Happy Birthday!

I was asked yesterday to make a quick birthday cake for a family member to take into work today. I knew the recipient liked chocolate covered cherries and her favorite color is purple so I used both of those ideas in the cake.

The cake is a chocolate devils food cake with a cherry and ganache filling (to symbolize chocolate covered cherries), iced with a vanilla buttercream and garnished with a bittersweet chocoalte ganache, buttercream swirls, and both milk and dark chocolate covered cherries.

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

I was asked to make any kind of cupcake to take into my internship by one of the employees. I wanted to try something new so I got an great recipe off of pinterest. The cupcake is a Chocolate Chip Cupcake with an egg free choc chip cookie dough batter filling and a brown sugar frosting garnished with chocolate chips. The cupcakes are not super sweet and have a muffin like tecture but are delicious! They were gone so fast I didn't get one! Luckily I saved one at home for myself :)

See below for the link to the recipe!

Recipe: http://smells-like-home.com/2010/08/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-cupcakes/

Grandma Shower Cake

So I've never heard of this before but it's such a great idea! A family member was having a grandma shower (not for her) at work and asked me to make a cake. I hadn't ever heard of seen a grandma shower cake before so I did some research and this was the result.

The cake is a white cake (with a pink & white stripe design on the inside) filled with a vanilla pudding and strawberry jam and frosted with a vanilla buttercream. The bottom tier is airbrushed with two shades of blue and the top tier is airbrushed with a pearl sheen. The clouds are made from a mix of buttercream and piping gel to get it shiny. The stars, the baby, blanket, and monkey are all made out of fondant and the baby booties are made of royal icing.

The say reads: When a baby is born, so is a grandma!

Valentines Day ♥

I recently made a Facebook page for my baked goods and because of that I had several orders for Valentines Day.

I made a tie dye flower bouquet which was red velvet cupcakes with multi-color cream cheese buttercream flowers.

2 cupcake orders: 6 red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese buttercream icing & 24 devils food mini cupcakes with vanilla buttercream. All cupcakes had red sanding sugar and a red candy heart sprinkle.

I had an order for a 6 inch cake. The recipients wanted different flavors but decided on a chocolate devils food with buttercream icing. I knew I had to make the chocolate delicious since there was a debate on flavor! It's a devils food pudding cake decorated with buttercream and white chocolate designs.

Baby Shower Carriage - Girl

The employees where I intern found out that I am a baker and asked me to make the cake for an office baby shower. The cake is a red velvet cake with cream cheese buttercream. Cream cheese BC is different than cream cheese icing and allows me to decorate with it without the icing being too runny. The recipe that I used is at the end of the post. I definitely recommend it! I actually prefer it over regular cream cheese icing! 

Along with the cake I made vegan chocolate chip cookies. I don't have a picture but because I am not vegan (and have no vegan products), I made a vegan package cookie. They looked like oatmeal chocolate chip but actually tasted pretty delicious! Definitely worth making again.

before the final touches

After the white chocolate embellishments. 

Recipe — Crust­ing Cream Cheese Buttercream

SERVES 1 , 4–5 cups (change serv­ings and units)

Ingre­di­ents :

1 cup but­ter, soft­ened
1/2 cup veg­etable short­en­ing
1 lb cream cheese, soft­ened
1 table­spoon clear vanilla extract
3 1/2 lbs sifted con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar
1/2 tea­spoon salt

Direc­tions:

1.   Cream but­ter, short­en­ing, cream cheese and extracts. Grad­u­ally add confectioner’s sugar and salt. Beat on low speed until nice and creamy. If you want whiter icing, try to use but­ter with­out dyes avail­able at most health food stores.

