Baking fun : Stormtrooper Cake

I will blog more about this when I regain enough energy.

Baking and Wedding Update : SK Reception Cake

Red velvet with cream cheese filling covered with fondant.

We decided to host a pot-luck dinner for friends out here in Moose Jaw so we could celebrate part of our wedding with them. It was a great night and it was a great excuse for friends to drive a "couple" hours for a weekend visit! :) I thought it was the perfect opportunity to make my own wedding cake. 

This cake was absolutely delicious. It was my first attempt at red velvet cake and I have to admit it was a lot easier than anticipated. The ingredients were pretty simple too so that helped. I had planned a whole morning to do it but what ended up taking the most of my time was the decorating.

The filling was delicious. I did have a small problem with it being too soft so next time I think I will prepare it a day in advance and leave it in the refrigerator overnight. 

For the decorating, I used store bought fondant because it's just so much easier and much much quicker. I used basic cutting tools and just gave 'er.

I wouldn't use butter cream with this type of cake as I didn't feel the red velvet was very flavorful - you need something with a little kick. However, I'd been looking for a good cream cheese filling recipe for some carrot cake and I think I found the perfect one. Stay tuned... ;)
 
PS: I cannot take the credit for the little lemon tartelettes. My friend Julie made them - I suggested she bring a desert in case anyone didn't like red velvet cake. They were absolutely amazing and I will definitely be making some as soon as she sends me her recipe. :)

PPS: Please forgive the very poor quality of the first picture. I totally forgot to take a picture of it before we cut the cake and I snapped this one to send in a quick email to Maggie - thank goodness!

Baking Fun - Baby Shower Duckies

Baby Shower Lemon Goodness!

I made this three layer checker board cake with lemon and vanilla cake mixes. I normally don't like to use boxes of cake mix but considering the time restraints, I didn't have much of a choice. The mom-to-be was aware so it made me feel a bit better about it. :)

I used the Wilton cake pans to create the checker board effect. I wasn't able to get  a photo of a slice of the cake because I didn't attend the shower but here's a shot of one of the layers. The process was quite messy and hard to figure out because I didn't have a clear plan or a single clue what I was doing.

I'm glad I used some more subtle colors because the layers of color didn't quite line up. Next time, I'll be more prepared and will attempt a more contrasting combo like vanilla and chocolate or something like that. I'd recommend to give this a try a couple times to get the hang of it before going all color-crazy.

I used some vanilla icing and some basic fondant for the decorating. Not much fanciness there. I don't have a board to measure my fondant and to anyone attempting to use fondant, I'd highly recommend buying one. It's the next thing on my list for sure. because this cake had three layers, it took me quite a few tries before I could get it the right size and thickness. The sided ended up being a bit chunky because of that but I was able to cover it up with some duckies all around. I added some blue buttercream icing for the "waves" and added some little silver candy for detail and a nice finish.

I had some left over cake mix so I mixed in some green coloring into the white vanilla batter and made some marbled mini cupcakes. I decorated them with buttercream icing in yellow and blue topped off with some cute candy. They looked awesome!

Mom and Dad to be were thrilled with how everything turned out and I got a prompt update that everything was all gone. Their guests loved the cake and cupcakes and the baby shower was a success!

Congrats to Sarah and Travis and I wish them all the best as they prepare to welcome their little bundle of joy into the world. :)

Baking Fun - Tinkerbell Cake Pan

I'm not particularly fond of Tinkerbell but I got a special request for a friend's birthday. I'm very pleased with the turn out.

Tinkerbell Wilton Cake Pan

My advice : Save up a whole week's worth of patience before attempting your very first Wilton Cake Pan.

The cake was a simple vanilla cake. They wanted a basic plain vanilla cake so I'm not going to lie, with all the effort I put into the icing and decoration, this cake came straight from a box. (Nick Ross, take you mind out of the gutter!) The only kind of cake I wouldn't recommend for this is the "only add water" kind. I find those to go dry and not have a lot of "lift" to them. The ones that need eggs and/or oil seem to stay moist a bit longer and have a bit more flavor to them. Sure, more calories but with all the icing we're going to throw on there... does it really matter?!

I fallowed the method indicated on the Wilton website. I had a hard time figuring out the eyes and they ended up being too thick so I had to take some of the white out in order to put in the blue and the black. If you're doing eyes or lips, spread out the icing in thin layers but thick enough because you don't want any transparency. I had a hard time centering the eyes but trial and error works best. I used to black jellybeans to help me get it right and center everything before adding the icing. I figured they'd be easier to move around and remove than scraping off icing and starting over again.

I wanted to add some extra color so I used some left over Easter candy and decorated the cake with little flowers and confetti.

Otherwise it was a pretty simple but tedious process.

Baking Fun - Applesauce Cake

We made this cake last weekend to compliment our Easter feast!

Applesauce Cake

This cake was absolutely amazing. It was perfect for Easter because it was a nice change from all the chocolate we'd been stuffing down our throats over the weekend but it was still sweet and kinda special.

