P's Birthday cake!

So P came home after 7 weeks, and we had a late b-day celebration for him at Yummy Sushi.  He ended up arriving a day early, which was also the day I made his surprise bday cake!

I made a vanilla / funfetti cake with a lemon raspberry buttercream filling and vanilla buttercream frosting.  I also made the marshmellow fondant which I used for several decorations.

The cake turned out pretty cute, and tasted delicious!

Birthday Cake time!

My friend Megan's birthday is tomorrow.  To celebrate, she invited a bunch of awesome ladies over for dinner.  I, of course, offered to bring the cake!

Since Megan requested a non-chocolate cake, I had to try a new recipe.  I made a white cake with a lemon buttercream frosting and a lemon and raspberry filling.  I'm not sure how I feel about the frosting, as I prefer really sweet frosting, but I hope it all works well together.

Megan was a science teacher, so I decided to go with a science theme for her cake!

Cake frosted and fondant sciencey tube things place

Finished product!   In the end, I had to make the tall tube shorter so it would fit in my cake carrier, though!  :-/

Take 2 at the homemade chocolate cake!

Well, it definitely isn't my favorite cake, decor-wise, but tastewise, oh my!  It was AMAZING.  Just the right density, and it was so moist and chocolately.  I added an extra 1/4 cup of cocoa powder this time and a bit more of the secret ingredient - COFFEE! 

The mocha buttercream frosting I made using instant coffee and cocoa powder... and it was perfect.  Somehw I managed to spread it quite smoothly and evenly, and it wasn't super thick like normal.  Yum!

I took the cake to school, and have been receiving rave reviews about it.  Only problem was the border on the bottom of the cake.  The frosting was being really difficult.  I managed to get it to work for me on the top, but the bottom it wouldn't "ribbon" correctly.  Oh well - practice makes perfect!

Panamax Cake

My latest cake was for a party celebrating the end of an international naval exercise called Panamax.  I made a from scratch chocolate cake with a secret ingredient!  The filling was cherry pie filling, and just regular vanilla buttercream frosting.  I was unable to attend the gathering, but I've heard raving reviews, and I hope they save me a piece to try it myself! ;)

Chocolate cake - cooling and in one piece!

cake split and filled!

And frosted!  It had a crumb coat, too.

Decorated cake!

Inspired by the PANAMAX logo

only side decoration

Cut and served... there were 12 people eating this and still half the cake left!

Birthday cakes!

Since my last blog, I have done 3 cakes.  I will talk about two of them here - 6" rounds - homemade from scratch funfetti cakes.  One batch of batter was enough for the 2 small sized cakes.

One of the cakes was for the 1st birthday of the Argentine officer's baby, and the other was an early 60th birthday cake for my mom, since she was visiting and I won't be able to make her an actual cake on her bday.  Both were filled with a chocolate raspberry filling!

me with the cakes cooling!  The cake for the baby was a zebra cake of white and blue funfetti!

me with Maria Sol and the birthday baby!

1!

The baby loves soccer, so the cake had soccer balls going around it

Birthday mom with her cake!

Close up!

The inside

What better to go with homemade cake and frosting than...

HOMEMADE FONDANT?!?!

That's right... this uber special chica decided to attempt to make fondant from scratch AND use it.... and no, I've never used fondant before... nor do I like fondant, jaja.

I got a recipe for fondant off of pinterest.  It just needed marshmellows, water, and powdered sugar.  First of all, it was a sticky mess for quite some time, and a biatch to clean up when done, but I would say that as far as firsts go, this one was not a complete fail.

What I learned:
1. Fondant is really difficult to work with.  It likes to rip.  Huh.

2. If you do not crisco-up the counter enough, the fondant mixture will stick to the counter, making the final mess even worse... oops. 

3. To roll out fondant, you need a LOT of counter space (well at least more than the counter space I have available).  Otherwise, you not only have a mess on the counter, but also on the cabinets and floor! :-S (oops again!)

4. Even though powdered sugar and marshmellows are both white, the fondant is not white... it's more of an off white color.  Just an FYI.

Powdered sugar in melted marshmellows

It looks like dough after about 5 minutes of work!

All rolled out... this is half the fondant.  The other half is wrapped up and in the fridge.

Finally got the fondant on the cake.  Doesn't look all that smooth like it should!  Grrrr! 

Decorated top

Decorated side

Made from Scratch - take 2

So on Monday, I decided to attempt to make a cake from scratch, again.  I found a recipe on About.com for a yellow cake.  I used it, plus sprinkles, to make a funfetti cake.  Guess what? It turned out!  The little tastes I got of it were tasty, too!!! 

In the oven... looking just fine!

It had to be in for 1 hour due to the fact that it was a deep pan.

