Rainbow Cupcakes and a Birthday

In my blogging absence I missed sharing with you all Little Boy’s birthday.  He is now 4!

We kept it simple this year and just had family over for dinner and cake.

 

He asked for a rainbow cake, so off I go to Google and Pinterest stalk I went.  I came across this recipe and made a few changes, the main one being cupcakes instead of a cake.

The kids both LOVED these and now I am making rainbow cupcakes for Little Girls birthday too.

These are actually just a white cake, you can cheat and use a box mix but that is like swearing in my house – I am a firm believer of cake from scratch vs. cake from box.

 

Rainbow Cupcakes 

These are a bit painstaking to make, but it's worth it. Everyone loves them (young and old), but I am not saying anyone in particular is old.3 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/3 cups white sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ½ cups milk

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line 24 cupcake tins with papers, set aside.

Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, set aside.

Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla and mix until well incorporated.   Add the flour and milk in alternating additions, beginning with the flour and ending with the milk.  Mix until well combined, scraping down the sides as needed.

Divide the cake batter evenly between 6 bowls.

Add food colouring and then spoon 1-2 tablespoons of each colour into the cupcake tins, spreading out each colour evenly as much as possible.

Rainbow food colouring chart: (I used the cheap food colouring you can buy in the grocery store for this and it worked great.)

• Purple: 9 red and 6 blue drops
• Blue: 12 drops
• Green: 12 drops
• Yellow: 12 drops
• Orange: 12 yellow and 4 red drops
• Red: 18 drops

Bake for 20-25 minutes until cake tester comes out clean.

Once cooled ice with your favourite icing.  My first batch (the one pictured) I used a cooked icing – it tastes great but is a bitch to work with in a piping bag, I strongly recommend a nice butter cream, much easier to work with and pipe.

Yield: 24 cupcakes.

Enjoy!

Birthday Cake

According to the kids and my husband, a birthday is just not a birthday without cake.

I believe in making my own cakes fron scratch as much as possible, and let me tell you - I must really love my husband because this required me to turn on the oven on Sunday (+29C) in Calgary, with no air conditioning!

I also try and make his a different type / flavour of cake each year, this year I got my insperation from Pinterest - a Mint Chocolate Chip "Ice Cream" Cake. 

First a few pictures and the recipe to follow.

The birthday boy and his cake.

So after dinner, someone comes to snuggle with her Daddy:

While someone else finishes my piece of cake:

I turn my head for a minute and look at what happens.  Oh, he is so his father's son!

The cake was delish.  The cake itself is a fantastic classic chocolate cake, but the icing tasted so much like the ice cream it is made to resemble.

Hubby, myself and the kids all gave it 2 thumbs up!

Mint Chocolate Chip "Ice Cream" Cake

David Lebovitz Devil's Food Cake

9 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 ½ cups cake flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

½ cup butter, at room temperature

1 ½ cups white sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

½ cup strong coffee (cold)

½ cup milk

Preheat oven to 350F.

Butter two 9” round cake pans, line the bottoms with parchment paper, set aside.

Sift together, cocoa powder, flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder.

Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar together for about 5 minutes.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

Stir half the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, and then add the coffee and milk; continue stirring and then add the remaining half of the dry ingredients.

Divide the batter between the two pans, and bake for 25 minutes, or until done.

Cool completely before frosting.

Mint Chocolate Chip “Ice Cream” Icing

2 cups butter, at room temperature

6 cups icing sugar

2-3 teaspoons peppermint extract, adjust to taste

150g dark chocolate, very finely chopped

Green food colouring

Place the butter in the bowl of your stand mixer, beat on high with paddle attachment until fluffy and smooth.

Add the icing sugar one cup at a time (you might need slightly less or more), until you reach your desired icing consistency.

Add the peppermint extract to taste and the food colouring.  Gradually add the chocolate pieces.

Source: Raspberri Cupcakes Blog

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to the best husband / partner in the world!

I can't tell you how old he is, but I can secretly tell you that next year I will be planning a big party to celebrate a birthday number that ends with a zero!  (I will let you figure that one out.)

We're having cake at our house tonight to celebrate - there's lots, so come by if you want.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday!
I know not everyone loves their birthday, but I love mine.
I love to be celebrated and honestly I think one day a year is just not enough.

I have been telling Little Girl for a few years now that I am 25, and this year she caught on to the fact that I need to start getting older at each birthday, so according to her, I am turning 26 today!

Sharing my birthday with me:

Shannon Doherty 1971

Vince Gill 1957

David Letterman 1947

David Cassidy 1950

Andy Garcia 1956

Tom Clancy 1947

Clair Danes 1979

On this day in history:

April 12, 1606 England adopts the Union Jack as its flag

April 12, 1861 "American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina."

April 12, 1917 World War I: Canadian forces successfully complete the taking of Vimy Ridge from the Germans. It is also considered a major event in Canadian history for the primary role Canadian forces played in the attack.

April 12, 1961 Human spaceflight: Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).

April 12, 1979 Soyuz 33 returns to Earth

April 12, 1980 "Terry Fox begins his ""Marathon of Hope"" by dipping his artificial leg into the Atlantic at St. John's, Newfoundland."

April 12, 1983 Harold Washington becomes Chicago's first black mayor

April 12, 1992 Euro Disney opens in Marne-la-Vallee France

April 12, 1999 "American President Bill Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving ""intentionally false statements"" in the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil lawsuit."


I thought I would share a picture or two of me, and then as i was looking through all our pictures, it turns out I am most often the one behind the camera, so there are not a lot of great pictures of me, but here are a few I found and am willing to share (because honestly there are a few I will never share and really should delete).

My friend Janice and I at the lake last summer.

