Happy New Years!

This year, I have discovered PINTEREST.  I love that site - I get tons of ideas from there.  This is one inpired from there - this started out as a cupcake clock, but then i had extra room on the pan and extra cupcakes, so I added a few 'year' cakes as well.

Pretty simple - I just whipped up a Cream Cheese Buttercream and topped with hardened chocolate designs.

Closer look...

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!!!