Life Would Be Boring Without Dear Kelsey

This is my dearest cousin, Kelsey, and I. She left me for college this year :(. I feel bored, and boring for that matter, without her. But, when Kelsey comes home, what do we do?

Yeah, we make a Super Mario Brothers Mushroom cake.

It's awesome.

Don't lie to yourselves.

So, I'll give to the steps we took to make this cake.

1. We baked a 9x13 strawberry cake and 12 funfetti cupcakes. (We're kind of crazy about the funfetti).

2. We cut about 2 1/2 inches off of the end of the cake for the mushroom's face. We then cut a large "mushroom top" out of the rest of the cake. Turn the cake horizontally to get the maximum amount.

3. We make our own icing when we make cakes. It's a wedding cake icing that is in the Pohl Cookbook (my grandma's side).

1 cup of Crisco shortening                                           1/2 cup of warm water

2 lbs of powdered sugar                                               2 tsp. of vanilla flavoring

Mix all of the ingredients together. It will be thick. It sets up really nicely and gets hardish. You can keep it in the fridge for a few days. Oh, and it's simply delish!

4. We placed a few cupcakes around the mushroom top and cut around them to make a space for the cupcakes to sit in.



5.  We "glued" together the two pieces of cake and put a thin crumb coat around the edge of the cake to keep all of the little pink crumbs out of the colored icing. We then separated enough icing to put some "tan" on the mushroom's face, white on about five cupcakes, and red to put on the rest of the cake. Save some extra white for touch-ups if you are as picky as we are.

( I apoligize for the large bit of finger that is in this shot:))

6. Place the white- iced cupcakes in the holes AFTER you've iced the red mushroom.

Draw on his little eyes with black icing ( they are just vertical lines).

And there he is. Your very own Mushroom cake. isn't he a beaut?

Enjoy!!!