Fresh out of the oven... looking good!

It didn't fall apart!  YES!  Now let's hope it's thoroughly baked.

Split...and perfect! :) 

Homemade Funfetti Cake from scratch = SUCCESS!!! :)

4th of July cake - the inside!

The moment of truth arrived... and the cake was cut into... and it was PERFECT!  I was so excited :)  The 6" cake was the perfect size for the party, we got 12 pieces out of it.  Ten were eaten, and 2 were frozen for the owners of the house ;)  On top of it being the perfect size and a great flag in the middle, it was DELICIOUS!  I am very proud of this cake!

Happy 4th of July!!!

I am so excited to be home in the US for 4th of July this year.  I haven't been here for our independence day since 2008!  Wow!  I'm super stoked for some awesome fireworks action, woo!

To celebrate the fourth, we are getting together with some friends and having a bbq... woo!  And our contribution is the cause of my current blog... the American flag cake!

As you have probably figured out, I am in love with pinterest for gathering ideas about cakes and decorating them.  A few weeks back I found a cake idea that had the American flag INSIDE the cake.  Whatttttt?!?!  COOL!  I had to do it... and what better reason than a 4th of July BBQ celebration???? :)

Knowing that these same peeps are probably starting to get sick of my cakes (if that is even possible jaja) I decided to make a tiny cake (6" round).  To make this American flag cake, I first had to make THREE cakes - a red one, a white one, and a blue one!  White - easy - white cake.  Red - easy - red velvet.  Blue - kinda easy - rest of the white cake with blue coloring gel.  Since I was making tiny cakes, I got the white and blue cakes out of the same batter, and the red cake along with 14 cupcakes out of the other batter.  Here they are, cooling:



Once they cooled, I had to level them and split them.  The red cake had to be split into 3, the white 2 and the blue, just one... but I needed to make it a bit smaller otherwise there would be too much blue cake! 

Next, I used a glass to make a small circle cutout in the blue cake.  Using the same glass, I cut a smaller circle out of one of the white cake layers and one of the red cake layers.  Below you can see most of the pieces, ready to be assembled!

The time had now arrived to put the cake together.  I started by placing one of the red layers on my cake circle, and putting a thin layer of frosting on it.  On top of that, I added my first layer white cake, followed by a thin layer of frosting and the second red layer and a thin layer of frosting.  Next, I placed the blue ring on top.  Then, the small white circle of cake went in.

Followed by a thin layer of frosting and then the small red circle.  The finished cake looked like this:

As with all my cakes, the next step was to crumb coat.  This I found to be particularly important when dealing with colored cakes!

I then frosted the cake and while it was setting, I started making the frosting roses.  I ended up making 8 red and 8 blue.  Here are my first 4:

Once I finished the roses, I let them sit in the fridge for a bit while I started to decorate the cake.  Here the cake is, frosted, bordered, and written on! :)  (The frosting job is a bit rough, but I tried an idea from my cake decorating book and another one from pinterest to make it smooth, and it didn't... it screwed it up!  I was annoyed, but no more trying that!!!)

After everything was set, the roses had to be placed onto the cake.  Using my special "flower" scissors, I carefully picked up each flower and placed it onto the edge of the cake.  I ended up only using 14 and having 2 frosting roses leftover.  I then added some squiggles (firework-esque!  ;) ) and green leaves, along with some randomly placed red and blue stars on the side of the cake.  Below is the finished product!

The cake is currently hanging out in the refri waiting to be transported to the BBQ.  I can't wait to see how the cake looks on the inside!!!!  And don't you fret, there will most certainly be inside pics posted, regardless of the outcome ;) 

Happy 4th of July!!!!! :-D

And I'm a graduate!

Today was the last class of Cake Decorating Basics.  I was the only one there today, besides the teacher.  It was crazy pouring rain and thundering, and there are flash flood warnings.  Blah.  But, I sucked it up and went, and while I got drenched even with an umbrella, I am now a course 1 grad! :)

As you know, my original cake for today did not turn out :(  Buuuu!  But I made a new one, of course, using the tweaked marble cake mix recipe from pinterest.  I did it in the zebra pattern again, and this one turned out .  The filling is raspberry cream cheese butter cream with fresh blueberries - soooo good! 

For class today, we had to already have our cake frosted.  I tinted mine a light minty green and frosted away.  As per usual I over did it on trying to smooth out my frosting and I messed it up a bit, but only a little.  I'm getting a bit better!  And while it took my 45 minutes to frost my first cake, this one only took me about 20-25 minutes!  We also had to come with lots of frosting already colored.  I chose dark green for my lettering, purple and pink for my flowers, and green and pink for my borders. 

