Christmas Cake

I've grown king of tired of watching all of these cake shows that are on tv nowadays while sitting on the couch feeding Lauren and not being able to make a cake. So I decided the day before Christmas Eve that I was going to make a cake. Crying baby or not. I worked on it here and there and really it wasn't that hard to accomplish.

Since I randomly decided to make this cake, I didn't have very much powdered sugar. Usually I try to keep extra on hand but I just made some puppy chow and I only had 1 lb. in the cupboard. Which was enough to cover the cake but nothing more. Usually I make my fondant as homemade marshmallow fondant frosting. Luckily I had a box of Wilton frosing just waiting for the occasion. This stuff is pretty darn gross ladies and gents. It smells bad. I can't believe Wilton would put their name on such a product. Why can't they make it taste better? I've always heard it was gross but now I know why. Oh well, on this cake it was pretty easy to pick off the decorations. I will say that this fondant is easier to work with than what I usually make. Much easier to knead in the coloring and shape. I'll have to work on perfecting my fondant in the future so it's a marriage of both worlds.

The candy cane decorations on the tree are Watkins sprinkles. The bows on the presents are also Watkins sprinkles. They came in a package together. Perfect!

Cake

I've made a couple cakes lately. The first is a simple one for a graduation:


The newest one is one I did for a bridal shower. The colors were red and white.
It's a "cherry blossom" cake.


I didn't have enough time to get the fondant just perfect but I think it still turned out ok.

Horse Cake

My sister-in-law has been in love with my cake decorating magazines. She looks through them when she they're sitting out and when I had to make the black and white wedding cake and our house was a mess and I was Adam's parents house making it and Abby and her mom walked out the door. 3 seconds later, Abby comes clomping back in the house, sets the magazine down and clomps back out the door. Guess she wanted to look again :) Anyway her birthday was on Monday so I had asked her what kind of cake she wanted me to make her. She said she wanted a horse on it. Later she told me that she wanted a bunny and kitty on it also.

I wish that I would have had more time to work on this cake but it turned out ok.
The horse is a little too much of a chunky monkey.

Although my husband kept popping in the kitchen asking if I was done yet and ready to go eat and told me I didn't need to make the bunny and kitty, I made them anyway :) The bunny turned out pretty cute and the kitty...well I won't be uploading pics of that :)

And Abby liked it so I guess that is all I can ask for.

More Cake

I had two cake orders this weekend so I did cake stuff Thursday night. I baked the cakes, made the buttercream frosting and some flowers out of gumpaste.

These will be butterflies.
Gumpaste is an edible substance that you can roll really thin and shape things out of. Then it dries and hardens. You can make very intricate and detailed items with this stuff.


Saturday we got up bright and early and I started to do some cake decorating!
A lesson in round cakes:
Frost the cake.

Dowels are the heart and soul of any cake with more than one layer.

Cut the dowel to size.
Push it into the cake

Cover the holes left.

And later after the buttercream has crusted, take a piece of wax paper, put it over the cake and smooth things out a little more and add a border.

Then add the decorations.


A lesson in sheet cakes.

Cut around the edges -

- so it's nice and square.

For the lettering on this cake I printed out the text from the computer and put wax paper over it. Then I mixed up some royal icing and piped the words out over top of the font. Royal icing dries really hard to I was able to pop the words off of the wax paper and lay them on the cake. Much prettier text this way than if I would have tried to pipe them freehand. Making the wording look pretty is always a worry of mine. It turned out quite well.

I also used the royal icing for the grass.
Add decor

and a border


And I didn't get a final pic but I added dots in the middle of the flowers so they look a little more detailed.

Wedding Cake #2

I finally got the pics of the wedding cake from last weekend.

It's Friday again!

Anyone who knows Adam knows that getting a new vehicle is nothing new to him. He's perfected the art of getting a vehicle and quickly getting it up to snuff. Last night was spent by him working on the truck.

I finally got a pic.


Adam worked on the bed trying to get the rust off. The liner that was in the bed rubbed away the paint and I'm guessing water got trapped in there and this is what it now looks like.

He wants to put some rhino liner type stuff in it so he has to get it all cleaned up.
The tailgate also needs some help.

We're probably just going to take this one off and put one on similar to this.


I also baked a cake last night as wedding cake #2 is next weekend.
Can you smell it?


Since cake decorating is not (yet) my full time job, I have to do a little here and a little there. So I freeze my cakes. I think the only reason that freezing cakes has a bad rap because grocery store bakeries freeze their cakes, ship them where they tend to get thawed, re-freeze once they get to the stores, and then thawed again when someone orders a cake.

The "Cake Bible" says that the best way to freeze a cake is:

Let the cake cool down after taking out of the oven. Not all the way cold but not hot either.
Wrap in saran wrap.

Then wrap in tin foil.

