Shopkins Birthday Cake

I don't know about your kids, but my daughter loves her Shopkins!  She attended a birthday party at a friend's house earlier in the year with a Shopkins theme and when it came time for her birthday, she just had to have the same!  I was happy to oblige.

My kids were a little late to the Shopkins game, but they've been collecting them for a while now.  I have to admit, the little figurines are quite cute.  When they first started collecting them it was sometimes difficult to find them in stock.  But now, after a year or so my kids have friends giving them their old ones.  Works for me!

Back to the party planning!

Once we had a theme we had to decide on a cake.  It had to reasonably meet my daughter's expectations and be within my skill set.  My daughter and I searched the internet for a while, trying to come up with a good idea.

We saw some simple cakes using the actual toys as decoration.  Not a bad idea.  My daughter wasn't interested in that style.  There were other elaborate cakes with so much detail I was not willing to even try.  Then one night while I was saying goodnight to my daughter, we looked at her Shopkins poster and saw Cheeky Chocolate.  "What about that one?"  I asked her.  She liked it!  The rest is history.

There are some errors in the design, but overall I think it turned out cute and resembles Cheeky Chocolate quite nicely.


Cheeky Chocolate Cake

Ingredients/materials:

Best Buttercream Icing
Wilton gel food color in Sky Blue
Wilton gel food color in Black
Wilton gel food color in Brown (optional)
Cocoa
2 box cake of choice
2 - 9x13 pans
frosting spreader
3-4 piping bags
writing tip(s)

Instructions:

Follow the instructions on your box cake mix and pour each cake into a 9x13 pan.

While the cake is cooking, mix up a batch of the Best Buttercream Icing.  Put 1/3 of the mixed frosting aside in a bowl and leave it white.  Cover.  Place 1/3 in another bowl, put aside and cover.  Leave last third of frosting in the mixer and very slowly add sky blue until you reach your desired color.  Cover and put aside.

To one of your bowls of white frosting, add a few tablespoons of cocoa.  You may need to add a small amount of cream to fix the consistency.  DO NOT mix in any black food coloring yet.  Add brown food color if necessary to get desired color.  Cover.

Once the cake has cooled, check if it is even.  If not, trim as needed.  Place one cake on desired tray then top lightly with white frosting.  Place the second cake on top of the frosting.  No frosting should be oozing out the edges.

Next, you will use the chocolate brown frosting to make the exposed chocolate bar.  Spread the frosting smoothly over the top of the cake where the chocolate bar should be.  Wipe off the frosting knife and gently drag it sideways to make 8 chocolate squares.  Then add some chocolate frosting to a piping bag fitted with a writing tip.  Make small hearts in each chocolate square.

TIP:  To make your frosting smooth, dip a clean frosting spreader in warm water, remove from water and shake off excess.  Use knife to smooth frosting before it hardens.  

Now you will take your blue frosting and spread it over the remainder of the cake.

After the blue is spread smoothly, take some of your white frosting and add it to a clean piping bag equipped with a writing tip.  Outline a white wrapper (look at picture for shape) bordering the brown and blue.  Then take your spreader or a smaller knife and fill the outline with white frosting.

Once the wrapper is complete, find a round template such as a glass and make a light mark where the eyes should go.  Outline the circle in white and fill in with white frosting.  Do the same for the inner brown part of the eye, using a smaller circle template.  The nose and inside of the mouth are also brown.

Now you will make your black frosting.  Take your chocolate frosting and mix in black food coloring until you achieve your desired color.  You will not get a good black without using chocolate frosting.  The amount of food coloring you would need would leave you with a very bitter frosting.  Add the frosting to a clean piping bag equipped with a writing tip and add the last details you see in the picture above.

There you have it!  Cheeky Chocolate.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this cute cake!  Let me know in the comments below if you've ever made a Shopkins cake or if you try this one out.


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Easter Eats

If you're looking for ideas for your Easter feast, look no further!

The first thing we make every year is hard boiled and dyed eggs.  The kids love it.  I'm not sure they'll ever really grow tired of it.  I never have!  As the years go on the designs get more elaborate and the hands stay cleaner, but the tradition remains the same.

Typically we only hide our plastic eggs, so we have a bunch of hard-boiled eggs available for eating on Easter morning.  These make a quick and easy breakfast for everyone!

Here are some eggs we've decorated in the past.  I do recommend rinsing off the sparkles if you use those!

Sparkly Eggs

Along with your hard boiled eggs for protein, you can't go wrong with a cinnamon treat!  This is a recipe for the absolute best homemade cinnamon buns I've had.  Part of the trick is using the bread machine to make the dough.  It kneads it perfectly and lets the dough rise at the ideal temperature.  The result is smooth, fluffy dough that puffs up just right.  You'll want to try these for sure!

Cinnamon Buns for the Bread Machine

Once it's time for lunch, you'll want to use up some more of those hard boiled eggs.  One of our favorite ways to prepare them is deviled eggs.  My husband can down half a dozen without trying!  Check out this cute version I made inspired by a magazine article.  They are adorable, don't you think?

Deviled Chicks

For lunch we traditionally have ham and potatoes.  I love scalloped, but twice-baked and mashed are also great!  I usually try to get a spiral ham if it's on sale, but sometimes I get the whole, unsliced ham and that's is quite delicious as well.  Typically I skip the glaze because I find the ham just right without it.  If I'm making the whole ham I like to top it with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. If you do this, be sure and save some of the pineapples and cherries for the recipe below!

For dessert, one of my favorites is pineapple upside down cake.  It's an older recipe and my mom used to make it often for Easter when we were kids.  Follow this link to for a most delicious treat!

