Cafe Munchkin

Posted By munchkinmommy on August 28, 2010

Summer vacation officially ended last Monday when my daughter started first grade.  And yes, we survived the first week of school!  I’m up pretty early so I can “assemble” a hearty meal for my girl.  One thing I’ve immediately noticed is that first grade is making my daughter HUNGRY!  I’m happy that she eats her snacks and almost finishes all the food in her lunch containers.  When she comes home, she’s lookin’ to eat some more!

And here’s the week that was in home-prepared lunchables…

Monday

For Monday, I packed  rotisserie chicken (saved from Sunday night’s dinner), half a Hawaiian roll, some grapes and sweet corn in my daughter’s Hello Kitty food container (Thanks, Tita Rina!).

Tuesday

On Tuesday, my daughter had stuffed mushrooms and brown rice.  She has been asking me to make stuffed mushrooms since she saw the pack of mushrooms in our grocery cart last Sunday!  Fruit was packed in a separate container.

Wednesday

For Hump Day, my first grader had Ground Turkey and Green Beans with Brown Rice.  The ground turkey and green beans were sauteed in oil with a little ginger, some garlic, white cooking wine, soy sauce and sesame oil.

Thursday

I’m not very proud of Thursday’s lunch.  My daughter wanted pork buns and I didn’t have the ingredients to make some from scratch.  But I did have some store-bought pork buns.  Unfortunately, they have MSG. :(  I promised my daughter the next pork buns she’s taking to school will be homemade, if only to avoid the MSG.

Friday

TGIF!  On Friday, lunch was Chicken Adobo and Brown Rice. How can you go wrong with that?  You can’t, specially if you’re from that country in Southeast Asia…the Philippines. :)

I’ve got my work cut-out for me tomorrow, Sunday.  There’s been a request for dumplings almost everyday this week.  And it’s about time they make an appearance in the lunch room next week. ;)  I wonder when sushi makes a grand entrance.

I love making school lunches for my daughter.  Online Elementary Schools wouldn’t be so much fun for me as a mom! Haha! I do ran out of ideas a lot of times but I don’t see school lunch-making as a chore.  To me, it’s another outlet for creative expression.  Only, it’s creativity that needs to be expressed so early in the morning.  Hee hee.

Y’all enjoy what’s left of the weekend!  Cheers!

Category: Home-Prepared Lunchables | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Posted By munchkinmommy on August 25, 2010

It can’t be helped.  I’m referring to this, being yet another cake entry.  Would you look at that!  Three in a row!  If I keep this up, I should probably already look into the possibility of catalog printing . Maybe not. The third quarter of the year just happens to be when I get the most “practice”.  Promise, my next entry won’t be about cakes.  Fair enough?  It’s a deal then!

Last month, I made a Secret Agent Cake for the 8th birthday of the son of good friends of ours.  He’s into spy gadgets, really.  But I took the easy way out, opting to make a cake where the “user” of the spy gadgets is the star.  Hee hee. :P  Allow me to present to you, Agent 008…

This is  Chocolate Cake filled with Chocolate Frosting and Marshmallows.  I have to say, hubby loved this cake. ;)  It’s just too bad the birthday boy has yet to be introduced to the wonderful spy that is James Bond. I really should have asked first.  Come to think of it, he might be a tad too young for 007 movies. :D

The cake topper was a lot of fun to make!  I love how I dressed this little man.  The hair could use a little more work, that much I’m willing to admit,  but overall, I was pleased.  The bomb was just begging to be lit. ;)

I made this cake on the same day as the Yogi Cake.  To save time, I used red and black jelly beans as decorative accents.  Candies are my best friends!

I could really use a martini now…shaken, not stirred. ;)

Cheers y’all!

Category: Cake Decorating | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Posted By munchkinmommy on August 24, 2010

Is it just me or was summer vacation too short?!  Now that the little boss is back in school, I should be able to squeeze in some time to update regularly.  *cross fingers*

My daughter celebrated birthday number 6 two weeks ago with an intimate pajama party here at home.  I shall give you more details and ideas from the party on a separate entry.  For now, let me tell you about the cake I made for my daughter.

I’m actually a little embarrassed to show you the cake photos and you’ll see why in a moment.  But what the heck, the birthday girl loved it and I must say that so did I.

So what’s wrong with the cake?  I made the figure a tad too sunburnt.  Hee hee. :)  The little girl didn’t seem to mind.  I don’t even think she noticed.  Well, I only noticed how dark the figure was when the cake’s all done.  And with dishes to cook and a house to get ready for the arrival of guests, I just didn’t have the time to sculpt another one. :P

I had a blast putting this cake together.  I actually enjoy making miniature elements from real life.  It’s a lot of fun, believe you me!   I’m very relieved, not to mention very thankful to the cake gods that save for the color of the figurine, I didn’t encounter any problems while making this cake.  Everything ran ever so smoothly.  In fact, I was done by 12:30pm.  Party time was 6pm. ;)  This cake, by the way, is Mocha Chiffon Marble Cake with Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream.

