Sunday, October 23, 2011

Birthday Cupcake Fun... (and seasonal!!)

Noah's birthday is just around the corner and I'm always looking for a little time to create some kind of birthday cake fun. One of my newest favorite hobbies is cake decorating!!!

We just started a school break so I thought what better time for me to do some (much missed) cooking from scratch! So, I bought a large piece of pumpkin at the Thursday market and... started thinking....
After the smoke cleared- I realized we had some friends coming into town this weekend and their son just celebrated his first birthday! With Noah's coming up I was excited about a dual birthday party for our LITTLE MONSTERS!! I was also excited about pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing!!
So... my first stop was trying to figure out how to make pumpkin puree from scratch.... Thank you Pioneer Woman for all your experience and HELP!! She too has pics, so enjoy hers as well!
I started out cutting my piece of pumpkin in slices and cooked at 350 for almost an hour....


After I pulled it out, it was tender and easy to separate from the skin...

I started smashing with both fork and hands...This is Sadie ("The Princess') face when I asked her to smash with her hands and I could take a picture... sheer disgust. You want ME to touch... THAT... and SMASH? Ugh... no thanks (with some whining in there!)

So, this is my beautiful puree after some elbow grease and finger smashing.... (no electricity needed!!!)

Nice, I only needed 3/4 cup so I am excited to make some pumpkin bread this week too!!!

One of our projects this week from Sadie and Noah being sick was to glue eyes on these little "thingies"(??) for monster eye balls...

And "VOILA..." (trying to practice French, even on the blog...)

Happy (almost) birthday to my little monster... and his little monster friend!!!


Stay tuned for the birthday party pics, coming soon!!!

1 comment:

Pwood said...

Amanda! I am just amazed! Everything looks great and so much fun! I wish I were that creative!!! Can't believe that Noah is almost 1, crazy!