Birthday girl

Oh, my, it's been a while. It is amazing how much energy and time two little ones take! My son, now just coming up on 8 months old, has been teething (enough said!). My daughter has just turned three (how did that happen?!). How time flies!

This is just a quick post to share some images from my daughter's birthday. We did a pirate princess party (I had no idea these were so popular, and can thank Pinterest for a lot of the ideas I used at our party!). It was two hours of madness: 14 children and assorted parents. The power went out for 40 minutes in the middle - thank goodness it didn't affect us too much.

I borrowed a giant Wilton cupcake cake pan from a neighbour for her birthday cake. I used the recipes for Dark Chocolate Cake and Raspberry Jam Buttercream from Food.com, and they turned out wonderfully. Unfortunately for ME, every slice of cake and every mini cupcake was gone by the end of the party! On the plus side, I'd made double the batter, thinking I'd need it, and ended up with an extra dozen large cupcakes as well as an 8x8" cake in the freezer. Phew! Personal chocolate crisis averted.

I learned a couple of things about the pan before I baked, and I'm going to pass on these tips for anyone baking a giant cupcake cake with the Wilton two-part pan.  First, turn your oven to 325 degrees rather than 350. Cover the dome side with oiled foil before baking, and remove it after the first half hour. Test after 40 minutes or so, but mine took an hour to cook fully both sides. Apparently you need two cake mix boxes to fill the pan, as the base takes 3 1/2 cups of batter, and the top 2 1/2. But, if you use the truly delicious recipe above, you only need one batch worth (unless you just want loads and loads of cake, which really is okay in my books.

Here's my sweetie before the party:

Love that girl!