Daisies and Ladybugs + Caking with Kids

My six-year-old son loves to cook and help in the kitchen. He designed this really cool pirate cupcake. It has blue water, black sand, and he even added toothpicks for posts to hold up a hammock for a pirate. He has such a good imagination and creative ideas! He was disappointed that I couldn't think of anything we had on hand for the net, but he was still happy with his cupcake and he shared it with me. What a great chef!



We worked on our cakes together in the kitchen. Mine was just a quick cake for a friend.



STATS:

Box Mix of Lemon Cake
Buttercream Frosting (green background and flowers)
Glace Icing (ladybugs)

Spring Flower Cookies

I decided to try my hand at making some Duff (the guy from Ace of Cakes) roses out of fondant. They were pretty simple to make, but some definitely turned out better than others...as you can see.



The last one is my favorite. Here's a link to a good tutorial if you want to try it out. http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1149096

Instead of rolling out the fondant and cutting out small circles, I chose to roll balls of fondant and flatten them out with my fingers to make the circles. I think that's why my petals ended up a little thick.



Overall, I think they turned out really cute. I used Peggy Weaver's marshmallow fondant recipe for the fondant. The icing is Toba Garrett's recipe that I thinned down a little by adding more milk. The cookies are strawberry cake mix cookies.

Peggy Weaver's Marshmallow Fondant
Toba Garrett's Glace Icing
Cake Mix Cookies

Garden Cookies

These are all sugar cookies decorated with royal icing. I had cookie cutters for the flowers, but I just used a cup to cut out the circles for the ladybugs. For the fence and sign, I used a sharp knife and cut out the shapes I wanted.

Red Flower


Orange Flower


Ladybug


Garden Fence (This one is my favorite.)


The plate of cookies!