FIRST BIG Fondant Cake!

I made this cake for a friend's baby shower... it was my first BIG fondant cake.  2 tiers - 3 cakes mixes, 2 different buttercream fillings, homemade fondant and store-bought fondant all to make this beaut:

The top layer is yellow cake with a vanilla chocolate chip buttercream filling:

• 1 pound bag of powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
• 2 sticks butter, cut into ½ inch slices
• 1/2 cup shortening
• One package vanilla instant pudding mix
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips, crumbled in food processor

• using the whisk attachment on your electric mixer, mix the powdered sugar, salt, vanilla and milk at low speed until smooth.
• add butter, one slice at a time, until incorporated
• add shortening and whip at highest speed 10-12 minutes, until volume increases by at least 50%.
• Add vanilla pudding mix & chocolate chips

The bottom layer is choclate cake with extra rich chocolate buttercream filling - which is just a basic buttercream recipe with whipped choc ganache added to it.

Buttercream:

• 1 pound bag of powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
• 2 sticks butter, cut into ½ inch slices
• 1/2 cup shortening

• using the whisk attachment on your electric mixer, mix the powdered sugar, salt, vanilla and milk at low speed until smooth.
• add butter, one slice at a time, until incorporated
• add shortening and whip at highest speed 10-12 minutes, until volume increases by at least 50%.

Whipped Chocolate Ganache

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces chocolate, finely chopped

1. put cream in a microwave safe glass bowl and heat on high for 2-3 minutes, until just about to boil.

2. put chocolate in a medium sized glass bowl and pour hot cream over.
3. let sit for a minute or two then stir with a wooden spoon until completely smooth.
4. freeze the ganache for a few hours until very firm, then whip in your electric mixer, about 5 minutes, until fluffy. Be careful not to over-whip the ganache, however, or you'll end up with chocolate butter!


The homemade fondant wouldn't hold up over the entire cake, so just some of the decor is made out of that.  The majority of the cake was covered with Wilton's packaged fondant - which doesn't taste that great... good thing I put all those yummy fillings in there :-)

I did a quilted pattern and added pearls where the pattern crossed.  Overall it turned out pretty good, I'm just not sure when I'll be ready to tackle another fondant masterpiece.

ELMO

Everyone Loves Elmo!  My friend has twins who loves Elmo so we decided they should have an Elmo Cake!  I baked a 10-inch round and covered it in white as a pedistal for Elmo's face - which was baked in an Elmo Cake pan purchased from Michael's.  I then whipped up some buttercream icing, tinted and starred away...

Oreo Cookie Cake

My friend's daughter wanted to celebrate her 8th birthday with a chocolate cake in the same of an Oreo.  I used 3 cake mixes to fill these 2-12 inch pizza pans with chocolate cake.  The middle is filled with a thick butter cream icing (all shortening, no butter to keep it the whitest and thick).  I make a chocolate butter cream to top the cake, but the color wasn't as dark as I wanted it to be, so I ended up topping that icing with a can of chocolate fudge icing.  Then i forked the sides for edging decor & piped on the top design.

In addition to the cake, I baked cupcakes and topped with the left over chocolate butter cream icing combined with Oreo cookie crumbles

OREO CHOCOLATELY GOODNESS!!!

Soccer Ball Cake

For Natalie & Nathan's combined birthday party, we invited our friends and family to Vetta Sport SOCCERDOME to celebrate with a little soccer and inflatable fun!  The kids all had a blast.  I was super excited to show off my first soccer cake.  This is the first time I've ever star-tip decorated a cake and I'm actually pretty pleased with the results.

I made 4 batches of butter cream icing and 2 cake mixes to construct this soccer masterpiece!  After I put a thin layer of icing over the soccer ball, I used a hexagon/pentagon template to trace the shapes with a toothpick before filling them in the the star-tip.  Next time, I'll make sure to get that special grass icing tip to make the grass look better.

Easter CAKE POPS!

I love to make cake pops and each time I make them, I seem to learn new trips to make each time better.  I've made the Easter egg pops before, but this year I tried the little lambs and I think they are my new favorite!!!  They actually weren't that hard to make at all.   I still can't conquer the chicks... maybe next year ;)

 
 















This year I also tried my hand at choclate pretzel rods; these were pretty fun to make.  Some I just dipped and sprinkled, others I took more time with, like these flowered ones below.

