Guinness!!

My husband's birthday was last month and even though he'd rather have pumpkin pie for his birthday, I like to make a cake or cupcakes for him to take into work. I guess it's sort of like sending cupcakes to school with a kid.  Haha!  :)

A couple years ago, I made this Chocolate Stout Cake for St. Patrick's Day and I though it would be fun to make it into cupcakes this year for his birthday. For some reason guys really seem to like things that have beer in them, are cooked in beer, taste like beer, look like beer, etc. so I was hoping these cupcakes would at least be a hit with the guys in the office.

The day I went shopping for cupcake liners, there were no plain or non-Halloweenish ones to be found so I used some nut cups I had sitting around. If you're planning to use nut cups for making cupcakes, make sure they are not lined with wax.  The wax lined ones are not suitable for baking.  Another option are paper souffle cups. One nice thing about using these is that you can just line them up on a baking sheet and put them in the oven; it enables you to bake more cupcakes at once.

It can be difficult to get the paper off to eat the cupcake, so I cut a small slit in each cup before filling. If you look closely at the pitcure below, you can see the small cut.

Since this was only the second time I had baked in these cups, I was worried they would bake up too high and spill over. I filled them about halfway and they baked up just right. I like my cupcakes to bake up with a flat top, it makes for easier decoration.

This recipe makes a huge amount of batter since it is for a 3 layer cake. I baked 22 regular cupcakes (I know it's a strange number, but there were only 22 cups in my 24 pack...), 24 mini cupcakes, 6 little pumpkin shaped cakes and an 8-inch cake. Thank goodness this cake is good, we ate it for about a week!  :)

Since I was only sending the cupcakes and mini cupcakes into the office, I concentrated my decoration efforts on those and used two frosting techniques. When the ganache was still warm, I dipped the tops of the mini cupcakes in and then stuck a large pumpkin sprinkle on top.

For the regular size cupcakes, I went with the traditional swirl and then topped them with sprinkles.  I found sprinkles that just happened to be in the colors of my husband's alma mater. Go Dawgs!!! 

By the way, they were a huge hit, not only at the office but also with all the friends we were able to share with!

Home Run!!!!

Lately I've been feeling the need to bake....A LOT!!!  So, when my husband's office announced they were having a softball game followed by a potluck, I quickly got to work planning what to make. I like to take cupcakes to potlucks because they are easier to serve than cake, so I knew I'd be making some sort of yummy cupcake.  After checking out some ideas on CakeCentral, I knew just what I wanted to do....chocolate cupcakes with buttercream "grass" topped with a fondant softball. 

I've been watching a lot of cake shows and cupcake shows and I've been intrigued by their use of fillings in cupcakes.  I'd never tried before so I figured I'd give it a shot. My original thought was to fill them with whipped ganache but I was too impatient to cool and whip the ganache so I just went with lukewarm ooey-gooey ganache instead. I've seen many people using apple corers to create a hole for the filling; I didn't have one of those so I used a bismarck tip. I think the bismarck tip worked extremely well for the filling I was using, it wouldn't work so well if you wanted to use a chunky filling. Using the bismarck tip, I was able to insert the ganache into three separate holes rather than one larger hole; this ensured there was ganache throughout.

These cupcakes were AMAZING; it was like having a truffle inside your cupcake.  I'm definitely looking forward to working with more fillings for cupcakes.

The finished product:

I've mentioned a few cake shows in my posts, here are a few I like:

Cupcake Wars

Ace of Cakes

Cake Boss

DC Cupcakes

Amazing Wedding Cakes

Did I forget any?

Also, I just heard that Bravo is going to take Top Chef to another level with Top Chef: Just Desserts.  I don't know how much cake will be involved, but I'm really excited for this show!

Vow Renewal

Some good friends of ours recently renewed their vows and asked me to make the cake for their reception/going away party.  Other than telling me which flavors they wanted and what colors the decorations were, they left the design up to me.  Since they were getting ready to leave Maui, I decided a tropical themed cake was a must. I headed to my favorite website, CakeCentral, to look for some design inspiration. I took some ideas from a few different cakes and came up with an idea of what I wanted; visions of plumeria, bamboo and teal/aqua filled my mind. 

After the baking and trimming were done, I filled the cakes:

Then it was time to start frosting.  I forgot to use my cake icer tip, so icing the sides was more difficult than it needed to be, but I still got it all covered.

Notice how I made sure the frosting went all the way to the edge of the cake board, doing this gives you a guide when you use a spatula or other tool to smooth the sides. The next picture shows one of my favorite icing tools, the Wilton Baker's Blade, this blade is great for smoothing the sides of a cake.

Unfortunately, the odds were stacked against me when I started trying to smooth the cake. I had forgotten that the sun beats on my kitchen wall all morning making it super hot and that the AC doesn't work all that well in there.  I iced and scraped and smoothed and re-iced and re-scraped and re-smoothed over and over for about an hour before I finally decided this cake was never going to be smooth.  I decided I'd go for the textured look and just say it was supposed to "represent the ocean"! :)  You can totally do that with art, right?  Haha!

I had some other tricks up my sleeve, so I wasn't too worried about the texture.  (My husband would probably disagree since I asked him about the texture until the very minute we actually got to the party!) Remember when I said that my visions included plumeria and bamboo?  Well, these were all handmade.  I sculpted plumeria out of gum paste and bamboo out of fondant.

This was my first attempt at the gum paste plumeria and I learned some tricks in the process, but overall they turned out well.

Even though it wasn't exactly what I had originally pictured, I think the cake turned out nicely; everyone at the party loved it and there were only a few pieces left when the night was over!

Birthday in Paradise

Last week I received a call from one of my husband's colleagues asking if I would do a cake for his wife's birthday.  I love getting the opportunity to make someone's birthday extra special, so I of course said yes!  Not to mention, the birthday girl is a dear friend of mine and I know she LOVES my cake!  :)

Other than the fact that the cake had to have lots of icing (the birthday girl's favorite part of the cake), I was pretty much given free reign over the design.  I've never been very good at the typical birthday buttercream roses, so I turned to my favorite cake website, CakeCentral, for ideas.  I quickly decided that I wanted the cake to have a tropical feel since this is the last birthday that my friend will be celebrating in our beautiful island paradise before she and her family move back to the mainland!

The CakeCentral photo galleries gave me a ton of inspiration, but given the fact that we have limited access to cake supplies here on the island and that the cake only needed to be big enough for her family of five, I had to scale back some of the grand ideas I had.  Luckily, I stumbled upon these instructions on making tropical flowers using buttercream.  Making these flowers was super simple and the results are great! 

I keep forgetting to adjust my butter and crisco amounts to compensate for the crazy humidity here in the islands, so my icing was a little softer than I would have liked.  I think a stiffer icing would have made the flowers look even better.  Also, at first I was little unsure about the color combination, but it grew on me after a while.  I think it gave it just the right amount of "tropical flair."

What do you think?

Here's a closer look at the flower:

I spoke with my friend today and she loved the cake; she's down the last piece or so of cake and she's rationing it. Haha!  I'm glad I was able to help her celebrate her last tropical birthday!

Tea Pot

For the last few months, I've been planning an amazing birthday tea party for my baby girl. Let's be honest, she's not really a baby anymore, she just turned 5. To me she will always be my baby girl! :)

Part of the tea party planning was figuring out what kind of cake to make. I had grand plans of a topsy-turvy concoction with a tea cup sitting off-kilter on the top complete with tea splashing over the side of the cup. That all changed when I asked the birthday girl what she wanted and she said two words: tea pot. My grand plan flew out the window and I got to work figuring out how to construct the cake she requested.

After browsing the galleries at CakeCentral.com, I came up with my design. I baked a ten-inch round cake and covered it with buttercream. On top of this, I placed a fondant "tablecloth" and on top of that a tea pot made from cake.

Rather than trying to sculpt a tea pot from round cakes, I baked up some cake in bowls. My bowls are stoneware so they are oven safe. Before putting bowls in the oven, check to make sure they are oven safe. Here is a picture of the bowl I used:

I liberally applied some homemade cake release solution to the bowls and inserted a well-greased rose-nail upside down in the bowl before pouring in the batter. I let the caked bake for about 45 minutes before checking on them and to my surprise, they were almost done.

