*Random Thoughts of a SUPERMOM!*

Friday, January 18, 2013

100th Day of School Cake: Step by Step

My kiddos have been in school for 100 days! And Grant's school is having a whole day to celebrate, including a short party where parents get to come and celebrate 100 days with them. I made this exact same cake last year for Grant's class, and I'm making it again this year...because when something is this cute you just don't change it up:) Last year when I made the cake, I didn't take the time to do a step by step tutorial mostly because I wasn't sure how it would turn out...so this time I tried to get a couple pictures of the process so I could walk you through how to make this cute 100th Day of School Cake!

First gather your supplies. You will need two cake mixes, two cans of icing, two bags of M&M's, two round cake pans, and one rectangular cake pan.

Mix up the cake mixes according to the directions. Split one of the cake mixes evenly between the two round cake pans, and put the all of the other cake mix into the rectangular pan. Make sure to spray the pans liberally with cooking spray so they don't stick! Bake and cool slightly.

Use a circle cookie cutter to cut the center out of both of the round cakes. To cut the rectangular cake to shape, I just lined it up next to the round cakes and made it look as close to a one as possible {sorry I forgot to get a picture of that}. After all three cakes are cut, place them in the freezer for at least an hour. The cut edges are hard to ice, and freezing them makes it so much easier.

Take the cakes out of the freezer and crumb coat them with a thin layer of icing. I do this mostly because all those cut edges make lots and lots of crumbs, and I am terrible at icing cakes...and I can't stand crumbs in the icing!

Stick the cakes back in the freezer for about an hour so that the crumb coat of icing can set. Then get busy covering the whole cake with a lovely layer of icing.

Now it's time for the decorating! I poured my M&M's into a bowl to make it easier to find the colors that I needed. I put the M&M's around the top and bottom edge of all three cakes.

I followed a pattern with my M&M's, but you can just put them on randomly...or let the kids help by putting them on. I let my OCD take over a little bit and I put them on in order of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown.And yes I know that brown isn't in the rainbow, but I let it take the place of purple since there aren't purple M&M's.

When it's all decorated with those pretty M&M's you don't really notice the imperfect icing or the wonky number one! And the kiddos for sure won't notice that everything isn't perfect, so have fun with it and make a cute cake to celebrate 100 days of school with your kiddos this year!

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Super Easy 100th Day of School Snack

My boys' 100th day of school is tomorrow! Seriously how has it already been 100 days. It seems like we were just taking our 1st day of school pictures! Anyway, last year I made THIS super cute 100th Day of School Cake for Grant's class...and I'm actually making it for his class again this year. So I kind of started feeling bad that I'm making something for Grant's class two years in a row and I hadn't made anything for Henry's class. So even though Henry's school doesn't do a big party like Grant's {I guess 2nd grade is the cutoff for really celebrating 100 days}, I decided I still wanted to send a fun treat with him to school tomorrow.

I stopped by the store on the way home from dropping Eli off at preschool, and I browsed up and down the aisles looking for inspiration. I knew donuts would be perfect for the zeros, but I wasn't quite sure what to do about the ones...and then I saw Swiss Rolls on sale! I got home and got busy making these SUPER Easy 100th Day of School Snack...and it literally took me less than 30 minutes to put together enough for Henry's whole class!

I started with chocolate covered donuts, Swiss Rolls, and wooden skewers that I cut in half. You need half a Swiss Roll for every two donuts to make one 100. So to make 24 100's you will need two boxes of the chocolate covered donuts and one box of Swiss Rolls.