2.   This recipe is for a stiff con­sis­tency. For a thin­ner con­sis­tency, use 3 pounds of pow­dered sugar instead.

3.   If you want a very smooth cake, let the cake sit for 15 min­utes after icing (longer for a thin­ner icing). Then using your spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool (this works best)and smooth it with a plain, non-patterned Viva paper towel. To do this, take your paper towel and lay it on your icing (after it crusts) and lightly rub over the paper towel with your hand, spat­ula or fon­dant smooth­ing tool to get a smooth sur­face. If the icing sticks to the paper towel, you didn’t let it “crust” long enough. Stick it in the fridge for 20 min­utes or so to let it “crust” then try again. If you let it dry too long it will get harder to achieve the smooth look.

4.   This recipe will ice, fill and dec­o­rate an 8″ dou­ble layer cake with icing left over.

Birthday Cupcake Bouquets

I made these cute mini cupcake bouquets for family members. Both are Devil's food cake with buttercream icing. These are made with 12 mini cupcakes which is the perfect size. Many people told me they don't feel as guilty AND that they can eat more than one and not feel bad! (perfect way to convince yourself to eat them! haha)

Mini blue/white rose cupcakes

Mini white/purple rose cupcakes

Primary Color Cake Pops

Another growing trend are cake pops. I was called by a family member and was asked if I could make 75 cake pops as a party favor for a 1 year olds birthday party. Cake pops are delicious and unique, and a lot of work!

The way that I make cake pops is by making a sheet cake and letting it cool. When it cools I crumble the cake into tiny crumbs and mix it with icing. I then roll out 1 in. balls and put them in the freezer to firm up for 15 minutes. I then melt different colors of white chocolate (or dipping melts) and put the stick in the cake balls and then dip the cake balls in the chocolate. They have a truffle taste to them but are so tasty!

The blue and the white cake pops are yellow cake with vanilla icing. The red and the yellow cake pops are chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Both are coated with white chocolate and decorated with various primary colors. 

Cupcake Bouquet 1

Sticking with a new trend (cupcakes), I wanted to do something special and unique with them because after all, decorating is limited to a tiny space! This bouquet is my first one and I think it turned out quite well! It's a chocolate pudding cake with vanilla buttercream icing (the cupcake was so light and fluffy it almost tasted like eating chocolate air...yummm).

Christmas Cookies!

I had a request for multiple types of cookies this year. The first picture is a swirl cookie and the second and third are parts of cookie platters that I made.

Swirl Sugar Cookies. The green and white cookies are vanilla sugar cookies. The red and white cookies are a mixture of peppermint flavor and vanilla sugar cookies. Both are covered in holiday sprinkles.

Four types of cookies in the platter: Spiced gingerbread snowflakes with royal icing, Chocolate chip cookies, Chocolate peanut butter chip cookies, and lastly Red Velvet with white chocolate chips. I made two of these platters this year (and kept some of each for my house..DELICIOUS!)

Holiday sugar cookie platter with royal icing decoration: Snowman, Bows, Christmas Tree, & Stocking.

**If you need help with decorating sugar cookies, this is a very useful website!**

http://annies-eats.com/2009/12/04/how-to-decorate-with-royal-icing/

School Bus

A friend asked me to make a thank you cake for her internship at a school. We came up with the idea of making a school bus and the sides saying thank you. The pictures were taken before the clean up just in case the bus had a "crash" and fell apart (so please excuse the mess!)

While moving to a different cake base that featured the road the nose of the bus detached. I was able to repair the cake! Unfortunately didn't get a chance to take another picture. The school really loved the cake and the principle sent me (and the intern) a very lovely thank you email. It was my pleasure!

Flavor: Snickerdoodle cake covered in marshmallow fondant and decorated with fondant and royal icing.

Winter Cupcakes

With cupcakes being a growing phenomena, I decided to start baking them more often and experimenting. Below are two different types of cupcakes made for winter celebrations.

Two types of Cupcakes below:

Hot Chocolate cupcakes: Devils food cake, ganache filling with a marshmallow frosting decorated with white dragees.

Smore's cupcake: graham cracker crust, chocolate cake with marshmallow icing topped with graham cracker crumbs. A nice twist on the campfire classic!