I used this recipe and I really don't think I'd change anything about it. The cake does turn out to be quite huge but in this case, I don't think the "less is more" rule applies. You could always make 2 cakes by dividing the batter in 4 different pans, making them thinner and serving more people.

The filling was fabulous too and I really liked not having to worry about icing the cake. Flop whipped cream, stack, flop whipped cream, stack, done.

The applesauce kept the cake moist and it was almost like a light-spice-cake taste. We had left overs for days and they kept really well in the fridge. The whipped cream keeps it cool so it's a good alternative if you get a craving for spice cake in July.

Overall, very happy with the turn out, easy enough and feeds a small country.

Baking Fun - Easter Bunny Cuppy Cakes

I had to contain myself yesterday not to post these on Facebook in case Maggie saw them before she left Winnipeg... here's hoping she's already on the road. :)

Easter Bunny Cuppy Cakes

For the actual cupcakes, I used a pre-made plain vanilla cupcake mix and just tossed in a bit of extra vanilla flavor in them. I like to use a more subtle cake flavor when the entire focus is on the icing as to not over do it - this worked very well. Also, instead of using food coloring, I added chocolate to the icing to make the brown ones so they have a slightly different taste than the green ones.

I took the design and idea from this book. Hello Cupcake is just wonderful because it makes things easy, uses real words and doesn't tell you you have to buy this and that and the other thing in order to accomplish this.

For the Rabbit Butts, I used chocolate icing and covered that in Oreo crumbs. I spent hours and hours looking for circus peanuts in this blessed town to no avail - so I settled to cutting the ends off marshmallows to make the feet. I used a black jelly bean, as shown in the book, for the large foot-pad but I recommend using either a chocolate covered peanut or raisin. The taste of the licorice jelly bean does not go very well with the rest so people will just pick them off. I couldn't find any chocolate covered sunflower seeds so I used some extra chocolate icing for the toes. I stuck everything on with a bit more icing - be careful when you add the Oreo crumbs to leave a bit of space for the sticking of the parts. Icing does not stick well to crummy surfaces - the feet will just fall off. Overall, very satisfied with how they turned out.

For the Green Grass ones, I simply piped some little stars to create the grass and stuck some mini-eggs, small candy flowers and some colorful sprinkles to give it a bit of color and make it look all Eastery and nice.

I used in total about 2 and a half cups of butter cream icing for the whole thing. Colored a bit more than half - so about 1 cup and a half - in green using paste coloring. That made about 30 cupcakes. I also put different amounts of batter in some of the cups as to give it a bit of variety and depth and it worked out wonderfully.

Can't wait to eat them!! :) Happy Easter baking!

Baking fun - Birthday cake for my favorite Geek!

... by favorite geek, I mean Js - not you, Nick. His birthday was back in September so forgive me once again if it's a bit outdated!

Geeky Goodness - Vanilla, Raspberry and Skor pieces

So the icing wasn't quite as I wanted it to be but I had about 2 hours to come up with something that would be easy to execute, would look good on a 9in round cake and didn't require too many colors. Behold, the Green Lantern birthday cake!

I used my grand-pa's plain white cake recipe as a base and threw in about half a bag of frozen raspberries. Mixed those in and poured the batter in two 9in round cake pans. When stacking time came around, I leveled the bottom cake and covered it with raspberry jam *mmm* and then covered that with Skor pieces. The plain white cake worked out very well with the uber-sweet filling and the raspberries added a bit of extra delicious. Then I slapped the second layer on top and went on with the icing.

I didn't have a pattern, mold or anything like that so I just had to wing it. I started by covering the entire thing with white icing then colored everything I had left in green. I used the handle of a long wooden spoon to press a straight line into the white icing along 2 of the sides where I wanted the 2 bars to be. Then I found a bowl that would fit well between the 2 lines and pressed that to the white icing lightly to create a round mark. I used those lines to follow along and create the Green Lantern logo - who needs a mold!!

I piped and piped away at trying to make a perfect circle and eventually had to give up as guests were arriving and I had to put things away. Js was very happy with the end result so it was all well worth it! :)

Baking Fun - Hallowe'en Cake

I said I'd back track and blog about my past-cake'strordinaire baking, here's my first attempt at it so sorry if it's a bit outdated! :)

Chocolate and Pumpkin Hallowe'en Cake

I made this cake using this recipe and it was to die for! The pumpkin kept the cake super moist and really brought out the chocolate flavor.

The icing wasn't as wonderful as I had hoped but it still tasted great! It took me an INSANE amount of food coloring to get it this light orange color so I think the picture on the website is a lie. It did get a bit darker when it set but not by much. Also, the icing was very soft and wouldn't be good for decorations or any other form of fancyness. Worked wonderfully as a base though and the taste was very well balanced with the cake filling. I wouldn't ice this cake with butter cream icing unless I wanted to go into a sugar coma.

The glaze totally bombed but I was able to make it look droopy with some careful pouring and a lot of patience. I used little decorative skulls, gummy worms and some red gel for some festive decor. I shaved some chocolate and sprinkled that around the cake and topped it all with a real mini-pumpkin.

Wasn't the easiest cake I've ever baked but most definitely one of the tastiest!!