The making of the roses took quite a bit of time.  I suppose it was a good thing I was the only student there tonight because I got lots of help from the teacher with those little buggers!  I think I finally got it down pretty well - but I will have to keep practicing!!

I am bummed that I won't be able to take course 2 until September unless I try to take it at Joann's (which isn't a problem, I just don't know their schedule!)  My goal is to take all 4 courses before going back to Peru. :)

cake re-do cooling

Filled! 

Crumb coated

Frosted and written on!

Side

Finished product!

My certificate! :)

First Cake FAIL :-O

Well, I decided for my final cake for my cake decorating course 1 I would attempt to make a cake from scratch.  I went to Publix and bought all the stuff I needed (including special cake flour) and had my recipe I found on pinterest printed and ready to go.  I was so excited!

I decided to also use another idea from pinterest which was to make a zebra stripe cake - that was super simple! 

Well, I followed the instructions, the batter was delicious, and got the cake in the pan.  I then put it in the oven at 325 for an hour. 

Looks cool hey?

After an hour, I checked it, and it was not done... not even close.  I then monitered it every 5 or so minutes (I didn't want it to burn!) until it appeared to be ok (I stuck a knife in, and nothing came out on it...)  It looked a bit special, but hey, it would be covered in frosting, so it didn't matter. 

Then I took it out of the pan and put it on the cooling rack.  This is what happened:



IT COMPLETELY FELL APART!!!!!!!!

So this is what my first attempt at a "made from scratch" cake now looks like.  I will later this week or next attempt to turn it into cake balls using another recipe I found on pinterest which requires crumbled up cake.  And if that doesn't work... well... at least I got to try 2 recipes, right?

So I honestly don't know what went wrong with this cake.  Not sure if I baked it too long (but it wasn't burnt...) or too short (but it wasn't raw....) or if the recipe just wasn't good.  All I know is that I am not using that recipe again! ;)

Check back later for my re-do cake using a tweaked mix recipe that I have used for all my cakes since starting cake class! (Don't worry... it turned out!)

My first... TIERED CAKE!

So, my job today was to make a cake for the Peruvian ship that leaves tomorrow.  I have been planning this cake in my head for a while and used a plethora of ideas from pinterest all put together.  The more I decorate cakes, the more I understand why wedding cakes are so expensive, jaja.  I went to the store around 9am, and started baking around 9:30.  I finished the cake around 3. 

The cake is 2 tiers.  Tier 1 is  an 8" round red velvet cake with a butter cream cheese filling and Tier 2 is a 6" round vanilla cake with a raspberry buttercream frosting.  I used a frosting technique from pinterest called the "pastel swirl," so it is not as smooth as my other 2 cakes I made.  But, that's okay because my plan was for the cake to be "ocean-y" and the ocean is seldom smooth, right? :)

I had gotten wooden dowels from Joann's to support the upper tier, but I found on pinterest it was easier to use plastic straws!  So I used 2 straws, cut to fit the size of the cake.  So far, it's holding up! :)  I was really nervous to put the little cake onto the bigger cake.  I was pretty convinced I was going to ruin my frosting job.  But, again using a tutorial from pinterest, I managed to get that 2nd tier on there without any major catastrophes!

Once I had my cake together, I had to do some work to fix a few issues with the frosting that I had messed up, and to hide the little cake circle that the 6" cake was sitting on.  Then it was on to my favorite part... DECORATING!  I had seen on pinterest a series of cakes decorated with spirals made out of dots.  Last class, we learned how to make those dots!  So I decided I was going to use that technique and that general idea and make it into a more nautical design - the spiral turned into a wave!

It was then onto writing.  I just wrote "Buen Viaje BAP Villavisencio" and attempted to draw a little ship with a 52 on it.  The ship drawing is a bit rough, but I think that the writing was pretty good for my first attempt.

All in all I am super pleased with my first tiered cake, and I really hope the marinos aboard the BAP Villavisencio enjoy it on their way back home!

Vanilla 6" and Red Velvet 8"

I chose these flavors because the Peruvian flag is red and white.

Red velvet split and filled with a butter cream cheese filling

I chose it because ... the Peruvian flag is red and white!

Vanilla with a raspberry butter cream filling.

I chose this because... the Peruvian flag is red and white! (noticing a theme here? ;) )

Tier 1 frosted using the swirl technique.  I chose blue for 2 reasons.

1. The ocean and sky are blue (what they see when they are underway!)

and

2. The American flag is red, white, and blue!  Red and white were already covered so! :)

"Dowels" in to support the 6" cake about to be placed!

Cake is stacked and I used the dot technique I learned in class to cover up the 6" cake circle and a few little issues I had!

I then used an idea I found on pinterest and turned it nautical.  Here you can see my writing as well!

The cake is FINISHED!