Ilana's 13th Birthday

   Recently I overtook my fiance's little sister's 13th birthday when asked to simply make a cake. I couldn't help myself! 13! Oh, the possibilities! I ended up deciding on a very sophisticated chocolate brown, and soft pink, with silver accents. This all got resolved after I had decided on the cupcakes of course. Once I had them down, everything else was relatively easy.

 {that's their mum is the background!}

   I made moist chocolate cupcakes with blush pink frosting sprinkled with silver glitter and silver balls. They tasted incredible, and whats better than awesome tasting cake? Cheap, easy, awesome tasting cake. I used a packet mix from the supermarket for the easy, but when I went to buy it, they were on sale for $2! A bag of icing sugar and a block of butter; and I was done, I had everything else at home.

{my cupcake}

    I wanted something really feminine and classy for her candle cake, so I made a smallish but tall double layer chocolate cake with the same pink frosting that I spent god knows how long smoothing out and then piped pearls of frosting around the base. As carefully as possible I piped pearls up the sides in an ever decreasing number and then, with tweezers, I placed a silver ball on every one of those pearls. I tried to make a little mound on the top with frosting so when I covered it with silver it would look like a much larger pile of silver bling, but unfortunately I was off center by a bit. No one really noticed until I pointed it out, so maybe I should have kept my mouth shut... Piped on a big 13, and then went to town on it with all my glitters and gels to make it pop so that in the end all the cake needed was the simplest silver candles I could find and a couple of sparklers.

 

{the candle cake}

   Got my colours down, got my cake down, time for candy! I desperately wanted to do cake pops because I see them all over the Internet and had never made them before, so I bought a chocolate mud from the store--I would never be able to destroy a cake I have baked--and totally annihilated it. They're dipped in dark chocolate and pink vanilla candy melts with the same silver sprinkles as the cakes. I did half with pink on top and half with chocolate on top just to keep it interesting. Using the remaining chocolate and candy melts I dipped marshmallows and decorated them to match, and using a recipe I found I made chocolate filled meringue kisses but I died them a very slight pink. Everything tasted soooo good I made myself sick eating it.

{all hand made by me}

    As well as the candy I made I also bought some other treats because this was a slumber party and you have to keep the sugar high going through the night. There were strawberry Oreos, marshmallow twists, musk sticks, mini lammingtons, pink and white Pascals mushrooms, caramel filled Hershey kisses, raspberries, and the cutest pink barbie coins. Unfortunately my photographer was too distracted by a pint sized puppy to take as many shots as I would like and a lot of details didn't get shot...

{my table}

   Luckily I found lots of decorations for cheap like the pink faux 'mums from Ikea for a dollar each, and the feather boas. The brown cloth is a bed sheet I have, and I already had all the glass wear, cake stands, and vase. Most of the little details like the mirrors and the silver beads came from a $2 shop and the paper flowers I made myself.

{gotta love balloons}

   Everybody must love balloons so I had to have them, there's something about a helium filled balloon that just says "smile". In the end my table and cakes were a big success and the girls had a blast, so I was  pretty proud of myself, wonky cake decorating and all...

P.S.

   The puppy got in on the action too!