Fuzzy Grey Mouse Cake DIY

Get your squeak on (Lyndsay? Is that even a saying at ALL?) with this cutie pie grey mouse cake DIY! I think this mouse cake would be best served with a sideboard of cheese. Yes, a sideboard. Not a stingy little wooden board, guys. We need mountains of cheese.

I wasn't born with an obsessive love of cheese like my husband was - my mom was a fan of slicing huge blocks of orange cheddar and placing those in our sandwiches along with lettuce and black forest ham. I knew cheddar, brie and havarti. Not until I married my cheese mongering husband did I learn how vast and truly WONDERFUL the world of cheese is! Gouda, gruyere, raclette - I love a good cheese party. So yes, I would highly recommend a mouse and cheese themed birthday party. It just seems right.

As for the dessert - scurry on over to Handmade Charlotte for how to make a fuzzy mouse cake!

xo Lyndsay

Donut Try To Take My Donut Pan: Pretty Palette Of Donuts + Recipe

Gosh darn it I loved making these colourful pretty little gems. I used my newfound and trusted donut recipe to make these in my donut baking pans. Mauve, peachy rose and mint green tinted vanilla milk glaze with a light dusting of rainbow sprinkles. The lovely Tamara Taggart asked me if I would make donuts for her for a photoshoot for the Glitter Guide - how could I say no to such a sweet and beautiful lady??

One of my Instagram followers noted that the donuts look like Froot Loops! Made me want a bowl of crunchy fake-fruity Froot Loops instantly, and it gave me a great idea for a future donut flavour! So fun! I have a sugar problem!! Oh and here's the donut recipe again after this photo.


Vanilla Nutmeg Cake Donuts
(recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour)


Yield: 1 dozen donuts + 1dozen mini donuts
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1/3 cup golden brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 2/3s cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole milk

For the glaze:
1 cup of icing sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
5 teaspoons whole milk
Sprinkles (optional)
Gel colours in fuchsia, purple and green

(I made three bowls of this glaze using the same amounts so I could tint each bowl with a different colour - you need to make a decent amount of glaze for donut dipping otherwise the dipping concept doesn't quite work).

Make it!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Oil your donut baking pans.

1. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, oil and sugars until smooth and creamy.
2. Add the eggs, mixing to combine.
3. Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and vanilla extract.
4. Add the flour into the wet mixture, alternating with the milk until combined. Do not overmix.
5. Fill your donut pans 3/4 full with the donut batter. I used a piping bag with pretty nice results.
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes, or until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Do not overbake!
7. Remove donuts from pans and let cool on wire racks.
8. Meanwhile, make the glaze: whisk together icing sugar, vanilla extract, milk and desired food colouring until smooth.
9. Once donuts are cool, dunk the donuts into the glaze. Add sprinkles if so desired!

Imagine showing up at your next birthday party with a big old plate of these? Best friends would be made for life. Or at least the duration of the party.

Happy snacking, cake pals! (donut pals??)

xo Lyndsay

Rose To The Occasion: How To Pipe Buttercream Roses

It's tough to deny how pretty a rose topped cupcake is, especially a buttercream rose that you cram-jam into your mouth... mmmm!

Find the whole DIY over at my How To Pipe Buttercream Roses post for Craftsy!

xo Lyndsay

Total Splash: Sweet Mermaid Buttercream Cake + Cupcakes

 


How obsessed was I with:

1. The movie Splash starring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah as the giant floppy tailed dolphin-barking mermaid. Um, also John Candy is in it. GOLD. Need to watch this again asap.

2. The original Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid where the sweet beautiful mermaid loves her prince so much she cannot kill him and throws herself into the ocean and disintegrates into a thousand bubbles into the ocean waves (SAD!)

3. The friendly-fied Disney version of The Little Mermaid where the little merm is a bright red haired firecracker mermaid and marries the prince (although there is still a horrible death scene of "crazy old Ursula" the mole-faced octopus scary lady).

4. The movie Mermaids starring Cher and Winona Ryder and a young Christina Ricci. Set in the 1960s with amazing hair and wardrobe and a coming-of-age story that any young lady would glomp onto. Yeah. That's a good one.

MERMAIDS! I still love them! And I will love anyone who requests a cake as pretty and buttercreamy beautiful as this one I made for the adorable Rhys. I even drew a custom cake topper in her liking. As a mermaid of course...

Thank you Genieve for the fun order - and happy birthday Rhys!

A Little Pep In Your Step: Easy Peppermint Chocolate Ice Cream

Irish or not, many of us ice cream lovers out there go wild for that minty green peppermint chocolate chip ice cream! This simple version is a snap to make with just a few ingredients. Blast on over to Poppytalk for this breezily easy peppermint chocolate ice cream recipe.

How To Decorate A Cake: One Cake Three Ways

I gots some sweet cake decorating ideas for lazies today! Check out my post on how to decorate a cake on You Are My Fave - including this candy topped beauty. Shortly after this photo was taken all of the mini eggs and malt balls were destroyed by ingestion. Candy problem, right here!!

PS you're not lazy. Even if you are, lazy cake decorating can still be great.

Pretty Pup: Pink Dog Cake For A Sweet First Birthday

I made this pink hairy buttercream dog cake for baby girl Quinn's first birthday party. I die a little of cuteness whenever I make a little baby's first birthday cake - it always reminds me of how emotional I was on my son Teddy's first birthday. You can hardly believe you made it through those 12 months ... those first newborn months going by so painfully slow and difficult yet you want to hold on to that mini human forever... then all those milestones in months, little smiles, teensy giggles, starting to eat solids, crawling, standing up and then BLAM. First birthday.

It is a frigging honour each and every time to make a little mini's birthday cake - guys, my cake is going to live on in all these kid's baby photo albums! Sweet!

Time flies so, so fast. Happy 1st birthday, beautiful little Quinn.

xo Lyndsay

Coffee Icing Glazed Vanilla Nutmeg Donuts

I finally found a sweet recipe for baked donuts that remind me of non baked donuts! The last few recipes I've tried were more on the cakey side - ie, they taste kind of like cake batter baked into a donut shape - but these guys really had that dense nutmeg heavier vibe going on - then, dripping with a thick layer of coffee icing glaze, well they're frigging delicious.

I wanted to mix it up with glaze flavours and looked through my extract collection - this Nielsen Massey coffee extract stared me in the face. The taste of the glaze reminded me of the wonderful lazy daisy vanilla cake my grandma would make for me, dripping in glaze made from instant coffee and icing sugar. I honestly was scraping dried glaze off the plate and eating it. Oh, and eating it by the spoonful. I think I like coffee flavoured things, maybe? Haha!

Coffee Icing Glazed Vanilla Nutmeg Cake Donuts 
(recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour)
Yields 1 dozen donuts

Ingredients

For the donuts: 
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1/3 cup golden brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 2/3s cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole milk

For the glaze:
1 cup of icing sugar
1 teaspoon coffee extract
5 teaspoons whole milk
Sprinkles (optional)

Make it!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Oil your donut baking pans.

1. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, oil and sugars until smooth and creamy.
2. Add the eggs, mixing to combine.
3. Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt and vanilla extract.
4. Add the flour into the wet mixture, alternating with the milk until combined. Do not overmix.
5. Fill your donut pans 3/4 full with the donut batter.
6. Bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes, or until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Do not overbake!
7. Remove donuts from pans and let cool on wire racks.
8. Meanwhile, make the glaze: whisk together icing sugar, coffee extract and milk until smooth.
9. Once donuts are cool, dunk the donuts into the glaze. Add sprinkles if so desired!

I seriously donut lie when I say this recipe is a goodie.
What's your favourite baked donut recipe? Would love to know!

xo Lyndsay

Hip Hop: Bunny Cake + Pink Cupcake Buddies

Gad sometimes it's so hard to let these cake friends go. Pretty much fell in love with this orange buck toothed party animal bunny cake and matching pink bunny cupcake buddies that I made for the adorable little girls Sapphira and Nyla! Don't you love how specific little kids can be? Orange bunny?? Amazing. Ahhh I love kiddos!

Thank you so much Dimithra for such a fun order! So fun to create something for your girls once again.

xo Lyndsay