Smore's birthday cake from scratch!

cake portion ( this is the recipe on the back of your hershey cocoa container)
(sorry mine is a little burnt got distracted with my little ray)
1- 3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/2 c. veggie oil
2 tsp vanilla
(1 c. boiling water)
Let me start by explaining why the 1 c. boiling water is in () well its because I have found that if you add the full one cup to a cake you plan to stack its to soft and tends to fall apart so i do 1/2 c. if its for stacking. otherwise do the full cup and its pretty amazingly moist like a pudding cake.

I like to sift my dry ingredients though it is not completely necessary in this recipe. (though you can pick one up at the 99 cent store or dollar tree) add your flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt into your mixer. Then slowly mix as you add your wet ingredients milk, veggie oil, vanilla. once those are fully mixed in add your boiling water. ***this batter is extremely thin so don't freak out it will work*** bake at 350° for 30 min till tooth pick comes out clean

Filling (my mother in laws white frosting recipe, similar to twinkie filling)

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 tsp. cream of tarter
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla

You put the sugar, water and cream of tarter  into a sauce pan on medium heat, cook till it boils and looks like sugar is desolved. In your mixer put you egg whites in slowly adding your sugar mixture while beating on a med-high speed. after adding in all your mixture let it beat on high for up to 7 minutes ( until it forms soft peaks) then add your vanilla (i like to do 1-1/2 tsp vanilla) and beat for a little longer. 

frosting after beating for a few min.

frosting
2 cups sugar
8 egg whites
1/2 tsp water
2 tsp vanilla

For this one, yes i know the ingredence look almost exactly the same as the filling but the frosting you can toast and the filling you can't so make sure you cook correctly. We will be using the double broiler method. get your water simmering then in your top pot add in your egg whites, sugar, and cream of tarter. The secret is to make sure you wisk the entire time its cooking. cook it till the sugar desolves and the egg is warm to the touch but not hot. when it hits this stage put it in your mixer and slowly increasing speed beat it till it forms peaks. then its ready to frost.

ok we just used half a gram cracker pack to the outside of the frosting.

ok now set your oven to broil and put your cake in. It takes about 8-12 min to get a nice golden color. eat it in the first day or two or the frosting gets real hard.

enjoy!

<3 Melanie

Shark party!

Okay so truth is we did this for a family jaws marathon, but it would be a great shark birthday party or a great shark week party! So here are all the crazy ideas i came up with...

So basically it was everything i could think of, we also did hamburgers and used a cookie cutter and cut them into sharks with plenty of blood (ketchup) :) 

This is the watermelon cut out in fun shark shapes you can buy them here or we bought them for a few dollars cheaper at a local baking store (orson gygi in Utah)

Ok and this is blue jello in cups with blue dyed whip cream and drowning teddy grams with lifesaver gummies. we also added gummy sharks to the jello.

Probably the easiest thing on the table, its just white cheese cut like shark teeth.

As part of the display i used my ceramic bowls that seemed to be the perfect size. oh and those Twinkies in the background have a blue raspberry filling (weirdest Twinkies ever!) 

This is super simple it is red punch with blue punch ice cubes in shark fin shapes. You can buy them here, we found it at an aquarium and spent even more on it sadly.

My oldest son said the cake need to be red inside so we made a cherry cake with my favorite icing and favorite homemade white chocolate marshmallow fondant!

My youngest son really loves the fondant

Basically this was something I had been planning sense I found out i was getting married. See my oldest (step) son is a huge fan of Jaws and sense I had seen none of them I promised to watch them all. Well sense I don't do anything super low key... I began thinking and hunting for fun ideas, along side of wedding planning, and doing the single mom thing. So over all considering the craziness that was going on during the planning i think this shark theme party rocked it!

<3 Melanie