Pink Ombre Mother's Day Sprinkle Cake

I love this cake.

Let's say it again: I LOVE this cake. This cake was inspired by this fabulous cake.  My mother saw it online and asked for the same cake, but in pink!

The outside of this tall cake is absolutely covered in rainbow sprinkles. I took all the nonpareils in the sprinkle drawer and mixed them together to make a huge bowl of rainbow sprinkles.

 

And the inside is even more special! Six layers of pink ombre fade, each a bit more pink than the last. 

Creamy white frosting inside. 

Pink cake and sprinkles, what more could you ask for? I served this cake with fresh juicy strawberries. I soaked the berries in juice and sugar, then dumped them on top of everyone's slices. It was the perfect finish!

Just be careful when adding the sprinkles...it's a little hard to get them to stick to the sides and there were sprinkles bouncing all over my kitchen floor as I was throwing them at the cake trying to get them to stick. 

This cake was made for Mother's Day, but it would be fabulous as a birthday cake or as a graduation cake if done in school colors. 

Or any type of celebration cake, really. It's quite festive and I think I'm going to be using this decorating technique quite a bit.

Maybe I should buy some more sprinkles. 

I'm bored. Let's make lemon cake!

Once upon a time there was a girl named Maddie who didn't want to study on a Sunday afternoon. And that's how this pretty pink lemon cake happened. I'm proud to say that this cake is included in an article about me in my school's newspaper.

Top layer: lemon blueberry. Middle layer: lemon lemon. Bottom layer: lemon strawberry.

Each layer is filled with this incredible vanilla frosting and super tart lemon curd.

It's all decorated in pretty swirls of this cream cheese frosting.  That recipe isn't actually for a frosting - it's really a no-bake cheesecake - but it's delicious, so I'm not complaining.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sit here and pretend that I didn't eat this cake for breakfast every day for a week.

Indiana Jones Ark of the Covenant Cake and Sankara Stone Cake Pops

Dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun. Dun dun dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun! A friend and I threw an extravagant Indiana Jones movie marathon complete with arts and crafts, activities, decorations, and of course themed dessert. Think paper mache boulders, blacks curtains and cobwebs everywhere, make your own duct tape whips, DIY Holy Grails, fruit punch with rubber snakes,  and a red jello blob with a "heart" inside for a dramatic kali mah reenactment. We watched all 3 movies (number 4 just doesn't count) and it was beautiful. Being the brilliant person I am, I deleted all the pictures from my camera without realizing that they were never uploaded. Uggh! Fortunately, my friends took great pictures of my desserts so I still have something nice to show you. 

 

The Ark of the Covenant cake! With red velvet insides and creamy vanilla frosting, this cake was very, very rich. I decorated it with chocolate jewels covered in luster dust and edible glitter.

The panels on the side are hand piped and made of white chocolate covered in luster dust. The little pears are edible white sugar pearls that I rolled in gold luster dust. While finishing this cake while I was sick at 1 am, I dropped the entire 8 ounce bottle of pearls on the floor. A month later, I'm still finding them EVERYWHERE!

My frind made the beautiful topper using foam board, spray paint, and a sharpie.

Ohh, shiny...

Cutting the cake.

 

 

And I made sankara stone cake pops. Easy to make, even easier to eat, and oh so cute!

Ice Cream Cone or Cupcake?

Why not have both?

I had so much fun making these cupcakes! I made a batch for a family even and then I made some more for a wedding shower the following weekend. Plus, I took [most of] these pictures all by myself. Want to see how they were made?

Ice cream cone cupcakes are one of the few baked goods that I think are actually harder than they look. Why? Quite simply, ice cream cones are not made to stand upright on their own. This makes for big problems in balancing them to bake, frost, store, and transport. The first time I made them last year was a total disaster. But now, instead of placing them on a cookie tray or cupcake tray, I put each cone in the cup of a popover pan. This is great because the high sides and narrow bottom resemble the cone shape, keeping them upright and fairly stable. Much less hassle.

So: cones in pan. Batter in cones.

I use an ice cream scoop to keep my batters even, plus it's much less mess.

Pop them in the oven and get the frosting started while the house starts to smell like chocolate cake. 

I used my favorite vanilla frosting recipe. It's a Creamy Vanilla frosting that uses a flour base and lots and lots of butter. It's very rich, but oh so delicious.

After making it, I divided it into two bowls.

One batch was raspberry...

And the other was oreo.

Now might be a good time to tell you that I injected fudge into the bottom of each cone. After the cones have cooled completely, I started frosting using a pastry bag and a very wide circle tip.

I stuck them in the fridge for a few hours to make sure the frosting was very, very firm before I started dipping. I was worried about the frosting sliding off the top and getting ungle smooshes, but with the refrigeration everything was fine.

At this point, a few urgently needed testing, so I happily obliged and sliced them open before they were frosted.  




I dipped each cone in melted chocolate mixed with a bit of vegetable oil to make it thinner and easier to work with. Immediately after dipping, each cupcake was attacked with sprinkles: red hearts for the raspberry, and rainbow hearts for the chocolate.

I love how shiny and delicious the chocolate is.

And then they're ready to box an go! I packed them in a 1/4 sheet cake box with a mini cupcake insert to keep them stable. The size was perfect for the narrow cones and they held up great on the long drive.

 All boxed up and ready for the drive!

 

Did I mention how much fun these are to eat?