Emma's Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

   It's been birthday time again, which means I go into baking mode.  Emma is in Kindergarten this year so not only did I do a cake I also made cupcakes for her fellow classmates.  Since Halloween is also this month I went with a ghost theme for the cupcakes.

I started out with a chocolate cupcake and with chocolate frosting.  I then used Rolos stacked bottoms together to make the body.  The head is a Whopper.  I made my own fondant from marshmallows and powdered sugar.  Jacob loved being my fondant assistant.  He would use a wide mouth bottle ring to cut out the circle and then roll the fondant more to thin and get rid of the cut edge.  

Then I would position the fondant and shape the ghost.  Using a toothpick I made the eyes and the mouth.

 I made 23 in all, so there were a couple extras, which made the other kiddos happy.

Emma's classmates were very excited to see the cupcakes and had a lot of fun with them. Interestingly enough there were a lot of Rollos in the trash can.  It make me a bit sad, you know how much I love caramel.

The next day I started the cake.  I made two cakes 10 inch and 6 inch.  That night I made more marshmallow fondant, trimmed and layered the cakes with chocolate buttercream, and covered them in a basic white fondant.

This is the trimmed off cake.  I plan to make cake balls with this.

The next morning, I began the decorating.  Starting with the bottom cake I decorated with a stripped pattern.  The yellow and green (looks like yellow in pics) were normal stripes.  The purple stripes were split and the pink stripes were twisted.

The next step was to decorate the top cake.  I used simple cookie cutters for flowers and butterflies and randomly placed them on the cake (top and bottom).

I also made fondant beads to put around the base of each cake, and finally topped it off with a fondant butterfly.

Emma loved her cake.  It matches her bedroom that I painted five years ago.