Snow Man Cake Pops and a Give Away

Can you guess who finally figured out how to edit pictures?  

 So this post is over a week past when I wanted to share it, but the photo hosting site for Google was telling me that I had no more room.  Well thanks to a wonderful blogger, Dorthy at Crazy for Crust, I have been downsizing my pictures so that I can have some room again.  I have done about 400, I have about 1000 more to go.  Sigh.  But it will be worth it to save me some money and I also figured out how to edit pictures so in reality it was a win win. Anyway back to my regular post.


 So you all know how much I love cake balls, and pops right?  I mean I did name this place after it.  But did you know how much I hate making them?  Okay not hate, and not really them.  I hate working with white or coloured candy melts.  So it's not really about the ball as much as it is about the coating.

This is what you could win, it looks way more impressive in real life, I promise!

Does that make sense?  Well never mind, I sort of don't understand it either.  Anyway.  I was checking out one of my favorite sites a few weeks back.  My Little Cupcake; they are some of the first cake pop molds that I tried.  I first got the cupcake shape and loved it, it reminds me of when I was little and would play with Play doh.   I would share that love with Pork Chop, but I hate the smell of the stuff now and hate how it gets all dry and flaky all over the place.  The only flaky stuff allowed in my house is pastry and cake crumbs.

I may or may have not talked Pork Chop into dusting while I baked, so he could play video games.  I took a picture so I could show Hubby how smart I was, and to prove that my child is not all about games.  He actually liked dusting, for about 2 minutes any way.

This is how many I got out of one 9x13 cake, give or take a few that I may have eaten while making them.

  So I noticed that the shop had a new little mold out.  And it was for a snow man.  Now I was almost not going to get it, but seriously it was not very costly and they are awesome to me. They shipped it to me without the box, to save me some shipping costs.  That is the only thing about living in Canada, shipping costs for us are crazy!  Anyway, I mentioned that I wanted one for me and I was going to buy another for you guys.  But then they were all, "nope we will send you one to give away"  I don't know, I mean really this is the nicest company.  They gave me molds to give away before.  And I am not a big blog by any means, just an itty bitty one, but they don't care they are super nice.

That single one in the middle, well his head fell off, and it may have been due to me not chilling them long enough.  I just wanted to be able to say "that snow man must have lost his mind!"  and.....never mind.

  So last week I got these molds and got all set to make some super cute snow men for you all.  Well really they were for Pork Chops hockey team, but you get the idea.

  Now firstly, I knew this would be crap because snow men are supposed to be white, and we all know how I feel about white candy melts.  I thought I had it figured out, you know now that I know how to turn the power on my microwave down.  But no, I still ended up with gloopy candy melts.  And I think I had about 40 snow men, but gave up trying after 20.

I have noting witty to say, just pretend I made some really funny comment about using Halloween sprinkles for Christmas, then laugh and move on.

  On the website they use mini Reese cups for hats, but because I have to do nut free, I opted for gum drops.  Or as they were called at the bulk store, spice drops.  I don't know, they were cute, but not really hat like.  Whatever, it worked.

See you can hardly tell its a pumpkin,

  So I started by making my cake ball mix with one full box mix and some chocolate icing.  I then shaped my cake pops with this mold.  Which really is super easy.  I then set them in the freezer to chill and attempted to get a nice smooth white candy melt going.  I gave up after about 30 minutes and just dipped them.  I managed to get almost 20 covered without too many issues.  The rest were ugly and I just took them to work. They didn't care, they still tasted good.

This looks sort of weird, but it's okay not all snow men have eyes in the wild.

 I used some Halloween pumpkin sprinkles to put the noses on, as I was way too lazy to dig through my sprinkle stash.  And I glued the hats on with some more melted candy melts.  Then I just drew on the eyes, mouths and buttons.  That was it. I was so fed up with the stupid candy melts.  So I sat there looking at them and I said to Pork Chop "do you still want to give them to your team?"  And he patted my arm and said "it's okay Mommy, THEY will think they look okay"  And  he patted my arm again and walked back to play with his toys.

Is it me or does he look sort of drunk, like he was having a party then just stuck a huge gum drop on his head?

  Yeah, I got told by an 8 year old.  So I bit the head off of one of the not decorated snow men, felt a little bit better and wrapped them up.

  Then I tried to make brownies and those sort of worked, but what ever.

I kind of wish now that I had made some with little yellow patches on the bottom, remember, never eat the yellow snow!

  So after all that here you go:

*Super Spectacular Give Away*

I know, I am dramatic.  The winner will receive one snow man cake pop mold. Supplied by the awesome My Little Cupcake
You can earn a few entries.

1) Become a follower or my blog and let me know in the comments, or if you already follow me, you are already awesome, so just let me know.  I will think new followers are awesome too, just so you know.

