Mini Poppy Cakes
Silver Dollar Pancake Cupcakes, french toast cupcakes, maple buttercream wrapped in marshmallow fondant with caramel drizzle.

French Toast Fantasy 
French Toast Cupcake with Maple Buttercream, Fondant Pancake
Topper and Caramel Drizzle

Peanut Butter Perfection Stack Cake
Peanut Butter Cake with Milk Chocolate Ganache,
Peanut Butter Buttercream and Candy Crumbles X4

Peanut Butter Perfection
Peanut Butter Cupcake with Milk Chocolate Ganache,
Peanut Butter Buttercream and Candy Quarters

S’more Galore
Graham Cracker Crumb Base, Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cupcake with Toasted Marshmallow Buttercream and S’more Garnish

Cupcake Bouquet
Yellow Cake Cupcakes, Vanilla Buttercream Flowers and Fondant Leaves

Happy Mother’s Day
Yellow Cake Cupcake baked in a terra-cotta mini, chocolate ganache, vanilla buttercream flower, and fondant leaves, topped with a Buzzy Bee cake pop.

The “Sweet Lou” 

I have a good friend, who has a SWEET TOOTH to say the least, his favorites are carrot cake, and red velvet cake, so this past birthday, his wife couldn’t decide which to oder him, so… The half carrot, half red velvet “Sweet Lou” was created.

Cookies and Cream Stack Cake

Chocolate cake layers with cookies and cream frosting, and milk chocolate ganache.

Pumpkin Latte Hi-Hat Cupcake

A Spiced cupcake piled high with coffee frosting dipped in pumpkin candy.

Hipster Cakes

Nerd… I mean Hipster infused/garnished cupcake

Sweetest Fish

Jelly fish (not Jellyfish) infused cake, vanilla frosting with the

sweetest little fishy (and sprinkles, lots of sprinkles)

Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

Vanilla bean cupcakes with vanilla cream filling topped with vanilla buttercream

What does this have to do with baking, decorating and delicious treats?

If you had asked me 6 weeks ago how to make a cake, I would have told you to call Costco and place an order.  If you had persisted and wanted that cake to be baked in your home oven I would have told you which aisle in Walmart the boxed cake mixes could be found though I rarely, at that point, had even ventured to do THAT.

When I decided to make my son’s birthday cake (I didn’t want to pay the hundreds of dollars other people charge to have my son obliterate it, but I did want him to have something special) I didn’t have a recipe.  (Thank you Swan’s Cake Flour for putting the recipe right on the back of the box) I didn’t have a mixer or even a pan.  I was not equipped for the task at hand, but I did have the motivation and curiosity it took to TRY.

My mother-in-law let me borrow her mixer:

Since then, my super amazing and generous friend, Joslyn donated her Sunbeam to BakeosaurusRex.  God is GOOD!

And I put out a little plea on Facebook to borrow a pan.  Many friends responded to my need.  Ultimately I ended up borrowing the one pictured below from my friend Colleen which she since then has donated to BakeosaurusRex.  God is GOOD! (what do you have collected dust in your cabinets? I’d love to clear your clutter!) 

Since that moment, which was now a month ago, God has revealed a talent within me, not even I knew was hiding.  As Confucius said,

Choose a Job You Love, and You Will Never Have To Work a Day in Your Life- Confucius

I do have to find humor in the call though.  I had been praying for willpower and the WANT TO motivation (as suggested in Made to Crave by Lysa TerKeurst) for my health and weight-loss and God answers by given me the opportunity to exercise willpower and to draw closer to him to seek my WANT TO with all these delicious goodies around 24/7.

I had also been praying for assistance and clarity with time management strategies… the answer seems to be that the more you have on your plate the more hours there are in a day as you HAVE to manage the time you were gifted more carefully to accomplish your home, family, BSF, hobbies and BAKING all while putting CHRIST first.

This month has been full of learning and a lot of fun!  Thank you, God for equipping those you call to do Your Will!  -Amen!

Happy Baking,

BakeosaurusRex

• 1 Tablespoon Lemonade (or vodka…most of my cakes are kid cakes so I feel a little weird about using vodka and lemonade works great)
• Gel Food Coloring (color(s) to meet your specific designing needs.

Instructions

1. Put lemonade in a shallow dish or palate
2. Start adding your first gel color, remember you can always add more, so use a toothpick and dip it into the color and stir the lemonade with this.
3. Add the color or combination of colors until you achieve your desired color.

To paint the griddle marks on the pictures above I used:

brown as my base color, and added golden yellow, copper and a VERY SMALL amount of burgundy to make the colors you see on my son’s cake top and sides.

These cupcakes were also on the tray for my son’s 1st birthday.  I just used my leftover french toast cake batter and made cupcakes, then pipped on leftover maple frosting and added a cute little fondant mini pancake and drizzle.  HUGE HIT!

When I started this, I had only PLANNED on making Poppy’s Pancake Stack Smash Cake and my awesomely generous Mother-In-Law took care of ordering the cupcakes for the guests which I planned on topping with mini fondant pancakes and drizzle (like above but white cake and vanilla buttercream) to fit the theme.  However, with all the practice I had done I ended up with more silver dollar stacks and those cupcakes pictured above.

