I have 1 niece and 2 nephews who are my entire world. My niece, Gianna is 12, my nephew Anthony is 10 and my nephew Michael is 9 and will be 10 in a few months. I love them so much. I enjoy the time I spend with them. I’ve been cooking with them since they were young. I’ve been making pizza with them since they were in diapers. I still remember making a pizza with my niece and nephew and my niece saying ” The more cheese the better.” I asked her where she got that from and she said, “From you Auntie Julie!” My heart just about erupted.
I try to do fun things with them when I’m with them. I want them to have the experience and to look back when they are older and remember these times. My niece, Gianna who is the oldest has really been into baking. Auntie Julie is not really a baker, I can teach her how to make a beef wellington, or a killer taco but baking has never been my forte. However, we have been trying.
I’ve kept it simple, we’ve used boxed cake mixes (hey don’t knock it, lol) we’ve just done different things. The first cake we did was a gravity cake. That was so much fun. Then the 2nd one we did was a piñata cake. You know where you stuff candy into the cake and then cut it open and candy comes out. Most recently we did ice cream cone cupcakes, this time we made homemade buttercream. (Yes, we did make that from scratch.)
My niece loves to bake more then my nephews. Gianna’s brother, Anthony gets involved sometimes but isn’t as into it as she is. I’m going to show you the cakes/cupcakes we made and put how we made them below. Next time I think we may try French macarons. My niece loves them!
Gravity Cake:
1 box cake mix, your choice on flavor
Ingredients for cake mix
2 container frosting, your choice on flavor
1 box of your favorite candy
2 heavy duty straws
Directions: Make cake according to the box, for 2 round cakes. Let the cakes cool completely. Stack the cakes and add some frosting in-between the cakes. Completely frost the cake. Add candy pieces of your chose on the top of the cake, to make it look like the candy is coming out of the box. Next, add the straw to the side of the cake and add frosting to the straw and add some candy on the straw. Add the box of the candy at the angle. See picture below.
Piñata Cake:
2 boxes of cake mix,your choice on flavor
ingredients for cake mix
3-4 containers of frosting, your choice on flavor
big bag of unwrapped candy
sprinkles for decoration, optional
Directions: Make cakes according to packages. Make 2 round cakes for each box of mix. 4 layers total. Let cakes cool completely. Using a narrow cup or glass cut a hole in the middle of each layer. Make sure the wholes match up. Next stack the layers on top of each other making sure to add a layer of frosting to the middle of each. Next pour the candy into the hole and make sure to fill to the top. Add a cut out piece of cake to the top of the cake. Next completely frost the cake. Decorate how you’d like.
When you cut into the cake the candy will fall out like a piñata. See picture below.
Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes:
Ingredients:
1 box of cake mix, your choice of flavor
ingredients for cake mix
24 ice cream cones
1-2 stick butter
1-2 cups powder sugar
1-3 T milk
Food coloring, optional
Toppings: Optional
sprinkles
cherries
Directions: Mix up cake mix according to the box. Add the cones to a muffin tin. Fill up the cone 3/4 of the way full. About 2 T per cone. Bake. Remove from oven and let cool completely.
Make the simple buttercream with 1 stick of butter and mix with a mixer slowly adding in the powder sugar. Add in the amount of sugar you prefer based on how sweet you like it. Add in milk if you need to thin out the buttercream if it gets to thick. Note, once you start to work with the buttercream it will soften.
You can separate the buttercream into different bowls to color it with food coloring.
My favorite little people and I at Christmas 2019!
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