Happy B-day Dan!

My husband turned 31 on the St. Patrick's Eve. Since he and a girl in our church's youth group both celebrated birthdays over the same week, I thought it would be fun to bring a cake to youth group. I wanted to go with a birthday present cake, so I baked up a 10" round chocolate cake, a 6"x6" square vanilla and strawberry cake, and a 5" round vanilla and chocolate cake. The vanilla cake was a last minute addition, but after the majority of the strawberry cake fell apart coming out of the pans I had to make a late substitution. I will be trying the strawberry cake again with modifications made for our altitude. Also, don't worry about all of that strawberry cake going to waste... they were reborn as cake bites (which will be shown in another post). 

I covered each of the layers in marshmallow fondant (I made a triple batch for this and the leprechaun hat cake). I made the bow a couple days in advance so that it would have time to dry on the wires. Then I stacked the layers and decorated with more fondant. I was happy with the result, and it was a hit with the 25 jr./sr. high students at our church! Happy Birthday Dan & Mallory!

St. Patricks Day cake

This year for St. Patrick's Day, my work had a potluck. It shifted from being an Irish food potluck to being a "green food" potluck. There were some interesting entries including green fettucini alfredo, green pinwheels (and yes the tortillas, ranch, and ham were ALL GREEN), chili verde, and enchiladas with guacamole. I took the opportunity to make a cake (of course)! Since I had just made red velvet cake last weekend for a wedding, I decided to swap out the food coloring and make green velvet. I adjusted the Martha Stewart recipe for our altitude (around 4500 feet), and the result baked up more evenly, didn't fall in the middle, and worked much better for stacking.

Since a plain cake just wouldn't do, I decided to make a leprechaun's hat. First I leveled, filled, and stacked the 5 layers (it required a double batch of cake batter).

Next I used a serrated knife to carve the general hat shape and crumb coated the whole thing with cream cheese frosting. 

The cake fell a ton on one side, and so I had to cut the bottom off at an angle to make the cake level again. The lesson learned was that with 5 cake layers was too many not to have a cardboard cake round and dowels put in for support... I won't make that mistake again! I covered the whole cake with green marshmallow fondant. It was my first time making fondant, and I was happy with the consistency but even happier with the taste. Overall, it was a hit with the coworker, even though the green velvet was a bit creepy!

Wedding Cake

Congrats Sam & Maggie on your wedding and thank you for letting me be a part of it! I got a call a little over a week ago from Sam asking me if I wanted to make the cake they would be cutting at their reception. They had sheet cakes for their guests, so the cake I made could be small (which was good because otherwise I would have been totally overwhelmed). I had made a cake for Sam's mom's b-day a few months back (the fun crown cake), so I was totally stoked when they asked me to do another cake. 

The wedding colors were navy and ivory, and the bride & groom wanted red velvet cake with cream cheese icing. I got the recipe for both from the Martha Stewart website (thanks Martha)! I originally planned to make roses out of modeling chocolate. They were going ok... but I was having trouble making them delicate enough for the scale of the cake (it didn't help that I had never used modeling chocolate before). So, I change directions and made the roses out of fondant (thank you wilton fondant and gumpaste class). I was really happy with how the flowers came out. I had some trouble with the fondant on the cake as a whole since the cream cheese icing was so soft. I definitely learned many lessons with this one!

Baby Shower Cupcakes

A good friend was putting together a double baby shower for coworkers at her school and asked me to create some cupcakes. One of the teachers is having a boy, and the other a girl so I used a variety of pastel colors. I searched through flikr and books to try and get an idea of what to put on top of the cakes. I was getting frustrated because nothing to seemed to be quite right. But... while walking through our local Ben Franklin Craft store I found these awesome Wilton chocolate molds with a baby theme. 

The cupcakes were chocolate and vanilla. I tried some new recipes from one of my favorite cupcake books "Little Cakes from the Whimsical Bakehouse". The cupcakes had a really traditional flavor, and a great texture. Some cupcake recipes that I have tried turned out either way to dense or way to dry, but these were really flavorful and light. I used the house buttercream recipe from this book. It used a different method than I had used before, but it turned out well. I topped the cupcakes with either blue or pink frosting and either the chocolates or rainbow sprinkles. Hopefully, the ladies like them because I was pretty happy with how they turned out!