Saturday, October 24, 2015

Harry Potter Birthday Party Part 5: The Cake

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If you missed our other Harry Potter Birthday Party post, check them out:


Such a simple cake but the kids loved it!

It's a simple five layered chocolate and vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.

It's covered with marshmallow fondant. Let me be clear, I dislike regular fondant and try to avoid it like the plague! It tastes awful. When I use it, I make figurines (e.g. on our Plants vs Zombie cake) but would never cover a cake in it. But I had heard rumours that marshmallow fondant is not only easy to work with but also tastes waaaay better. So what the heck, I thought, let's try it.

It doesn't taste like marshmallows but it is sweet and pleasant tasting. More importantly all the kids (and my husband) ate it and liked it - not one peeled it off the cake! That says something!

It was easy to work with. Even though I rolled it a bit too thin, it still adhered to the cake well and it was easy to smooth out.  The ribbons on the bottom of the cake hid a bit of messiness around the edges of the cake!

After it was covered, I added a bit of color gels to pieces of extra fondant. After rolling them out and cutting them into shapes (you can use whatever cookie cutters you have on hand or even cut them free style with a knife), I wrote on them with edible ink. The kids gave me their favorite spells and quotes from the Harry Potter books and movies and I just copied them onto individual fondant pieces. If you rub a tiny bit of water on the cake or the back of the fondant piece it will be easy to adhere it to the cake!

Note: Make sure you make the fondant a day or so in advance - it makes it much easier to work with.

Here are the sites I referred to when making our marshmallow fondant:
Great Video by My Cupcake Addiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaKqSND8sPc


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Sunday, October 4, 2015

Grammie's Ginger Snaps



Only nine ingredients and a little bit of time stands between you and these spicy, sweet ginger snaps. These are so easy to pull together. My kids love rolling them in the sugar and placing them on the baking sheet. I prefer to use raw sugar to roll the cookies in - it's crunchier than regular granulated so it adds a great texture element.

The video below was made by my 11 year old - I think she did a great job - don't you?




Ingredients

3/4 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
2.5 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt

1 cup extra granulated sugar or raw sugar in bowl for dipping cookies

Instructions

  1. Cream butter and 1 cup sugar well.
  2. Beat in egg.
  3. Mix in molasses.
  4. In another bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, and salt.
  5. Add to the creamed mixture and mix well.
  6. Shape into 1 inch balls.
  7. Roll in sugar and on baking sheet.
  8. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.
  9. Cool on pan for 5 minutes and then transer to wire racks to cool completely.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies.