Mini Cupcake Pies - (cake that looks like pie)

My daughter's birthday was last month, and while all the girls are getting older and their theme parties are a bit more chill, I always still try to make a fun cake for their birthday.  She was just going to have some friends come over to play video games, and didn't have a particular theme in mind. Then I realized that she plays a game on the computer where they make virtual pies all day. I had this idea to make cupcakes look like miniature pies.  We searched around on Pinterest and came up with a few ideas to base our cake/pies on.  They turned out super cute!!

Mini Cupcake Pies are probably the cutest thing ever!

 
All you need are:

24 cooked, cooled cupcakes (from a box or from scratch)
Silver cupcake liners (to look like pie pans)
1 large bag of mini MnM's, colors sorted
2 tubs of store bought frosting (or make your own butter cream)
Unsweetened cocoa power
Yellow food dye Wilton basket weave tips (47 for cupcakes or 1D for larger cake pies)

Bake 24 cupcakes and let cool completely. 

For the frosting you can make your own or a few cans of store bought vanilla, though in hindsight the homemade buttercream might set up firmer around the edges of the "pie".

Cake, that looks like tiny pies. Adorable!

To your white frosting, place a 1/2 teaspoon of unsweetened cocoa powered and a few drops of yellow food dye into the frosting until you get a "pie crust" type color. Add small amounts of cocoa as needed.

Unsweetened cocoa powder and yellow food dye will give you frosting a "pie crust" peachy color

Frost each cupcake with a bit of the crust colored frosting 

It's sort of an odd shade, a light skin color, or peachy/brown

Then carefully place tiny MnM's in one color (red for "cherry", blue for "blueberry", etc.) My teen had fun doing this.  Once you get the top fully covered in mini MnM's then you are going to pipe a lattice (we used Wilton basket weave tip 47) a few strips one way, 

It looks like little blueberries under a lattice crust

Then a few stripes the opposite way.  Don't worry about the edges, you can cover that up with a little "ruffle" type edging to make it look like a real little pie crust.

Messy edges will be covered up with the next stop

Next, go around the edges of the cupcake with the same tip in a ruffly "edge of the pie" type pattern, mostly a wave pattern.

Blueberry pie! The first time we did this, we used store bought frosting and it got a little warm, but still did an okay effect

Next try a few more colors of "pie filling"

Ooo cherry pie!  We ended doing 4 mini pies of each color

For the orange and yellow MnM's (lemon and pumpkin) pie, we didn't do lattice work for those, and thought they would look nicer with a little blob of white "whipped cream" (white frosting pipped with a star tip).

Twist on the star  tip as you pull up to get that "dollop" look

These tiny pies started to look pretty good as we did the different flavors

Did someone order a chocolate mini pie cupcake?

We put a variety on a sheet pan and it turned out to be a great way to display them.

The teens went gaga over these little beauties.

My middle was turning 14.  These number candles fit in one pie perfectly

We had a little left over batter, so I decided to pour it into a full-sized pie pan and then we whipped up a pretend pumpkin pie, which was the birthday girl's favorite pie in the fall.  It looked pretty realistic when we were done. (Note: We took the extra pie crust frosting, which already had that brown crust hue, separated it and put red and yellow food coloring in it until it resembled a pumpkin color). More white dollops of white frosting with the flower tip to give it some flair.

Fake pumpkin pie cake... looks pretty realistic

Here it is all lit up with candlelight

Happy pumpkin pie funfetti cake to you...

See, it really was cake all along.

Great for any holiday, even April Fools!

I hope you liked our little fake out fun food here.  We had a blast making these together, and there's not a ton of activities you can do with your teen where they are chatting and enjoying themselves making tiny food.

Llama Alpaca Birthday Cake

What do you do when your tween loves, Llamas/Alpacas, Laser Tag, and Sleepovers? Well you have a Laser Llama Pajama party for her 12th birthday, of course! My middle really wanted a llama/alpaca cake for her big day, because her new favorite things (above all of the things) are llamas and alpacas. I went searching the interwebs for some cake inspiration, and what resulted was the cutest darn llama face cake in the history of tweendom.

Is it a llama, or an alpaca?  We'll let you decide.

Here's a couple tips on how to make one for yourself. I am in no way a professional baker by the way, just a regular mom that tries to obtain her kid's wishes through baked goods. You will need:

Round cake baked with 2 (or more layers)
Top (roundish) part of cake trimmed off (save that part for the raised llama nose)
Frosting in white and whatever other color you want to make your llama
A few easy gel frostings with easy tips in black and pink for the facial features
The "grass tip" or Wilton tip (#233)
Pale Laffy Taffy, or vanilla Tootsie rolls for the ears

First, bake a two layer cake and stack the two layers. (Sometimes I will bake the cake the day before, let it cool, wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze until the following day when I'm ready to frost. Frozen cake is sometimes easier to frost with less of a crumb coat needed).

