Harry Potter Paper Craft and Other HP Goodies

A dear friend of ours is now officially a dentist and that means she'll be moving away in a month. She's a fellow Harry Potter nerd and we decided to go all out and make her a bunch of cute little things as a graduation present. We had so much fun making everything and she absolutely loved it! 

 Ai made her the most beautiful paper craft shadow box and a cute little Harry Potter cube key chain. I made  her an acceptance letter, a wand (here's the tutorial to make your own), and a little door hanger for her office. 

The shadow box is just so gorgeous! 

The detail on all the little pieces is so amazing! 

We did the Pottermore thing so we could get officially sorted. Ai ended up in Ravenclaw and I got placed in Slytherin.

The key chain was made out of felt and stuffed with fluff. It's so cute! 

All the goodies together! 

We found the cutest box at Michaels! It's shaped like a suitcase and had a very Harry Potter feel to it.

That's all for this week folks! We hope you're inspired to go out and make some of your own nerdy crafts! Happy crafting and baking!♥  

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Monkey Baby Shower Cake

We made a beautiful monkey themed baby shower cake this weekend for a friend! Now monkeys can be pretty tough to make look right but Ai did a phenomenal job! Her monkeys came out incredibly sweet and super adorable! 

The cake was a wonderfully light yellow cake made with this recipe! You must follow the recipe to a T and be sure to whip it for the whole 3 minutes. The cake just comes out absolutely fantastic and has a really nice crumb.

The filling was a light vanilla custard layered with fresh strawberries and blueberries. I made the custard by hard whipping one cup of cream and folding it into this vanilla pudding recipe. It's my go to custard recipe and is super easy to make!

Now let me talk about the frosting. I've always loathed American buttercream because it's overly sweet, heavy, and not smooth enough. I'd always heard that Italian buttercream was superior but a little worried about making it. A few months ago I decided to go ahead and finally try it and all the work was definitely worth it! I used this recipe and it was just a dream! Ai and I have an unhealthy love for butter (we don't eat it very often, but when we do we really go for it!) and if we could, we'd eat the whole batch of buttercream together! Make sure you follow the recipe very closely. It's not too difficult, but takes a lot of patience to get just right.

Finally, the decorations were made using our usual marshmallow fondant.

We're so proud of how this cake turned out. It's definitely the best cake we've done so far.

The baby monkey is just so cute! 

The mama monkey is a classy gal! 

Daddy monkey is just as adorable as baby! 

We had a lot of fun making these wooden cakes filled with bananas!

That's all for this week folks! We hope that you all are inspired to make your own beautiful monkey themed goodies! Happy baking and happy crafting!♥  

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Crazy about Ganache

So I've been on a ganache binge lately. Truth be told, I've always been too afraid to even go anywhere near ganache. I always thought that it was something too difficult and too beautiful to be made at home. After doing some research, turns out that I was dead wrong. Ganache is hands down the easiest and most beautiful thing you can make to decorate your desserts. 

Ganache is so versatile and absolutely delicious. After checking out a few recipes this was my favorite. Her recipe is easily adjustable for either larger or smaller quantities. There is one thing I need to confess here: I took a bit of a shortcut and used semisweet chocolate chips and heated the cream in the microwave! I have no idea if that's a no no, but the ganache turned out excellent. A word of caution with the chocolate chips though, you should definitely chop them up or run them through the food processor. 

I used the ganache as a glaze for some spring themed cupcakes:

I whipped it up and covered a cake with it:

Whipping it turns it into the most luscious and fudgey frosting you've ever had in your entire life!

I used it to glaze an entire cake (which I still have to work on getting the sides to be completely smooth) :

The recipe is a definite keeper! I can't wait to try to make truffles with the ganache and many more yummy things. 

That's all for this week folks! Don't be afraid to try ganache. I'm sure all of you can do it! Happy baking and happy crafting! ♥  

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Fun Kid Friendly Easter Egg Cake Pops

Happy Easter everyone! So I know that I'm a little late with this post, but I didn't want to make the pops too far in advance. I ended up doing these yesterday and wanted to have the blog up yesterday too, but I didn't have enough time. You guys will just have to save this project up for next Easter! 

The idea for these pops struck me when I saw all the cute mini plastic eggs at the store. It also occurred to me that we all tend to get carried away doing lavish and ornately beautiful cake pops which never seem like they would be something a kid could easily help with. So these pops are both cute and kid friendly. 

To make these you'll need:

• All the basic cake pop ingredients. I used this chocolate cake and frosting recipe. It made about 45 cake pops.
• Mini plastic eggs.
• I only needed 2 bags of candy melts. If you want to lots of different colors, then you'd probably only need about half a bag of melts. 
• An assortments of sprinkles.
• Small treat bags and thin ribbon

By now most of you know how to make cake pops with your eyes closed, but if you're new to the party then head on over to Bakerella's original tutorial. But instead of shaping the eggs by hand, you use the mini plastic eggs! If you've got a lot of kids over the job will be done in no time. To shape them, I took a clump of cake about the size of the eggs, shoved it in there and squeezed out all the excess. This does make things a bit messy because all the buttery goodness gets all over the eggs, but I'm sure the kids will have a lot of fun!

Before you start dipping the pops, set up a table with all the sprinkles poured out into bowls for the kids. You do the dipping and hand the pops over to the kids for decorating and let them get crazy. The sprinkles guarantee that each pop will be beautiful and I know that the kids will come up with some unique sprinkle combinations! 

As a side note I decorated all my pops myself. My sisters weren't really up for helping >_<

I thought these little flower sprinkles were very easter.

The pops were for an Easter party, so I wrapped them up in mini treat bags and tied them with pastel colored ribbons.

Using the eggs made the cake go very far. So make sure you enlist a couple of kids to make the work faster and more fun.

That's all for this week! Hope you all had a lovely Easter! Happy crafting and baking! ♥  

DIY Harry Potter Wand Boxes

As promised, today I'm going to show you how to make a beautiful box to go with your new wands! I made up one of those nifty infographics. I hope the instructions are easy to follow, but if you have any questions feel free to message me. 

I'm also providing the labels that I used for the boxes. I found the Ollivander's label after searching around google for a while. I made the number labels myself. I'm providing the labels for free and ask that you only use them for personal use. This is the link to the number labels. Here is the Ollivander's wand labels. Both of the labels are made so that they can be printed on an 8.5x11 piece of paper. I used colored cardstock to print my labels. 

The instructions are hard to see so you can download the tutorial here.

Happy crafting and remember to have fun! ♥