Groom's Cake - Vroom Vroom

One of my good friends Mary got married in September. I offered to make a grooms cake for the reception. Her husband is really into racing so we decided to try to incorporate his car into the cake.

This is an actual picture of his car that I lifted off of Facebook and then used as a model to make the fondant miniature.

I wasn't 100% sure how I was going to make the car. I bought red fondant in case I wanted to mold it out of that, but I wasn't sure how to get the white stripes on the side, so in the end I decided to mold it out of white fondant and paint it. I used AmericColor edible paints.

The inside of the cake is probably my favorite. I bought a checkered cake kit a while back and never knew what to use it for. When I asked what kind of cake they wanted, the bride said she liked white cake and the groom liked chocolate. I thought, I can do BOTH! And added bonus, it looks like a checkered racing flag. #Winning.

This is what the set looks like. (Bonus: hidden Mickey!) Pretty simple.

You fill the outer and inner most circles with one kind of batter...

And then the center ring with the opposite. Once all the rings are filled, you slowly remove the plastic...

Tah-dah! It's a little messy, but not as bad as you would think. Then you bake the cakes normally.

I made the almond butter cream frosting to fill between the layers.

All three layers ready to be frosted!

Then I rolled out some green fondant I bought (I used the Fondarific brand because I think it tastes the best out of all the ones I've tried) and covered the frosted cake.

Next I trimmed off the edges and added a black road, the fondant car, and some mini fondant cones I made.

Here's the cake displayed at their wedding! The ribbon around the bottom was money. It made the cake look 100 times better. It's a simple and easy way to make the edges look smooth.

Here's what the inside looked like. Now I want to go eat some chocolate. Probably going to have to buy my trick-or-treaters some more candy because I don't think what I have is going to last until Halloween!

How Many Did You Eat?

Last weekend I hosted our second annual Lord of the Rings marathon. All 3 extended versions of the movies = 13 hours of awesomeness! I had a lot of fun planning out the menu though we did have to combine a few of the meals for time's sake.

First Breakfast, Second Breakfast, Elevensies
- Sausage
- Bacon
- Hard-boiled Eggs
- Grape tomatoes
- Cheese Cubes

Lunch, Tea
- Finger Sandwiches
- Cherry Scones with clotted cream and jam
- Chicken Curry Balls
- Strawberries & Cream

Dinner, Supper
- Stew
- Croissant rolls
- Cake
- Cream Puffs

And then of course for snack there was Lembas bread! If you don't know what that is, let Legolas here explain it to you:

Lembas bread is typically wrapped in Mallorn leaves. I found a pattern for the leaves and a delicious recipe here. The website suggests making the leaves with craft foam, but I used cardstock.

I bought a pack of different shades of green and I think they turned out really nice. I drew the spines on the leaves with a green highlighter (on both sides so it looked more like an actual leaf.) Then I wrapped the bread up and tied it with some twine. It was a great snack in between meals. And the leftovers made a nice addition to my breakfast the next morning. More pictures of the party and a link to the drinking game we played after the jump!

Part of Your Complete Breakfast

After Christmas 2011 I bought a lot of clearance items from Williams Sonoma. One of which was this awesome set of pancake molds! I don't really like making pancakes because I always burn them and make the batter too thick. True to form, the first 2 rounds of these were pretty crispy. But once I got the hang of it, they were easy to make and beautifully golden-brown!

I cooked them on a griddle because it was the only flat pan my parents had.

This is one of the early pancakes where I took the mold off too soon. Nothing like a melty stocking!

Now I can say I am an expert pancake mold maker!

Wednesday Review: Christmas in the Nick of Time

See what they did there? NICK. heh. This week we're reviewing Christmas in the Nick of Time by Carol Field Dahlstrom. It boasts 750 easy-to make ideas. That sure is a lot!

What I Like:
* I love crafts (duh.) and I love baking, and I really appreciate books that have a hearty dose of both. This book has ideas on ornaments, centerpieces, gifts, cookies, candies, soups, and breads.
* Learning 101. At the end of each chapter, there are different "lessons" on a variety of subjects - like the different kinds of flatware. I like the lesson on soup garnishes.
* The set up of each chapter is pretty different from other books. It starts out with pictures of all the crafts/goods in that chapter and little descriptions. Then all of the instructions are at the end of the chapter. (with more pictures thankfully!). It also includes any patterns/templates you need right along in the instructions instead at the end like most other books.
* It includes some wonderful gift basket ideas. Have a friend who loves to gamble? or fix things? The gifts are all in fun containers and have a nice aesthetic layout.

I haven't actually made anything from this book yet, but it does all look relatively simple. I've realized that Christmas time is really one of the hardest to do crafts/baking because of all the OTHER stuff going on. (work parties, concerts, ugly sweater parties, ornament exchanges, Yule log ceremonies, etc.) I guess that's why they have Christmas in July!

All I Want Is You, Will You Be My Bride

The wedding was AWESOME. I laughed, I cried, I danced like a crazy person with my best friends. It was a fabulous time. The weather ended up being beautiful so we even got to take pictures outside! Susan made the wonderful wedding cake. (3 words: Cookie dough frosting) I made the heart cookies again, this time saying "Mr. and Mrs. Edmond." I dyed the dough blue and green to match the wedding colors.