We used two 8-inch round cakes and layered them with strawberry jelly between the layers

When you pull the cake out of the oven, there is usually a "domed" up section in the middle of the pan. Use your knife to level off the top of the cake to make it flat, but take the "domed" top and cut out a small round circle to be the nose of your llama (this will make it looked raised and three dimensional).  Place this little extra disc in the center of the cake for a visual on future placement.

Use the cut off top of the cake when you even it out to make an elevated llama nose

Frost top of your cake with white frosting.  Half of the llama's face will be white, with a "furry" blue layer around the frame of the face.

Place white frosting on the top of the cake.

Take your little extra dome piece and frost that while on a separate plate.

It's messy to frost the sides, but then pick the whole thing up with a fork or large spoon.

Move the domed "nose" to the center of the cake and using the grass tip (Wilton #233) start pipping little fur tufts all over the cake, being sure to leave an almost heart shaped white spot in the middle for the eyes, nose and mouth.

Squeeze near the cake and pull up quickly to make little sections of "grass" or "fur" everywhere.

My original intention was to try and make the fluffy fur all over the cake, however, when I got close to the sides, I realized that the frosting was falling over too much (thanks to gravity) and so I opted last minute to use the blue frosting and frost around the sides. 

Smooth sides and fluffy bottom

You can totally do the smooth sides in aqua right after you put the white frosting at the top near the beggning. I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants.  I went back after the sides were on and put extra "grass" at the top  and then went around the base and added grass there too.

After that you want to add the face.  I used black pre-made frosting gel in a tube (with a decorative tip) to make the lines for the smile and the eyes with those most adorable eyelashes.

The nose is a "U" shape with two mouth lines to make a smile, and then a large dot for the eye and three eye-lashes for fun

 Next came the cute little rosy cheek dots.

I love the pop of color in the cheeks

Next (and rather last minute) I wanted to add ears. We had a pineapple Laffy Taffy, but you could also use a vanilla Tootsie roll. You can either roll it around in a clean warm hand until you can shape it into a tear drop shape, or some people will microwave the candy for a few seconds to get it warm and pliable. 

Cute, edible ears

I sort of pinched the bottoms of the circles or teardrops to give it a more realistic look. I also put some extra frosting under where I wanted them to be to prop them up a bit.  Isn't this the cutest stinkin' thing you've ever seen?

Hello, I'm adorable

After that, there was nothing left to do, but party!

Bring on the party animals!

Happy 12th birthday Eva!

Light da candles every-ting all right!

They had the best time. We got a lot of OOOoohs and Aaahhhhs when her friends saw the cake.

Happy birthday to you....

So, if you have a llama lovin' tween in your life, a 4-H guru, need something for your Future Farmers of America party, or if you just want this cute face looking up at you at your next gathering, give this one a try. Let me know how it turns out!

Enjoy.









 

Mermaid Treasure Cake

My middle child wanted to have a mermaid themed party this year.  She didn't want specifically Ariel, but rather a mermaid/under the sea theme for the whole party.  We picked cool tones like blues, aquas, and purples for the party theme colors, and went looking around for different mermaid cake ideas on Pinterest.  None of them completely struck our fancy, so we ended up doing a hybrid of a few cake ideas we saw and made the cake our own.  Behold, I give you, the most spectacular mermaid treasure cake in the history of the world:

Mermaid Treasure Cake

First thing that happened was we baked two cakes in a round 8 or 9 in pan, enough to give it two layers. We added some blue and purple coloring to each pan to add to the mermaid color scheme.  I often will freeze the cakes after being completely cooled and removed from the pan and wrap in plastic wrap.  It's easier to work with cake when it is cool and frozen.

Unwrap the frozen cake and place on the board you want to serve it on. I tend to put some strips of wax paper under the four edges of the cake, to protect the serving board from getting frosting on it.

frozen cake layers are easier to handle with less crumbs

Add a layer of strawberry jam (or frosting) between the layers to help secure them together and stack the other half of the cake on top.  Because they are frozen it is easy to trim back any areas that might be lopsided, or off center at this time.

Stack the cakes together

Now that the cakes are stacked you want to get a Wilton large round tip and put a large amount of light aqua blue frosting in a pipping bag.  I have seen many cakes on pinterest that will put a line of dots vertically up the cake, then smooth half the dot over then add more dots. 

I wanted to do that same effect, only I wanted it to look like scales of a mermaid tail.  So I put a line of dots about an inch in diameter all around the very bottom of the cake. 

dot along the bottom of the cake for a mermaid scale effect

Then take a small round spatula knife and stick in near the middle of the dot, and press and pull up to streak the frosting in the area above it. I ended up trading the one shown below for a smaller round tipped spatula (looks the same, just smaller) that would fit inside the blue dot.

Do this all the way around until you come back to the first dot.

Next layer you want to start up a little bit, covering up some of the streak from the first layer, and and a new layer of dots, and pulling them up as well.

Continue each layer, more dots, more streaking up

After a while, you will see the "scales" on the mermaid tale take shape

At the top layer I placed the dots as high up the sides without going over the top.  Once at the top, I pulled the streak up to the top side of the cake.  Going all the way around, it will look unfinished, but we will cover that up.

Next, switching color and frosting size tipped (smaller round tip) put a ring of purple dots around the top of the cake.  To remove the little peaks that stick up, dip your finger in water and touch the top of each dot.  The moisture will push the tip in and make it look like a round ball.

  I wanted to make a treasure chest on the top of the mermaid cake, but I wanted to make it look like sand.  So pour 1/2 cup (to start with) of brown sugar onto the center of the cake.  

 
Be really careful and slowly with a fork pull the sugar towards the purple dot border.  You don't want the sugar to actually touch or stick to the dots, or fall over the side of the cake, as it will stick to the mermaid scales.

  Go slow here until you have full "sand" coverage.

 
After that, it is time to build the treasure chest made of chocolate.  I mean, if you are going to have a treasure chest, one made of chocolate would be extra fabulous, no?   Gather up a pile of regular Kit Kat bars and make sure you are working in a cool place, or chill the candy in the fridge, as it tend to melt and I found even leave finger prints in the chocolate if it's too warm while you are doing this next part. 

You will need two full Kit Kat bars for the box, plus one Kit Kat bar cut in half for the sides.  You will also need a full Kit Kat bar for the lid.  The bottom of this box is open and will sit in the "sand".  I took a sharp knife an chopped off the very ends of the bars that flair out a bit, so it made more of a square edge. This was only on the parts that would not be seen.

Melt a handful of chocolate chips in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time until you have liquid chocolate. This will be the glue you need to make a chocolate treasure box  Working quickly, paint a swab of liquid chocolate down one side, making sure the front of the words "kitKat" are right side up.  Hold in place for a few seconds, then prop up against something so the chocolate can dry.  

Two sides of the chocolate Kit Kat box

  Make a second version of this for the other side of the box, also prop to dry. 

I tried to get all the Kit Kat logos facing the same direction all the way around the box

Once these two pieces are firm and holding together, place more liquid chocolate in the two corners and place all the pieces together to form a box.  Again, let it dry completely.

A box.  A box of chocolates.  Mama always said....

Now place the box on the cake where you want it.  The "sand" will help hold it in place.

chocolate treasure box on mermaid tail cake

Next we need to fill it with "treasure".  I decided to put some "filler" material in the bottom of the chest, so I used some captain crunch type cereal to fill up half of the chest, then I added those fancy jewels to the top. Jewels were found at Oriental Trading Company in a 12 pack of Velvet bags for vacation bible school, I just removed the jewels from the bag and used for my treasure.  This was way more economical than buying other fake jewels from amazon or other places on line, and bonus, they looked pretty real! I also added a fake black pearl necklace hanging off the side of added effect.

Next came the lid.  I took two sucker sticks (can buy in a pack of 25 at the craft store) and stuck them in the front of the treasure chest in the two front corners.

The lid of the chest consists of one full Kit Kat bar.  Get some more of that liquid chocolate, and "glue" the lid in place, securing it at the back of the chest while holding it propped up on the sucker sticks.  It will take about 30 seconds for the lid to set in place. 

Every treasure chest needs a lid - to protect from pirates of course

After that, sit back and enjoy your awesomeness

Chocolate treasure chest - B-E-A-Utiful!

 My middle child absolutely LOVED this cake.

There were many OOs and Ahs when the party guests saw the cake. I found these cool twirly candles at Walmart that reminded us of waves, or seaweed.

They looked really cool all lit up.

This was the inside of the cake, once we cut into it.

Let them eat cake!

All in all, it fit right in with our under the sea mermaid party and the girls really loved his cake.  

I am told the next morning, that in the middle of the night, some of the girls snuck into the kitchen and demolished the chocolate treasure chest, as there was only a pile of cereal left behind as evidence.. those tricky mermaids...