Kelsie's Cakes from "Back in the Day"

As promised in my last posting, I'm going to keep up with this blog while I'm still in college, baking or no baking.  So far, no baking. Which is really a shame, because I've had such a craving for those chocolate chip cookies I love.  Katie told me she'll send some in a care package for me, but either they're going to get stale and/or smushed in the box, or my family will decide they should eat them all without me.  Personally, I'm betting on the second option.

I did, however, scan about 20 pictures onto my computer and upload them to Flickr.  I don't have the dates for any of them, but I'm sure I could figure it out if I had a calendar and a lot of time to kill. Even though I don't remember the dates very well, I can promise you I remember the cakes.

It's funny to think that I've had cake on my brain since I was really, really little.  As in, three-years-old.  Granted, back then my ingredients were things like mud and flower petals, but it's the thought that counts, right?

There's no mud in this cake, though, just lots of sugar and cute little Teddy Grahams.  I found the instructions for this one on a magazine cover and mom and I put it together for my birthday.  When I say "my birthday," of course I mean Maggie's birthday as well, because when we were younger, we always had combined parties.  At the time, I resented it, but looking back, it really wasn't that big of a deal.  Sorry for giving you such a hard time about it, Mom.

As you can tell, this was before I ever picked up my first Wilton instruction booklet or visited Cakecentral.com.  If I had to guess at a time frame, I'd say elementary school, maybe 1999.  But the cake still provided a lot of fun: going shopping for the ingredients, baking and icing the cake, putting the little Teddy Grahams in their Life Saver floatie devices, making a slide out of bubblegum, the giant lollipop who's purpose I can no longer remember... Oh, and eating all of the leftover candy later.  That was fun, too.

We still have that tablecloth, by the way.

This next and final cake I'm showcasing for today is the Barbie cake.  I'm pretty sure every little girl wanted a Barbie doll wearing a dress made of cake and icing, but how many little girls can say that they helped make that cake themselves?

Sure, it's not as pretty or "dress-like" as the Barbie cake my aunt Elsie made for her daughter, April, but it has chocolate AND rainbow sprinkles, so I'm happy.  I don't know if we had three different sized cake pans, or if Mom just cut the tiers to the appropriate size, but it was probably the latter.

That Barbie in the middle of the cake is my pink Power Rangers Barbie.  She was my favorite.  She had this cute little party dress (which she's wearing) and her kick-butt Power Ranger's suit.  I lost one of her gloves, though, which was a sad, sad day in my household.

So there you have it: two of my childhood memories, preserved in photographs of birthday cakes.  But don't worry, there will be lots of cakes and memories in the future!

Happy Birthday to me!

I turned 18 a week ago! :D

For some reason, though, I always have trouble figuring out how to decorate my own cake.  When it comes to an idea for someone else, I'm usually quick to find inspiration, but for some reason, I'm more picky about my own cake.  Last year, I came up with an adorable idea, but this year I was struggling.

Eventually, though, the purple/silver theme took hold, and I decided to run with it.  Since doing the margarita cake, I really like the idea of ribbon roses, so I made a bunch of those, in purple and gray, and painted them with the trusty pearl dust/extract mixture to make them shiny.

The squiggles and swirls are also shiny because of the aforementioned pearl dust.  The candles, however, are not shiny, as they are old and left over.  After the fact, my mom told me she could've bought new candles for me.  Oh, well.

Also, did you see the bulge around the side of the cake?  I still can't get rid of that and it's infuriating.  I think that (I hope, really) that if I ever cover a cake totally in fondant, that should take care of the bulging problem, but I'm not entirely sure.  And I was going to attempt to cover this cake, but I didn't have enough store bought fondant (which I used for the flowers, etc.) and the homemade fondant was all crumbly, which happens to me every time I make it (or at least, the only 3 times that I've made it so far).  So, I figure I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

And I'd like to give a shout out to Chris and Sarah who arrived before I finished decorating and helped make the squiggles and swirls with me.  That was fun! :D

I leave for college at the end of this week, and unfortunately, I don't know how much baking I'll be doing since there's no kitchen in my dorm room.  However, I'm going to try to get a job working in the cafeteria, and I'll be sure to keep you informed of how that's going.  I'm really not sure how much baking and blogging I'll be doing between classes and work and all that other college stuff, but I'm not going to stop baking if I can help it.  It's still my biggest dream to open my own bakery in the future, and college will hopefully  be a step in that direction.  If you don't hear from me in a while, though, don't worry, I promise I will return!

A Birthday Cake Fit for Ringo Starr's #1 Fan :P

I'm not really sure who Ringo Starr's #1 Fan is, but I'm pretty sure it's my little sister.  Well, she's not so little anymore; she just turned 14 yesterday.  But she's definitely a huge Beatles fan and at about 11 o'clock at night, a huge boulder of an inspiration hit me and I realized her "Beatlemania" would be the perfect theme for this cake.

The "Happy Birthday Maggie" and cartoon Ringo drawing is one big FBCT , which I was really unhappy with because of the detail.  I should've used a #1 tip, instead of a #2, but I think the hungry monster that eats all our socks also stole my tip. :-(

Of course, I could also blame my unhappiness of the cake on the fact that it was 2:00am when I piped the lyrics to "Birthday" on the side of the cake, and that's why it looks so messy, not because I have horribly illegible handwriting when I write sideways.  Of course!  And I'm not really unhappy.  I'm just such a perfectionist when it comes to cakes.  Mostly just my cakes, but I've been known to be pretty judgmental about some of those Cake Wrecks too heh heh...

"Yes, we're gonna have a party"

"I'm glad it's your birthday"

 "I would like you to dance"

"Happy Birthday to you"

"We're gonna have a good time"

"They say it's your birthday"

(Sorry about the really poor quality of some of the pictures I took with the little digital camera. I wish I had the funds to invest in one of those fancy, expensive ones, but I just have to make do with what I have. =] Thanks for sticking it out with me!)

But Maggie loved the the cake, and that's what's really important.  I tried out a new chocolate cake recipe, and I think I used too much dark cocoa powder and not enough sugar.  But the buttercream was extra sweet, so that compensated it for me.  Plus, everyone else said the cake was delicious.  So I should probably just quit nitpicking and enjoy the chocolaty goodness, right?

Baby Shower Cake

I have never made a baby shower cake before, but I'm happy to say that now I have.

This cute little cake was made for a friend of mine, her mom's baby shower is today.

The cake is lemon with lemon buttercream  (it smelled amazing, and the cake scraps were yummy).  I got the cake recipe from Elisa Strauss' book, Confetti Cakes for Kids .

The blocks are made of rice krispie treats, covered in a double layer of fondant and decorated with more fondant.  Of course, after I spent a good 2 or 3 hours on them, I found out that there does indeed exist an easier method .  Oh well, maybe for next time.

The flowers, borders, and letters are all buttercream.  Because I fail at making flowers sideways, I piped them onto wax paper, froze them (they need to be in there a good twenty minutes to solidify), then stuck them on the cake with a dab more buttercream.  Add some little leaves, and viola!

I'm off to make my sister's birthday cake now.  All the cool kids have birthdays in August. :-)