Category Archives: Cakes

It’s a Birthday!

13 Wednesday Oct 2010

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Which means…CAKE!

Today is my friend & co-worker’s b-day today. So of course I used it as an excuse for cake!

I’ve been wanting to try a peanut butter cake, so a few days ago, I made an almond cake & cupcakes and a peanut butter cake and cupcakes. I wasn’t sure how the PB would taste overall, but the batter was good. ;-) I was planning to bring Brenda the almond until I found out she didn’t like almond cake, so the PB it was.

The Icing Adventure

I didn’t really feel like making buttercream (mainly b/c I’m lazy and hate clean-up), so I decided to try a homemade whipped cream for the icing. I stopped by Wal-mart on my way home from the theatre classes I teach on Tuesdays so I could grab some whipping cream and various chocolate chips. (And there’s another story: the time a creepy man hit on me by asking me if I liked cheese.)

And then the adventure began. I made my whipped cream, which was delicious, and then added some melted milk chocolate. Also delicious. Then I thought I’d try to make some ganache for filler (white chocolate) and drizzle (milk chocolate).

Unfortunately, I did not actually even look at the measurements in the recipe, so the filling was a bit grainy and runny. It still tasted good (and is my favorite part of the PB cake), but I needed to put a solid wall of icing around the edges and it still ran over a bit.

The drizzled ganache turned out well. I didn’t like the flavor overall, but on the cake it was yummy. Added some chopped up reese’s cups, and there you go. All done.

I  just brought in some of the almond cupcakes and used store-bought caramel icing to top them. (Which I heard was amazing; haven’t tried mine yet.)

And now… PICTURES:

of course I forgot to take a pic before I cut it…

Chocolate goodbyes…

28 Wednesday Jul 2010

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Yesterday was our good-bye lunch for one of our staff, and I was asked to make the cake.

I went for a simple design. I definitely need to work on writing. I redid it over and over until I decided that it would have to work.

I did enjoy the color contrast in the black (actually still brown) and white. I kinda wish I coulda left it entirely plain after the shell borders.

Contrast-y shells.

If red wasn't so hard, I would have used that instead of blue.

Autumn in May

25 Tuesday May 2010

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Last night was the final night of the Cake Decorating class number 1. We spent the whole class working on roses as the centerpiece for our cake, so we had to bring in a cake that was complete and ready for the centerpiece.

I had a really hard time deciding what I was going to do with the cake. I wanted to use chocolate icing, possibly to make black, and or red icing, though it’s a hard color to make with the taste still edible.

I looked at so many cakes photos last week, and I still couldn’t decide on colors or design.

I ended up doodling cake panels* in small group class** and came up with a design I liked.

* I made a diamond-shaped cake, so I was thinking of the sides as identical panels.

** I promise I was paying attention. I focus better when doodling. And I apparently come up with better cake designs that way. I did my Wonderland cake sketch during a sermon on the back of my notes.

Picture time!

panel sketches

Pre-roses Cake

with roses

Things I learned:
Cake Boss/Duff brand buttercream icings are not the same consistency as homemade/wilton brand. I had to add a TON of sugar to thicken it.

Maybe it was because I carved the diamond down from a larger size on one layer, but I had an AWFUL time with crumbs. I don’t think I’m crumb coating correctly.

I do like multiple colors in one bag.  I love the colors my roses turned. Yellow with a bit of red.

Overall design, I think this was better without the roses, or with much smaller ones.