Double Halloween Post! *Pumpkin King* & *Cookie Monster*

Jack Skellington Cake

Vanilla cake-

9-inch round 2-layer vanilla cake with white frosting (canned, ::sigh::), decorated with black Wilton Sparkle piping gel.

Cookie Monster Cookie Cake

9-inch round 2-layer Toll House chocolate chip cookie "cake" with vanilla frosting, decorated with blue "jimmies" for fur, melted white chocolate with chocolate melt for eyes, melted dark chocolate for mouth and half of a chocolate chip cookie (again, Toll House recipe) for his special cookie treat.

Cake Walk, part...oh, I don't know, I've lost count! These (and two other cakes I forgot to take pictures of, darn it!) were made for the Halloween festival at the school I taught at last year. Without turning this into a very special episode of Oprah, let's just say last October was a really tough month at work, so the need for a creative outlet was priority for my mental health. Cake to the rescue!

My affinity for The Pumpkin King is fairly well known, there are rumors (which I'll deny!) that a squeal of joy flew from my mouth when the artist told us that we would be drawing Jack for our Animation Academy session at Disney California Adventure. Also, Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas allows me to prolong one of my favorite holidays well into my other favorite holiday! What better way to celebrate Halloween than a Jack cake? It was super simple, I don't even think I had to trim it other than leveling the tops before stacking. The fun was in bringing him to life with that signature smirk. I must commend Wilton for this stroke of genius, their Sparkle piping gels are so much fun! I've used them before (see *Vroom, Vroom!*, *Setting Sail* and *That's A Spicy Meatball*) and the black adds just enough glitz befitting a king.

*FUN FACT!* The kids running the cake walk got a late start and rather than let winners pick their own cake, the cake for each round was on display as chosen by them. Amazingly, Jack was never chosen and I got to bring him home with me-a la "kill 2 birds with 1 stone", as I had company arriving that evening for a Halloween party, so now I didn't have to create dessert too! However, something tragic happened on the way home...Jack's face got stuck to the lid of the box and he lost an eye and part of his mischievous smile! I debated leaving it and just turning him into Pirate Jack, but thought better of it and touched him up just in time for the doorbell to ring-whew!

Now, as much as I adore the works of Mr. Burton, something that captured my heart early on were Jim Henson's Muppets. Last fall, I got to attend Disney's D23 Expo and had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet Fozzie, Gonzo and Pepe. A few glitches aside, I ended up with a rather amuzing conversation with Gonzo and a pic with my devastatingly awful phone camera. I walked away from the experience with misty eyes and a goofy smile, check that one off the bucket list!

I saw a picture (via Google image search) of Cookie Monster cupcakes, which I duplicated and also tweaked to make Oscar the Grouch cupcakes as well for our Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street party in my classroom. But now it was Halloween and what's Halloween without a monster. I know Cookie has recently changed his "diet" to say that cookies are a "sometimes food", whatever they need to tell themselves on 123 Sesame Street is fine by me, but my Cookie Monster will always feast upon a buffet of delicious cookies.

I'll tell you a secret-this "cake" isn't actually a cake! It's actually a Toll House cookie! (No! YES!) Made from the recipe on every bag of Toll House morsels, I simply put the dough into 2 9-inch round pans. Once baked, I simply frosted it just like I would a cake, pressed blue "jimmies" into the frosting and melted some chocolate disks for the eyes and mouth. *HOT TIP* if you don't have a microwave (like me!) you can cheat by placing the melting disks into a squeeze bottle, wrapping it in a really damp kitchen towel, wrapping that in foil and placing on a cookie sheet or in a Pyrex pan in the oven on low-say 250 for about 15 minutes, reheating as necessary. I have one of those Wilton chocolate melting pots, but for a job this small, it's not worth the clean up. The cookie I jammed in his mouth is simply a cookie I baked separately from the same batch of dough, cut in half and "glued" with the dark chocolate I used for his mouth.

The other two cakes which are M.I.A., were a candy corn-shaped cake with sugar sprinkles in white, yellow and orange (of course!) and a sugar "cookie pizza" which had all sorts of Halloween candy pieces and chocolate melt drizzles in green and orange. Not taking a picture of those is regrettable and I haven't the slightest idea as to why I didn't snap photos of them. Probably fatigue as I made all 4 cakes in about 48 hours. So you'll just have to trust me when I tell you they were awesome!

In the immortal (get it? immortal, because he's a skeleton!) words of Jack, the Pumpkin King:

"Happy Halloween Everybody!"

*Summer Strawberries*

Vanilla and Strawberry Cake-

1/4 sheet, 2-layered vanilla cake with Tahitian Vanilla frosting, with fresh sliced strawberries and strawberry glaze. Completely frosted in the Tahitian Vanilla frosting, decorated with fondant strawberries and sugar flowers with green icing accents.

