Happy Baking!

We have been doing a bit of baking this week. It all started with my dad's birthday earlier this week. I was surprised to hear that his favorite homemade cake is actually a simple yellow cake with chocolate icing. Simple enough. I wanted to decorate it with chocolate shavings, but Maddie voted for the obnoxious blue sprinkles for her Pop! 

This was the first family member's birthday that Maddie could actually sing Happy Birthday really well, it was so adorable.

My best friend's son will be celebrating his first birthday in a month and I am bringing the cupcakes! I wanted to make something special for my favorite little boy, but I get nervous trying a new recipe for an event without doing a trial run first. So Maddie helped me practice making chocolate fudge cupcakes with homemade cream cheese icing with oreo crumbs mixed in. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the finished product because I didn't have nice cupcake liners and they just did not look that pretty to be honest. But let me just say they are my absolute FAVORITE baked good I have ever made. I will hopefully have pictures of them for you along with the recipe around Brody's birthday. For now here is a picture of my favorite helper doing a "baking project" as she calls it...

And of course my other favorite helper watching intently from her bouncer...

Claudia's birthday is coming up this July and being so close to fourth of July we will be doing a BBQ. Since all of the kids will be to young to do actual smores I wanted to copy this idea I saw on pinterest that is marshmallows on lollipop sticks, dipped in melted chocolate and sprinkled with crushed up graham crackers. I didn't have lollipop sticks on hand but Maddie and I had fun doing a trial run on the marshmallows. I definitely like the look of the ones dipped in graham cracker better than the oreo and sprinkle dipped ones so that is what I will use for her party. Also glad I did a a run through because for next time I know to keep my fingers really clean so they don't leave chocolate prints on the marshmallows (you will notice smudges on the marshmallow with pink sprinkles...woops.) I also learned that they look better if you sprinkle the graham crackers on top of the chocolate, rather than dipping them.

Now my only challenge is not gaining 10 pounds by sampling everything!