The moon is made of cake (birthday cake!)

My computer time seems to be coming in smaller chunks lately, so I am going to spread the coverage of the rocket/space ship/astronaut birthday, over a few, more manageable posts.

This is a strong contender for the easiest cake I've ever made. I've used this Wilton sports ball pan for all kinds of cakes--except any having to do with sports.

I even cheated and used store-bought frosting. I was beginning to think this was a mistake when my attempts to create craters were failing miserably. So I stuck the frosted cake in the fridge for a few minutes. When it came out, the frosting was much easier to work with and I pressed into the cake (and cupcakes) in several places to give it the crater effect.

I turned a black plastic serving tray upside down, sprinkled coarse salt on it and covered it with blue saran wrap, to give the feel of outerspace behind the moon. In red frosting, I piped, "U R OUT OF THIS WORLD," and "Happy Birthday!"

But my favorite part is the red rocket! Remember these?

Well, I bought them and used them to make popsicles, but they also worked beautifully to make the candy rocket that topped the cake. I took red candy melts, melted them in the microwave and poured them into the (very lightly oiled) rocket mold. I stuck a sucker stick in chocolate, so I would have that to anchor into the cake. This came out much more easily than the popsicles we made. I also bought squiggly candles, picked out the fire colored ones, and placed them around the rocket, to resemble the fire from the launching rocket.

Make a wish on the moon (instead of a star)!

While we are on the subject of cakes, you have to check out the Cake Wreck blog, if you have not seen it yet. A couple of these posts had me in tears, I was laughing so hard. (like this one).