Monday, December 28, 2009

Left 4 Dead


12-28-09 This is a really large brownie covered in fudge frosting decorated in honor of the Left 4 Dead video game, so I'm not so sure it really belongs here. Thanks for the candy corn inspiration from http://chiccookiekits.blogspot.com/2009/10/emotional-life-of-candy-corn.html. I found a wooden helicopter in a dollar bin at one of my favorite stores and had to hand paint it from yellow to green, and then came the details. I had to hand paint a pale green candy coating on each zombie before applying the faces and blood with a cakemate writer. The wording was Wilton candy melts that I tented zombie green. I printed out the font on my computer and placed a sheet of waxed paper above it taped to the counter top. I piped the melted candy onto the letters and let them dry. The lettering was super easy that way.

Monday, December 7, 2009

I'm A Pepper


12-07-09 This cake I made for someone that I knew would appreciate Dr. Pepper as much as I do...The cake itself is a Dr. Pepper cake recipe and I made a buttercream and added some Dr. Pepper to it to give it the flavor too. "Hy" for Happy in place of "Dr" for Doctor. I looked up a font to use to get the rest of the letters the correct way. I had to use almost an entire container of Burgundy food coloring and still added some cocoa to it to get the color correct. This was kind of spur of the moment, but I did want to do something cool for her.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Polka-dots


11-01-09 Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting inside. Hand made chocolates on top. Buttercream frosting for all other decor, save the hand made chocolate swirls. The image that inspired my creation was the picture that was on an evite for a birthday party I was asked to attend. All the decoration on the sides were made using a tip 12 and flattening them down.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Chocolate Everything


10-26-09 I made this one to take to a potluck in honor of a couple very special ladies in my life. It was chocolate cake with white chocolate icing filling. I also tried out for the first time making hand made chocolates for this one. The candies came out pretty well, I may start using them in other cakes now that I have a little confidence in how to make them. All that chocolate needing something to pop on the cake. So I added a small amount of aqua butter cream icing on the sides as well as a few dots on top.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Feeling Blue


9-18-09 This was created for a family birthday party for 9 Birthday people. I went through several designs, and finally, I just winged it after a few minor disasters with this one. What I learned: 1) ALWAYS level the bottom layer, even if you're in a hurry to get the second on the top so it doesn't stick to the pan. 2) Always make one and a half the amount of icing suggested by the pan for it's size. 3) Make sure all your ingredients are in your home before beginning the process. 4) Don't be so hard on yourself, Mrs. perfectionist, it's just cake. It's not like it's the cure for cancer... Ok, I'm still working on number 4, but I still had fun with it, and that's the important part.Though I am not happy with the top of the cake at all, I do like how the sides turned out. It was a marble cake with butter cream icing as the filling as well as the decor.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Word World


09-13-09 Word World! Yay! Did cupcakes and a 6 inch round for the birthday boy. Funfetti cake with cream cheese icing. Sprinkles on the cupcakes and a decorative paper medallion placed in each. The small cake was decorated like the logo they have on everything in word world. 3 rolling hills done with the grass tip so the grass is at three different angles to distinguish them apart from one another. Complete with white fluffy clouds in a blue sky.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Seashells and waves


08-27-2009 I admit I cheated a bit in the fact that the seashell chocolates are pre-made by a Belgium company. I put waves complete with foam on the sides of the cake and tinted the top sand color. The cake was a Funfetti one filled with pudding in between the layers of cake. The font I also used a trick to create. In order to achieve the penmanship I desired I printed out what I wanted to say on the cake in the correct size and font on a regular piece of paper. After printing it out I used a quilting pin and punched wholes into the paper following the lines of the type while it was over a clean folded towel. Then I placed the whole punched paper onto to the cake where I wanted the font. I then sprinkled cocoa powder over the paper and used a small paint brush to ensure the cocoa went through the wholes. Removed the paper to find my outline and traced it with my desired frosting.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Chocolate Lasagna


08-07-09 mmmm, chocolate lasgana... I got to make my own birthday cake this year as an added treat to getting my new Hamilton Beach mixer as my present. I absolutely love it! The top design is made from melted mini chocolate chips. The cake is a butter fudge and the icing is an almond butter cream. 3 layers of cake, 2 inner layers of icing include chocolate chips to infuse even more chocolate in every bite. mini chocolate chips are stuck to the lightly iced sides. In true lasagna style, the layers of filling are trying to escape all along the sides. Doesn't it just look delicious.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Just because


07-29-09 I just felt like making a cake with my kids, so I made this one. I used strawberry cake and canned strawberry frosting iced in the "casual" frosting method. Jumbo confetti sprinkles randomly placed on the sides by the kidos. I used two cookie cutters to put an imprint into the top of the icing and then sprinkled colored sugar sprinkles on the lines it made. The larger heart was made of purple sprinkles, while the smaller was green. The outside edges were outlined by more jumbo confetti sprinkles, half blue, the other half yellow.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Cinderelly


6-20-09 This is actually a replica of Cinderella's dress that the mice and birds made for her, that eventually got ripped to shreds by her step-sisters. I thought that to be kind of appropriate since we would be cutting it to pieces in the end. The dress was a cream cheese pound cake in doll cake pan form, with 3 more layers of 2" cakes to get enough height to put an actual doll in the middle. All the icing was butter cream that was hand smoothed, colored, and piped by yours truly. I couldn't get bows to look like anything other than a mess of frosting, so I ended up buying some fabric ones at Joanns. They just so happened to match the color I had tinted the frosting perfectly. The torso of the doll was also decorated with butter cream. The cupcakes were strawberry with canned vanilla frosting and jumbo confetti sprinkles. The cupcake papers and crown toothpicks were a Wilton combo thing.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Scribble Art


4-1-09 Cupcakes were strawberry cake covered in butter cream icing. Since it was for a very active 4 year old I decided scribble art would be right up his alley. Using primary colored icing I simply "scribbled" the colors on them in various patterns. I wanted to stick a crayon in each one, but with all the scare about things from China containing lead around this time, I figured it was better not to. There are candles that are made in the shape of crayons that I could have used, but ran out of time to go on a hunt for them.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Batter Up!


