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.