Make sure that when you put it in the freezer it's on something nice and flat and not next to something that you don't want the heat from the cake to possibly thaw a little.

Backyard report.
I ran to the house last night but didn't get there before dark but it looks like the back yard is getting close to being dead. There are still a couple spots that are green but we can easily take care of those.

September 3rd

and it's definitely fall! No. It's COLD out there! All of Adam's softball games this season are late too. I think it's time to break out the parka or I'll be freezing in the stands!

Last night I had my first ever cake testing. After my fiasco with the raspberries I went to the store yesterday and got some raspberry pie filling. I also picked up some strawberry filling to test the difference between homemade and store strawberry filling. And the verdict is........store bought strawberry filling. We didn't think you could really taste the raspberry and the store bought strawberry tasted more real than the homemade. Less work for me. I'm ok with that!

Adam also worked on the quilt rack a little more last night and while it isn't done, here's a sneak peak

All about cake!

This past week was a week full of cake! I made the big cake for a friends wedding and I started way back on last Saturday. Combine that with my cake class and here is how the week went:

Saturday: Made Fondant Frosting - takes longer than you'd think.
Sunday: Went to church, spent the day at the lake and then visited a friend to watch Big Brother 10 with them! A break from cake.
Monday: Made fondant balls to line each layer.
Tuesday: Made buttercream frosting for wedding cake, class and made the cake for class.
Wednesday: Class
Thursday: Made the cakes and a few more fondant balls.
Friday: Made a couple more cakes and cut out and colored the flowers.
Saturday: Frosted cakes. I took the cake to the reception in pieces


and assembled it at the reception and put the flowers on. It was super hot so we didn't assemble it until the very last minute and even then it started to get sticky. Here is the finished product!









The middle layer was chocolate and the top and bottom layers were white.

On the way to the reception we only had two potential disasters - the first corner we turned, something that wasn't totally secured fell on the biggest layer. Thankfully it was fixable. Second, I looked back and saw a huge bubble on the top of the cake. I don't know what was going on but that was easily fixable with a toothpick :)

Last Cake Class

Wilton Course I, Class IV

This was the last class in course I and we got to pick any cake in the book to make. I combined two different cakes and here is what I came up with:

Cake Class

Wilton Course I, Class III

Nothing much to report from this class. We pretty much just learned how to make different accents such as a cherry, grapes and clown. We decorated cupcakes with them at this class.

Cake Class #2

Wilton Course I, Class II

The second class was based on starting to make the rose and decorating our first cake. I learned how to transfer a pattern onto the cake. You take a piece of paper with your design on it, put wax paper over it and pipe some piping gel over the design. Then you flip the wax paper onto the cake where you want the design, rub and take the wax paper off. Then you can go ahead and pipe your frosting onto the cake!



Here are some images of the cake!

Cake decorating class

Wilton Course I, Class I

I started a cake decorating class last Wednesday - it's at Michaels and based off of the Wilton courses. So this class follows course 1 and is 4 sessions. The first class focused on the basics of frosting and tools. I actually learned more than I thought I would.

Obviously there are different consistencies of frosting but I never really thought about it that way. You need to make stiff, medium and thin frosting for different projects you are doing. Stiff for flowers and such that need to stand up. Medium for the broadest range of items. Thin for frosting the cake and writing. I learned about Meringue powder which helps to stabilize the frosting and about piping gel which is used for.....piping! This can also be added to buttercream frosting to aid in writing.

I learned that there is an icing tip to help you apply the buttercream to the cake so that you do not get cake crumbs in the frosting.

I learned that to get a cake perfectly smooth with buttercream frosting, you can frost it, let it crust over and then put wax paper on top and smooth the cake on top of the wax paper.

I'm going to be making a rainbow cake this week and learning how to transfer a pattern and start to learn how to make roses.

I'm so excited! :)

Fondant Cake - Second Attempt

Here is my second attempt with fondant frosting. I made a cake for the 4th of July. I made the fondant from scratch this time instead of using the Wilton kind. It's super easy. Just take a bag of small marshmallows and put a tablespoon of water in them. Then melt them. Grease the counter thoroughly with Crisco. Dump half of a 2 pound bag of powdered sugar on top and then stir until slightly mixed. It will be hot! Careful! Then dump this mixture on the counter and add more powdered sugar. Grease hands as well. Knead. Add more powdered sugar and crisco as needed. If the fondant is tearing, add a little more water. If possible wrap in saran wrap and put in ziplock bag over night so there will be no powdered sugar clumps.

Here is the cake!

Chris said it looked professional and everyone else liked it a lot! I think I should have used fondant for the whole thing instead of the buttercream stripes but I'm still learning! All in all a success!

Here was my first attempt. Only back in April but I've learned a lot since then by reading online and by watching Ace of Cakes on Food Network. I used the Wilton fondant which was harder to work with, didn't knead the coloring into it and didn't know how to fix the hole I made in the side.