Cheng and 3 Kids

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Daddy Herschel's 61st Birthday

My stepfather turned 61 years old last weekend. We decided to make him a surprise birthday celebration in advance. The little boy had a sleep over with his woewoe and woewa (lolo and lola is Filipino for grandpa and grandma, but when Nath was younger he couldn't pronounce it right, sounded like woewoe and woewa), so we knew for sure that they were coming that day to bring him home.

This is the birthday card I made him. I used the digital scrapbooking kit from Kristal Kreations. You can click here to check out her site. This is the same kit I used to make my Father's Day Freebie.

Claire made a drawing of him, but unfortunately I didn't get to take a picture of it. Yes, me, the family paparazzi, forgot to take a picture of something. Still kicking myself about that, by the way.

My sixteen-year-old daughter Bea made this chocolate cake from scratch.

You want to know how I made the number 61 on the cake? First, I printed out the number, making sure it's the right size for the cake. Then I stapled a piece of wax paper on top of it. And then I melted some white chocolate, spooned it into a ziploc bag, snipped off a corner and piped it onto the wax paper. I tried my best to follow the shape of the number 61, then topped it off with sprinkles. When I was satisfied with it, I put it into the freezer for a few minutes until the white chocolate is set.

The thing is, I went a little crazy with the birthday candles. And you know how when you have a lot of candles to light, it kind of takes you forever to finish lighting them all? Yeah, that's when the white chocolate started to melt. Yep, our number 61 turned all weird and melty. Oh well, at least we had a good laugh about it. Makes it more memorable, don't you think?

Thursday, June 20, 2013

The 4th of July is just around the corner, so I decided to make some red, white and blue Oreo cupcake bites. I love Bakerella - what's not to love, right? - she makes the cutest cake pops and cupcake bites. Her Oreo Truffles are a favorite in our house. My 16-year-old daughter likes making them for her friends on their birthdays.

Bakerella made a tutorial on how to make cupcake bites a while back, these are very similar to the cupcake pops, except they're not on sticks. And since my kids prefer the Oreo Truffles, that's what I used for these cupcake bites. If you want to see Bakerella's Cupcake Bites tutorial click here.

I followed her directions for making Oreo truffles. You can click here to see it. But after rolling them into balls and putting them in the freezer to let them set, I then proceeded to follow her Cupcake Bites instructions. But since I didn't have the candy mold that she used, I had to improvise. I'll show you how I did it.

First, I placed mini baking cups in the mini muffin pan.

Then I melted my chocolate according to the instructions on the wrapper. I got them from Walmart.

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I spooned the melted chocolate into the baking cup, and then I immediately pressed an Oreo ball onto it.

I then put the entire mini muffin pan into the freezer for a few minutes to let the chocolate set. Then I peeled off the baking cups from the chocolate and this is what it looked like.

I melted my other Almond Bark, same brand as the chocolate, except it's white. Then I dipped the top of the cupcake bite into the melted white chocolate, placed a red or blue M&M candy on top, decorated with sprinkles and I'm done! Cute and yummy, just the way I like it!

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