The use of the color pink was very minimal because my daughter claims her favorite color at the moment is blue.  I don’t really believe that to be true, but I played along anyway.  The girl is wearing blue pajamas with pink polka dots.  To her right is a cup of cocoa, a bowl of popcorn and a slice of cake. ;)  I wasn’t sure if I did the popcorn justice.  So while I was making it, I called the celebrant and asked her what I was making.  She immediately said popcorn.  That’s all the assurance I needed to proceed. :)

I’m not what you might call a bag hag, but I seem to like making purses out of fondant.  I made one for this cake and a pair of bunny slippers, too! :)

There are lines on the quilt the figure is lying on.  It’s just too bad they’re not visible in the picture.  This ensemble won’t be complete without pillows.  I made 2. :)  Oh, and let’s not forget the eyemask!

This is the first fondant cake I ever made for a member of my family and is easily my favorite.  Next year, when Abby turns 7, I hope to make a bigger and better cake for her. :)

She had several small birthday parties with different sets of friends and we had so much fun in every single one of them.  The birthday girl was also happy to have her birthday wish granted. Too bad we were not able to get our hands on cyberpowerpc coupons before we bought the present. Hee hee.

I hope your week was off to a good start! Cheers!

Category: Cake Decorating, Celebrations | 2 Comments »
Tags:

Posted By munchkinmommy on August 16, 2010

Oh my! Has it really been a full month since I last updated this space?!  We’ve been very busy these last 3 weekends and now that we’re on the final stretch before school starts again on the 23rd, we’re definitely squeezing in as much crazy fun as we can into our last week of summer break.

I’ve baked and decorated 3 cakes since my last entry.  This week, I will do 1 or 2 more cakes and a couple of cupcakes.  My stand mixer will definitely get a good workout this week, that’s for sure! ;)

Last July 24th, a good friend of mine, her son and I had a triple birthday celebration.  It was our 2nd Annual Pink Party.   I made the birthday cakes for mother and son.  My cake, on the other hand, was made by my cake decorating guru of a friend.  For this entry, the spotlight’s on the Yogi Boston Cream Cake I made for my yoga-junkie friend. :D  Presenting, Camille’s Yogi cake…

Camille is into yoga, hence, the Yogi cake.  She’s also kinda watching her sugar, so I searched for a low-sugar cake recipe.  I found two recipes that I wanted to try and when presented with the cake options, Camille chose the Boston Cream Cake.

This was my first attempt at molding people out of fondant. It turned out to be a lot of fun! I love how the yogi came out..and the bag…and the roll of towel. :)

You can barely see the texture on the yoga mat, if at all.  But believe me when I say that it is a textured mat. :)

The cake turned out nicely, getting the thumbs up of the birthday celebrant and our friends.  Hubby, however, thought the cake was a little dense. Hmp!  Well, he was right.  The cake was a little pound cake-ish. :)  The custard filling and the chocolate glaze were oh-so good, if I may say so myself. ;)  You can find the recipe here.

After I molded my first person cake-topper out of fondant, there was no stopping me from making cake toppers out of fondant for my next cakes. You’ll see them in upcoming posts.  Hopefully, it will not take me another full month to update. :P

Cheers y’all!

Category: Cake Decorating, Celebrations | 3 Comments »
Tags:

Posted By munchkinmommy on July 16, 2010

This is a follow up, if you will,  to my Mid-30 Birthday Cake entry.  My Mocha-flavored birthday cake was supposed to be 10 inches round and more or less 4-inches high,  made up of two layers of about 2 inches high each.  However, the cake in one of the pans shrunk down to 9-inches.  I refused to trim down the 10-inch cake to 9-inches so I ended up with 2 cakes. I did, however, divide both cakes into two layers still, so I can fill them with Italian Meringue Mocha Buttercream and a load of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Decorations for this second cake were slices of fresh strawberries and mini marshmallows…

I couldn’t be happier that I always keep ” instant cake decorations” that  I can grab anytime from the fridge and the pantry for speed cake decorating.  Hee hee.

I decorated this cake 30 minutes before my family left the house to meet our friends.  I, of course, shared this cake with them.  And because I didn’t have to stay up late decorating, I didn’t have to worry about bumps that could have appeared the following day and needed acne treatment.  *wink*

The cake recipe can be found HERE.

Postscript: Cheers, y’all! :D

Category: Cake Decorating, Celebrations | 5 Comments »
Tags: