Mona-Rama

My Mona is ten!  How can my baby girl be ten?  

Since Thanksgiving fell so late this year, Mona had the chance to have extended family at her birthday party.  I told her we could arrange a friend party if she wanted it, but she liked Quinn's birthday adventure in Chicago and wanted something similar.  We declared it an extended Mona birthday weekend, and spent a day with visiting relatives at the Field Museum, and on their last morning in town we threw a breakfast party with crepes and a chocolate fountain before everyone headed for home.  We spent the rest of that day exploring the Museum of Science and Industry and had a blast.

For Mona's actual birthday this week she took cupcakes to school, got to pick where we went to dinner (who knew she liked Culver's that much?) and I baked her a cake.  I love having the chance to bake interesting cakes for my kids.  Mona didn't decide until the day before her birthday what she wanted this year, though.  She wanted a cake in the shape of a Mold-A-Rama from our collection and thankfully she chose probably the easiest one to turn into a cake: the Space Shuttle figure from the Museum of Science and Industry.


I used basic chocolate sheet cake for the main body of the shuttle, and sculpted the wings and tail out of rice crispy treats.  (Many leftover cake and cookie scraps were enjoyed by all.)










I dirty iced the whole thing before I took Quinn to his piano lesson and it had time to set in the fridge.  Then when we got home I frosted it again a little neater, rolled out a ball of fondant that I made in the morning before work, and dropped the whole sheet of that onto the cake and smoothed it out.

Making a copy of a Mold-A-Rama version of the Space Shuttle was a lot less pressure than making a straight copy of the Space Shuttle somehow.  Fewer details to worry about.

The final touch I did after Mona went to bed so it would be a surprise.  I cut letters out of sugar paper in the Mold-A-Rama colors to spell out her name Mold-A-Rama style.  It was a big hit.

One more cake to go before I can turn my attention to Christmas baking.  Aden's is going to be some kind of Minecraft cake, so I will need to do some research.  Not a clue yet what that will entail, but I'm making it vegan so all of her guests can have some.

(Did I mention my baby girl is ten?  Ten.  That's a lot of cakes, not to mention a lot of scraped knees and love and tears and worry and crazy outfits and creations, and that child makes me laugh every single day.  Damn I love my Mona.)