Erupting Volcano Cake!

I am so excited about this one!  My son Nathan said he wanted a dinosaur cake for his birthday, but I couldn't find a mold or recipe/instructions for one that I felt comfortable doing.  Besides the fact, that Nathan kept saying he really just wanted toy dinosaurs ON his cake.  That make me think... what other kind of cake can I make to decorate with dinosaurs - then it hit me - Volcano!  I googled the idea and from there, put this thing together.

I used 3 cake mixes to make a stack of cakes - bunt cake, 8 inch round cake, bowl cake, large cup cakes.  I used thick chocolate pudding mixture to fill in the holes in the middle and iced the entire thing with chocolate icing.  Then chopped up Oreo cookies for the rocks around the volcano, and color coconut green for the grass around the rocks.   The lava at the top is a combination of red sparkle icing and fruit roll ups.  Lastly, I added a few of Nathan's dinosaur figures and toy trees.

The best part is the hole that I left at the top... I filled it with dry ice and a red egg white mixture that overflowed and smoked when we added hot water to it.  We were all so excited about the erupting volcano cake, that we forgot to light candles and sing happy birthday!  Luckily, I had extra cup cakes around for us to take care of that while we were enjoying our volcano cake. :-)

Click here for the eruption video - unfortunately, I was holding my camera phone the wrong way, so you have to turn your head to the side to see it correctly!  Video of the eruption!!!

Gender Reveal Party... sort of

It has recently been brought to my attention that people are having Gender Reveal Parties... I SO wish I heard of this when I was pregnant.  For those of you who don't know... it's when you have a party to reveal the sex of the baby.

When the happy couple goes for the 18-20 week ultrasound, they ask the tech to write down the gender in a sealed envelope.  The couple then takes that envelope to the bakery and asked them to make a pink or blue cake - iced in white/green/yellow - so generic color.  Then you have small gathering, and when the couple cuts the cake, everyone find out what the sex of the baby is!

It just so happens, that I stumbled across this idea while my cousin Jamie is pregnant and very close to her 18 week ultra sound date.  I couldn't talk her into having a real gender reveal party - but she did let ME make her a pink or blue cake and have a mini-reveal with our co-workers (convenient that we work together).

Now this cake didn't exactly turn out the way that I pictured it in my head, but it was my first time using fondant.  I first tried to cover the whole cake for that smooth cake look, but that didn't turn out good at all.  So I did make a lot of the butter cream icing and just covered the whole thing generously with that, and made cute little cut out shapes with the fondant to decorate.

And the BIG REVEAL:

IT'S A GIRL!!!



Well I am super happy for Jamie & Mike (any Sammy too).  I was secretly hoping that I got to make a girl cake :)

Valentines Treats

I didn't go all out this year, just made rice krispies & cup cakes.

I make these pink heart shaped rice krispy treats for Natalie's Valentines Day Party.  I was surprised that they actually let me 'make' something instead of just bringing in a store bought item.  We do have 2 kids in her class that have food allergies, so I had to use lactose free butter, but they still turned out cute and yummy!

People at work got these:

And my mom brought over the kids this cute heart shaped cake.  She made a special cream cheese whipped filling and dowsed the cake with hot fudge sryup.

I hope everyone had a ... HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!



Cakes

Here are a few cakes that I've done so far... working on more!

Natalie's 5th Birthday 'Barbie' cake:

Nathan's 3rd Birthday 'Firetruck' cake:

Dave's 65th Birthday 'Luau' cake:

Dad's Anniversary 'Casino Night' cake:

Natalie's 4th Birthday 'Princess Castle' cake:

Halloween Party cake:

 

Updated one made in 2012... check out the bones this time!

 



A Rockin' 65th Birthday Party

My mother-in-law turned 65 this year.  Since she is a huge Elvis & Teen Town fan, the 50's theme seemed perfect for her.  We decorated the hall with pink, black & Caribbean blue colors, LP records, old time Chevy's, and music notes.  We even had the kids dress up in their poodle skirts and leather jackets and had a hula hoop contest.

This is the invitation that I printed and sent out for the party:

I did order the banner for this party (shindigz of course); but I didn't make the cake, just ordered this one - I think it still turned out pretty good.

We had a drive-in car type of photo prop set up for pictures:



 Here's a picture of the kids in their 50's outfits:

And this picture of the guest of honor and her good friend - also shows a good background shot of the color scheme.