Owl Cake

OK.  I cannot wait to share this any longer-it is too adorable!!  Shauna MADE this AWESOME cake for her niece's birthday.  It was a "Night Owl" party. The girls watched Tangled, played some really cute games, had pizza and cake, and I painted their toenails.

Inspiration came from this adorable cake at SnowyBliss:

Shauna made the fondant using a marshmallow fondant recipe.  She says using that fondant is awesome.  I helped a teeny tiny bit, and it did seem to work really well.  (i don't have much experience with fondant to compare it to, so take her word not mine)  :)

The bottom two cakes are real, and the owl is a styrofoam ball.  "Hoo-Hoo" would have guessed that?  I guess it would be sort of difficult to make a spherical cake.

The birthday girl LOVED it, of course.  "Hoot" wouldn't?   hahaha  OK, enough corny owl humor already.

Bottom line:  When it comes to cakes, Shauna's good.  Real good.  Here is your proof.  :)

Strawberry Smoothie Tip

Shauna and I recently became the proud owners of Blendtec blenders.  We went back and forth between wanting Vitamix and Blendtec.  We finally went with the Blendtec, for reasons we may get into later.  They are both fantastic products and knew we couldn't go wrong with either, though.

Anyway, on to the tip!!  With this awesome blender, I no longer have to remove the leaves from strawberries!  There are great vitamins and such in those leaves, and I always removed them before because my old blender didn't totally blend up green leafy things.  I guess I could have left them, but never thought about it.  It makes freezing strawberries so easy, no hulling them, just wash and place them out on baking sheets and freeze.  Once frozen, place in bags and they are easy to pull out as needed.