Lions, Tigers and Bears....Oh no just Polar Bears....

So as I am making and creating all these delicious treats and fun looking goodies my kids wheels are spinning and they are thinking about their birthdays. Keep in mind on is June and the other is July and we are in February.....

Any ways my sons favorite stuffed animal is a polar bear his great grandfather bought him in Germany when I was pregnant with him. He named him Bim and sleeps with him every night. It's his favorite stuffed animal and always has been. Seems simple enough, mostly white with some black accent. Off to Google I go.

I find a picture of a full bodied Polar Bear that I think is cute and a super cute cupcake idea. I wish I had saved the things because I would love to give credit where credit is due but in my haste to get fondating (is that really a verb??) I just pulled out my supplies and started. So if you find similar pictures on the internet of what I did, chances are they did it first.

I found the the full bodied easier to make then I thought they would be but I think that is because they are mostly white. Shaping the bodies, torso, arms and legs went rather quickly. The head is a rounded triangle shape, the body is oval, the arms and legs are basically 'worms' with the legs being a little thicker and longer then the arms. Both tapering in at the body. I used the fondants own adhesive properties to attach all the pieces by using a small food grade paint brush and water.

 

Making the cupcake was the same as the full bodied Polar Bear minus the torso. The idea of the cupcake is that the bear is doing the back float in the water. I used a 1M tip to make a rose on top of the cupcake as my 'ocean' and places the fondant pieces on.

My son instantly fell in love and that made me one happy Momma! I am planning on doing a small cake featuring some full bodied Polar Bears for candles and him to cut. The cupcakes will be to pass out to the guests.

I love chocolate chips!

So in a recent trip to a local craft store I found heart shaped donut pans. Clearly these pans were calling my name and I had to leave the store with them!

I get home and am pondering what to do with these because making donuts in a donut pan just seems to easy and cliche. Cookies, that's what I will make. Being that my husband LOVES chocolate chip cookies, why not give those a shot. I make up the cookie batter and in the pan it goes.

The full size chips were made it a little hard to fit into the mold but I got it in there and baked. The end result, a super cute cookie that tastes as good as it's round counterpart. Maybe, a cute idea for the one you love for valentines rather then the same old chocolates.

I did try these again with mini-chip and it was MUCH better the second time.

And so it begins.....

So I have been baking treats for a couple of years now. Mostly just for my small little family or holidays and parties I hosted. I have always gotten rave reviews and have been told to sell my goodies (no pun intended LOL) Fast forward to Christmas of this year, I got in my head that I was going to make these snowmen truffles. I buy all my ingredients and off I go!

Took some trial and error, burned the first batch of chocolate in the microwave…. I get the truffles made and coated in chocolate, now what? I can’t have naked snowmen. FONDANT is the answer! How I came to that I am still not sure. I had NEVER made it, worked with it or quiet frankly knew anything about it. That didn’t stop me tho, a little time on Google and with my kitchen aid and my first batch of fondant is made. I couldn’t be PROUDER of myself!

So now I have these snowmen pieces and this fondant. My chocolate on the truffles is imperfect and all the fondant is white. No snowman I know of has ridges or or a white top hat. Smoothing truffle balls and coloring fondant, what’s a girl to do?

It was again trial and error with coloring the fondant, I first tried food coloring. That was an epic fail. It added extra liquid which made the fondant moist and sticky. Although I knew nothing about fondant, I knew that wasn’t right! A trip to the local craft store and I had new coloring gels and much more dynamic fondant. I had black for hats and buttons, orange for noses and red for scarves.

Time to dig in!!

I use the fondant like it is playdoh. Thinking about it and shaping it just the same if I had been playing playdoh my kids. Before I knew it I had wax papers full of all the pieces I needed and set them aside to dry.

I did the best I could with a steak knife to smooth out the edges and round the truffle balls. They stacked fairly well which is what I wanted. Snowmen aren’t symmetrical and I didn’t want mine to be either. They still weren’t perfect but I was Ok with that.

This was a first attempt and I was PROUD!

Finally I googled edible glue and basically found that I could just use confectionery sugar and water to make a paste that hardens quickly and strong. Piece by piece my snowmen were assembled. Now I have these awesome snowmen and don’t know what to do with them. I bought cute packages and off 3 of them went with my children to school for teacher gifts. A friend of my husband had eaten one of the ‘snowmen heads’ so I assembled the bottom and put the ‘facial accessories’ on a piece of foiled cardboard and gave him a headless snowman. The last one was my favorite. My grandmother always gave her co-workers ‘snowman poop’ (google it, you know you want too!). I made her a snowman walking through the woods ‘pooping’ I used leftover gingerbread trees with dyed frosting and fondant decorations. It was a hit!!!

So there you have it. The ‘project’ that got this all started. To date everything I have done has been self taught. I have found you tube and google to be my friends. I get so excited to try new things and even more excited when I see a finished product!

Thanks for hanging out with me this long. My intent is to blog my way through my new artistic talent, in hopes of finding like minded people to build a network with or maybe give some information to another enthusiast using google to try something new. STAY TUNED!!!