3-28-09 Made 24 cupcake baseballs as well as a 6 inch cake for the birthday boy. The cake was chocolate and all were covered with butter cream frosting. I used the grass tip as the bottom border of the 6 inch cake. Light blue sky colored icing for the rest of the cake. I used a cookie cutter to imprint the outline of the baseball cap. The baseball cap was for the Angels as Nolan Ryan had once played for the team and this was the birthday boys name sake. Two flying baseballs were on the side of the cake as well. The most difficult part was placing all the little red lines of stitching on each cupcake. I was definitely glad to see them eaten as I had been looking at them up close for far too long a time.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Nature is Tier-ific



This is my first attempt at a tiered cake. It was a lot easier than I was anticipating to actually tier the two cakes, but still a tricky experience to undertake. Joe is an experienced landscaper and irrigation professional who loves chocolate. So, it made since to use an irrigation piece for the 0 in 30 with some blue tinted piping gel as water around it. Leaves outline the top tier with kindergartner style trees on the sides. The top of the bottom tier is covered in green butter cream icing using a tip to create the look of grass, with a few red and white flowers randomly placed in the meadow. The sides of the bottom tier were simply frosted with chocolate icing and chocolate cake crumbs placed around as the border to resemble real soil. It was a lot of fun to make, but definitely stressful to deliver. I was so afraid something would happen on the ride it felt like 3 hours when in reality it was probably only 15 minutes away.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Dog Speaks


03-12-09 This cake was created for a birthday party for a 2 year old who loves a particular show that airs on PBS. I hope that my attempt in recreating this talking dog in an icing form at least resembles her. I thought it would be a neat idea to use the phone cord to write the name, but it could have used a few more loops in the a and n. The border on top was rosettes, and black dot outline of a bone was in three places on the side of the cake. In between the bones were the letters of the alphabet, as Martha ate alphabet soup to allow her to speak. The cake itself was a white cake mix and butter cream icing. The cupcakes were nothing spectacular as far as decorating goes. The party was for a girl and since the theme was puppies I simply iced the cupcakes, used pink and purple sugar sprinkles and them piped on a little paw print on each one to tie them into the theme. It was fun to make, but a word of advice when it comes to using the black icing...only put it on the cake at the most the day before the cake is presented or else it bleeds, and keep it out of the refrigerator as the moisture in the fridge will also make it bleed. Hope you liked this one

Monday, February 2, 2009

Dr. Pepper cupcake








2-2-09 Chocolate cupcakes that were infused with a little bit of Dr. Pepper. I did this by using Dr. Pepper in place of the water the cake mix that I used. Topped with some canned chocolate frosting and a maraschino cherry. Delicious.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Key Lime Pie


Here are some facts about the Key Lime using my favorite online resource Wikipedia:
The Key lime (Citrus aurantifolia or Christmas Swingle) is a citrus species with a globose fruit, 2.5-5 cm in diameter (1-2 in), that is yellow when ripe but usually picked green commercially. It is smaller, seedier, has a higher acidity, a stronger aroma, and a thinner rind than that of the Persian lime (Citrus x latifolia). It is valued for its unique flavor compared to other limes, with the key lime usually having a more tart and bitter flavor. The name comes from its association with the Florida Keys, where it is best known as the flavoring ingredient in Key lime pie. It is also known as West Indian lime, Bartender's lime or Mexican lime, the latter classified as a distinct race with a thicker skin and darker green color.
C. aurantifolia is a shrubby tree , to 5 m (16 ft), with many thorns. Dwarf varieties are popular with home growers and can be grown indoors in winter in colder climates. The trunk rarely grows straight, with many branches that often originate quite far down on the trunk. The leaves are ovate 2.5–9 cm (1–3.5 in) long, resembling orange leaves (the scientific name aurantifolia refers to this resemblance to the leaves of the orange, C. aurantium). The flowers are 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter, are yellowish white with a light purple tinge on the margins. Flowers and fruit appear throughout the year but are most abundant from May to September [1] [2].
My key lime tree seems to produce fruit between September to January. and I haven't noticed any thorns either, but they are DEFINITELY key limes.You can tell because they are small, really acidic, have that thin rind, and turn yellow when they are ripe.However, what I really find interesting about the key lime that is not listed on the site is the fact that it is a lime that is green on the inside and yellow on the outside.

One of my dad's favorite desserts is the key lime pie. He was born in Miami so maybe that had something to do with it, but maybe not. He is actually coming for a visit and will be helping me repair a few things around the house. This little blog addition is his payment for all that help. It's really a simple recipe and doesn't take much time to bake at all. Plus, it tastes sooooo good. Just click on the image to get a better view of the recipe. Too bad they don't make scratch and sniff blogs.