Monster Birthday Bash!

My little monster E just turned 1!  His birthday is right before Halloween so we decided to have a Monster themed party.

I had a vision of what I wanted the cake to look like and I am pretty happy with the finished product.  I baked a chocolate pound cake in a 13 x 9 pan and carved out my monster. I used a star tip (17...I think that is the number of the one I used). Yes, it takes forever piping all those little stars but I love how it looks when you are done.I used just your basic butter cream recipe with food gel coloring.  His hat was the smash cake. We had a great time and my little monster really enjoyed his party. 

We had some yummy cake pops.  I found this site to be most helpful when making my cake pops...Bakerella These were a big hit. Inside there was chocolate cake with strawberry frosting.

I couldn't find any invitations I liked so I pulled out some card stock and made my own. I found the shape of my monsters from a fabric sample. I didn't use any special machines (although I would love to have a Silhouette... Ahem Santa) I simply drew out a template of each monster and used it for all the cards.  Excuse the roughed up invites. K and E decided these needed to be dissected and inspected. Of course they took the only one I kept for the scrap book and destroyed it. I was able to salvage it, thankfully. ;) Little monsters.

For favors we did Jolly Rancher Lollies with all kinds of candy pressed into the lollies. Somehow I don't have a photo of these but they were awesome. I have a few left so I will take photos and either update this post or do a new one.

During the party I was running around playing hostess and wasn't in control of the picture taking. Unfortunately there aren't many shots of the decor but I made some of these from the Martha Stewart site. We also had a frankenstein, mummy, monster,and a scarecrow one. They were super cute.

Pic from marthastewart.com

I also made this cool bat mobile from the Martha site to hang over the table...

Pic from marthastewart.com

We had an awesome time and E had a wonderful birthday. K has already informed me that he wants a birthday soon and he wants it to be Mickey mouse. LoL

I also wanted to add if you have never tried homemade butter cream, you should. It taste much better than the can stuff. IMO. Here is the recipe if anyone wants to try it. This is for the true white icing. The other method for making butter cream uses 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup shortening in place of 1 cup of shortening and no butter flavor.

Butter Cream Icing

1 cup vegetable shortening

4 cups confectioners sugar

1 tsp of clear vanilla extract

1/2 tsp butter flavor (clear)

2-4 tablespoons milk

Place shortening in the mixer and mix on love for a minute just to break it up a bit. Add your vanilla and butter flavor. Set mixer on low and  slowly add your sugar. Once it is all in the bowl and mixed turn on medium until mixed well. It will be quite stiff. Add 2 tablespoons of milk and beat on med., scraping the sides often until you get a fluffy icing. You made need to add a little more milk. If so, add 1 tablespoon at a time. Keep refrigerated when not using it or cover with a damp cloth. Again is the pure white recipe used for adding color. I have found this to be the best method for getting better color.

This will keep in the fridge for about 2 weeks in a sealed container.