Golfer Birthday Cake

My father-in-law is an avid golfer, so when I was contemplating what he would be getting for his birthday this year I thought "What could be more special than to replicate him in fondant?" My husband wasn't so sure about this when I putted (ha ha) this idea to him, but he came around and gave me the thumbs up!

So I started off with the birthday man himself holding a golf club. I also made a hole & flag for the golf course and a dimpled golf ball (which is hard to see against the white Styrofoam.)

I baked a chocolate cake, and made some chocolate fudge frosting for the filling and for the sides. But since my theme was golfing, of course I covered the top in green butter cream, to create my putting green.

Outlining the green way...

And my favorite part, I added the grass with Wilton tip 233.

And for a finishing touch, added a green shell border.

Finally I placed my fondant pieces on the cake and we were ready to party!

Cosmopolitan Birthday

Oh how I wish I could keep up with it all. Here it is, almost Christmas and all, and I am posting pictures of cakes I made in September! I think I've used this before, but "better late, than never!"

Well, I made my wonderful best friend a fabulous cosmo cake for her birthday! I baked a half sheet cake and cut out the martini glass shape, frosted with butter cream, and garnished with some fondant accent pieces. The pictures kind of speak for themselves, so enjoy!

Yellow cake from scratch! One of the nicest parts of sculpted cake, is getting to nibble on the "left overs." YUM!

Not quite finished decorating yet.

Fondant lime and sugared rim!

As her cake design was a surprise, all she told me was that she wanted "purple" on her cake somewhere. Since, the last time I checked, cosmo's are not purple, I had to sneak it in some where.

The birthday girl LOVED the cake!

Odds & Ends Baking

So I have been quite the busy baker bee since my last post. And I thought I would start off with a bang by doing a collage posting of several different things I have made over the last three months.

Here goes...

First, for Mother's Day we had our families over for a nice Sunday afternoon BBQ. I decided Cheesecake sounded like a real winner. So I pulled out an old favorite, Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake with Chocolate Crust and Raspberry Sauce. It was the perfect ending to Mothers Day. I only got one photo (which wasn't even that good) because there were a lot of people starring me down, waiting for their slice.

Next, Mini Brownie Bites, just because Brownies rock! I had bought these really cute mini muffin pans on sale, and hadn't really had the chance to use them. And Brownies are just one of those foods I crave, do you know what I mean? So I mixed up a batch and baked them up in my mini tins and then let them cool on the rack. Once they were cool I just looked at them and thought they are so adorable, they deserve a little decoration. I mixed up a quick batch of chocolate butter cream and piped it on top with my 1M tip and that's all she wrote. Added Bonus - They went perfectly in our lunch boxes for the next few days!

Here we have my husband's coworkers 40th birthday cake. Did I have any advance notice of this birthday so I could properly plan? Nope. I baked, iced and decorated this thing after I came home from work at around 5 o'cock and had it ready to go to work the next day by about 10 o'clock. (Thank goodness for those "buy one get one" cake mixes I stock up in my pantry.) This included coming up with the idea itself. It needed to be funny, but not too cliche, but not too offensive either. Did I already mention I had no notice to come up with this... So I turned to old faithful, the internet, for idea's and I actually got this idea from a picture of a greeting card I came across. It's not fancy, but it's funny, and that was all they really needed, a good laugh about getting old and a big slice of cake!

Finally, my experiment with rainbow cupcakes. Right before I was abducted away from the blogging world, I was seeing these rainbow cupcakes popping up everywhere! And I loved them, who wouldn't? I regret that I do not have tons of photo's of me making these, but I could have used four hands just to make these things alone. I would have needed a fifth hand to take pictures. I didn't have a special occasion in mind, just a hankering for some cupcakes, and to try out some new sprinkles I had just purchased.

So I mixed up the batter as I would for any cupcakes, and then I got out four of those disposable plastic bowls by gladware or ziplock or whoever. I divided up the batter in four parts and then colored them yellow, green, blue, and pink. I highly recommend the first time you make these to not try anymore than four colors. Four colors is PLENTY to work with, don't complicate it with six, its just not worth it! Next, I filled four half-gallon size disposable bags with my colored batter, snipped off the ends and filled the cupcake papers. Gosh, that sounds so easy! Here's a nifty tip, batter is extremely runny, and icing is usually not, batter does not act like icing in a piping/disposable bag! Instead batter just keeps running out of the bag :) So if you want this cool rainbow effect, you have to be very crafty, and have helpers on hand to hold the bags that you have opened while you fill cupcake tins with a different color batter. This isn't so hard as long as you bribe helpers with cupcakes. Like I said before, I could have used four hands for this project.

