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.