Lets face it, when you have three kids, with three birthdays each year, you’re having a birthday party on a pretty regular basis and your kitchen looks like zone at the great bakeoff… I’m more than happy to give my kids a great party and I especially love baking a special birthday cake for them. And I’ve made a few in various themes such as Lightning McQueen cake from Cars, Harry Potter cake, Plants vs Zombies cake, Lego bricks cake, Minecraft cake, Hello Kitty cake, Turtles cake and a Dragons cake. I’ve added them here for cake inspiration Mostly I use fondant, butter frosting and candy for decoration. Sometimes I’ve made fondant flowers. Fondant is easy to make, this is the Fondant recipe I use:
Fondant for the birthday cakes
1 bag white Haribo marshmallows. Haribo is the brand I use but other brands may work
1 pack powdered sugar / or as much as you think you need (I always finish the pack…)
1 tbsp water
Also use:
Coconut oil for avoiding stickiness. It doesn’t add color or flavor like other oils do.
Food coloring of your choice, I try to use natural & kids safe food colors.
Place coconut oil on your hands and the tools you are using, such as a glass bowl, spatula and boards.
Place some amount of marshmallows in a glass bowl – (approx 10-12 would cover a regular size cake), add a tablespoon of water and microwave for 15-20 seconds. The marshmallows should melt right away. Stir in some powdered sugar and add food coloring while the marshmallows are still a bit moist. Add powdered sugar – knead and stretch it till it’s firm and doesn’t “leak” while you hold it. Store it in the fridge, wrapped tightly in plastic film.
Repeat for a new color.
Lightning McQueen cake:
The Lightning McQueen cake was made for my son’s fourth birtday. He was a huge Cars fan and wanted a Cars cake. We used his toy car for reference and made two large basic chocolate cakes, chocolate butter frosting (butter, powdered sugar, cacao, vanilla powder and a little bit of water), formed in the same proportions as the car.. The decorations were only made of fondant except for the wheels were oreo crackers (in halves, with the spread) and smarties for the eyes.
Harry Potter cake
The Harry Potter cake had a white fondant over a double chocolate cake covered with chocolate frosting. The base was supposed to be an open book but it needed to be formed a little better 🙈. It might also be nice to use a vanilla cake for this one. The deco was made with chocolate and fondant. The owl was formed with a fondant, so was the scarf but the wand was formed with cake crumbs and frosting, mixed together, got a coarse “wooden” effect.
Plants vs Zombies cake
The Plants vs Zombies cake was a regular chocolate cake layered with chocolate frosting – the background was made with green frosting in two colors (for green frosting just skip the cocoa, add a little more vanilla powder and food dye). the plant was made with fondant and candy was used for decoration.
Pokemon cake
No fondant was used for this Pokemon cake, only frosting, melted chocolate and candy.
Minecraft cake
The Minecraft cake was fairly easy. Two large chocolate cakes, one of them being cut in a square form and placed on top of the other halves. A little bit of fondant was used only for the “stones”, green frosting was placed in a grass-like form and some paper deco added for more fun 🙂
Turtles cake
This Turtles cake was a request from my 6 year old son – he found a picture online that we decided to replicate in a cake and he absolutely loved it. The mask, eyes and teeth were made with fondant but the other parts were made with frosting and candy – smarties and liquorice.
Lego cake
The Lego cake looks simple but was a bit tricky. It’s a simple chocolate base, covered in frosting. The Lego buttons were made with Rolo candy and fondant placed over it. The fondant had to be quite thick and flexible so it would not tear around the Rolo buttons. Tips: If the fondant looks matte from the powdered sugar, you can brush it with water and it will become shinier.
How to train your Dragon – cake
The Dragons cake is (again) a simple chocolate cake with frosting, decorated with liquorice, Cadbury’s eggs and chocolate raisins (being the dragon poo..). A little bit of fondant was used to make a nest, squeezed through a garlic press. And of course Toothless played a special role on top of the cake.
Hello Kitty cake
I made the Hello Kitty birthday cake for my daughter’s second birthday. The toppings were frosting in different patterns and decorated with sugar pearls and icelandic candy called Möndlur (red spheres)
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How you’ve enjoyed these and perhaps found some inspiration for your kids cakes 🙂
Today has been very snow rich and windy. The weather forecast had warned last week that the weekend was going to be rough in our area us so we made preparations by doing some grocery shopping and cancelled events we had planned. This weekend was going to be a cozy indoor weekend. This morning people were basically requested by the police and rescue team to stay indoors, the roads would not be cleared till the weather would get better.
When you know a snow storm is coming, you don’t even try to make plans, it just hits you and you’re happy that you and the people around you are safe. Even though it gets really cold outside (it very seldom goes below -20°c /-1F) and even if it does our houses are very strong and warm, always tank-top weather indoors. The snow gathers around the house and you might have to dig your way out but then you just have to remember the warm summer days and that they will be back, eventually.
The boys spent a good part of afternoon on our backyard porch shoveling and making tunnels and pathways, they really loved it and couldn’t care less that it was windy and had snow blowing everywhere.
They were really happy being outdoors, and especially when they thought of throwing snow at the window with their mum behind, who was safe and warm indoors!