And here they are all baked up and split open for you viewing pleasure. So go ahead and try making some, they are lots of fun to make and to eat, but be ready for a mess! (Like there isn't always a mess to clean up afterwards anyways.)

March Birthday Cake Madness!

My husband, and both of my maternal grand parents, all have March birthdays. So seeing as how I have been in a constant time pinch lately with my new job, and family obligations, and life in general, I was barely able to find the time make and decorate their cakes. In other words, I am lacking in my normal amount of photo journaling baking photo's. At least I was able to get some pictures of the finished products prior to them being devoured!


This was my husbands birthday cake. I asked his opinion about what he would like, and he said "I don't know, chocolate?" OK, you want chocolate, you got it! Devils food chocolate cake, with chocolate butter cream filling, coated with chocolate gnash frosting, and decorated with more chocolate butter cream!


My grandparents on the other hand, well I took it a little easier on them. My grandpa is diabetic and he really shouldn't be having cake as it is, but on your birthday your deffinatley entitled to some cake. So I went with a simple french vanilla white cake, and filled, frosted and decorated with vanilla butter cream. And to tell you the truth, were all so chocolated out from my husbands cake the week prior, the vanilla cake was a welcome change!

Brimming with Roses Birthday Cake

I have been behind on my blogging recently, due to a job change. So this blog is a little late, as I originally made this cake a few weeks ago for my mother-in-law's birthday. But better late than never!! So my husband has mentioned in the past that his mom never baked that much when he was growing up. The only cake her could ever remember her making, was carrot cake from scratch. So for her birthday, we decided I would search for the best home made carrot cake recipe I could find. So I hit the Internet and I probably read about twenty different recipes before I found what I now know to be the best carrot cake recipe ever! I mean it's been about two weeks since I had a slice of this cake, and I can still recall the wonderfully warm taste of cinnamon, nutmeg and black walnuts combining with the tangy, rich cream cheese frosting. Now that I had my cake recipe pinned down, I wanted to come up with a good design for decoration, so I could show off my new decorating skills to the family. So I flipped through a Wilton Cake Decorating book that I had. I didn't really have to flip too far, as the cake I was inspired by was on the cover of the book. Below are the pictures I took as I assembled and decorated the cake, I hope you enjoy!

Here is the cake, the cream cheese icing and the walnuts used for decoration. The recipe I used made enough batter for a 3 layer cake using 8" round pans.

Hmmm, this looks good!

All three layers stacked high!

I put on a pretty thick crumb coat, as I knew that you wouldn't really see much of the icing once the cake was decorated. After crumb coating, I pressed a mixture of regular walnuts and black walnuts to cover the sides of the cake.

See, TaDa!

And here are my beauties. The stars of the show. My royal icing roses.

Since I work full time, and I knew I had to bake my cake on a Friday night, and assemble and decorate on Saturday morning, I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night making my roses. I worked with one color of icing each night. I just sat in my living room and made roses while I half-watched TV. It was actually quite relaxing.

Once I positioned each of my roses on top of the cake, I piped green royal icing leaves to fill in any gaps.

And here she is, all ready to go and celebrate!

And as I mentioned before, it was DELICIOUS!

Here is a nice shot of the whole cake.

And one more shot from above.

This cake was a lot of work, but totally worth it. It came out beautiful and it really was a (big) slice of heaven, right here on earth!

Little Mermaid Birthday Cake

One of my girlfriends daughters was having a "Disney's the Little Mermaid" themed birthday party, and since having recently gone through what I now refer to as "cake college" I asked her if she would mind if I did her cake for free, so I could get some practice. Oh, and of course she agreed, I mean free cake, who wouldn't agree? So here are some photo's of Ariel and Flounder. I felt pretty darn good about the whole thing, excpet for one small mistake. When I was coloring all of my buttercream, I forgot to leave myself some plain white buttercream for her eyes and teeth. Ooops, this is why I need the practice!



I used the piping gel trace method I learned in Wilton Course One to get Ariel on the cake. Then I filled her with tip 16 (star) and tip 4 (round).



Here is my "work in progress" shot.



And finally she is ready to go on the road. Everyone loved it, especially the birthday girl! She requested a vanilla and chocolate marble cake, with vanilla butter cream. Hmmmm, it was yummy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cuppy Cakes

Yes, they are as wonderfully delicious as they sound! My sister and I love peanut butter and chocolate, so I made these little treats for her as a present for her birthday. I won't spill her age because that wouldn't be nice, but I will say she is my older sister! :)

First I mixed a basic chocolate cake mix in my stand mixer, following the directions on the box, and after the batter was completely mixed, I added about 2 Tbs of melted peanut butter and mixed that in really well. As a side note, this gave the cupcakes a hint of peanut butter flavor hidden inside the chocolate flavor. Next time I will probably use closer to 4 - 6 Tbs of peanut butter to see if this gives it more of the peanut butter flavor I was going for.


