Light and Dark

Last week I ended up doing two cakes. One was a black cake with "dead roses" for a fortieth birthday and the other was a stacked Easter cake with lilies.

The fortieth cake was half white cake, half chocolate cake with a 6" round topper done half and half to match. The little round topper was filled with cookies 'n' cream buttercream and the rest was filled with vanilla. The black icing was flavored chocolate. I need to work on my shell border...it really did not turn out well on this cake! I checked out Toba Garrett's book from the library to work on my cake skills.

The Easter cake was my first attempt at stacking a cake. Although I had some problems, I was pleased with the cake overall. I made gumpaste lilies for the cake and thought they turned out very nice! The top tier was strawberry cake with cream cheese buttercream and fresh strawberry filling. The bottom tier was white chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling. I got to eat this cake and it was super yummy! Hope you all had a blessed happy Easter!!!

Hooray for Refunds....Boo to Duncan Hines!

Our accountants worked hard this year and got us a big tax refund. So, the day before we were to go up and sign the taxes, I decided I should make them a cake. I browsed Cake Central for ideas and decided a calculator would be easy to do! This cake is a 9x13 that I carved/built up to create the shape. I used a Duncan Hines fudge marble mix and doctored it with sour cream and irish cream flavored coffee creamer. A word of advice...if ever you are doing WASC (stands for white almond sour cream cake, but cakesters use it for any sour cream doctored mix) do NOT use Duncan Hines! I tried this twice with the same results - it falls while baking! I have used other mixes with success, so I am guessing it is the mix that failed me. It was still tasty though, and luckily I was carving some cake away, so it all worked out. I torted the cake and filled it with chocolate ganache, refrigerated, and carved. I did a crumb coat of vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream and covered that with marshmallow fondant. The buttons are marshmallow fondant and all the letters and numbers are piped on with royal icing. I tasted the cake scraps and it tasted heavenly...I hope the accountants liked it!!!

Spring has Sprung...a Blizzard?!

The joys of living in Nebraska in the spring! Yesterday's blizzard kept us trapped indoors, so I used the opportunity to do some baking. My husband requested chocolate chip cookies. Don't they look yummy?

But I thought they were missing something so I decorated a few!

Much better! Happy Spring!

Fabulous Fudgy Frosting

Yesterday I made some waffle cookies, and if you have never had these little delights you are missing out! My family made them for years and peanut butter frosting was our favorite topping. My husband loves chocolate and so I decided to frost them with chocolate instead.

The frosting is made by melting 3 TBSP margarine, then adding 3 TBSP sugar (white or brown), and 3 TBSP of cocoa. Mix this all up and add 3 TBSP of sour cream. Stir and add 1/2 c. to 1 c. of powdered sugar depending on how thick and sweet you want it. Stir or whisk until all the lumps are gone and you are left with creamy chocolately goodness!

The finished frosted cookie. Yummo! This frosting is also very good on brownies and cake!

Cake Decorating Saves the Day!

My amazing husband gets a gold star today for his ingenuity and resourcefulness. This handy little device not only cleans the small openings of cake decorating tips, but also makes a great cleaning brush for computers! Just remember this tidbit the next time your toddler jams banana inside the internet port of your laptop.

When Irish Eyes Are Bloodshot...

This cake was made overnight...literally! The person requesting this cake wanted it delivered to a dinner party the next day! So here was my first chance to see if I could bake and decorate a cake (I did tell this person it would be a simple cake - no hand-painted fondant here!) with very short notice. I immediately went home and .... it was such a nice day .... a shame to let that good weather go to waste! So I doinked around instead of starting on the cake right away. I think I started baking around 5 p.m. and didn't get the buttercream made up until after 9. (There was a good show on that night!) I then decided I would go to bed and get the cake done in the morning; however, I ended up getting up at 1 a.m. (courtesy a wake-up call administered by a set of two-year-old lungs) and going to work on it. I don't really remember finishing the cake but I sure was tired! I felt good about how the cake turned out for such short notice, but this is definitely NOT my best work! I hope it was tasty...it was a yellow cake (dyed green on request) filled with rum buttercream. The sides were frosted green but it is hard to see in the picture. Lesson learned...make up buttercream ahead of time and freeze for short-notice cakes. Oh yeah, and don't procrastinate!

Twice as nice!

Cake decorating with a two-year old?!? Yes, my daughter is now two and presenting new challenges for me in this cake decorating endeavor. She knows what cake is all about and eagerly dug in when I presented her with this Winnie the Pooh cake for her birthday! She loved the filling the best - vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream - yummo! The cake was chocolate and I made the fondant out of marshmallows. If you hate fondant, give the marshmallows a chance! It is better (in my humble opinion) than that ready-made stuff in taste and texture. I painted the fondant with food coloring diluted with vodka. (Don't worry - the vodka evaporates. No drunken toddlers here!) I tried to make a fondant bow for the package, but it looked too big and bulky and I eventually decided on the real ribbon...it wasn't edible, but oh well. Just looking at this cake makes me want to go make another one....Mmm....cake!