On November 22nd we cleared our backyard porch
It feels a long time ago that me and little miss cleared the porch which is now completely filled with snow. We use the porch to hang out clothes to dry so we try to keep at least a part of it clear.
All of the windows in our house now have natures Christmas decorations 🙂
Have you heard of Finnsdottir Ceramic Tales? Don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell you anything (apart from pastel being ‘in’) since I have no involvement with them.
Basically, I’m trying to gear into a lifestyle of only buying stuff that I really want. By that I mean I have thought about them for weeks or months and if after that time I feel that I need them or crave them, I let go of my purse and allow them to take my money. I’m trying really hard to stop impulse buying both because my house could possibly drown in stuff that I thought for a point in time was worth buying and fill it with clutter, and also it’s so bad for the environment especially if these are mass produced things that have traveled the world back and forth. Buying local made items may be more expensive in the short run but it will pay off in the long run.
One of the things I crave at the moment are the ceramic vases and candle holders from the danish/icelandic designers at Finnsdottir Ceramic Tales. The forms and colors are just so overwhelmingly beautiful.
I’ve never been much of a fan of pastel colors till now, I guess by remembering the early 90’s when the world was in painted in every pastel color available – simultaneously – I got a bit immune to them, but using pastel with white/off white and black is really delicately beautiful.
One of the items I’m looking out for this Christmas is this four piece candlestick, very festive as Christmas decoration but can totally go in non-Christmas context in January, so I’d never pack it down with all the holiday items.
Just look at these christmas decorations, a squirrel and a deer. Just can’t beat the cuteness!
Check out the facebook page for Finnsdottir Ceramic Tales, the photo stream is just drop dead gorgeous. This is definitely on my wish list this christmas, *hint*.
I know say this every year but I just can’t believe how quickly time flies and this year is almost over! 2015 has been particularly nice to us. It started out cold and dark like every January in our region. That’s why we hold on to the Christmas lights almost throughout January, especially the plain white ones, because everything would otherwise be so dark and dreadful.
January through March is a perfect time to go skiing in Iceland, and Akureyri has a splendid ski area in a mere 15 minute drive, you could easily go skiing after work – that’s the type of luxury we take too much for granted. I used most of January and February, and March and parts of April to go skiing. I’m quite confident at it and I absolutely love it, it’s also very much “me time” like hubby has his during the golf season. I do like to take the boys skiing and my oldest, who is 11 years old, loves it too.
And then came Spring:
I’m telling you, Spring up here is like a very stubborn child trying to do things on his own and you just have to be really patient, you know he’ll get it eventually but maaaaan waiting for it to happen can seem like forever.
Being in such an isolated place like Iceland really is, an island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, the need to travel abroad gets very intense. So 2015 has been very good traveling year for us. We’ve been to and seen new places and enjoyed a fair amount of sunshine, which is not so common when you live almost at the arctic. We went to Berlin Germany, Barcelona in Catalonia/Spain and Helsingborg in Sweden this summer. The kids loved being in the sun and went to the beach for the first time in their lives!
Berlin was wonderful, me and Hubby went there over a long weekend in April with his colleagues and we’ve never been there before. I love getting to know new cities even though I would have liked to spend more time at it. We did rent a bike and cycled from one end of the city to another like proper Scandinavians 🙂 The history is at every footstep and I admire the cities capability to face history and embrace different cultures.
I <3 the cherry blossoms, we don’t have them in Iceland and I miss them a lot in the springtime.
I’m hoping that we get to travel a bit next year as well, there are no big plans. Do you have any suggestions on destinations we should look into, as a couple or as a family? Please feel free to place your comments below.
Having a little person growing up from being a baby to becoming a toddler is another beautiful adventure this year has brought us. She’s unstoppable at everything she does, and she should be. She’s loves the daycare she started in September while I go to the design studio (which is conveniently at home, and the daycare is a 2 min walk from us, embarrassingly short walk) and work for approx. 6 hours. That’s our routine and it’s very convenient for the time being.
I have no doubt that 2016 will have new adventures for us and I can’t wait to find out what they are, all I know is time wont slow down. Lets hope not at least.
I’m like all moms probably, I love shopping clothes for my kids and looking at baby’s and kids clothes styles. What I look for in kids clothing is that they are first and foremost comfortable, made of soft fabrics preferably organic which don’t stretch with use, that they have a pattern that suit my kids figure and have complementing colors/graphics. I’m not looking for expensive clothes for my little ones mainly because they grow out of them too quickly, but for quality fabrics and unique style, the price tag I’m looking for is usually fair.
I have a one year old girl and really love dressing her up, thankfully she doesn’t mind either 🙂 I’ll list a few of my favourites here, sadly I don’t get any perks for these mentions so I assure you this is truly a personal favourite. 😉
My favourite brands are mostly Scandinavian, the danish brand Molo,
and the icelandic brand Iglo+Indy, they’ve become even more adorable in the last few years, I used to buy their clothes for my boys
I’m also a huge fan of Tiny Cottons a brand from Barcelona:
I should also mention the icelandic brand As we grow but I’ve already made a unique post about them so they’ll have to settle for one (adorable) dress image:
As I overview my selected favourites I see I have a color theme here 🙂 If you have a favourite kids clothes brand please tell me in the comments section 🙂
