Baking (lots of photos)

This week has been busy. My father-in-law was back in the hospital. He was home for five days before we took him back. Thankfully he wasn't admitted. 

My knee is on hold for a few days. I have an appointment on Tuesday with my pain doctor. We are going to try a spinal stimulus trial which should be scheduled for the next few weeks. 

I have done a lot of baking this week and have a lot left. We dropped off cookie packages to our neighbors earlier this week. I have tried to do this for each holiday for the last 12 years. This year's Easter packages weren't as fancy since I cannot stand for any length of time. But I got them done!

Easter cookies - white chocolate macadamia nut sandwiches & double chocolate chip

Today I had one of my best church friends come over. Her daughter is turning 16 on Monday and it is a surprise party at our church. She asked me to help with the cupcakes. The theme was hot pink & zebra and I love how the cupcakes turned out. 

I found these on Pinterest - Divide white cake batter in two bowls and dye one hot pink. Then make chocolate cake mix. 

My friend had given me cupcake wrappers earlier in the week. I used 10 drops of the pink food color from the Neon dye.

Carefully spoon the batter in the cupcake papers. I did chocolate, then pink, then chocolate, then white, etc. Spoon each color in the center of the last so it spreads to the sides.  

I used a knife to drag through the mixture before I put them in the oven. 

The baked cupcakes were really pretty. 

They are a bit more time consuming but worth it for a themed party. 80 of them took me about 3 hours to do including bake time.

This was one of my earlier batches before I adjusted and put chocolate in between each layer so the white & pink were more divided. 

I used the Wilton 2D closed flower tip to make these rosettes on top. The icing went SO fast compared to baking them. You can YouTube rosette cupcakes to watch exactly how to do this.

My friend forgot to bring the shortening and milk today and so I made the icing from water, powered sugar and butter. They are SO sweet but we didn't have any other choice. My nearest grocery store would be a 1/2 hour round trip and I didn't have any choice.

After she left I made two cakes. One for her daughter turning 16 (Taylor) and another for her daughter turning 8 (Megan). 

This icing is also the powdered sugar and butter mixture. The kids are going to be bouncing off the walls!

The black stripes were from a tub of buttercream fondant I purchased last year at TJ Maxx on clearance for $3. It is easy to use and tastes much better than normal fondant. 

I hand painted the zebra with black Wilton food gel (thanks Amazon) and a tiny paint brush.

Megan loves the movie Frozen and I wanted to do something different for her. I am going to attempt an Olaf fondant character a bit later today but here is what the cake looks like right now. 

Before adding Olaf - scroll down for the finished cake

I iced the cake twice with white icing and then glazed the top to give it a frozen look. Mix two drops of blue with a bit of water and use a foam paint brush to paint on the color. 

Before adding Olaf

Thank goodness for buttercream fondant and cookie cutters!

Tomorrow I am going to make the gluten-free Easter egg cookies for children's church on Sunday. I am teaching ages 2-7 and we usually have about 40 kids in the group for the holidays. 

And then I am making zebra cut out cookies for Taylor's birthday. Stayed tuned for more photos!  

Update: Here is the (almost) finished Frozen cake. I have to re-plump Olaf's head since I squished it when I put a toothpick through it. But I can do that tomorrow.