Did I mention peanut butter cups were going into the middle of these?!?! Oh Yeah! So I unwrapped 24 miniature peanut butter cups. And for quality control purposes, I made sure to sample a few pb cups while I was unwrapping. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that this is a very important step. ;) Next I divided my batter equally into two gallon sized baggies.


I clipped the corner off of one side of the baggie and then I filled each cupcake liner about 1/3 full. Then I placed a peanut butter cup in the middle of each cupcake liner. A good trick is to place the peanut butter cup upside down, so there will not be any air pockets inside your cupcake. Finally, clip a corner off of the other baggie and fill the cups up to 2/3 full. And off to the oven they go!


OK, my girls are baked and ready for more peanut butter! After the cupcakes cooled off for about 30 minutes, I melted more peanut butter and drizzled it over each cupcake! Then I let them completely cool for about four hours, before I decorated them.



Ahhh, time to make them pretty! I made my chocolate gnache frosting in advance the day before, so it had plenty of time to set up. I swirled on the gnache with a 1M tip and placed my fondant flowers (remember these?) on top, and voila! Gorgeous little beauties all ready to be enjoyed!


Too bad they're all gone, looking at them now is making me want another one!


And I had a few gum paste daisies left over from my last Wilton class, I couldn't let them go to waste now could I? No way, so here are some pretty daisy cakes too.

Fondant & Gumpaste ~ Wilton Style

I really meant to post this after class on Tuesday night, but it has been such a busy week! I finished Wilton's Fondant & Gum paste class this week. And how extremely convenient, that the very next day was my co-workers birthday! :) Needless to say she was the lucky recipient of a very finely decorated cake! So here she is, my Fondant & Gum paste Final Cake, in all her glory!

This is a french vanilla cake, frosted and filled with strawberry butter cream, and covered in fondant. The fantasy flowers and leaves are made of gum paste, and the border balls are fondant. And for that "little something extra" special effect, I covered the cake and flowers with cake glitter. Oooohh...Aaaahh!

All of my co-workers, including the birthday girl, loved the cake. Well, they loved the actual cake and the strawberry butter cream. They were all a little weirded out by the fondant and the fact that you really don't eat it. I mean it's edible and all, it just isn't as great as butter cream. Just as a side note regarding the fondant. For the purpose of this class, I used only store bought fondant for convenience and because it was recommended by the teacher that we learn with store bought fondant due to the fact that it is extremely consistent. I do plan in the future to give it a go with marsh mellow fondant, as I have heard the taste is much, much better!

What's next? Wilton's Course 3 Fondant & Tiered Cakes, which I am so excited about, but I have to wait two months to take it! Sigh, I guess I will just be doing a lot of baking and blogging until then!

OK, one last picture of my cake, this one is at a different angle :)

Happy Birthday Cupcakes

My daughter's teacher at daycare celebrated her 20th birthday last week. One of the other teachers was spreading the news the week before and as soon as she told me about it I knew I wanted to do something special. So I decided that I would make her a batch of delicious birthday cupcakes! So I went home and sized up my pantry, and I came up with the idea to make a yellow cake cupcake, with a hint of chocolate flavor. Now I just needed some inspiration on how I wanted them to look. Ask and you shall receive, the inspiration was right in front of me. My kitchen timer is shaped like a cupcake, and a rather cute one at that! So now I was off to work on making some fabulous birthday cupcakes for Miss H! Ready, here we go!

I started with my basic cupcake ingredients. I followed the cake mix instructions exactly, and to achieve my hint of chocolate flavor I added 3 tbs Cocoa Powder and 1 tsp of milk...mix...mix...mix...

then I filled my cupcake liners with my batter...then it's off to the oven for about 30 minutes...

...hmmmmm they're done! Wow, that smells so good! But, must let them cool on a wire rack...

Now we're ready to decorate! (My favorite part!) While the cupcakes were cooling, I whipped up some vanilla butter cream frosting. Then I put my 1M tip into my disposable pastry bag and filled it with butter cream.

Oh and don't forget those sprinkles!

Let's start by piping my first layer swirl...

and then finish it off by piping my second layer swirl right on top!

Now, repeat! Aren't they cute, I just love cupcakes :)

Again, don't forget those sprinkles! They really make the (cup)cake!

Ooooh, so sweet!

Inspiration & My Creation!

Not too shabby if you ask me! Oh and I had to have one (I swear, just one) you know as a tester and they we're awesome! Miss H loved them too!