When the cakes were cool, I put them together with a thin layer of buttercream in the middle. After applying a thin layer of buttercream and chilling the cakes for a while, it was time for the fondant. I had some issues with the fondant, mostly because of the shape of the tea pot. Every time I would try and get the fondant to come back down to the bottom of the pot, it would start to tear! Either that or my fingernails would poke a big hole in it! (Note to self: Remember to cut fingernails super short before working with fondant!) I finally got the fondant to cover most of the cake successfully and used a few tricks to cover up the mistakes! :) Here's a picture of the cake:

 

The purple band around the bottom covers up some mistakes. The spout, handle, and lid are all made from gumpaste. Handle and spout were free-handed and have floral wire inside to connect them to the cake.  The lid was molded from the inside of another lid I have.

Another Wedding Cake

I just got back from a trip to California where I made the cake for my brother-in-law's wedding.  I love being able to give my family members a wedding cake as their wedding gift; it saves them a ton of money and gives me a chance to perfect my craft!  :)

The bride gave me her vision for the cake fairly early on and I got to work planning sizes and my plan of attack!  Whenever I travel and do a cake I have to make sure I make some sort of baking and decoration schedule ahead of time so I know I have plenty of time.  Here's the picture she sent me as inspiration:

When she mentioned that part of what she liked about this cake was how imperfect it was, I was both relieved and terrified!  I was relieved that she wasn't expecting me to have perfect corners, that's a pretty hard task and one I'm not very skilled at yet.  At the same time, I was terrified because I am a perfectionist and it's not in my nature to put out a product that doesn't look as perfect as I can get it! 

Once we figured out an approximate number of guests, I figured out what sizes pans I would be using (12 in, 10 in, 8 in and 6in) and started to figure out the quantity of ingredients I would need.  I also started to stress out more and more about how to make an imperfect cake!!!!  Haha! I started looking at some cake pictures on Cake Central and realized that giving the sides some texture would look pretty cool and it would be an easier way for me to make it look "imperfect".....not to mention it would take a lot less time to frost the sides! So, I sent the bride and e-mail with a couple sample pictures and she decided she liked the texture too (when I got that e-mail I'm pretty sure I let out a sigh of relief and a big "WOO-HOO!!!" as well!)

The textured sides were a breeze; it only took me about an hour to frost the WHOLE cake!!!  If I'd been going for a smooth texture it would have taken me at least twice as long.  Here's a picture after I got it assembled:

Just sitting there in my mom's kitchen I thought it resembled the Matterhorn at Disneyland....hahahaha!!!

Once I got it to the venue and the flowers got put on it, the look totally changed.  It totally fit in with the theme of the wedding and the feel of the venue.  My dad said the sides of it sort of looked like the walls behind it.  I wasn't sure how I was going to like this cake because I am not used to the texture and the askew stacking method, but in the end I really liked how it turned out. Here's a picture of the final result:

 

Two more quick things:

- The cake had two flavors: white cake with lemon buttercream and chocolate cake with German chocolate filling

- I discovered a new favorite thing: The cake icer tip - This thing made icing a breeze!  I used it spread icing all over the cake and then all I had to do was smooth the sides a little.  I forgot to take a picture of the process, but I'll try and remember to take some when I make my next cake!

Quick Pics

On my last post, I mentioned that I had forgotten to take pictures of the cakes I did for the Air Force promotion party.  Some of my readers were actually at the party and one of them sent me some pictures she had taken!  Thanks, Corrie!

I love everything about these cakes.....except the handwriting!!  Writing on cakes is the thing I dislike the most, I feel like I need to spend hours just perfecting my cake handwriting which, by the way, is completely different than regular handwriting!  It doesn't help that I still haven't figured out all the tricks to working in such humid conditions!  :)

Without further ado, here are the pictures:

These cakes are completely iced in buttercream and the leaves are made from a fondant/gumpaste mix.  I rolled out the fondant and put a cut-out of the leaf over it and cut it out with an exact-o knife.  I then used the knife to make the detail lines, which are the same detail lines found on the hard rank a Lt. Col. wears on their uniform. Then I dusted the leaves with shimmer powder to give them the metallic look.  After the fondant was dry, I just picked them up and laid them on the cake.  Simple fondant accents can really make a cake "pop."

Hope you enjoy!

Thanks again Corrie!