2)Visit My Little Cake Pop and let me know in the comments here what other mold you need to make your cake pop life complete.

3) Share my give away on your face book or blog or whatever, just leave me a comment letting me know how you shared.

4)And the easiest, just leave me a comment telling me how much you hate working with white candy melts, and if you actually love it, leave me a tip of some sort.  I am close to hurting someone over these things people!!!!

The contest will close on Wednesday December 5 at noon (Toronto time) as I want to try and get this to the winner before the holiday.  I will use random.org to pick out the winner, and if you live in Canada I will have you answer a skill testing question.  This is open to Canada, the US and International readers too. Please leave me an email or some way to reach you, but I will announce the winner on Wednesday December 5 in the evening some time, and the winner will have 48 hours to get back to me or else I have to choose another winner.

Good Luck!

Phineas and Ferb Party for Pork Chop

Happy Birthday Pork Chop!

Well now that we have had a few days to sit down and sort through things, I can finally share some of the party pictures. Tomorrow I am going on a class trip with Pork Chop, which is sort of scary.  I can hardly keep myself from killing him, how am I going to do it with lots of other peoples kids.  Well I made cookies so maybe that bribe will help, who knows.  Anyway.

  Now I didn't do anything too crazy this year for his party, just no time, but it was still good.

But I have lot's if pictures.  Some of which are even in focus, so you know, it could be worse.

These are almost perfect, I used coloured candy melts and will from now on.

So I already shared with you the Perry the Platypus marshmallows I made.  Other than that I didn't do too much.  I made some cake pops, some chocolate covered pretzel rods, cupcakes and a tiny cake.  Then we played some games.  So lets get to it.

Sort of messy, but not too shabby!

These are my tiny little spring form pans, they are perfect for mini cakes.

  Firstly the cupcakes, I made cupcake toppers like I usually do. I found some images of Perry on google and printed out a few sheets onto edible icing paper.  Then I cut them out, and put them on a layer of fondant/gum paste and let them dry out.  For some reason I felt the need to use a lot of icing sugar and this made the pictures sort of dull.  And well, I have no idea what I was thinking really.  Other than I was in a rush and at the time it seemed really smart.  It was not, but whatever, it still turned out sort of okay.

These are all the cupcake toppers I made, you can sort of see how I covered some in icing sugar and  they look dull.  Oh well.

  For the cupcakes and cake I just made the basic vanilla, chocolate and red velvet batters that I have shared here before.  For the cake I made two layers, one chocolate and one vanilla.  Then all were iced with vanilla butter cream, in bright colours to match the theme.  The cake I just decorated with a few left over strips of edible icing and then I tinted the icing a few colours.  Super easy.

A cake decorator I am not!

  The cake pops were your basic chocolate cake, formed in my My Little Cupcake Pop, mold.  And dipped in orange and some purple candy melts.  I think this is the way to go for me.  I am able to get a good flow on the coloured melts.  Not something I can get in the white melts so much.  So once I finish the 50 pound box of white melts, I am not getting  any more, I will stick with the coloured ones.  They may cost more, but man they work so much better for me.  I can for see a lot of bark being made to get rid of the last pounds of melts I have.

I don't think I have done an actual edible image wrapped around a cake before, not too bad.

  I decorated them really fast, by drizzling on a bit of the left over melts and sprinkling on some co ordinating sprinkles.  Simple and fast.

  The pretzel rods got a dip in milk chocolate and a simple drizzle of candy melts and sprinkles.  I was in a rush.  Pork Chop had one big request, he wanted candy Lego men.  Last year I made them for his Lego party and I said why not.  It was easy, I just used the left over candy melts and made them in the silicon Lego mold I had.  He was thrilled and the kids at the party ate them like crazy.  So that was great.

Perry is all "oops, sorry I'm all over your cake."

Why I picked those most girly colour I have no idea, but it worked.

  At his party we decorated simply.  I had coordinating table cloths, only one was an actual theme cloth.  Then we hung up some large pictures I got in the theme section of the party store. I had a center piece which  I think for the $7 really ties the theme together.  I also got a roll of themed streamers and a few balloons.  That was all I bought to decorate with.  And my mom, sister, aunt and friends really did a great job.  I set up the main table with that, then put the desert table together.

I didn't want to put pictures of other peoples kids, and I have no idea how to cut or blur them out, so you get to see Pork Chop.

Hubby and him think the underwater camera is awesome.  

