Special Agent Oso Birthday Cake

We had a Special Agent Oso themed birthday party.  I made a pinata, a poster for pin the "paw pilot" on Oso and we also had a station for the kids to make their own party hats.  I have pictures of all this after the cake.

Here is the cake.  This was not the original design.  I originally wanted to use the Wilton Bear Stand Up pan but after 2 thwarted attempts I gave up and decided to just hand pipe Oso's face onto the cake.  I will try my hand at that Stand Up pan again.  I have not given up completely yet!  :-)

This is the pinata that I made.  After 11 kids tried to destroy it and only the arms fell off, I had to pull in my 9 year old nephew to the rescue to get all the candy out.  Guess I made it too good!

This was the party hat making station.  I just found a simple party hat template online, added the three main characters from Disney's Oso cartoon and then left out ribbon to attach to the hat for the kids to be able to wear the hats.

This was the special birthday boy's hat!

And here is the poster that I made with some of the "Paw Pilots" already in place.  It was a great time!  Now what are we going to do next year, I'll worry about that come November!

Birthday Cupcakes

I made 4 dozen cupcakes to go along with the main cake for my son's birthday party.  I made Oreo cupcakes and Vanilla with vanilla pudding filled cupcakes.

These Oreo cupcakes are slightly different from the ones I previously posted.  I kept them in their original wrapper and I cored out the center to add the cream cheese whipped Oreo filling.  Then I put a swirl of Espresso Chocolate frosting around and topped it with a mini Oreo cookie.

The Vanilla cupcakes here were a 1-2-3-4 Cake recipe off of the Swan's Down Cake Flour box.  I took some dream whip and vanilla pudding and followed the directions on the Dream Whip box to make a Mousse like consistency for my vanilla filling.  I piped it into the center of all the cupcakes.  Then I made a Vanilla Buttercream frosting to top them all off.  I added a few stars for color.

Football Birthday Cake

I haven't baked for a while until last week when I made 4 dozen cupcakes and 3 cakes.  It was my son's 1st birthday party.  Here is one of the cakes I made.  My brother-in-law's birthday was the very next day after our birthday celebration so I wanted to honor his birthday as well.

My BIL is a big football fan so I felt it was only appropriate to have a football shaped cake for him.  I made a chocolate cake for some of my cupcakes and used the leftover batter to pour into a bread pan.  Then I carved the cake into a football shape.  I layered it with just a layer of vanilla buttercream frosting.  The whole cake is covered in an Espresso Chocolate frosting.  Then I added my simple decorations with some more vanilla buttercream frosting.  Mmmmmm Yummy!!!