The cakes are back!

Well... it has been some time since I have posted. The lack of cake baking has been due to our move. All of last summer and fall we got our house ready to try and sell. We also put an offer in on a house. It took 6 months for the deal to go through and for us to move! Now we are getting settled into the new place, and I am finally back to making cakes. I have had several fun events to bake for, and I am really excited to post the results.

The first cake was for our good friend Jace's 4th birthday. He loves Monster Trucks (which is probably why my husband has such a fun time with him)! So, the cake replicates one of his favorite toys... his Monster Truck ramp. The cake itself is a yellow butter cake with cookies and cream filling and yummy chocolate frosting. The biggest compliment I got on the cake is when several of the party goers tried to drive the trucks on the cake!

The next cake was for a baby shower. It was a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and filling. Congrats Amy on your exciting day, and I am excited to meet Baby Boy Sisco! I was really happy with the monkey and was so excited to use such fun colors.

German Chocoalate B-Day

This is my first German Chocolate Cake. I really enjoyed making the pecan coconut frosting (and eating a good portion of it). The cake had a relaxation asian theme, so I made bamboo out of fondant for the sides of the cake and a colorflow bonsai tree for the top. Overall I was really happy with the result.

2 Birthdays and a Baby Shower

Wow... this was a busy cake weekend. I did 2 birthday cakes (one for a 89 year young lady and one for my 92 year young grandma) and some baby shower cupcakes. The first birthday cake was chocolate cake with strawberry filling and Swiss meringue buttercream. The roses on top were piped with meringue and dried in a low oven. What could be better than a cake with cookies on top! The other birthday cake was carrot cake (the only cake that my grandma can understand people wanting) with cream cheese icing. The baby shower cupcakes were chocolate and vanilla with American buttercream. The theme of the shower was baseball, so I piped some baseball items in chocolate for the top of the cupcakes. I forgot to make a mirror image of the gloves though, so I piped all left-handed mitts! Hope you enjoy!

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!

Cherry-Yogurt Loaf Cake

Last week, my husband and I made the plunge and finally bought a t.v. We have upgraded through 3 hand-me-downs, but decided to move up in the electronics world. After researching our options, we found ourselves buying one at Costco. While standing in line at Costco, I took a visit to their cookbook section. I found a great cake book that I couldn't pass up called Gorgeous Cakes. It is written by a british author, and has some wonderful recipes in it. I like that it has many cakes made with dried fruit, which I love to use. 

This cake, "sour cherry yogurt cake" was easy to make and turned out wonderfully. The cake didn't use eggs, but rather contained a pine nut paste. The cake was glazed with a mixture of orange juice and powdered sugar. The recipe called for red food coloring to give the pink color, but I had some blood oranges in the fridge so I used those instead. 

We had some friends over for dinner, and this made the perfect after dinner treat.

Valentine's dessert

Can I say how much I love the cookbook Cake Love! Everything I have tried is amazing, and this cake is no different. To say I love you to my wonderful hubby, I decided to bake the LCD cake (an awesome vanilla bundt cake). I topped it with chocolate ganache and melted white chocolate to make it extra decadent. 

I am not quite sure why I thought we needed an entire bundt cake for the 2 of us (especially a cake as rich as this). However, it did make a nice treat for my coworkers! A coworker had also brought some  yummy treats to work that day, so it made for some great snacking (probably not what I should be doing while sitting in a cubicle all day).

Vegan cupcakes

A while back I purchased a great cupcake cookbook "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World".

It has tons of great recipes in it, but I hadn't gotten around to making any of them until this weekend. So I tried out the golden vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. The batter mixed up very easily, although it is very easy to overmix it (which I did and they came out a tiny bit tough). They rose a ton in the oven, which happens often because of our altitude. I expected them to fall, but they stayed a perfect shape for frosting! All in all I thought they were delicious, and you couldn't tell a difference in taste between these and their non-vegan counterparts!

Happy New Year

To ring in the new year, we had a progressive dinner with a group of friends. We started with appetizers at Christina's new house, went to La Fuente restaurant for dinner, came to our house for dessert, and finished the celebration at Mary's house with cocktails and dancing! For dessert, my friend Candace made flan, and I made chocolate mousse in chocolate cups. To create the cups, I first melted 12 oz. of semisweet chocolate chips in a double boiler. Then, I used a pastry brush to paint the inside of cupcake liners. I tried both regular liners as well as nut & party cups. After the first layer of chocolate, I froze the cups for 30 min. Then I remelted the chocolate and painted a second coat and froze the cups again. Once the chocolate had hardened (about 1 hour), I peeled off the paper cup. I found that the nut & party cups were MUCH easier to peel off than the regular cupcake liner.

While the chocolate was hardening, I made the mousse. I found the recipe for "Heavenly Chocolate Mousse" on the All Recipe website. The only deviation I made was that I cooked the egg yolks over a double boiler rather than directly over the heat. Once the mousse was done, I piped it into the chocolate cups using a large star tip and topped it with some whipped cream. It made a nice single serving dessert. I think next time I might try it in mini cupcake liners for a bite-size dessert! Happy New Years!

