Superhero Birthday Party

Cake and Cookies for my grandson's 4th birthday.

The cake is actually four 6" cakes individually iced and put together on a 14" cake board.

They were blue and yellow on the inside made with rainbow chip cake mix and cherry chip cake mix. Gasp! Yes, I used a cake mix. I read that boxed mixes take food colouring better than homemade but 

I have also had success with "jacked up" boxed mixes in the past. I do 4 eggs, sometimes butter instead of oil and I use mild instead of water. It makes a big difference and it is a convenient shortcut when pressed for time. Nobody complained and all of the cake was eaten eventually so I really don't apologize for using a mix in this instance. I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the cake - I can't believe I could forget that but they were dyed blue and yellow and looked and tasted delicious.

The cake toppers were cookies - I made four sugar cookies that were over 3" round and thinner than the other cookies to place on the cake instead of fiddling with fondant. I just wasn't up to dying fondant, rolling it out, shaping it and keeping it from drying out etc. I love the look of fondant cakes and the decorations but I have very little space to work with and to be perfectly honest, very little patience for all of that but nobody minded and it looked pretty good as it was. The icings were vanilla buttercream and almond/cherry buttercream.

The cookies were made using my go-to sugar cookie favourite: Sweet Sugarbelle's sugar cookie recipe and her royal icing recipe - but I used Kirkland Pure Vanilla Extract and Nielson-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste for the cookie dough instead of Sugarbelle's preferred almond extract. 

Easter Cookies

These are chocolate roll out cookies by LilaLoa and sugar cookies by Sugarbelle. 

The lambs were inspired by Marian at Sweetopia.

These bunnies on a stick were requested by a friend for a gathering she was going to where there would be some little ones who would enjoy these bunny face "mask" cookies. She told me afterward that they were a hit with everyone. I made some in LilaLoa's chocolate and the others in Sugarbelle's basic sugar cookie.

I also sent a dozen cookies to work with my hubby on Good Friday and he said they were a hit there too. 

Links to ingredients used to make all of these cookies....

Nielsen-Massey Vanillas

Vanilla

Ruddy Red Cocoa Powder

Wilton Clear Vanilla Extract

Wilton Meringue Powder

Birthday Girl Cookies

These cookies were made for a little girl who was turning 7 - her party theme was cupcakes, so of course the cookies had to be cupcakes in girly colors. 

These cookies were made using the sugar cookie recipe from Sugarbelle's site. This dough is easy to work with and tastes great with different flavorings - for these cookies, I used pure almond extract to flavor the dough and I used Wilton clear artificial vanilla to flavor the royal icing. I haven't found anything else that is "oil free" to use for the royal icing. If anyone knows of any other oil-free flavorings, please let me know, I'd love to try something different. I make my dough using a mixer, someday, my mixer will go ca put on me because of the volume of cookie dough, cake batter, buttercream and mostly - royal icing that I make. My goal is to be able to buy a KitchenAid stand mixer - they are beautiful  and seem to be the stand mixer of choice with most bakers. Someday.... I can dream :)

Just had to make a special cookie for the birthday girl herself :)

I don't have cookie cutters for the cupcake or the tiara so I did templates on paper and used them to cut out the cookie dough using a knife - it takes longer than using a cutter and is a bit of a pain but you gotta do what you gotta do!