Sam & Greg's Engagement

April 2010

My good friend, Nicki, was going to a birthday brunch for her friend, Sam. Sam’s boyfriend was planning to surprise her by proposing at the brunch! The plan was to top some cupcakes with fake diamond rings – all except Sam’s which would be topped with her real engagement ring. Nicki asked me if I could make the cupcakes and I was happy to!

Half of the cupcakes were carrot cake with cream cheese icing, tinted green. The carrot cake recipe I used is one that I had used before for Nicki’s Christmas cake. I halved the recipe this time and ended up with 12 cupcakes. For the rest of the cupcakes, they requested red velvet cake. I had not ever made red velvet cake from scratch before so I needed to find a good recipe. I posted a request for a recipe on The Nest and my fellow Nestie, Mary, highly recommended this recipe. I only needed about 6 cupcakes, so I made only a third of the recipe (and I got 10 cupcakes). I was very pleased with this recipe – the red velvet cake was delicious!

I made up a double batch of my go-to cream cheese icing recipe and tinted half of it with Leaf Green color and half with Lemon Yellow color and voila – surprise engagement cupcakes 🙂

Jen's Bridal Shower

March 2010

Jen is my future sister-in-law. She is marrying my husband’s brother at the end of April! She was also a bridesmaid in my wedding and I am a bridesmaid in hers, so I was very excited to throw her a shower (with my mother-in-law). It was the first shower I have given and I thought we all had a great time. And naturally, I volunteered to make the cake!

Jen said she wanted chocolate, but for some reason I didn’t want to do chocolate icing. For one thing, her wedding cake will be chocolate icing, and I wanted to do something different, and for another, I was thinking “light, springy” so I wanted to do something else. After much contemplation, I finally made the decision the week of the shower to go with chocolate cake, cream cheese icing, and chocolate cream cheese filling. I would make the decorations with fondant.

I mixed up 3 colors of Wilton’s fondant using Wilton’s colors: blue (Royal Blue and a touch of Black), yellow (a touch of Lemon Yellow), and green (Leaf Green and a touch of Black). I used a tulip cutter and alphabet cutters to make the flowers and the letters. I used a pizza cutter for the flower stems. I’ve decided I love using fondant for decorations. It’s surprisingly easy to work with and I think it looks very nice.

I made 2 10″ round chocolate cakes with this recipe. This is my go-to chocolate cake recipe – it is moist, chocolatey, and delicious! I also made a double batch of cream cheese icing and tinted it light blue. I used Royal Blue color, but since the icing itself was slightly yellow-ish due to the butter and vanilla, it came out a little on the green side. And finally, I made a 3/4 batch (I know, odd) of cream cheese icing and added some cocoa powder. This was the filling.

I filled and iced the cake using my new offset spatula. Have I raved about this yet? It’s amazing how that tiny little bend in the spatula can make icing SO much easier!! I’ve used it on my past couple of cakes. Anyway, I finished the icing with a bead border. I arranged the fondant letters to spell “Congratulations Jen”. And I arranged the tulips into a bouquet.

I was really pleased with the way this cake turned out. And on the stress scale, it came in very low!! And it was well received at the shower which is the important part 🙂

A Daddy Baby Shower

March 2010

Two of my male coworkers have babies on the way this month and next, so we threw the dads-to-be a surprise baby shower! I thought this was very cool of my office because dads don’t often get a shower, and really everyone deserves cake 🙂

There’s nothing too elaborate about this particular cake. I made it mid-week, so I didn’t have a lot of time, but it came out well. I used 2 boxes of Funfetti cake mix and made 2 9×13 sheet cakes and stacked them. The icing is Wilton’s buttercream. I mixed up some pink and blue using Wilton’s colors (pastels are so much easier and faster to make than brights!!).

PS: Sorry for the crappy picture. The lighting in my kitchen is not so good at 11pm!

Valentine's Day came early this year…

February 2010

On February 6, 2010, we all made it through the “snOMG” event of our lifetime – the Blizzard of 2010. We got 28″ inches here at my house and it was a very good excuse to stay inside and do some baking! So since Valentine’s Day is next weekend, I decided to go ahead with these little treats a week early 🙂

So far I have tried only one chocolate cake recipe from scratch and it was kind of “meh” – not too chocolatey. So I Googled and came up with this recipe from Hershey’s. A batch of cake mix always makes far more mini cupcakes than I am expecting, so I ended up quitting after 4 dozen, but I probably could have gotten another dozen out of it.

Next, I was going to experiment with homemade marshmallow fondant. I have never eaten, worked with, or made fondant of any variety before and I was definitely excited to try! I found this recipe from Wilton for rolled marshmallow fondant and followed some instructions to make a smaller batch. I found it very easy to make and work with. Once I was done kneading, I divided it into 2 parts and used Wilton’s Red-Red color to tint one part pink and one part red. This is probably the first time I tinted something red and had it actually come out RED! I wrapped each part in plastic wrap and put them in a ziplock bag until the next day.

When I was ready to work with the fondant again, I popped it in the microwave for about 7 seconds to soften it up again. I kneaded it and rolled it out and cut out some hearts with a tiny heart cookie cutter. I kept the little hearts in between 2 sheets of plastic wrap overnight and they hardened a bit, but they weren’t brittle.

This morning I made up some vanilla buttercream icing following a basic recipe from Domino (if you buy the 1lb box, the recipe is on the box, but I bought the store-brand 2lb bags, so I had to look up the recipe here). This is the recipe my mom has always used. Last May when I made my first try at piping icing, I made this recipe and it did not hold up to piping and it melted. I blamed the icing, and switched to a shortening/butter recipe after that. But I have since learned that it really wasn’t the icing’s fault afterall – I had added too much milk and made it too thin and that’s why it didn’t hold up! So today, with many more months of experience under my belt, I gave the recipe another go and was able to identify the right piping consistency. And I’m so glad I did, because I think this all-butter recipe has a better taste than when shortening is used.

As an experiment, I also made up some of my usual cream cheese icing because I wanted to see how it tasted with chocolate cake. The verdict is not in on that yet. Also, I split the cream cheese icing into two batches and added some cocoa powder to make chocolate cream cheese icing. The combination sounded a little weird, but I wondered how it tasted. My husband thought is was really good, and I have to agree! I will add this to my recipe book.

Halloween Cupcakes

October 2009

The Jack-O-Lantern cupcakes are chocolate cake (box mix, with a packet of pudding added). The icing is Wilton’s buttercream and I used the Wilton gel colors to make the orange and green. This was the first time I had used a leaf tip – I think I need more practice! For the “face” I used a can of pre-made frosting and mixed in 1/2 tsp (plus a tiny bit more) of black liquid food coloring.

The Spider Web cupcakes are the same chocolate cake as above, and the same icing recipe, only tinted purple. The spider webs are made of melted white chocolate chips. I melted them in the microwave and then piped it over an outline of a spider web. Then chilled it for 10 minutes in the fridge. (I discovered when I tried to “practice” this with some semi-sweet chocolate chips the day before that this does not work with regular chocolate, only white! Regular will melt again when taken out of the fridge.)

Lemon Raspberry Cake

October 2009

I made a yellow cake from scratch, but I replaced the vanilla extract with lemon extract. I think this will be my go-to yellow cake recipe. It is delicious! I used raspberry jam as the filling. It worked pretty well, but it was slippery, so the top layer was slipping while I was icing it and some of the raspberry leaked out the sides. The icing is also from scratch – lemon buttercream. I tinted some icing yellow (Wilton gel) for the bead border. I did a checkerboard pattern on the top and filled in every other square with the raspberry jam.

Cinnamon Spice Cupcakes

September 2009

The cake for these was a spice cake (box mix) and I added a packet of vanilla pudding mix to the batter to make the cake more moist. The icing is cream cheese icing (from scratch) that I tinted orange (Wilton gel). I sprinkled cinnamon on top!

Chocolate Cake with Almond Buttercream

September 2009

This was my first chocolate cake from scratch. It was fine, but not very chocolatey. I think I’ll try a different recipe next time. The icing was buttercream, but I replaced the vanilla extract with almond extract. It was fine, but very sweet. I think I’m going to have to branch out from American buttercream soon. This was also my first bead border, and textured sides. I tinted the icing two shades of light brown using Wilton’s coloring gels.

4th of July Cake

July 2009

This was a combination of red velvet cake (box mix) and white cake (box mix – dyed blue). The pink icing was supposed to be red, but I couldn’t get it dark enough.  I used a gel coloring (McCormick, I think). The stars I cut out of cake and covered in a blue glaze icing (powdered sugar, water, blue coloring). I also tried to pipe a shell border on the cake, but the icing wasn’t thin enough. So this cake was a FAIL from a decorating standpoint, but it tasted fine.

Guitar Hero Cake

August 2008

This was my first attempt at “carving” cake into a shape and also my first attempt at black icing. I printed out a picture of the guitar, cut it out and laid it on top of the cake and cut around it. For the black icing, I used liquid black food coloring mixed into a can of store-bought frosting. Jen helped with the construction! Oh and that white blob at the top is just extra cake we had and we did a bad job of cutting it into a starburst-type shape.