Gingerbread

I have to admit that I had never made a gingerbread house. It seems like the holidays always fly by and we never get around to it. So... I was stoked when my sister-in-law threw a gingerbread house making party. I found the gingerbread recipe on About.com, but instead of using the icing recipe I used the royal icing powder mix from Wilton. The recipe made a good dough for the house and for cookies. However, the first batch of cookies I baked WAY to long and they turned into little gingerbread rocks. The dough turned out really dark because the molasses I had on hand were blackstrap molasses. It still tasted really yummy though. The first house below I decorated and the next one my husband, Dan, decorated (notice the fully landscaped yard)!

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! I have been really busy, but was really excited to do this Christmas cake. My mom volunteers with an organization called Young Lives, which provides support to teen moms. They had their Christmas party this week, and my mom asked if I could do a birthday cake for Jesus. The cake itself was a 1-2-3-4 cake from Paula Deen, which was ridiculously simple since it only consisted of 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups self-rising flour, 4 eggs, and 1 tsp vanilla! I filled the cake with raspberry preserves and frosted it with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. The nativity was done with fondant. 

The cake ended up having a pretty funny story. I dropped the cake off at the party, and went home since I was exhausted. The weather was terrible with quite a bit of snow predicted, so they thought the turn out would be bad. But... there were WAY more people than they expected. Things got so hectic that they forgot to serve the cake!!! So... now the cake will double as a treat for the children at our church after they finish the Christmas pageant on Sunday!

Big Birthdays

Over the last couple of weeks I had the privilege of doing 2 big birthday cakes. One was for a 21st birthday and the other was a 50th birthday. The guy turning 21 is really into music, so I made a fun guitar and music note cake. The guitar is made from fondant and the lettering/music notes were done in chocolate. The cake itself was chocolate, with strawberry rhubarb filling and white chocolate frosting (MMMMM).

 The 50th birthday had a fun theme of "Long live the Queen". It was carrot cake (a Martha recipe) with cream cheese frosting. The crown and lettering were done in fondant and painted with luster dust.

Happy Birthday and Happy Halloween

This was a two cake week for me. The first cake I made for a coworkers daughter's 2nd birthday. Her party had a jungle theme, so I made a color flow piece that matched the party plates. I have had mixed results with color flow because it is very fragile, but I was pleased with how it came out. The cake itself was a chocolate layer and a white chocolate layer with cheesecake pudding center and white chocolate frosting (rich but very YUMMY). 

The second cake was for an elementary school fundraiser. It had the same cake layers as the jungle cake but with peanut butter filling and vanilla icing. The spider and pumpkins were made with fondant. I am not generally a fan of spiders, but I kinda liked this little guy!

I love autumn!

I love the crisp morning air  and the leaves changing colors! I also love all of the comfort foods that I start cooking when the air turns cooler. Two of my favorite desserts are apple pie and cheesecake, so I was really excited when I saw this recipe that combined both. The apple pecan cheesecake bars recipe is from the Kraft Foods website. I made this recipe to take to the new youth directors house when they invited Dan and me for dinner. I was very pleased with how it turned out... and it is surprisingly easy! I hope you will follow the link above and try this recipe. I am sure you will enjoy it.

Fruit Crisps

Our extra nice neighbor brought us some peaches from his tree. My husband and I had a huge sweet tooth, so I used this neighborly gesture as an excuse to bake! I found a yummy crisp recipe that was really simple (butter, flour, sugar, and cinnamon). However, it made MUCH more topping than the amount of peaches that I had. So... luckily I had some frozen berries on hand to make a berry crisp. We were able to enjoy fruit crisps all week!

Wilton Course 3 Final Project

Here is the final project for our final Wilton Class. I am stoked with how it turned out but sad that the classes are over. We had to complete a 2 tiered cake. The top tier was chocolate cake with chocolate filling and the bottom tier was vanilla cake with chocolate filling. MMMMMMM.

The class focused on fondant and royal icing. For this cake, I covered it in blue fondant and decorated it with brightly colored fondant flowers. It was exciting to learn how to support the cake with dowels, and now I feel confident in constructing multi-tier cakes!

Two baby cakes and baby bundts

This was a busy cake baking week! First, I had my final class in the Wilton Fondant and Gumpaste course. I chose to do a yellow butter cake covered in yellow fondant with a baby bassinet on top (basically a fondant box with a baby and blanket inside). I also learned to do fondant draping along the cake to simulate a blanket. I had to let all my coworkers know that this was NOT a clever way to make a baby announcement!

The second baby cake was for a coworker, whose son was turning 1! It was a monkey cake from the Wilton 2007 yearbook. It used the Friendly Lion pan and then added cookies to transform him into a monkey! I rolled the cookies a little too thick though, so the monkey's proportions were a little off... Oh well, I think he is pretty cute. And besides... the birthday boy fell asleep before cake anyways!

The baby bundts were a chocolate bundt cake from my new favorite book "Cake Love". I filled them with whipped cream and strawberries and dusted them with confectioners sugar. YUM!

Happy Birthday... to Dan's dad, Jeremy, and me!

We were celebrating the early August birthdays  this weekend, and I wanted to try my first stacked cake. I wanted it to look like a present, and I am pretty happy with the result. The bottom cake is chocolate pound cake (from Cake Love) filled with whipped chocolate ganache and strawberries, and the top is yellow butter cake (also from Cake Love) filled with the same ganache and strawberries. I frosted the cakes with Swiss Meringue and covered them with fondant.