Devil's Food Cupcakes

Here is the recipe I used for Little Girls cupcakes and cake.  This is actually a cupcake recipe, so if you want to make a cake, just prepare your pans like you normally would, and plan on cooking much longer - check cakes at 30 minutes and guage from there.

Devil's Food Cupcakes

1 2/3 cups cake flour
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup sour cream
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 tablespoons melted unsalted butter, cooled

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Place the cake flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, sugar and salt into the bowl of your stand mixer.  Mix together on low, until well combined.
In a large measuring cup, mix together the buttermilk and sour cream.  In a separate bowl, mix together eggs and melted butter.
Alternately add sour cream mixture and egg mixture to dry ingredients with the mixer running on medium low until mixed.
Pour batter into muffin cups, only about 2/3 full and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when tested.

Makes: 24-30 cupcakes.

Source: This recipe is from the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook.

 Chocolate Buttercream Icing

This is a very good chocolate buttercream, it is pretty easy to make, tastes great and pipes super well, but it has one weird ingredient – Ovaltine.  Don’t ask me why I even made it the first time, but now I have a big jar of Ovaltine in my pantry, so I keep making this icing, partly because it is so good, and also because, what the hell am I going to do with the Ovaltine otherwise.  But I like it so much, I will probably buy another jar when I finish this one.

1 1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup Ovaltine

Cream together butter, cocoa powder and salt. Butter mixture will be very thick. Turn off the mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl and add powdered sugar.

Turn mixer on low and mix in powdered sugar while adding milk and vanilla extract. As the sugar incorporates, raise the speed of the mixer to beat the frosting. Beat until smooth.

In a 2 cup measuring glass, stir together heavy cream and Ovaltine. Turn mixer speed to medium and pour cream mixture into frosting in a slow, steady stream, until you’ve reached your desired consistency. You may not need the full amount of Ovaltine and cream.

The pink icing pictured was just a simple vanilla buttercream with pink food colouring - honestly it was nothing special, so I am not going to blog the recipe. 

Family Birthday Party

After we celebrated Little Girl's birthday with all her friends, we then had a family dinner to celebrate her as well (yes, I was thoroughly exhausted come the end of the weekend).

She requested a pink and brown cake, the shirt actually matching was a complete coincidence.



Before Little Girl was born, I was given a gift from my Mother-In-Law.  A beautiful crocheted blanket.

This blanket became her blankie.  It has been loved so much that it is falling apart, and although it has been fixed a few times, it is just loved too much.

Little Girl will put her blankie to bed, walks her in her doll stroller all the time and treats her blankie as her best friend.
But as this blankie is falling apart, we have made her keep it only in her bed so it does not get even worse.

Well Grandma gave Little Girl a super sweet present - a new blankie!
It is almost identical to her old one and although the old one will always have a special place in her heart, this new blankie can now be carted around the house again and go for rides in her stroller.

The other part of the present was a doll bed from Ikea - or in our house it is blankie's bed, it is up in Little Girl's room, right beside her bed where she tucks blankie in every night - yes, very cute!

Her other Grandparents gave her this necklace for her birthday.  It could not have come at a better time since the day before she was asking me for one.  Thanks Mom!

And I could not do a post without this picture of my brother - can you tell he was having fun!

Kid's Pizza Party

For Little Girl's fifth birthday I planned 2 parties, one for her and all her friends and also a family dinner.

First up was the friends party - as previously mentioned I did a Pizza Party!

The kids had a good time making their own pizza's, and then I let them decorate their own cupcakes - I gave them all little baggies with icing and let them go to town with the sprinkles.

Here is a picture I took of all the kids in their aprons and chef's hats.  I did not want to show the children who are not mine on my blog, hence why their faces are blocked out.

I used fabric paint to write each child's name on their apron, and they got to take them home in their loot bag.

Hopefully we have a few future chef's on our hands.

Cupcakes I decorated for the parents.

Birthday Party Planning

Little Girl is turning 5 in a few weeks, so I have been planning her birthday party in my mind for a while now, and as we get closer all the details are starting to come together.

In the past we have invited a bunch of different kids all of varying ages, but now that she is getting older, I decided to do a party that was more for her and her age group.

We are keeping it small since I am hosting at our house, and we are keeping the kids to the same age as her since the activities are geared towards that age.

We are having a pizza party where the kids will get to make their own pizzas. And I decided because I love to be in the kitchen and so does Little Girl, we are also going to have the kids decorate their own cupcakes.

Of course this makes for an event where I think they will all need aprons.

I have spent quite a bit of time looking for kids aprons in the city, and yes I can find them, but I am not willing to pay that much money for them.

Until I found an ad on Kijiji the other day.  Man I love Kijiji!

A woman was selling off some supplies from a business she used to run, and look at what I got!



I got enough aprons for all the kids at the party, tons of chef's hats, a whole bunch of measuring spoons and measuring cups and some other miscellaneous stuff, all for $25.

I am so excited.  Little Girl and I headed to Michael's to get fabric paint - I will be writing the kids names on the aprons as soon as I know who is coming, and the gift bags will now include measuring spoons and cups for each kid.

How fun is that?

Little Girl is beyond thrilled and so looking forward to her birthday party in the kitchen.

A New Year and a Birthday

I am a pretty low key New Year's person.  I love nothing more than staying home and being in bed sleeping by 10pm.

This year I picked up Sushi for dinner, which Hubby and I enjoyed and the kids had leftovers, and then after they went to bed we opened a bottle of Champagne.

We had a nice little toast, and then off to bed I went.

But for New Year's day, it is my mother-in-law's birthday.  This year there was a little party, so I jumped at the opportunity to make the cake. (I will post the recipe in a few days.)

We had a good time visiting with everyone and the kids of course love any birthday party.

A birthday party is just not complete with out party hats - so Grandpa made a few for the kids.

Puzzles