Nautical baby shower cake

hello everyone!  sorry about the huge gap in posts, i've been super busy at work and away on vacation!  Anyhoo, a friend of mine is having a baby boy that's sure to be drop dead gorgeous and she asked me to do the baby shower cake.  The theme was nautical and i kept it pretty simple.  I like simple cakes.

first step is always, bake the cake then frost it :)

and if you're like me, sneak in some chocolate chips or candy in the middle layer :)

once you're done, your crumb coat should look like this (crumb coat = very thin layer of icing)

*pretend there's pictures of me covering the cake with white fondant here*  

if you need to know how to do this, click  on my air force cake tutorial HERE

Next i wanted to border the cake with little waves (auntie to be sent me a pic of this on another cake), this was pretty easy to do as long as you have circle cutter...or even a shot glass would work.  Roll out your fondant and cut it into a neat strip, then cut semi circles out

when you add the border to the cake it will look like this, pretty cute huh?

next up mini life savers...i didn't take pics of me making these bc i suck.  Basically cut a disk out and cut a smaller disk out of the center and add little red squares...easy :)

i made the cake topper the day before at work, i know i have the unfair advantage of making awesome metal cake toppers. (i've been thinking about opening an etsy shop with custom cookie cutter and cake toppers.......not convinced though since my life is already so freaking busy) Basically i drew my design on AutoCAD and the waterjet did the rest :)

i sanded it down a little and washed it thoroughly, i painted it and waited a couple days to make sure it was super dry and no chemicals were still there, then i washed it thoroughly again.

red and nautical-y :)

i added little disks with the baby's initials all around the top and made little matching cupcakes

 

there they all are neatly packaged into my box and ready to be transferred

now that your hard work is done, have fun at the party :)

For all of the observant readers, you'll notice there were only 8 cupcakes at the party instead of the 10 in the photo.  that's because my darling dog Chloe decided the spontaneously jump in the car while i was loading everything up and stomp on the box......this led to 4 cupcake casualties, RIP cupcakes

Luckily i had 2 extra cupcakes in the house and i re-used the lifesaver toppers, but i did freak out and cry when i saw what was happening, i was terrified to look inside the box!  

and that is the story of how 10 cupcakes became 8

i was featured :

quick and easy s'mores bars!

via

Here's what you'll need:

1	pouch (1 lb 1.5 oz) Betty Crocker® sugar cookie mix
1	cup graham cracker crumbs
1	cup butter or margarine, melted
3	cups milk chocolate chips (18 oz)
4 1/2	cups miniature marshmallows

Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, stir together cookie mix and crumbs. Stir in melted butter until soft dough forms. Press into ungreased 13x9-inch pan.  your dough should look like this:

once the dough is pressed into the pan, you're ready to pop it in the oven.  bake for 18 to 20 minutes

as soon as you pull the crust out of the oven, immediately sprinkle chocolate chips over crust. Let stand 3 to 5 minutes or until chocolate begins to melt. Spread chocolate evenly over crust.  When it looks like this, you're ready for marshmallows:

Spread your 4.5 cups of marshmallows evenly over the surface.  once you've done that set your oven control to broil and pop it back in.  Broil the marshmallows for about 30 seconds, but keep an eye on them because marshmallows cook super fast!  i love mine golden but if you dont, take them out after 20 seconds

let them cool for 10 minutes and cut them into little bars.  they taste great warm so don't cool them too long ;)

this recipe makes about 24 servings.  I actually found this recipe on the back of the sugar cookie mix and thought i'd give it a try, it was really easy :)  next time i might just make the sugar cookies as listed on the bag but that's jut because i live for cookies!

we enjoyed these on 4th of july after a long day in the pool:

chloe was terrified!  even holding her in the water wasnt working

my love and me

my brother trying to calm chloe down....that wasnt working either haha

let me know what you think and be sure to link back in your comments so i can visit back :)