I guess it's been a while! Things are slow in the cake department for me as of late (part to do with a lack of events to bake for, part to do with my last year's teaching job) so there hadn't been a reason to post until now. So I'm brushing off the dust and getting back to the sweet life!

(this cake is chronologically newer than the posts to come, I have a small back log of cakes to post later!)

Ok! Back to the cake! It was a cake I happily made for a good friend for her 30th birthday. She was an attendee at my 30th (what seems like a hundred years ago!) and given it was a pirate-themed "dinner-and-a-show" type place, making a cake for her big day was the least I could do to say thanks....and I'm sorry!

She told me her only demands were that it said Happy 30th and that the rest was pretty much up to me. This was both a blessing and a curse-to quote David Bowie & Queen: this is (myself) UNDER PRESSURE! Being that it was summer, I wanted to find a way to incorporate that into the cake somehow...Think, Think, Think...

While I was thinking, I went to check in on my strawberry pot and give it a drink when I saw this-

the cutest little strawberry I'd ever seen!

(I know you can't tell how diminutive this little guy is, but let's just put it this way, it would blanch at the sight of a hummingbird!)

But I finally had my inspiration, so off I went, to Michaels cake/baking isle!

And what glorious thing did await me there? None other than my favorite cake baker's mug plastered on a handful of items-Duff (Ace of Cakes) has his own line of cake decorating helpers!!! Swoon! And although the 2 lb. bucket of fondant was a bit on the pricey side, I snapped up a bucket of white, a tube of green decorating icing, some sugar daisy flowers and leaves (as you can see, the leaves didn't make the cut) and headed home to create.

Now, I've been working with fondant for a good while now. This is what I know: Wilton's is not fit for human consumption, Satin Ice is fantastic and chocolate fondant is a gift from the baking gods. (see post *Martha, Martha, Martha* & *Bridal Shower in Pink & Brown*) But THIS fondant, words can't describe the heavenly scent that hit my olfactory system as I opened the container. Light and airy, sweet and delicate, it was all I could do to not take a big spoon to it and dig in! I was intrigued because although the bucket seemed the same, this was not the same as Satin Ice, so I did some quick research and found that this partnership of decadence is with Fondarific. And I couldn't agree more!

The cake itself is the same fluffy vanilla cupcake recipe I've used in several of the cakes posted here (*Frog Princess* and *Vroom!Vroom!* to name a few). The frosting comes from the same recipe book, I've made it a zillion times, but because of the use of fresh strawberries I decided to tinker with the flavor a bit. I have that William-Sonoma 3 pack of vanillas; Madagascan, Mexican and Tahitian; at home and typically go straight for Madagascan. They all smell amazing! Madagascan goes with just about everything, Mexican is best with chocolate based goodies and Tahitian has an almost tropical fruit undertone that takes you to a white sand beach surrounded by sapphire blue waters while sipping coconut cocktails.....(I so need a vacation!) Tahitian vanilla worked like a charm and complimented the strawberries and frosting perfectly.

The strawberries were gorgeous this time of year and I bought extras so I could snack, you know, for artistic inspiration while I was busy with the cake! I decided to try making a glaze with the strawberry juices, but once mixed together, I worried about the spongy cake soaking it up too much, especially since I knew I wasn't covering this cake with fondant. I balked, draining most of the glaze from the strawberry filling. I kept having images of this cake "bleeding out" strawberry juice to the horror of everyone at the party...I was hoping for ooohs and aaahs, not ewws and icks.

Making the fondant strawberries was so much fun, and theraputic! Jabbing at lumps of fondant with a sharp object, in this case a bamboo skewer, can do wonders for anyone with a soul-sucking job like I had recently. Not only was that fondant filling my house with sweet smells, but it was a dream to work with too. Adding color and kneading it to the desired color didn't take a sledgehammer for once. And given that our weather had peaked in recent days, I was impressed that it seemed to wave off atmospheric threats to it's composition. *50 pts. for a burst of SAT words!

Assembly was a breeze, but the loser of this cake turned out to be the pre-made icing leaves I bought at Michaels. It seemed like something I needed...at the time. But once the cake was close to completion, I realized they were not destined to partake in the strawberry party. Oh, well, they'll get used...some day!

Being a "fun"employed teacher, I know that kids (of all ages) are robbed of celebrating their summer birthdays during the school year. I don't think it's fair either, personally, I think the solution is to just go year-round anyway, but that's another post for another blog. So to all of you with summer birthdays...

But it probably wouldn't hurt if you started embracing your half-birthday, or, you could choose any random day and celebrate your "Un-birthday"...You know today is my un-birthday, too!

Happy Un-Birthday to ALL!