Train Cake Fail

My youngest son turned two this week and I had GRAND plans to make him a train cake. I have a really cool cake pan that is in the shape of the various train cars and engine. I tried to make a cake using this pan once before (several years ago) and it was a fail at that time. I figured that since I have some clue of what I'm doing with cakes/decorating these days, I would not have the same experience. Not so much I'm afraid.

First of all, I apparently filled the cake pan too full and this is what I found in the bottom of the oven. 

Cake was all over the place. What a mess.

 The idea is that you let the cake cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes and invert it and the cake will pop right out.

 That really didn't happen for me. Cake stuck everywhere. It looked like there would not be a train cake after all.

Plan B went into effect. Looking in the pantry, I found everything I needed for Rice Krispie treats. I cleaned out the cake pan and greased it well and went to work stuffing sticky Rice Krispies in the pan and praying that the end result would look something like train cars. In the end, it wasn't what I originally envisioned, but that is okay. It turned out just fine for my little one and he loved it!

I died coconut flakes green for the grass and piped chocolate pudding for the track. I used Life Savers, Fruit Roll Ups and other candies for decorating the actual train cars.

Project: Butterfly Cupcakes

This past weekend, we celebrated my grandma's 85th birthday. She decided she wanted to have a party so she could see her friends and celebrate this occasion. Planning for the event started back in January. My mom and aunt were in charge of getting everything organized. I am known as the crafty one of the bunch....the only granddaughter. My mom and I did a lot of the buying of decorating supplies and my mom did a great job organizing and packing everything so nothing would be left behind (we had to take everything from Tennessee to Indiana). My main contribution to the party was the cupcake. Mom found this idea with butterfly wings and we proceeded from there. This is how our cupcakes came together:

We used chocolate to pipe the wings of each butterfly. We planned on over 100 cupcakes, so we had well over  200 little wings (I anticipated breakage on the journey from Tennessee). I found a butterfly template that we used for all the little wings.

After the outline of the wing set, we proceeded to fill the inside with colored chocolate.

Butterflies of all colors could be found on my kitchen and dining room tables.

I was in charge of all the cupcake baking. I started early on Thursday morning and baked 120 cupcakes (all before 8:30 AM I might add).

Saturday morning in Indiana. I iced all the cupcakes preparing them for our little butterfly wings.

Here's the final product.

I just love the cupcake stand that my aunt found to display the cupcakes on the main table. I'm VERY EXCITED that I'm the new owner of said cupcake display. Happy Birthday to me :-)

 I'm so happy with the way they turned out. We had many, many compliments on them!