  I used my two cake pop stands, that mom got me when she was in the states.  They were made my KC bakes, and I wish I had more, I mean how many do I really need, but they are awesome!!!!  Then I used my cupcake stand, it was a plain make it yourself stand that I got over a year ago.  I put my colorful cupcakes on it and the one on top I decorated with a Perry the Platypus vinylmation.  It was simple but easy and I loved how it turned out. I had to watch as a few kids were all, "that is my cupcake!" I told them it was for the birthday boy, and they could have any of the other ones.  I was a little surprised that the kids all wanted the red velvet cupcakes, they went first.  Which was good.  Pork Chop got to blow out the candles on his mini cake.  And a few kids were yelling "the cake is so small, we won't get any!"  Which was right, but they all got cupcakes and I didn't have to cut a thing.  As a matter of fact we never even got to his cake until 4 days or so later.  But cake stays well if it is iced fully, so that was not all bad.

That's my dad, he was wearing a Perry coloured shirt and he didn't even know it. Try not to look at the kids, pretend they are not there.

  We played a few games, which I wish had been spread out better.  The party started out with an hour pool party.  We rented out the whole pool for the party, it was huge and really the cost was nothing at all so the kids got to tear around and Hubby got in with them.  Thankfully another dad did too.  But I asked parents to stay and watch in case their kids needed help to change or were not strong swimmers.  Not a big deal really, there were comfy seats and the time passed fast.

And there you go, if he gets any older I may need a bigger cake to get all the candles on.

  But I really thought this would wear the kids out, being that the pool part was over at 6:30 at night.  But no, the kids were crazy!  So as soon as they were all in the room they were tearing around like they were full of sugar, but they hadn't had any yet!!!

My poor hand was feeling the heat!

  So as soon as they all got in the room and got seated we had pizza, and of course Pork Chop would not eat any.  But I had told him if he wants a large party we have to have pizza it is the most economic thing to serve really.  So we did that.  Then the kids ran around a bit.  And I was all "we have to stop them, someone is going to get hurt."  My solution?  Give them cake.  I know, I am smart.

Hubby tried to get a picture but it was dark.  

    So everyone sat down again and we sang happy birthday to Pork Chop and he was all "this is so embarrassing"  And he blew out his candles.  Then the kids got cupcakes and Pork Chop ran for a cake pop.  I told him no, that those were for after the party, because I had like 60 cupcakes and they had to be eaten!

 So after they were all done we played some games.  I had a few.  One I did a few years back, was basically a quick one.  You print out a picture like 100 times, make them the same and all of them get tapped all over the room. So it is like a decoration, but you are going to use it. Then you tell the kids to find them and the one with the most wins a prize!  So not only are they having fun, they are also cleaning up some of the decorations.  I know they may figure that our in a few years, but for now, I'm good.

My sister got these pictures for me, that is my desert table.

  After that we played a game that I read about on line.  In the TV show there is an older sister who is always trying to bust her brothers.  So we played "busted"  basically I blew up a bunch of balloons and one of them had a paper inside that said "you win!"  So I let them loose and let the kids pop them until they found the winner.  Then I got them to clean them all up, because bits of balloon were everywhere.

  The last game was going to be a dance contest.  But Hubby was not able to get the song I wanted.  Gangam Style, sure you have heard of it?  Well basically Pork Chop was going to use his "dance inator" to get the kids to dance.  Because another character is always making up silly "inators" so that was good, until one kid was slamming into the floor, so we cut it short as he was just being too silly and was going to hurt himself or someone else.

Not the most detailed picture, but the best I got.  Considering I forgot to take any.

  Then we had like an hour left.  So I gave each kid a tattoo of Phineas and Ferb.  Hubby's mom even got one, and one kid wanted one right in the middle of his forehead, I told him his mom might kill me, so we stuck to hands and arms.

  Then the kids tore around for like 20 minutes when I figured we needed to bring it down.  So we let Pork Chop open his gifts.  I don't like to do this as usually he is not the most subtle when he doesn't like something or already has it.  I talked to him about being great full and told him the only thing I wanted to hear him say was "thank you" and that was what he did, even when one toy was something he already had.  No matter he was very good.

 As kids started to leave they each got a Marshmallow pop, a cake pop and a pretzel.  So it was a good day.

This was the table, see those tiny pictures?  Those were one of the games.

  We got home and Pork Chop begged Hubby to start putting together his Lego's  I told him if he helped me sort the pieces I would do one too.  He said it was his birthday and he didn't have to sort if he didn't want to.  I have no idea how you respond to that, so I said, "okay we can do it later, when it's not your birthday"  And so there you have it.  Pork Chop is officially 8, he doesn't need a booster seat anymore, but I don't know how I feel about that.  He is old enough but not tall or heavy enough.  We will see, he is not bothered by it.

And next year, watch, I bet he will be all, "I want a Lego party"  And I will have to break his legs.  Think I can talk him into a sleep over, with like 1 friend, and I go out and Hubby deals with it?  Well I have a year to work on it.