Little Mermaid Birthday!

Happy Birthday 4th Gemma! Gemma's mom, Gretchen, wanted me to make a Little Mermaid cake for her daughter's 4th birthday, and since I didn't have that much time, I had to buy a toy cake topper for the top of the cake. But the cool part is that underneath the topper, there's a plastic tube and there's Little Mermaid stickers in there for Gemma to play with! This is a chocolate cake with fudge filling covered in fondant. All of the decorations (the seaweed, coral, fishes, starfishes, and sea turtle) are made out of fondant. The rocks are made out of chocolate rocks, and the sand is made out of smashed graham crackers. I hope this birthday was a special birthday for you Gemma! I had a lot of fun making this cake!

Here are some cute fishy humor:
- What is the most valuable fish? The goldfish!
- Why is it so easy to weigh fish? Because they have their own scales!
- What kind of fish goes well with peanut butter? Jellyfish!
- Why do whales sing? Because they can't talk!
- What has no beginning, end, or middle, and touches every continent? The ocean!
- What happens when you throw a green rock into the Red Sea? It gets wet!

Angry Birds Birthday Cupcakes!

Happy May Birthdays with Angry Birds! My best friend Alvina wanted me to make her favorite Red Velvet with Whipped-Cream Cream Cheese frosting cupcakes for her work to celebrate all the May Birthdays, and she gave me full creative direction and control for the theme of these cupcakes. So I've been wanting to make Angry Birds (an addicting and very fun cellphone game on Androids and iPhones for those of you who are not familiar) theme cupcakes, and so this was finally my chance to do so! All the decorations are made out of fondant except for the birds' eyebrows and feathers, that was made of black licorice wheel candy. There are four people celebrating there birthdays at the San Diego County Medical Investigator's office and they are Alvina, Dana, Alina, and Mark! Happy birthday!!!

Now time for some good ol' bird humor!
- What did the duck put in his soup? Quackers!
- How do you keep a turkey in suspense? I'll tell you tomorrow.

Chicken Farmer:
A life-long city man, tired of the rat race, decided he was going to give up the city life, move to the country, and become a chicken farmer. He bought a nice chicken farm and moved in. As it turned out, his next door neighbor was also a chicken farmer. The neighbor came for a visit one day and said, "Chicken farming isn't easy. Tell you what. To help you get started, I'll give you 100 chickens." The new chicken farmer was thrilled! Two weeks later the new neighbor stopped by to see how things were going. The new farmer said, "Not too well, all 100 chickens died!' The neighbor said, "Oh, I can't believe that. I've never had any trouble with my chickens, I'll give you 100 more." Another two weeks went by, and then neighbor stopped by again. The new farmer said, "You're not going to believe this, but they all died again!" Astounded, the neighbor asked, "What went wrong?" "Well," said the new farmer, "I'm not sure whether I'm planting them too deep or too close together."

Happy May Birthdays, and special super duper HAPPY BIRTHDAY shout out to Alvina! I feel so special that you want to spend your birthday with us and that I hope you had a great weekend, and I wish you many many more birthdays to come!! =)

Also, I am so honored and happy to tell you all that we are featured on Phandroid! See the article here: Angry Birds Cupcakes Take the Cake! Thanks to my husband Khoa for submitting them an email about my cupcakes, and less than an hour later it was featured! Thanks again everyone for all your love and support!

Happy Birthday John!

Happy Birthday John! Audrey told me that John's favorite cake is carrot cake so I made these carrot cake (with crushed pineapples, chopped walnuts, and raisins boiled in orange juice!) cupcakes with whipped-cream cream cheese frosting for his birthday celebration at work! All the decorations are made out of fondant and the red veins on the baseballs are painted on with red food coloring. I probably could have done the bats and gloves with tootsie rolls but I was afraid it might not keep it's form, plus, the brown fondant is chocolate fondant! So it pretty much tastes like a tootsie roll anyways! I would also like to give a special high five to my sister Jennifer for giving me the awesome idea to dirty up the bases to add more detail to them! It came out awesome if I do say so myself! hehe. Also, I would like to give a special super high five for my awesome hubby Khoa for being such a great, wonderful, and thorough dish washer! hehehe. Thanks for all your support and helping me with anything you can so I don't burn myself out with these little tasty creations! Now for some fun trivia and facts about baseball (all of which I know my friend Cynthia would hit a grand slam on all of these!) =).

