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!