Buzz Lightyear!

A few weeks ago, AJ and Maddie were asking Naomi what kind of birthday cake she wanted.  We have a lot of fun with birthday cakes- the girls always pick some sort of theme that is fitting for them at that time.  I have lots of cake molds that we have done in the past- a princess castle, Winnie the Pooh, Strawberry Shortcake, Cinderella, Noah's Ark, but we've also done our fair share of coming up with a design from scratch.  We've had cakes designed after Chronicles of Narnia, High School Musical, a Polly Pocket water slide etc etc.  Well, needless to say, I definitely prefer when they want something that I can use a mold with- it's just so much easier.  I'm not a naturally creative person- I can copy things pretty well, but as far as coming up with my own original idea- not so much.  So anyway, Naomi says that she wants a princess castle (which I have a mold for) and I say, "But Naomi, don't you want Buzz Lightyear???"   (yeah, no mold for that...)  Well, me and my big mouth.  Naomi is all about Toy Story these days- especially Buzz Lightyear so she was beyond excited about that possibility.   Thank the Lord for the internet- who knew that there were so many pictures of Buzz Lightyear cakes out there??   So yesterday I found some pictures of cakes, drew out a picture of what Buzz should look like and as has become the tradition got started about 10 p.m the night before the party.  Not a very proportional Buzz, and he ended up not having any arms, but Naomi was thrilled none the less. 

 

We also made chocolate surprise cupcakes.  These have become a favorite for us at holidays because they are so versatile.  You make cupcakes using a chocolate cake mix (could really do any flavor) and then make a filling of cream cheese, sugar, egg and chocolate chips that you plop on the top of each cupcake and the chocolate bakes up around it so it's a cream cheese filling.  Depending on the holiday, we dye the cream cheese mixture and match the icing on top of the cupcake.  For halloween, the had orange filling and orange icing, for valentines, pink filling with red icing, you get the picture.  Our Buzz Lightyear cupcakes had a nice lime green filling to match Buzz's suit.  I had the idea after the fact last night that I should have used my Andes Mint Baking chips instead of plain chocolate chips in the filling to make mint chocolate chip cupcakes- next time.  

 

I also found a great recipe on allrecipes.com for a sherbet cream punch that could be very versatile in America, but not so much here since we don't have any kind of sherbet but raspberry.  I was hoping to find lime sherbet so I could make the punch green, but all they had was raspberry- still very yummy.  It's also great for baby showers.  You combine 1 quart vanilla ice cream, 2 pints sherbet (orange, raspberry, lime etc), 1 quart milk, 16 oz Sprite) and serve immediately.  So yummy!

Here's a few more pictures from the party today: