I have been taking cake decorating classes for a couple of months now. Let me first say, it is so much fun - I absolutely love it! With that being said, let me also say this means I am up to my ears in frosting. I always try to find some use for my cakes - I don't want them in our house! So my co-workers may have gained some weight recently :-)
When a recent birthday arrived for a member of our family, I jumped all over the opportunity to bake and decorate their birthday cake.
Let me describe the cake to you first ( you may want to close your eyes here) : 4 layers of homemade, rich, moist chocolate cake, separated by a melt-in-your mouth chocolate frosting (also homemade). Okay, you can open your eyes now and wipe the drool off your chin! But seriously, it was delicious. It reminded me of a molten chocolate lava cake...yum! Now staying true to my style, I was up late the night before baking the cake and making the frosting (Maybe 1 or so...not too bad :-) )
The next day, I thought that I would have enough time to frost and decorate the cake during my daughter's nap and have the cake ready for the party that evening. As you can see by the photos, I did have the cake set, but literally only with about 5 minutes to spare. (This was a little source of tension between my husband and I). I guess what happened is that I had so many things that I wanted to do and incorporate into the cake. I guess some people would call that "unrealistic expectations". I'm an overachiever, what can I say? But, as you can see I was able to include several different techniques that I have learned : the rose, the swirl flower, shell and star borders. I am the most proud of the roses- a lot goes in to those babies! Each petal is made by hand!!!
So despite my late night and running around like a chicken with my head cut off the day of the party, I would call this a success. It all worked out- the cake made it on time and the birthday girl was happy. I mean maybe I should try to start my projects a little bit more in advance, but I worry....maybe I don't work as well if I am not under pressure!!! But, maybe I should try- atleast for my husband's sake :-)
I am hoping to take a cake decorating class in the near future - but until then you'll have to settle for these bite size treats! The ones with sprinkles are chocolate cake truffles and then I made peanut butter truffles dipped in chocolate then rolled in crushed peanuts and peanut butter truffles dipped in milk chocolate and drizzled with white chocolate. I really could have you used you here this weekend Kelly!! :-)
What a perfect excuse to do a ton of baking, a bake sale! My husband Josh has one coming up at his work this week and I of course jumped at the chance to make lots of sweets so I could eat them and then get rid of them!!! Naturally not wanting to go overboard I decided to make chocolate chip toffee cookies (yes they are as good as they sound), peanut butter truffles, chocolate cake truffles and oatmeal cherry scones with lemon icing... that's not too much right????? If Kelly were here we'd be making twice as much! Okay, so the bake sale is tomorrow - so far I have completed the cookies and the truffles. Here are some pictures of the cookies...I know you want some!!! I will upload the truffle pics in a separate posting. Oh yeah - and here you can see my attempt at cursive piping with white chocolate - and just so you know - the heart stands for sisterly love people - Kelly and I are both happily married - to men! :-)
When a recent birthday arrived for a member of our family, I jumped all over the opportunity to bake and decorate their birthday cake.
Finally I decided I had watched enough Food Network Cake Challenges that I was ready to play with this fondant stuff on my own. I decided that I wanted to decorate a cake with
fondant for my son's first birthday party. So of course I needed to make at least one before the party to practice. My practice cake was my twin sister's (Sara) 30th Birthday cake. Believe me - it was FAR from perfect! Lot's of unevenness, bumps, cracks and just plain imperfections. In fact - the pictures look better than the actual cake did. But most importantly - it was FUN!! I have decided that fondant is basically play-doh for adults, except it is sweet! So about a month later - with Kelly by my side I tackled my son's birthday cake. It came out better than I expected, I definitely owe this to Kelly's presence and moral support in the kitchen at the time. Of course - one of the things I was most proud of was the fact that I had made both cakes from scratch. My sister's cake was a white cake with raspberry buttercream and my son's cake was a yellow cake with strawberry buttercream! Both were quite yummy if I do say so myself! Of course I forgot to mention the time factor involved in both of these cakes.. Sara's I started at around 8pm - so of course in keeping with the theme of this blog I finished it close to midnight! The Curious George cake however I started at 9am - and as a result finished it around 12:30pm - about 30minutes before the party began!!! Whew, that was a close one!! Alright enough about me what you really need to see is the first fondant covered cake that Kelly made - AWESOME!! A Mickey Mouse cake for her daughter's first birthday party!! Okay Kelly - the ball is in your court now - Let's see the cake and hear all the fun and gory details!!!