I also made un-dyed cookies that said "I DO" and decorated them to look like wedding dresses. 

Apparently I didn't take pictures of the baked cookies. So hopefully someone will post them on facebook or the photographers got some. I also made mini cupcakes. My friend sent me a link on how to modify a box cake mix to make it taste better. I used the same modifications for the chocolate and the yellow cake and they sure were delicious!! 

Next I made my favorite frosting (made with almond extract YUM) and dyed half green and half blue. Then I whipped out my newly acquired Disco Dust and WENT TO TOWN.

I also put Disco Dust on the sugar cookies I iced to look like wedding dresses. (Pictures to come soon... hopefully). You really can't have enough sparkle!!

Weddings on the Mind

Two of my best friends - Sara & Scotty - are getting married next week. I cannot WAIT for the wedding! For the reception a bunch of people are pitching in to make desserts. I may have gone a little crazy in the baking section of Michael's last night. Since I have weddings on my mind I thought I'd go back to the first (and only other) wedding I've been in. My friend Meaghan got married in August of 2010. For her bridal shower my sister Chelsea came up to help me decorate sugar cookies.

I bought the Wilton wedding cookie cutter set. I've used them a few times now and decided that the cake and the dress are the easiest to decorate. The bells are the worst - so I don't use them anymore. 

The icing I made for these was just powdered sugar and water mixed together. It doesn't harden like when you use meringue powder, so you can't stack them. For the flowers I added more powdered sugar so it was more of a paste consistency and then I shaped them like play-dough. It's a little tedious decorating them, but if you have somebody to help can be a lot of fun! 

Mardi Gras

Tomorrow is Mardi Gras! I usually miss this holiday - but I marked it on the calendar early this year so I actually made plans - happy hour followed by the Clarendon Mardi Gras Parade! Luckily I've been in a yellow phase recently so I'll wear one of my many yellow outfits with some purple and green beads.  

If I wasn't drowning in the calories I consumed from last week's Valentine's treats, then I would definitely be making this 20 minute King Cake for tomorrow. It looks beautiful and who doesn't love cooking little baby figurines into a cake? Hopefully next year Mardi Gras and Valentine's day won't be so close together.

BABIES!

This has been a full week of baking! Last night we had a surprise baby shower for one of the girls in my bible study. It was a blast and fun to see the mom-to-be so surprised! My sister posted the idea of cupcakes that look like babies on my fb wall a few weeks ago and I thought this would be a perfect time to try them out. They were so easy to make!

I dyed butter cream frosting with Wilton's Creamy Peach. After frosting the cupcakes, I stuck pacifiers on top.

Next I drew on faces with black icing.

This week Michael's has a 50% off one item coupon so I used it to buy a 3-in-1 cake caddy that has a cupcake tray. SCORE! Whenever I look at the picture it makes me think of this commercial:

Baking Hearts

I had planned on leisurely baking my valentine's treats this weekend but the weekend got away from me. Instead of baking I saw 2 movies (The Grey and The Vow - the latter I enjoyed much more but also cried a lot more), attended a Valentine's dessert concert, a jewelry party, and ate at PF Changs where my fortune was looking pretty good:

Then it looked less good when my brother got the same one. LAME.

Anyways, it was a fun weekend but my procrastination led to me baking like a mad woman last night. I rushed home from work and started on the whoopie pies. The pan came with recipes for both chocolate and vanilla cake. I made the chocolate first… they did not turn out so well.

This was the first time I'd ever made cake from scratch. The recipe says to stir it until it is just mixed, but I don't think I stirred it enough. The batter was difficult to get into the whoopie molds and I ended up with a lot of ugly peaks in my cakes.

Since I only have 1 whoopie pie pan I had to bake it in two batches. I stirred the batter more before the second batch and they turned out much better. I ended up cutting the top half of the cakes so the ugly side was in the middle. The filling was very easy to make, a little sticky to fill - but I just used the back of a spoon to smooth out the sides. Then I decorated with sprinkles!!

Learning from my mistakes, the vanilla cakes turned out much better. I dyed it pink (yay!) and made sure to mix the batter well.

The batter smoothed out much better for these.

mmmm. Woopie Pie filling.

Next I moved on to the Pie Pops. I love the pre-rolled pie crust Pillsbury makes. It's just so easy to use! One circle made 7 hearts. I placed them on the cookie sheet, placed a rod on top and some canned cherry pie filling. Four cherries were a little too much - the juice squeezed out the sides, so I went down to 3 cherries per pop. 

Using the end of one of the rods, I pressed the edges together. I brushed on some egg whites and baked them. At this point it was close to midnight, so I only made 7. I wanted to get more pictures of the step-by-step process, but my phone had died and of course I left the charger at work. I didn't mind too much because I still have my Sony Cyber-shot camera - but when I turned it on this is what I saw:

Looks like it's time for a new camera!!

I'll still have to play around with the pie pops - 4 of the 7 turned out really well. The rod either fell out or broke through the crust on the other 3. But broken or whole, they all tasted pretty good!

Happy Valentine's Day!!