Birthday Cake

Hello again!  Yes, I know, two posts in one day!  Crazy!

So, today was my daughter's birthday party, and you know what that means - cakes!  Now, if you have followed me for a while, you will probably recall that I seem to have a tendency to have birthday cake disasters.  This time is no different!  Though, I did manage to make them look alright in the end.

Now, my daughter chose cupcakes that looked like ice cream sundaes.  I realised that the candle we had bought was too large for a cupcake, so had to make both cupcakes and a large cake.  No big deal, right?  

So, this is what happened:

First of all, I made the cupcakes.  Just normal chocolate cupcakes, from a recipe that I've used several times.  When I spooned the mix into the cases, I realised that they wouldn't rise high enough for what I needed, so in my infinite wisdom, I decided to add a marshmallow into the centre of each one.

The problem with this, as I quickly remembered after I'd put them in the oven, is that when you heat marshmallows, they expand and then deflate, creating a crater.

Ok, so that was a bit of a fail, but I soon remedied it by placing another marshmallow on top before icing.

To make these look like ice cream sundaes, I melted white chocolate buttons, and slowly poured a dollop over the top, smoothing it around to make it look like ice cream.

Once that had set, I then melted some dark chocolate buttons, and placed a blob in the centre of each cupcake, allowing it to run a little.  I added sprinkles and an M&M to the top.
I think they turned out pretty cute, don't you?

Cuteness aside though, there may have been a tad too much chocolate, because they were a touch hard to bite through!  Oh well, I know for next time!

As for the cake.  I had high hopes for this.  I had picked a silicone cake mould in the shape of a rose, because it had the right shape to make the top of the sundae.  It also, however, had a lot of ridges in the pan, which apparently did not want to let go of said cake.  This is what it looked like:

I know what you're thinking - delicious!  Right?  Lol

As you can probably tell, it's a red velvet cake, so instead of white chocolate, I made a cream cheese icing - just because it would be wrong not to.

For anyone who hasn't made this before, you use around 1/4C cream cheese, 1/4C softened butter and around 1C icing sugar - I also like to add some lemon essence or lemon zest.

I had forgotten to buy another piping bag, so I did the old trick of cutting a corner out of a bag and using that.  I got about 3/4 of the way through before the nozzle came squeezing out and I had to rejig my bag to a different corner.  By this stage I had quite a lot of icing on my hands.

Once I managed to get that finished, I again melted some dark chocolate and poured on top - take my advice, don't do it as thick as I did - not the easiest to cut!

Before the chocolate sets, add sprinkles and M&M's or whatever you are using to decorate.  I also took this moment to stick the candle in - also probably not my best idea as it became stuck in the chocolate.  I know, I'm such a pro!

Anyways, I think it turned out alright in the end:

Anywho, I hope you've enjoyed my little ramblings, and perhaps I've inspired you to try and make your own ice cream sundae cakes :)
Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and Happy Cooking!