Why so tired you may ask?
After cramming a days lab work into 3 hours and then running home to take care of hand, foot, and mouth girl, I get a burst of energy during her nap time to bake a birthday cake for Grant's teacher's birthday.
It all started with thinking that buying Miss Teacher Costco movie tickets (2 for $15) was a thoughtful, money-saving idea...but how to give Miss Teacher the tickets?
Inside a card?
In a gift box?....and then along came Pinterest.
I must explain before proceeding with story...
If you haven't heard of this site...you MUST, I mean MUST try it...it's a virtual organizer for...well just about everything you could could ever want to bake, cook, drink, travel to, decorate, craft...etc.
The gist of it is: 1)You find something you like then 2) "pin it" to your own "bulletin board". Your "boards" contain the pins with links back to the original link where you will have your recipe or other instructions.
If you thought Facebook was a time-sink, just wait until you get sucked into this site.
You can "follow" peoples "boards" and see what they've been pinning. There is no "friending" (like Facebook) so you can follow whose ever boards you'd like.
Got it? Here's a like to my "boards"...
Back to the story...I found this idea on Pinterest, so I cannot take credit for it. However, I did upgrade a bit from cupcakes to ONE BIG CUPCAKE.
I have the silicon baking pan for ONE BIG CUPCAKE and I have used it before for a birthday cake two years ago (for myself, nonetheless..who else was going to bake me a cake?)
Here it is:
Side note 1: Look at my munchkins!! Gwen was 7 months and Grant 2 years 6 months old!
Side note 2: Grant still wears those pajamas two years later. YAY for small babies and Hanna Anderson quality clothes!
So, using this pan, I baked a standard German chocolate cake and headed to our local Michaels to look for "popcorn container" paper...I was HOPING they had red and white striped scrapbook paper.
Side note 3: YAY for San Diego having TWO Michaels and even better that it was on sale for $0.25 for a piece of paper!
I wrapped the paper around the bottom of the cake, to give it a "popcorn box" look...
Then I frosted the top with cream cheese frosting....
Then, I recruited my neighbor, Jack, and Gwen to pull apart about a million little marshmallows and stick them back together again (this makes the marshmallows look like little popcorn nuggets when they are layered on the cake)
Then, once you've got your marshmallows on the cake, take 2 drops of yellow food coloring in water and "paint" the marshmallows for a "movie butter-like" look.
Voila: Popcorn cake:
Now, attach movie tickets using cute little "candy" stickers (had these in my crafting "bin"--which is basically 1/3 of our garage.) My husband likes to tell people that "if Michaels doesn't have it, we probably do".
I decided to "go the extra mile" and write "Happy Birthday Miss Teacher--ok, now you all know her name is Stephanie, but whatever, it's not like she reads the blog), but I think I went a little too far.
I melted chocolate (those little disks from Michaels) inside the candy bottle, which is made of the THINNEST.PLASTIC.EVER.
The nozzle kept clogging and I constantly had to clean it out and re-warm the chocolate, which kept INCREASING the temperature of the damn plastic bottle.
It was just a mess and I burnt my hands.
Go ahead, ask my cousin. She was watching me the entire time.
During what I like to think was an "ah ha!" moment, I put on silicon oven mitts to squeeze the bottle. It wasn't my best work, but here it is in it's entirety.
I haven't picked up Grant just yet from school, so I haven't heard her reaction...but I'm a bit nervous as she was the teacher who thought I used "black cheese" on Grant's bento sandwich the other day.
I hope I redeemed myself.
I
OMG! You are too good!
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