Posts Tagged ‘cakes’

Fashion Show Birthday Party

Friday, July 1st, 2016

Fashion-show-birthday-party

My daughter recently celebrated a fashion show birthday party. She had so much fun! The party included a runway with dress-up clothes, a doll fashion show, and a dress cake!

Our table centerpiece for the party was a miniature runway, with mannequins the size of Barbie dolls. (The kit we used was called Fashion Time Fashion Show, but you can create your own fashion show with actual dolls.) My daughter could decide what colors of cloth go together to make great outfits, and then she shoved the cloth into a vertical groove at the back of each mannequin.

fashion-show-dolls

You can embellish your fashion outfits with ribbons or lace. As you can see, the table runway looked great! I used hot pink confetti for the runway on top of a white tablecloth with lace.

After opening presents, my daughter did another fashion show with her American Girl doll, placing new doll outfits on her that she had received as gifts from her friends.

fashion-dolls-for-kids

Next we made a dress cake. We baked a rectangular cake and let it cool in the refrigerator. Then we cut out the shape of a dress and placed it on a piece of cardboard lined with foil. We iced the cake with cherry icing, and we used chocolate chips for the buttons. I also created a pleated skirt effect by scoring downwards with a knife on the lower half of the cake.

dress-cake

I took out lots of dress up clothes from previous activities we’ve done: the poodle skirts from our 1950’s party, medieval dresses from our Medieval Unit Study, hippie clothing from our 1970’s party, cowboy outfits, ruffled skirts, boas, and an assortment of hats.

dress-up-fashion-for-kids

We made a red carpet runway down our living room by placing our hallway rugs end to end, and putting a wider red rug at the far end. The girls would turn around when they got to the end of the runway, to show off their fashions. The girls were having such a great time that the fashion show lasted a full hour! Who knew that a fashion show for kids would be so much fun?

fashion-show-for-kids

Eye Model Cake

Monday, February 22nd, 2016

eye-model-cake

When you are studying the eye in human anatomy, why not make an eye model cake? First you will need to bake a circular cake with two baking tins. I recommend yellow cake with strawberry jelly between the two layers. (Don’t try to place jelly in the middle until the cake has completely cooled!)

How to Decorate an Eye Model Cake

  1. Frost the cake with white frosting.
  2. Open another bucket of vanilla frosting and divide it into four bowls, using food coloring to get the colors you want. (I only used three bowls: one for red frosting, one for blue, and one for green. I had a tube of black frosting left over from an Ugly Sweater Cookie Kit from Christmas, so I used that for the black.)
  3. Spread the blue frosting like a rainbow, and the green frosting next to it. The blue would represent the ciliary body, and the green the iris. Leave the lens white.
  4. Put the red frosting into a Ziplock bag and cut a hole in the corner. Make veins and arteries throughout the vitreous humor. You can use blue frosting, too, instead of just red frosting.
  5. Surround the entire cake with a black outline, except for the pupil, which is where the light comes into the eye.

You are now finished making your eye model cake. Have fun eating it!

eye-cake

Alien Spaceship Cake

Monday, May 12th, 2014

alien-spaceship-cakeMy 8-year-old son invented this alien spaceship cake for a Cub Scout cake contest years ago. He won first place! Here is the story of how this cake was made:

My son wanted to make a cake in the shape of the planet Saturn. We brainstormed how we could possibly do this, when I thought of baking half the cake in a glass Pyrex bowl. This would be the round top part of the planet, and a round cake would be the rings of Saturn. We baked the cakes and placed them into the fridge overnight before frosting.

The next day when we opened the fridge, my son saw the cake and thought it looked like an alien spaceship! So he decided to make an alien spaceship cake instead of the planet Saturn.

He frosted the bottom cake purple and the top part yellow. He made a light blue front window, which he outlined with black icing gel. Then he went to town adding candy embellishments. We used gum drops, Life Savers, M&M’s, and other random candy. My son wanted a piece of green licorice to outline the top of the ship. He outlined several lines on the bottom part of the ship with black icing gel. He stuck in pretzels, and he shoved gum drops on the top of each pretzel. Two chocolate cookies were placed at the back, where the motor would be. His work of art was finished.

No wonder he won first place! This alien spaceship cake turned out fabulous!

Amoeba Cake

Monday, November 25th, 2013

amoeba-cake

Amoeba cake?! You’ve got to be kidding me! That doesn’t sound very appetizing… But my son wants to be a microbiologist, so guess what kind of cake I made him for his birthday this year? You guessed it: Amoeba cake.

Before I explain how to decorate the cake, look at the cool invitation we made for his amoeba birthday party:

amoeba-invitation

How to Decorate an Amoeba Cake:

  1. Bake a rectangle cake. Make it whatever flavor you want.
  2. Cut a piece of cardboard larger than the cake and cover it with foil, taping down the edges underneath.
  3. Sprinkle flour on a cutting board. Grab the rectangle cake while it is still hot and up-end it onto the cutting board. With a knife, cut the rectangle into an amoeba shape.
  4. Pick up the cake and place it on the foiled cardboard. Put it in the refrigerator for an hour or two.
  5. Stir some blue food coloring into the white vanilla icing. Ice the cake.
  6. Grab some candy to represent the organelles, and decorate the Amoeba cake. We used a peppermint patty for the nucleus, round mints for the contractile vacuoles which pump water out of the cell, and M&M’s for the food vacuoles.
  7. We outlined the cake with chocolate frosting. You can do this cheaply by putting the frosting into a Ziplock bag, and snipping off the corner. Then squeeze the frosting out like toothpaste.

amoeba-boxYour Amoeba cake is now complete and ready to eat! Enjoy!

As a side note, my daughter made an amoeba box out of construction paper and tape, with an amoeba colored on the outside of the box. She created some bookmarks for her brother’s birthday and put them inside the box. Isn’t the box cute?

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