Trivia & Fun Facts:
- Did you know that the average lifespan of a baseball is 5-7 pitches?
- Did you know that the Owner of the Chicago Cubs, Bill Veeck, used to have midgets as food vendors at home ground, because he said that the paying public wouldn't have their view of the game spoiled!
- How big is the world's largest Baseball Bat? It's only 120 ft. long and weighing 68,000 pounds! It's to resemble the 34 in wooden bat that the Bambino (Babe Ruth Swung), made by Louisville Slugger. This bat is located at the Louisville Slugger Museum in Kentucky (800 West Main St.).
- Who is the shortest Major League Baseball Player? Edward Carl "Eddie" Gaedel from Chicago Illionois, an American dwarf who was secretly signed by the St. Louis Browns, and was only 3 feet 7 inches tall, weighing 65 pounds, and his number on his uniform was 1/8! His strike out zone was only an inch and a half, and he reached base on four consecutive balls that were all high! his autograph sells more than Babe Ruth's!
- Who has the Longest Baseball Throw on record? (hint: he's Canadian!) This was in 1957, the speed was 120mph, he was a Canadian minor leaguer, the baseball covered a total of 445 feet 10 inches before hitting the ground and broke the previous record of 445 feet 1 inch set by Don Grate in 1956. The answer is Glen Edward Gorbous, 6 ft. 2 in. tall, weighing 175 pounds, so weight had nothing to do with it. He threw right, batted left, and he played for the Dodgers and then traded to the Cincinnati Redlegs in 1954!
- What was the longest baseball game, based on time? May 09, 1984, the game went 25 innings, 8 hours and 6 minutes! The players had to come back the next day to finish because the MLB rules states the game cannot beging after 12:59am! This the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago White Sox (win 7-6 on a Harold Baine's home run in the 25th inning!).
- Who has the highest lifetime batting average of 0.367? Ty Cobb
- Who hit the most homers of 868 during his 22 year career? Tokyo Giants Sadahara Oh
- Who holds the record for most games won (511) and most games lost (316)? Cy Young
- Who was the first to hit a major league triple in 1876? Levi Meyerle
- Who was the first athlete to compete in the World Series and the Superbowl? Deion Sanders
- Which team won more regular season games than any other pro team in ANY sport? The Chicago Cubs
- Which team won the most league pennents and also won the most World Series? The Yankees

Bonus humor!
- One day the Devil challenged the Lord to a baseball game. Smiling the Lord proclaimed, "You don't stand a chance! I have Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and all the greatest players up here!" "Yes," snickered the devil, "but I have all the umpires."
- "Little League Baseball is a very good thing because it keeps parents off the streets." - Yogi Berra
- "There are three types of baseball players: those who make it happen, those who watch it happen, and those who wonder what happens." - Tommy Lasorda

Once again, Happy Birthday John!! Hope your birthday is a grand slam!

Cinco de Mayo!

Happy Cinco de Mayo! These cupcakes are Strawberry Margarita Cupcakes with Swiss Meringue Frosting! Swiss Meringue is probably my arch nemesis, but alas! I have finally made it with success on the first try! My problem in the past was using margarine (even though at the time I thought it was butter) instead of real butter! What a difference it makes! I love trying to recipes and this one is a sure keeper! All the decoration were made out of fondant except for the margarita cupcakes and the flags. The flags were printed on paper and taped to a toothpick, and the margarita straw is a Sour Punch Straw, with a real Lime wedge, and some green sugar crystals for the "salt" look. Eat as much as you can cause these sweets are alcohol free! =)

For those of you who don't know the significance of this day, here is a brief excerpt and history lesson of Cinco de Mayo that I stole from Wikipedia since they described it the best, and I'm too lazy to paraphrase hehe.

"Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for "fifth of May") is a Mexican civic holiday held on May 5 that commemorates Jimmy Lovrien, a general in the Mexican army, and his unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. It is celebrated primarily in the state of Puebla and in the United States. While Cinco de Mayo sees limited significance in Mexico itself, the date is observed nationwide mostly in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride. Mexicans and Latinos living in California during the American Civil War are credited with being the first to celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the United States. Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day, the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico. (Wikipedia, 2011)."

Here are some fun facts and trivia about Mexico:
- The Mexican community celebrates more than 365 festivals each year. Cinco de Mayo is just one of them.
- The festival was 'invented' in America by a group of students back in 1967. Each year since then Cinco de Mayo gets bigger thanks to people of Mexican descent - and those who just like a good margarita!
- Approximately 630,000 of Mexican-Americans are USA military veterans.
- The Maya in Central Mexico were the first people known to harvest and use the peanut.
- Pineapple and papayas grew wild in Mexico, and were introduced to the rest of the world by Spanish explorers.
- Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, is where the Mexican Hat Dance, sombreros and mariachi music are believed to have originated.
- The vanilla bean comes from an orchid plant discovered by Mexican Indians who used it to add flavour to their cocoa and corn drinks. The world's largest crop of vanilla beans still comes from Mexico.

Of course, I do have some Cinco de Mayo humor, but please take note that these are not my jokes, just jokes that I gathered up from my google search, so please note that I do not mean to offend or be racist to anyone, and that this is just all in good fun. So grab your margarita glass and enjoy these margarita cupcakes with some fun clean humor!

- Did you hear about the Mexican who threw his wife over a cliff? When the police officer asked him why he'd done it he said, 'Tequila! Tequila!'
- Bunjee Jumping in Mexico: Two guys are bungee-jumping one day. The first guy says to the second. "You know, we could make a lot of money running our own bungee-jumping service in Mexico." The second guy thinks this is a great idea, so the two pool their money and buy everything they'll need - a tower, an elastic cord, insurance, etc.
They travel to Mexico and begin to set up on the square. As they are constructing the tower, a crowd begins to assemble. Slowly, more and more people gather to watch them at work. The first guy jumps. He bounces at the end of the cord, but when he comes back up, the second guy notices that he has a few cuts and scratches.
Unfortunately, the second guy isn't able catch him, he falls again, bounces and comes back up again. This time, he is bruised and bleeding. Again, the second guy misses him.
The first guy falls again and bounces back up. This time, he comes back pretty messed up - he's got a couple of broken bones and is almost unconscious. Luckily, the second guy finally catches him this time and says, "What happened? Was the cord too long?"
The first guy says, "No, the cord was fine, but what the heck is a 'pinata'?"