Desserts and Downpours

A few hours ago, the rain finally let up, but it's been a very messy, wet, and cold day here at home, and across the southeast.  Thankfully, though, we don't have it nearly as bad as everyone riding out the storms in Fargo, and I hope the their weather conditions will improve as much as ours have.

One of my first thoughts waking up this morning was that today is my Aunt Elsie's 48th birthday (and I'm sure she wants that information posted all over the Internet for the entire world to know).  Elsie is the one we should all blame for getting me hooked on this baking and cake decorating obsession: she gave me my first instruction books, tools, and inspiration, and she's always a phone call away when I need some baking help.

So this afternoon I baked up a batch of 2 dozen cupcakes to celebrate this momentous occasion.  I used an amazing recipe: Wilton's butter cupcakes.  They weren't too sweet, and had a great texture.  Next time, I might use a little less butter, because the bottoms were a little greasy when I first pulled them out of the oven.  Also, the recipe really makes more than 24 cupcakes; I overfilled a lot of mine, and probably could've gotten closer to 3 dozen.

Elsie was pleasantly surprised and everyone enjoyed them, which, of course, is the whole point of cupcakes anyway:  to bring out the kid and you and have some fun.  (You should've seen my uncle Kerm eat his cupcake; it was a treat in itself.)  The hardest part was actually delivering the cupcakes to my grandparents house in all this rain.  Mom and I had to manuver with the tray of cupcakes and an umbrella.  Unfortunately, I don't have a neat little caddy like this one to hold my cupcakes; the container I do have will only hold a dozen.

From start to finish, the cupcakes only took a few hours.  I cheated a little bit and iced them before they were completely cooled, but since they are only cupcakes (and not an entire cake), the structural integrety did not falter and the little cakes were cool enough so that icing did not go sliding all over the place.  And, yes, I did use left-over icing from other cakes because I was too lazy to make more (and we were out of butter).  Of course, shrew cake decorater that she is, Elsie noticed that the icing colors matched the Spanish cake that I made a week ago.  She didn't mind, though, because she does the same thing with her left-over icing.

To wrap this up, these hastily thrown together cupcakes certainly served their purpose in celebrating yet another birthday! :-D

Felicidades!

 

This is the fastest rush job I've ever done.  From start to finish, the cake only took an hour.  OK, so it wasn't from the very beginning, but after I baked and iced the cake, creating the "blank canvas," the clock was on.

I had to get home from school, mix up some icing, decorate the cake, and take it back to school for the Sociedad Honoria Hispanica induction ceremony-- in an hour and a half!  I was going to decorate the night before but I was really tired, so I decided that I would have enough time Thursday afternoon.  It turns out that I did have enough time, but barely.

The red took the longest to mix up, of course, but I was pretty happy with the shade I got.  The roses, I think, turned out supurbly.  I'm definitely getting better at them. :-)  They didn't have enough time to freeze, unfortunately, so when I put them on the cake, I had to be really careful that I didn't smush them because they were so soft.  Thankfully, I didn't!

Oh, and the message says, translated, "Congratulations to the new members!"  It's not exactly centered; I could have put the message lower on the cake, but it still looks fine, I think.  The only probably I really had was that after I put the roses on, I realized the first exclamation point was covered up, so I repiped it.

In conclusion, I was able to decorate the cake, change clothes, and get back to school in time so that I wasn't late to the ceremony.  Afterwards, I had the pleasure of serving the cake (which might have been a disaster because I forgot to bring a serving knife, but someone had a plastic knife, so that was nice) and everyone told me that it looked (and tasted) really nice.  Which I was very happy about, because I'm always afraid that when I make a cake for someone I know, it will be a disaster.  Thankfully, it wasn't.  Also, one lady who ate the cake told me that I did a wonderful job on it, which was quite a compliment, because she used to be a caterer and she knows her cakes!

Despite the crazy afternoon, the induction ceremony, cake included, was definitely a success.  And all that craziness definitely keeps life from being boring!

Zebra Cake, II

This is last weekend's cookie cake for my sister's friend's 15th birthday.  I changed the design up a little bit from the last one, and I think it looks awesome.  (I might be a little biased, but the birthday girl and her mom liked it too.)

Plus, the said it tasted great, which is the main purpose of the cake anyway.

In other cake decorating news, I have recently been to both Michael's and the "local" cake decorating store.  At Michael's, I bought some tips and some various cookie decorating equipment, like squeeze bottles.  The "local" cake store was a little more interesting:  I bought a tip saver and a lily flower nail, which will come in handy when Easter is here.  I say that the store is "local" because it's really 45 minutes away-- not really in the local area at all.  However, it's only about a minute from the dentist's office, and Mom and I were able to stop by and browse before my appointment.

This week I've got to make the Spanish Honor Society Induction Cake (the NHS cake fell through because I didn't have a pan big enough to make a cake for 100 people) and Katie's birthday cake.

If you haven't been able to tell, with my lack of blogging recently, March has been a very busy month.  And it's only half over!  I will try my hardest to stay on top of things, though, which includes blogging.  Oh, and Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone!

The Horse in Striped Pajamas, Part I

So I was finally able to decorate that cookie cake that I made on Saturday.  Of course, this is just the practice cake, so I hope that the finally version will look a little more cleaned-up than this cake.

Let me begin with the zebra, since he is the center piece of the cake (cookie).  I had a wax paper cutout that was traced from a computer printout (I just googled "zebra coloring page"), and traced it onto the cookie (cake) with the white buttercream.  When I lifted the wax paper up, some of the outline came with it, but fortunately, enough of the outline was preserved that I just free-handed it.  I piped in all of the white first with a #5 tip (I think next time I'll use a #3 or #2 for the outline) and then I free-handed, based on the picture, all of the stripes, facial features, and tail.

I used a #3 tip for the black detail, and next time I'll use a #2.  I just didn't have the control that I wanted with a bigger tip.  I might even use a #1, but that tip is so small, so probably not.  Also, the black buttercream was too thick (I added cocoa powder to dark the icing up), so for the "real" cake, I'll make sure it's thinned down.

(A helpful hint about making black buttercream:  I always add cocoa powder, usually dark, to the buttercream before I add the black gel, and a little bit of liquid.  And I mix it until it's a dark gray color.  If you're not sure if your gray is dark enough, take a little bit and hold it up to something white, like a napkin.  Even if the icing seems too light while you're mixing it, when it's compared to white, it looks black enough.)

The musical notes were made with a #5 tip, which I will certainly not do next time.  Probably a #3 tip would be best, although I'll do a few practice notes first this weekend when I make the real cake.  They will also be blue, not white, but I was just too lazy to change out my tips.  Also, I'll put "Happy Birthday" on the real cake, but as this practice cake is merely for my own family's enjoyment, so I didn't worry about the words.

I would really like to do the star/shell border with a #32 tip, instead of the #21 that I used this time, but unfortunately, it got smushed.  I'm not sure what happened, but when I opened my Box O' Cake Decorating Supplies, I was aghast to see the #32 star tip all dented in.  I know Wilton makes a tool to help fix a problem like this, but I am not currently in possession of that aforementioned tool.

I'm really excited about making the real deal this weekend.  I got the practice cake done, so hopefully that means I got all of the mistakes out of the way.  The only problem is that I have to get the rest of this week over with before I can enjoy this weekend and the cake.  I'm getting my wisdom teeth out tomorrow. :(

It's definitely a busy month for baking, because next weekend I'm making another anniversary cake, and the weekend after that is my sister's birthday, and between those 2 cakes, I'm making a third cake for the Sociedad Honoraria Hispanica induction ceremony, so that should be fun.  And definitely busy!