DIY Pom Pom Decorations

Yes, I know what you're thinking. I'm crazy. I still have one and a half months till Z's first birthday and I'm ALREADY making decorations. For a birthday party for a 1 year old. For a birthday party that will ONLY have close family for guests. Close family that visit us nearly every week anyway and so this 'party' isn't really anything special since they'll probably be coming over that day anyway.

But one thing you should know about me, and I'm sure you'll figure it out over the next 1.5 months. I'm a bit crazy about parties. And decorating. And birthdays and cakes and dinner parties and tea parties and all of the above.

The invitations I created with Photoshop. Private information blanked out for obvious reasons.

So. That should just about bring you up to date. Onto the pom poms.

I'm not going to bother doing a tutorial on these pom poms. Do a Google search and you'll find hundreds already out there. The dimensions I used when cutting out the tissue paper for these pom poms was 10cmx20cm. That gave me the perfect mini pom poms to decorate each place setting at the table. I changed my mind about the color scheme after ordering the invitations so instead of making these in navy blue I used a pale Tiffany blue.

Actually, that's a lie. I spent 3 hours making a whole bunch of these in navy blue and silver only to decide afterwards that I didn't actually like the navy blue, or the size, or the pom poms themselves, so I started again. DH told me I was crazy. My FIL just made a couple of patronizing comments about how it was all a waste of time for a 1 year old anyway. I ignored them both.

I made half of the pom poms with curved outer edges and the other half with spiked edges. The first of the spiky pom poms came out awesome, but the way they were cut made an optical illusion that made them look smaller than the other pom poms so I had to make less dramatic spikes on the rest of them. In the end you can barely see the difference. If I were to do it again I would have cut the spiky ones as 11cmx22cm and made the spikes sharper.

I'll have to do a follow-up to show you how I intend on using the mini pom poms.

Vanilla-Almond Butter Cookies

So I have a few tubs of leftover frosting in my freezer from previous cakes, there's cherry brandy frosting, lemon SMBC, milk chocolate ganache, and white chocolate ganache. I don't think I'll be making another cake with the cherry brandy frosting or the lemon SMBC for awhile so I've been trying to think of some ways to use the tubs up.
So I decided this weekend to make some vanilla cookies and spread frosting on the top. Mmmm, they were soooo darn good so I thought I'd share them.

I spread cherry brandy frosting on half of the cookies and left the other half plain. I didn't end up using the lemon SMBC this time, I might use that next weekend.
I reaaaally liked this cookie recipe, not many things make it onto my make again list, but this recipe is definitely a keeper. They're incredibly simple to make, nothing fancy in the ingredients other than the almond essence, which is optional anyway (although I highly recommend adding the almond essence, it's definitely worth it!).

Vanilla-Almond Butter Cookies

Ingredients:
1 Cup softened butter
1 Cup sugar
1 large egg
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract* (optional)
2 Cups plain flour

Directions:
Preheat oven to 175C (350F).
Cream butter and sugar.
Add egg, vanilla, almond extract and beat well.
Mix in flour.
Drop rounded teaspoonfuls onto parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes.

* I like almond flavoring so I added a full teaspoon :)

C.A.M. - Mud Cake Scratch-Off

So for this months cake I've decided to go back to basics. Instead of making a fancy layered cake I'm going to test a few different mud cake recipes and have my family sample each of the cakes and pick the one we like the most. It's one thing to have a cake that looks nice but it needs to taste fantastic too! Eventually I'd like to make different variations on my mud cake recipe, adding different liqueurs, flavorings, nuts etc, but I need the perfect base recipe first.
So there are some mud cake recipes that I've heard several people mentioning on the Cake Central forums that I'd like to test out. I've also found a couple of recipes by Googling that have great reviews. So the recipes I've narrowed down to as contestants in my mud cake scratch off are as follows:

Bluehue's chocolate mud cake (can be found on the Cake Central forums)
Pams chocolate mud cake
Australian Women's Weekly Mississippi mud cake
Best Recipe's best reviewed mud cake
Exclusively Foods chocolate mud cake (this is the recipe I used for last months cake)


I'll be judging the cakes based on the following criteria:
1. Flavor
2. Texture/Crumb
3. Moistness
4. Ease of recipe
5. Cost

I will also be preparing each of these cakes exactly the way I would as if I were using them for a fondant covered layer cake. That means that after they've been baked and cooled I'll wrap them in glad wrap and freeze them for a week, then allow them to defrost overnight in the fridge before serving them.
Also, as a side note I should mention that if you're ever going to bake mud cakes to never eat them on the day they've been baked, mud cakes are best at least 3 days after they've been made.
Edit: I also want to add that freezing mud cakes before you defrost and serve them actually improves the flavor!!

I love mud cakes, although I've discovered that they seem to be predominately used in the Australian baking industry. Here in Australia most weddings you go to will have a mud cake as the wedding cake. They're wonderfully rich, and moist, last a very long time, take to freezing extremely well and have a delicious dense, nearly fudge-like, texture. They tend to remind me more of a large brownie than your traditional cake. They're perfect for covering with fondant as they're heavy enough to take the extra weight and can be flavored pretty easily. After using mud cakes for the last couple of my cakes I've decided to stick with mud cakes from here on unless I'm specifically asked to make a different type of cake for someone.

Z's 1st birthday is coming up in about 1 and a half months so I'm also making plans for that. I've already designed the birthday cake and made plans for all the birthday decorations to make so as I make the decorations I'll continue to post for those of you interested in any tutorials.