Do you like the theme, and the idea of dressing up an ordinary ordered cupcake to fit your theme? Check out these pictures below:

Into THIS:

This was NOT my original design.  I got my inspiration and instructions on how to construct the fondant and add the details from reading Rose’s Tutorial on her Blog.

The First things you are going to need is your GO TO cake batter recipe, and an awesome pan (and a few other supplies and ingredients).  I didn’t have anything that would suit the size I wanted at the time, so I borrowed a GIANT cupcake pan from my friend, and used just the bottom part.  You could also use 6″ pan and stack them as high as your heart desires.

Supplies you will need:
Mixer
3 bowls
Rubber scrapper
Your pan of choice
The Original No-Stick Baking Spray with Flour (I am new to this whole blogging thing, I am not sure what I am allowed to say and not say lol…)
Cake Recipe
Fondant Recipe
Piping Gel Recipe (or Caramel Maple Drizzle which I will get to later)
Gel Colors
Fondant Paint
Decorating brush
All your Ingredients

So grab your stuff, and let’s get to it!

 Here is what I did:
Step 1– Start SMALL, like cupcake size small.  You will end up with CUTE silver dollar pancake stacks, and everyone will LOVE them!

Step 2- After baking and allowing your cupcakes to completely cool, trim the “muffin top” (yes, I just giggled too) off and the edges perhaps if you want, just to shape. (I used a little serrated knife) Toss the trimmings into your “gonna make cake pop’s with this” scraps container.

Step 3- Dab some of that buttercream onto the freshly trimmed top (now bottom) and plop it onto a plate (or whatever you want, mini cake round, piece of parchment paper…).

Step 4– Spread a thin layer of your buttercream on there. I’m not fancy, I just used a butter knife and started on top and worked my way around turning the plate.

Step 5– Set that to the side and bust out your fondant. Don’t forget, marshmallow fondant needs to be made ahead of time to “set-up” and become workable.  I made one batch and tinted the majority of it with a little brown gel coloring BEFORE I added the powdered sugar.  I made the “butter” a tiny little part of that batch and added GOLDEN yellow prior to adding the powdered sugar.

Step 6– Make fondant snakes.  Remember your play dough days? (or if you also happen to have a 3 year-old maybe your “play dough days” are everyday)

Step 7-  Wrap it around your upside down, trimmed, iced, cupcake.  Be sure to gently press the snake into the frosting as you go, and start at the BOTTOM laying each coil on top of the last one as you go.  This does NOT have to be perfect.  Remember we are making a stack of pancakes, it should look shifted and mismatched.

Step 8-  now for the top.  See it above? Roll fondant into a ball and then smash it in-between your hands to make it look like the top pancake.  Make sure it covered the whole top and is about as thick as your coils appear to be.

Step 9- THE PAINT! Make your “paint” So, usually fondant painting includes vodka it would appear.  I felt a little funny about painting my one-year-olds first cake with vodka haha even though its like TRACE amounts, so I used lemonade.

Step 10– Take your decorating brush and get to work.  Apparently I didn’t get a picture of myself painting, which makes sense as I had my brush in my left and the cupcake in my right, next time I will have my husband snap a photo but I will do my best to describe it here.   a) Dip your brush in your fondant paint, if you are not sure how it will look, practice on a scrap piece of fondant till you get the look you are going for.
b) Turn your brush sideways so the tip will go between the “pancakes” and spin your cupcake to coil around from BOTTOM to top. This doesn’t have to be perfect, remember on a real pancake the browned marks from the griddle, that is what we are imitating.  It should have imperfections to look REAL.
c) The Top! Start in the middle with your paint. (Remember, you are going to have fondant butter pads and either piping gel or maple caramel drizzle to imitate the syrup on top too so don’t worry about the inconsistencies and asymmetrical paint job you may have just done, I am sure it looks great! I cannot wait to see a picture of your creation! Send me some! shannon@bakeosaurusrex.com

Step 11– Make your little pads of butter.  For the silver dollar cupcakes just made little balls with my hands and squished them down and cut two small squares.  (for the big stack I did the same, I just used a rolling pin to flatten them a little more consistently.)

Step 12– The DRIZZLE!  Whatever you choose to use as your “syrup” Put it into a decorating squeeze bottle (or one of those picnic condiment squeeze bottles) and start from the top middle, on top of the “butter” and squeeze a little out in a light, slow, steady, stream (I am going to use the CLOCK numbers to explain it, so when I say “at 12 o’clock”… you know what I mean) down 12 o’clock then back up that same stream to the middle, then down 2 o’clock, back up, down 4 o’clock, and back up (so a little will pool on the plate like a REAL stack of pancakes) so and and so fourth every “two hours” till you are back in the middle after 10 o’clock then stop.  Remember- practice makes perfect.  That is why I did ALL THESE little cupcakes, to boost my confidence (and had fun cute treats for my party guests) before I tackled a BIG STACK.

YOU ARE DONE! I bet it looks AWESOME! (don’t forget to show me) 

(Step 13– Now decorate your BIG stack the SAME way)

Coming up next- This cake and these cupcakes LOOK like breakfast, How do you get them to TASTE like breakfast too with a few items you already have in your cupboard? AND…not everyone likes fondant covered cakes?! How I accommodated those guests at my son’s party.