Switchfoot and their crew as part of the Switchfoot Baking Club.  I brought them to a concert that my friend and I went to in March.  

For the top set I made chocolate toppers of their 'logo', some music notes, and SF for Switchfoot. The bottom set have fondant toppers with the songs from their Fading West album (the new one at the time) written across them.  In the 'background' of each topper I wrote lyrics from that particular song.

More pictures and details to come... :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about this cake, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about this cake by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Music Note Cake Balls - January 2014

My son's band was having a cake ball sale; so I made these music themed cake balls to donate to it.

I used black candy melts to pipe the music notes out on to parchment paper.  I let them harden and they were ready when I needed them to decorate the cake balls.

To make the basic cake balls I followed Bakerella's instructions.  You can find them here.

Right after dipping the cake balls I sprinkled some yellow sanding sugar sprinkles on top, and then placed a music note on top standing straight up.  You have to be ready and work quickly so the chocolate doesn't harden before you get everything on it.  I had to hold the music note in place until the chocolate hardened enough to hold it upright on its own (a couple ended up a little crooked :/).  I had to be careful when handling the music notes as the stems were a bit fragile.  I had a couple snap, but thankfully I was able to repair them or replace them with extras I had made.

I thought the cake balls turned out very nicely, and the bake sale was a success!  Yay!  :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Homemade Christmas Cookies - December 2013

My son's band was doing a Christmas cookie sale at one of their concerts.  I made the music note cookies (and some of the circle ones) for the fundraiser, and then I used some of the extra cookie dough to make some Christmas cookies for home.

To make the cookies I just followed a recipe for cut-out sugar cookies.  After the dough was mixed, I separated it into two bowls.  I used green food coloring to make the dough in one bowl green, and I used red food coloring for the other.

For the music note cookies I took red and green cookie dough and rolled them into fat snakes.  Then, alternating the colors, I put them together and rolled them out into a long strip.  I used a music note cutter to cut the notes out of the striped dough.  

After I got all the notes I could cut out of my striped dough, I gathered it up and rolled it out again.  The  notes on the top row (below) were cut from that dough, and they had more of a marbled look.  I also cut out some circles and stars to finish getting our amount of cookies we needed to bring.

The cookies below are what I made with the remaining dough.  I used some cutters and did some freehand.  For some (like the wreath) I treated the cookie dough like Play-Doh, rolling it into balls or snakes to make the various cookies or cookie parts.

Before:

After:

For the candy cane cookies below I made a long snake of red and a long snake of green, twisted them together, and then formed the twist into the shape of a candy cane.

Before:

After:

Merry Christmas!

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Switchfoot Themed Cake Balls - October 2013

These are cake balls I made for the band members of Switchfoot and their crew as part of the Switchfoot Baking Club.  I decorated them with various 'Switchfoot themed' items, and brought them to their Fading West movie viewing and concert back in October. 

 

[The little picture of the guitar to the side is a correction on one of the guitars that I had made that I delivered at a later date.  I got it wrong and it bugged me. ;) ]

More pictures and details to come... :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about this cake, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about this cake by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Teacher Appreciation School Subject Themed Cupcakes - June 2012

I made these cupcakes for my daughter, Cara's, 7th grade teachers.  Each of her teachers got a cupcake and each cupcake had a fondant topper that had something to do with the subject that they teach.

These cupcakes came from the same batch of cupcakes that we used for my son's teacher's cupcake (see this post for tulip cupcakes and this post for Star Wars cupcakes).  So, the cupcakes are just baked, cooled completely, and then iced by using a large star tip to pipe chocolate buttercream on top the chocolate cupcakes.

 

The cupcake below was made for her language arts teacher.  I made a 3D book out of fondant.  Cara wanted the title of the book to be The Giver, which is a book they read during the year.  So, I decided instead of just writing 'The Giver' on the front, I would look the book up online and draw the cover using a brown food coloring marker.  Cara was happy when she saw it.

The next cupcake was made for her P.E. coach.  I rolled out some white fondant and let it dry just a little (it helps the food coloring markers draw more smoothly without catching on the soft fondant).  I drew the volleyball first using a black food coloring marker.  The I used different colors of food coloring to paint on the basketball, tennis ball and tennis racket.  Then I went back with the black food coloring marker to finish the details.  I cut the picture out using a small paring knife when I was finished and stuck the fondant sports topper into the icing.

This cupcake was made for her math teacher.  The process for this topper was the same as the sports one above except I left a little tab of fondant at the bottom when I cut it out to stick into the icing.

 

The cupcake below was made for Cara's science teacher.  I used the same food coloring painting technique going back for the details with the food coloring marker as I did for the sports topper.  I did use a toothpick dipped in water to take some of the lighter purple color away to make bubbles in that section.

I made the following music note cupcake for her choir teacher.  After I painted the music note with red food coloring, I used edible shimmer dust to make it glitter.

This last cupcake was made for her social studies teacher.  Again, same painting technique as the sports topper.

All her teachers liked the cupcakes, and Cara was excited to give them a little thank you treat.  :)

 

(I created my animated name at this site.)

 

Music Note Cupcakes - January 2012

My mom and I made these cupcakes for my sister, Casandra, for her birthday.

I asked my mom if she could make the cupcakes and icing and I would do the toppers.  She got with my sister and they were talking about how since she, Casandra, shares a birthday with Elvis they could do banana cupcakes with peanut butter icing [it was so yummy :)] since he liked to eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches (evidently sometimes also with bacon and/or honey).  So, when my mom told me that, I changed my original idea for the top of the cupcakes and decided to top them with blue shimmery music notes [another little nod to Elvis :)].

My mom made a little round cake for her too, cute.  :)

She put banana pudding filling inside the cupcakes too... mmm!  :)

More details to come... :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about these cupcakes, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about these cupcakes by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)