If you're not in a sugar coma by this point, check out these adorable cupcakes and cake.  They were, like the deviled chicks, inspired by a magazine article.  I found the marshmallow bunnies while I was out shopping and I thought they would be adorable on these grassy green cakes.  I have no separate post or recipe about the cupcakes, I just thought they were too cute not to include!

To make the cake, just bake up your favorite box mix or other favorite cake recipe.  Pour half into an oven-safe bowl and the remaining into a cupcake tin with liners.  Bake as directed.  Frost with any icing you like, then top with  *grass and decorations.   Here's a recipe for icing if you need it.

*To make the grass, empty a bag of coconut into a bowl and squeeze in a few drops of food color.  Mix until color is evenly distributed.  Voila!  Grass.

The jelly beans, by the way, are Starburst jelly beans, my fave!

Do you have any favorite Easter recipes or traditions?  Comment below to share.


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Pineapple Upside Down Cake

This is a traditional Easter recipe from my mother's collection.  I like my mom's recipe but I tweaked it slightly in order to omit the shortening and add a little more pineapple tang.  The original recipe is below and my modifications are in the parentheses.  Enjoy this old fashioned favorite!


Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Ingredients:
  
1/4 cup butter
5 canned pineapple slices, drained and halved
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup shortening (sub coconut oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup brown sugar
9 maraschino cherries, drained (optional)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 cup milk (sub pineapple juice from can)

Melt butter in 9-inch round cake pan.  Brush sides with butter.  Add brown sugar to butter.  Place over low heat on stove and stir until blended and remove from heat.  Arrange pineapple halves in a pinwheel pattern on top of sugar mixture.  Place cherries in center of pineapple slices.  In a bowl, cream white sugar, salt and shortening (or coconut oil).  Beat in eggs one at a time until fluffy.  Add vanilla.  Mix together flour and baking powder.  Add alternately with milk (or pineapple juice) to creamed mixture. Pour batter over pineapples.  Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees.  Turn onto a serving plate immediately.  Serve with with whipped cream.

Here's the cake I made for Easter without maraschino cherries.  Also, I made it square because my round pan was packed due to us moving!  I'm always ready to improvise.  

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Simply Elegant Curtains

I can hardly take any credit for the beauty of these simple curtains.  I was looking for something pretty to dress up the windows in my craft room and I came across this fabric in my stash.  It was a gift from a friend.  One of her relatives was cleaning out so I inherited some great material!

These curtains are made very simply.  I sewed a seam up each side and a pocket for the curtain rod.  I have no tutorial or step-by-step instructions, but if you can fold and iron fabric and sew a simple line, I think you can do it!

Here's a closeup so you can see the eyelet and embroidery details.  The fabric came with the embroidery and ribbon completely finished.  Trust me when I say they were easy.

I didn't want a ruffle on the top, but if you did, you would just sew two pockets and put the rod through the lower pocket.  Curtains are one of the easiest things to make for even the least-skilled seamstress.

Since I've had my Project Runway sewing machine sewing has been a cinch.  I got it at Walmart a few years ago when I wanted to make curtains for another room.  It is the perfect machine for what I need.  And, like most other things, I learned to use it by watching a YouTube video.  If you have a machine you're not sure how to use, just look for tutorials on YouTube.  If it's not a totally outdated machine, I'm sure you'll be able to find something.


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Blue, Brown and White Giant Granny Square

I've been gone for over a month!  But I haven't been sitting idly by.  Here is a blanket I finished up in January that I just hadn't gotten around to sharing with you.  It's a giant granny square much like this one.  I started it without a grand plan, just some yarn that I already had around from other projects.  I hope you like it!

Giant granny squares are so versatile.  Plus they're quick and easy.  They also lend themselves nicely to using up leftover yarn because the pattern possibilities are endless.

I'm on a bit of a crochet hiatus at the moment.  It's been busy around here!  I've been cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  And after that, well, just getting rid of stuff!  Just before things got busy, I started making a blanket comprised of small granny squares.  I plan to post that in the coming months.

I have probably thirty granny squares worked up but I have yet to join them.  I was going to use a continuous join, but I think I'm opting for the single crochet join.  Do you have a favorite join for the classic granny square afghan?

If you want to see things I'm doing regularly, join me on Instagram @homecookedandhandmade.  Just type that in the search bar and you should see my page.

Anyway, here's the pattern from my giant granny square blanket.

Classic Giant Granny Square Afghan

Materials:

3 jumbo-sized skeins of yarn (you will have some extra but not too much)

size I hook

needle to weave ends

Shell -three double crochets together in one space

1.  Begin by chaining four.  Put your hook in the furthest chain from the hook and slip stitch.  Pull to make a circle.

2.  Chain 2.  Double crochet two into the space.  Chain two.  Double crochet 3, chain two.  Repeat this two more times.  Once you have four groups of three double crochet chain two, slip stitch to connect.  Slip stitch to the corner.  

3.  Chain 2.  Double crochet two, chain one, then double crochet three.  Chain two and make two shells in each corner followed by chain two.  Slip stitch to join and slip stitch to corner.

4.  Continue pattern with two shells in each corner separated by chain one, and one shell in each chain two space, separated by chain two.

This is a throw-sized blanket measuring approximately 53" X 53"

Here's a great YouTube tutorial if you would like to see a visual.  Videos like this one are how I taught myself to crochet a few short years ago.  Her pattern is a tiny bit different, but really, you could follow her and end up with a blanket basically the same as mine.

Thanks for stopping by!


Join me on Instagram @homecookedandhandmade



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