Jonah's Birthday

Warning: These pictures were taken with a iPhone 3G that was more than four years old. Don't judge.

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So I've felt like a return to blog posts lately - if not a return to baking - although I am still doing a fair bit of that, just less often and in greater quantity. To start myself off I thought I'd post some pictures of something a little bit adorable that my dear friend Katie and I worked on for her son's first birthday back in August. Of course Jonah was the cutest thing around, but he isn't mine to post pictures of on the Internet, so I will refrain. Katie did a LOT of work for the little guy's first birthday party and her whole family chipped in to help with cleaning and decorating the house and feeding everyone at the party. I, however, am only going to show you what I had a tiny part in - the baked goods for the Sesame Street themed event.

• Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream as Elmo, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch. • Jonah's smash cake. • White chocolate dipped oreo pops. • Browned Butter Rice Krispie Treats (DELICIOUS!) Katie had picked out the cupcakes she liked the look of from some images online and was confident that with our powers combined we could manage to pull off some Sesame-Street-esque faces. I was not so sure and was hopeful that I could convince her to just let me pipe some brightly colored frosting...I failed. I still am not sure how I feel about the cupcakes as a whole, but I think you can probably tell who they are supposed to be.

Wehad a heck of a time getting Elmo's red frosting. It was pink for a very-very-very long time. Lesson learned, the frosting really does get darker as it sits...and sometimes Wilton Gel isn't the best option. Jonah's smash cake was just a three-layer 6-inch cake. I made up some marshmallow fondant with thoughts of doing something a little more detailed for his big day...but in the end time was not on my side and we went with simple instead with some brightly colored buttercream and his name cut out of white fondant. I tend to like simple anyway. I'm not sure how pleased Katie was with it though.

I'd post some recipes, but the chocolate cake was one that I actually posted on here years earlier. The buttercream was very basic. The vanilla wasn't amazing. Oreo pops don't really have a recipe. And the Browned Butter Rice Krispie Treats were entirely Katie's doing. (Did I mention those were delicious? Totally worth the effort Katie put in.)