Kids' Birthday and Welcoming Fall

I don't know where the time has gone, but it has been flying by so fast. I think the birthday season for my family just ended. It started in July (right after I got back from honeymoon) and continued to October. You see, I have two brothers and their family living nearby and that includes five nieces and nephews. All of their birthdays, their parents, their grandma, and DH's birthday are one after the other. That is seven birthdays in about two and half months!!! I've been baking up a storm and I will post them one by one, but here's a glimpse of our changing season.
Some people get really excited that Fall/Winter is coming, especially those who live in Texas because they can now get a crisp weather, but not me. I love the warm 75F weather and crisp morning everyday in California and not looking forward to have to wear jacket all the time. But I have to admit that I love seeing the change of feeling that comes with it. Pumpkins are everywhere! All different sizes and shape, colors, it is exciting. The leaves are turning from green to yellow, then red, it is pretty!

Anyways, with mostly kids birthday, I don't have many exciting cake story to tell because some of them are very similar cake, just different shape. It is funny how excited kids are over a custom-shaped birthday cake. So even when some of them might be similar cake underneath, it still never failed to impress them.

Here's a combined birthday for my nieces from early August, V and Z, they are the cutest!! The inside is blueberry sponge cake filled with cream cheese buttercream and blueberry preserve. I got the blueberry paste and preserve from my previous Indonesia trip and they smell (and taste) like candy! The theme was ship, ocean, under the sea creatures and such. I got the inspiration of the colorful waves online (I didn't save the link :( ) and I think it is very suitable for kids as they are very colorful. DH made the figurines, and although they looked a little "chubby", I think he was really creative by using the cocktail umbrella, I thought he was a genius for coming up with such an idea!

We saved the top tier for a second birthday dinner with family only.

The next birthday was Tobias' birthday. I made a cake for him every year (and for my other nieces and nephews too). He is super obsessed with cars (after Thomas the Tank Engine craze last year). His current favorites are lightning McQueen and Chick Hicks car. We decided to make the lightning mcQueen car because it is more popular, easier to decorate, and this was the original plan before he got obsessed with chick hicks a week before. As usual, DH was in charge of the carving and decorating it, he enjoys doing it and I think he is really good at it! Maybe one day we can team up and open up our custom cake bakery, haha. I was in charge of making the base cake, coloring the fondant, and drape the fondant over the cake, then it was all his.

It took us the whole weekend to do this, we were so dead tired by the end, but after seeing the birthday boy excitement over it, it was worth it. He was literally running when he got home to see the cake. The inside of the cake is "lapis surabaya" (Indonesian vanilla and chocolate cake alternating, made only/mostly with egg yolks and butter) with blueberry preserve and shredded Indonesian cheese (a classic favorite). I need to find an alternative cake for carving maybe soon or else we will all be gaining weight during this kids birthday month considering the amount of egg yolks and butter that goes into it.  Oh well, soon enough, they will be big and hopefully get over the children cakes and start appreciating French pastries :).

I have made a lot of cakes lately too and I finally made my first pumpkin pie! I will blog about it soon.