What fun! What fun! E is one!

This year flew by.  I mean at Mach 3 speed.  I can't believe E's First Birthday has come and gone.  I'm a little ashamed to admit it but I started planning his party as early as December!  (I have issues, I know!)

The party was Dr. Seuss themed.  I ordered decorations from Birthday Express - they sell great Dr. Seuss party sets, with plates, cups, cutlery and table clothes.  They also sell adorable window decals and wall cut outs. 

E's Dr. Seuss collection is quite respectable and made for easy décor.  I placed several of his books around the living room.

I couldn't find a banner that I liked, so I used the basic Paint application on the computer and created a banner saying Happy Birthday, spelled out on Cat in the Hat hats, sewn together with bias tape.  I made a similar banner for E's highchair saying "I am 1".

Food-wise, I kept it simple.  I made:
fruit salad - called "Beezle Nut Fruit Salad";

• potato salad - lamely called "Tangy Pangy Potato Salad";
• green eggs;
• ham (and turkey) sandwiches;
• "cat"prese skewers;
• doughnuts - because "D is for doughnuts";
• cheese trees; and
• Birthday Cake with Jerry Jordan's Jelly!

For the cake, I tried to style it like the birthday cake from "Happy Birthday to You"!  The cake itself was a plain white cake, with raspberry jam filling and lemon frosting:

Lemon Frosting

1 box lemon pudding
1/4 cup icing sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 tub thawed cool whip

Mix pudding, icing sugar and milk with electric mixer for 2 minutes at medium or high speed.  Allow mixture to sit for 1 minute.  Fold in cool whip until frosting is consistently mixed. 

I also ordered custom "green egg" cookies from a local baker.  They were AMAZING!!!  Cake Expectations totally exceeded my expectations.

All-in-all, it was a good day!

St. Patty's Day Bake-A-Thon

Because apparently having a bun in the oven isn't enough baking for my husband and because apparently he is having some sympathy cravings, my hubby thinks I haven't baked enough lately.  I reserved comment for a more appropriate time and kindly obliged this weekend (and I should note he has been very helpful throughout the pregnancy).  Since today is St. Patty's Day, I went with a theme and made Shamrock Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing and a Mint Chocolate Cake.

Shamrock Sugar Cookies
 
I've grown up using the Company's Coming series of cook books, which has a great recipe for sugar cookies and royal icing.

As always with sugar cookies, the dough is best for rolling and cutting cookies if first chilled for a while (I chilled this batch for roughly 45 minutes.)  One dozen turned out really well.  The next...well, not so much.  To fix these ones, I used one of the round cookie cutters to cut them down to size.

Its been a LONG while since I've iced cookies, but I tried my hand at it.  I went with Wilton Kelly Green colouring for the festive feel.

I couldn't find a squeeze bottle, so I had to use piping bags for both the edge piping and the flood icing.

Not my best work but they taste good and they are cute.  Turns out I could have thinned the flood icing a bit more, but I used a toothpick to spread it out.

Mint Chocolate Cake

For the cake, to save time, I used Betty Crocker's Chocolate Fudge cake and baked it per directions.

For the icing, I made a mint buttercream icing:

4 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp mint extract

Blend the icing sugar, butter and milk until smooth and blended.  Add the mint extract.  Add more to taste if necessary.  If the icing is not thick enough, add more icing sugar.  If too thick, add more milk.

Once it was the consistency I wanted, I added Kelly Green colouring.  It was really quite Irish. 

Once the cake was cooled, I just did all of my usual steps (frosting between cake layers, crumb coat, cool for 10-15 minutes, frost, cool for 10-15 minutes, use paper towel to smooth frosting).

To add some additional St. Patty's Day flair, I created a shamrock cut-out on a piece of foil and applied some icing sugar.

The hubby hasn't had any yet, but I thought it was a good mix of chocolate and a subtle mint flavour.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!