candy lego men tutorial....!

....so after posting the lego dude valentines and the lego dude cupcakes.....i've gotten quite a few comments or emails about how to make them.....so here you go....my first "official" tutorial....(although i usually include how i do stuff in all my posts)....

....start with a lego minifigure ice cube mold....i got mine from an official lego store (for some reason my boys including the 41 year old seem to love that place...!)...but you can find them other places online or ebay probably has them too.....

....and you need candy melts of course...i use wilton but whatever kind you like and colors you want your dudes....for these i went with the traditional yellow, red, and blue.....i add mine to regular zip lock bags...and nuke them in the microwave until just melted...(about 30 secs or so depending on your microwave)....don't over melt....you want it just fluid enough to "pipe"...snip off an end of the bag to make a small tip....the key is to have all 3 colors ready to go at the same time and you have to work a little fast (so apologies for the kinda crappy photo pics!)....

....i start with the head....fill up about half way....don't go past the "ridge" between the head and the body or you will get the color over flowing into the body when it hardens.....

....then fill half way with a different color for the body and same with the pants...trying not to go past the "ridge" separating each section.....(if you are really motivated you can color the hands the same color as the head....but i'm usually not that motivated)...

....i stop once 4 are half way filled and then tap the mold on the counter to get the colors even....then fill the rest of the mold with the same colors again.....

....once the molds are filled....tap on the counter again....pretty hard to get make sure there are no air bubbles and to fill in all the sections of the mold....(you usually don't see the back of the lego guys as much so i don't worry about how that looks as much....you can see the colors run a bit into the different sections here)....

....i put them in the freezer for about 10 minutes then pop them out of the silicone mold (it's really easy to pop them out---never had any break doing this).....

....and you get an edible lego minifig dude.....

....or multiple lego mini fig dudes....!

....if you make these they usually get a pretty cool reaction from the kiddos or lego fans in general.....these were for a bake sale at the 6 year olds school yesterday...a cake with the lego dudes and some candy lego bricks i found at our local candy shop....

.....and cupcakes of course all wrapped up and ready to go....!

.....hope this is helpful and if you do make the lego guys....send a pic and let me know how they turned out....!

tidy mom

yo gabba gabba brobee cake....!

....if anyone has little kids like 6 and under....you may know this guy....he's from the kids show yo gabba gabba...it's kinda like a new version of sesame street...lots of pretty neat guest stars....lots of cool music....weird looking puppets...including this little dude....his name is brobee and he thinks hugs are fun....

....start with 2 sheet cakes ....these are 2 9X13 cakes...1 chocolate and 1 vanilla from boxed mixes....slice each in half to give 2 thinner layers....frost half and then add back the other half....

....then carve the brobee shape....which was based on a pic i found on google images (btw-what did cake makers do before you could go do a google search for a pic...? buy books?...go to the library?...i wouldn't even know where to start without the internet!)....i used part of the cut aways from the leg area to make the arms and filled in with extra pieces as needed to make it look "right"....

....then crumb coat.....

....then fill in the different color green stripes with frosting (and is it frosting or icing...? and is there a difference??)....to make it look like "fur" i used a wilton grass tip....the sides were a bit impossible to do with the grass tip since my hands warmed the icing too much seemed to not stick well to the sides....AND i was running out of dark green....AND the zip lock bag i was using sprung a hole near the icing tip....AND it was getting late and i was too lazy to make more icing so the sides were just iced any which way i could to cover it with the dark and light green together.....

.......brobee apparently has horns....so they were made with sugar cones dipped in red candy melt......his eyes are white icing and the black monobrow and outline around his eyes are black royal icing.....oh and the red mouth is candy melt too...

.....and you get brobee from yo gabba gabba.....anyone for a dancy dance....?

....this is 1 of 2 cakes for a party on saturday for my twins who recently turned 4!...plus i figured if i was going to get judged on saturday may 21, 2011...i was going to offer a choice of 2 kinds of cake to better my odds....because everyone likes cake...right?

thanks for peeking in on me and brobee and have a great week...!

tidy mom

mother's day goodies....!

well re-posting after the blogger snafu....!

...does everyone make their own mother's day treats or maybe that's just me....?

....these are a mashup of i am baker's rose cake (which is showing up everywhere these days) and the infamous bakerella's mother's day cupcakes.....btw-although bakerella is pretty much synonymous with cake pops, her other creations are awesomely awesome as well....like this re-creation of her niece's artwork in cake!...i am so doing this one of these days!...i think i can easily blame her for my candy melt obsession too...!

...and while i'm at it...that amanda....she does some really cool cakes with surprises inside like this easter egg cake.....and i totally thought her russian doll cake was going to have layers of russian nesting dolls inside (she probably can do that but doesn't want everyone else to give up and stop baking)...

...the sugar cookie cake is made from the same base as these frosted sugar cookie bars....(definitely use the lemon zest, it makes the recipe)

...and i finally got around to using the letter mold i got awhile ago.....i used candy melts and before totally hardened....added a tooth pick at the bottom of the letter (so you can stick it into the cake)....

....and since i had some leftover cupcake batter from these....i made some mini bundt cakes too.....well because who doesn't love mini bundt cakes...?

.....i used much smaller roses than amanda's rose cake....using a wilton #17 tip but you can probably use any open star tip.....and make sure the frosting is at room temp and not cold...it's much easier to pipe the flowers that way.....

.....and after a couple it gets pretty easy to get the hang of it.....

....you end up with a bunch of cute bundt cakes and a big sugar cookie cake....!

....oh and i found out that my kiddos that usually only eat the frosting off a cupcake (go figure!) will eat slices of the the frosted sugar cookie cake....

....hope everyone had a great mother's day....and lookie at one of the mother's day card's i got.....

....it doesn't get much better than that!

ps i am so bummed i lost the comments on this post, they were so sweet! (not that i'm looking for comments or anything.... :) thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

tidy mom