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!

Ghosts in the Graveyard - Dessert Style

The graveyard cake is one of my favorite things to make every Halloween. Not only is it really easy to put together, it's delicious and ADORABLE. The recipe is pretty straight forward, only 3 ingredients - chocolate pudding, cool whip, and Oreos. I substitute a chocolate cookie with no cream in the middle for the Oreos (basically whatever I can find at the grocery store) because I find the cream makes the crumbs harder to work with. The past few years I've also started replacing the cool whip ghosts with peeps because they stand up longer and just look better.

You can see this year the gel didn't really work in my favor to write "RIP" on the cookies. Waaa waaaaaaaaaaaa. I vary what I put in the "dirt" depending on what I'm able to find that year - gummy worms, candy corns, gummy pumpkins, etc. There's so many different things you can do - a great chance to get creative!

Memorial Day Treats Part 2: Patriotic Cake!

In this second installment of Memorial Day treats, I will show you the fun cupcakes/cake I made. First: THE CUPCAKES!

I found these fun patriotic cupcake papers in the recesses of my cupboard. I think I bought them at Walmart a few years ago for the 4th of July. WIN!

Next I divided the batter into 3 bowls and dyed one red and one blue. Then similar to the tie-dye cupcakes I made, I spooned each color into the papers - started with blue on the bottom, then white, then red.

I used a 1 tablespoon scoop to evenly add the batter. Though I did run into the problem of not having enough of each color. I need to learn how to divide the batter more evenly. Unlike the tie-dye cupcakes, I didn't mix the colors around once in the papers.

I used white frosting and topped with red, white, and blue star-shaped sprinkles.

Next I moved on to the Flag Cake. I saw this cake on a website a few years ago and have never had the chance to make it. I learned a lot making this cake.

Lesson #1: Evenly divide batter. I made white cake batter, poured what I thought was half into one 9in pan then dyed the other half red. Unfortunately I ended up with more of a 1/3 white, 2/3 red ratio.

Not sure if you can really tell from this picture, but the red cake is WAY taller than the white cake. I then repeated the process but left half white and dyed the other half blue. I did better with the second batch evening out the batter, but still not perfect.

Lesson #2: Use a cake leveler. I just used a knife to cut my cakes in half horizontally. They were all kinds of uneven. It looks like Betsy Ross may have been drinking a little when she made this flag.

You create the flag effect by placing half a white layer, then half a red. Next you take the whole blue cake and another half red/white combo and cut a circle out of the middle. You use the outer blue circle and the inner red/white circle when you're putting the cake together. BONUS: lots of scrap cake - Cook's Treat!

Here is a view from the top. I used copious amounts of white frosting to make up for how uneven the cake was. Then I decorated them the same way as I had the cupcakes.

Lesson #3: MORE ICING! I didn't ice between the top red and white layer and they didn't adhere as well as I would have liked.

Lesson #4: Add a crap ton of dye. Not only did Betsy Ross drink too much and sew this flag all crooked. She also passed out and left it in the sun. I hope she's proud of her pastel flag.

Mmmmmm. Tastes like freedom. 

I'm Up For Hire!

I had my VERY FIRST commission last week! My boss's daughter is obsessed with the Hunger Games (kid after my own heart!) so she asked if I'd make her a cake just like I did at my Hunger Games Party. I used a Wilton roll and cut mat to roll out the fondant this time. It didn't really work too well - the fondant stuck to the mat so when I finally pried it off it was a bit wrinkly. Next time - powdered sugar! I also didn't cover the edges too well - luckily thats nothing that can't be fixed with a crap ton of fondant leaves! I just put a lot more around the edge to cover up all the gaffes.

Here is the cake I made for the birthday with my first cake below it for comparison.

The bird is positioned a little differently. I think I made him too big this time around - had to squeeze the letters around him. But luckily my boss didn't notice and she said her daughter loved it. Sorry there's no picture of the jungle I put around the edge. Next time. 

Cake and Papes.

My little brother turned 20 years old last week - its weird. My mom made him a tie-dye cake upon request. Isn't it puuuuurty? This past weekend I went to celebrate my friend's 30th birthday in NYC with 14 other people. It was a blast. We stayed at the Hilton in Times Square. The weather could not have been more perfect. I got to walk around Central Park and visit the Belvedere Castle.

Saturday night we went to a piano bar called Don't Tell Mama. It was awesome - I highly recommend it if you're in the city. Then we moved our party to another bar that was celebrity central.

Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs were having drinks there, a few tables down was Dan Fogler, and then about an hour after we got there, John Lithgow walked by. CRAZINESS. Sunday I went to go see Newsies.

SO GOOD. I had to refrain from standing up and singing at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I wish I were a boy for the sole purpose of being able to be a newsie. It was a fabulous production. SEIZE THE DAY!

Its Fleece Was White As Snow - More Easter Treats!

To keep the theme going with cute animal shaped desserts and Easter - I invited my wonderful friend Virginia to guest blog today! 

Happy Easter!  As my high school religion teacher used to remind us, Easter is a season and not just a day - so I can still say that.  And I can still tell you about what my family did for dinner on the big day …

I heard a lot of people talk about very traditional dinners this year - many parishioners at my church missed the Obama family attending the 11 a.m. service this year because, like us, they went to the 9 a.m. in order to have more time to get various meats into the oven.  (In our absence, the First Family was as well-dressed as always.)  Some people talked about making ham.  I’ve never had ham for Easter, as far as I can remember, because the vast majority of special occasions are celebrated in my family with lamb, and - Easter being a particularly appropriate time for it - last weekend was no exception.

My mother’s maiden name is Lamb - and so lambs have always figured prominently in our lives.  My grandma’s maiden name, Wight, made her married name even cuter when said out loud.  She had a lot of lamb-related tchotchkes around, including a framed picture of a wooly lamb which assured the viewer: “Ewe’s not fat - ewe’s fluffy.”

She also made lamb cakes with a special cast-iron mold - kind of like this one:

Apparently my sister and I had these cakes for our first birthdays, though there was sometimes a problem with keeping the head and facial features in place - I’m told that toothpicks were involved.  The mold we used this time didn’t give us this problem (my aunt has just found the old one - so we’ll see if we can find success with that one in the future).

Grandma also dyed coconut green to be the grass the lamb was lying on … we didn’t go that far, but we did make him nice and fluffy.  First, my mom made the cake, using a  Duncan Hines white cake mix.  It was really good - she made mini-lambs with smaller molds using the extra batter, and we sampled it the day before.  It tasted like angel food cake but not as insubstantial.  Then my dad made some “Seven Minute White Icing” from The Joy of Cooking, and iced the lamb.  Finally, I took over with the coconut.  It was not easy to secure coconut onto all the vertical surfaces of this cake.  I found I had more success when I focused and had the courage of my convictions.

You can use part of a maraschino cherry, if you like, for the nose.  We used raisins for the eyes, and borrowed two red jelly beans - really - from a neighbor, in order to give ourselves more than one shot at creating the nose.  I also think a pink jelly bean would be cute.

Earlier in the day, I had lived out a very recent dream and made a Sweet Potato and Roasted Peep Casserole.  I found the recipe online through a Facebook friend earlier that week, but didn’t initially think I’d actually go through with it.  But I’m glad I did - it was delicious.

This was the picture from the website:

We picked up the yams (they’re interchangeable, right?) and Peeps on the way back from church that day, so it’s possible we were not availed of the most complete smorgasbord of Peep options possible.  A Safeway employee had to help me find the only Peeps left, and it looked like the only options available were small pink chicks or small yellow chicks, so I took two packages of the yellow ones.  They were not big enough to make a nice complete ring like the website’s picture - so I spaced them out evenly when I put the casserole back in the oven to roast them.  They got bigger, but they really got bigger when we put them in right before dinner to warm up.  They kind of melded together at that point into an almost full ring, and while that may not be the ideal way to do it, it meant more Peepy goodness for our guests to enjoy.

I would definitely make the casserole again - the crispy yellow sugar is a nice addition to the sweet potato casserole experience.

So next year, if you’re going to put marshmallows on your sweet pototoes or yams, why not go the extra step and make them bunny- or chick-shaped, sugar-encrusted marshmallows?  And if you’re going with lamb, why not have two?  Until then, happy Easter!

Baby Shower Cakes!

This past Saturday was my friend Kim's son's 2^nd birthday. This week we'll look back at his baby shower! (I can't believe that was TWO YEARS ago!!)  I was expecting 20-30 people for the shower so I made 2 cakes. I bought the Wilton stork and the baby carriage cake pans. (LOVE THEM)

I thought it'd be a pain to decorate, but it was fun - almost like a color by number. I wasn't too creative with the colors - just copied the picture that came with the pans.

Unfortunately we had a blizzard the day of the shower so only 7 people ended up coming. Luckily I love cake so had no problem eating all the left over! 

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!!