Baby Cakes

Lots of baby shower cakes recently, and lots of babies! At Bliss, there were 2 baby shower cakes and a cupcake order last week. I took quite a few cake orders at Publix, too. Plus there was the cake that I got to make! :)

I modeled it off this cake I found at Cake Central. The baby shower's theme colors were green and pink, and I just loved the swirls and polka dots. I was a little worried about the border, but I practiced on some wax paper before-hand, and it really brings the whole cake together. I used the #12 tip for that, and a #5 for everything else, except the writing, which is a #2.

It's all buttercream, with a delicious yellow cake underneath. And it turns out that simple syrup really isn't that simple, because I ran out of granulated sugar. I tried it with Splenda, but it left a funny taste; the brown sugar turned the liquid a maple brown color, which wouldn't have looked good on the yellow cake; and the powdered sugar was murky because of the corn starch. So my parents picked up some sugar on their way home, and the crisis was averted.

But other than that (and the fact that I was babysitting all day, dropped a hot, cheesy pizza on the floor, and didn't get to bed until 1am), this cake was a breeze to make. I smoothed down the dots with a paper towel to get them flat, which took some manuvering, but it worked out quite nicely.

And I still can't get over how cute that swirly border is!

The Once and Future Cake

I stumbled out of bed at 11:30, bleary-eyed and pajama-clad. Only three hours to go before the party, and the cake was still in pieces in the freezer, and the chocolate buttercream was still unmade.

Gone were my dreams of creating a whimsical YouTube show, complete with costumes and props and instructions on how to carve a cake. The camera wasn't charged, the tripod was still in storage, and I hadn't taken a shower yet.

I think you know what they say about "best laid plans," but is there a saying about thrown-together-then-scrapped-at-the-last-minute plans? My friends and I are still talking about making an instructional and fun webshow about cake decorating, but that will just have to be put off until another day.

On the other hand, the cake itself is really awesome. I'm getting a lot better at carving cakes, thanks to instructions from Shelley at Bliss. I've really gained a lot of confidence in my cake decorating abilities since I started working there.

I'm still far from perfect, though. For example, the sword. It was gumpaste, and I made it the night before, so it didn't have time to dry. I did have the foresight to stick a dowel rod through it, but I didn't put the dowel rod all the way through, so the next day, the top of the sword was sorta cracking. Uh-oh. I patched it up with some cardboard and somehow, miraculously (it was Excalibur after all!) it stayed upright on the cake during the entire party. Oh, and that shiny stuff? Silver Glaze.

Maggie really loved the cake though, even if I did forget the anvil that the Magical Sword was "supposedly" attached to. The chocolate pound cake was "the best chocolate cake I have ever eaten," according to my aunt. So even though I look at my cakes with a more critical eye than someone else, I'm really proud of this cake and I'm glad everyone else liked it!

Duff Love

Bakerella, I love you.

Why? First of all, because you make adorable cake pops. Secondly, because you live in my favorite city (the ATL) and we shop at the same cake store, and third, because of this post.

Turns out Cake Boss is hosting a cake decorating competition. Yeah, I'm toying with the idea of entering. It would mess with my school schedule though, so that's the one draw back. But seriously, how freaking cool would that be?! I know I've got some skills, I'm told that I'm talented, and I've won competitions before... maybe not baking ones, but how 'bout that second place certificate for winning the Medical Terminology Spelling Bee in 11th grade, eh?

I know that doesn't count. But I still make cool cakes, right?

Anyway, I'm equally, if not more, excited about Duff's new line of products. And I say more excited because a) they're avaliable at Michael's, and b) I don't have to compete with anyone to buy them. (Instant gratification ftw!) Hopefully. Who knows how high the demand will be?

He makes his own fondant. I bet it's expensive. I also bet that it tastes better than the other fondant that Michael's sells.

Ohmygoodness. When is this avaliable in stores? I know I'm babysitting today, but I'm gonna have to drag my brothers out to the shopping center with me. Good thing I haven't spent all my hard-earned pay checks yet!

National Hot Dog Day

Hot dogs have nothing to do with cakes. Unless, of course, you make a hot dog cake. Which is an entirely plausible thing to do. I didn't make one though. Did you?

I wish I had something cool and amazing to blog about today. Last week I helped make a Trans Am cake at Bliss which was awesome. And I worked 2 days in a row there, so I was in cake heaven. But for now, I'm cakeless. I've got a vanilla sheet cake and a chocolate pound cake that I'm making later in the week, and you'll see pictures soon enough. I'm also working on my YouTube show (YouTube? What?! Doesn't everybody and their grandma have a YouTube show by now?? Probably. But I don't. Yet. ...Stay tuned!) but more about that another day.

Today I'm just going to babysit my brother, force them to watch all the cake shows we have on TiVo (Ace of Cakes, DC Cupcakes, and Bakery Bunch) and eat hot dogs.

But hey, looks like somebody else made a hot dog cake!

Lucky girl. I wish I could meet Duff!

I'm Addicted to Adorableness

Just found this cupcake apron give-away on Katherine's Corner.

First of all, I'd like to say, this is an adorable apron! It's got the cupcakes, and the bows... and you remember how I feel about cupcakes and bows and aprons, right?!

And b.) I can't believe I found this crafty little blog by googling "cupcake apron." Google, you did not disappoint.

Anyway, I'm just blogging away to let you know about this contest (and also to get myself a couple of entries, wink, wink). So head on over to Katherine's Corner for your chance to win, and wish me luck!

Peanut Butter and Ladies

I could tell you that I'm going to stop quoting Will Ferrell movies, but let's be honest, I'll probably never stop. I can't help it; his movies are so funny.

The other day, my best friend (you know, she had the Jeopardy cake, and told me to make the Hogwarts castle and I'm making her a disaster cake...soon) suggested that we make peanut butter cupcakes. So we did! Best. Idea. Ever.

Nobody ever called me a good food photographer. But
look at that chocolate filling!

She found a recipe for the cupcakes, I found a recipe for the peanut (butter)² cream, and we bought chocolate fudge as the filling because, really, it was a lot less work than making our own chocolate fudge. (Except my little brother didn't like it. But whatever.)

My family was pretty excited that they actually got some cupcakes of their own this time, because the last cupcakes I made were for a party and therefore off-limits. My mom in particular loooooved them. Except for the part where we cooked them a little too long and the bottoms burned. =( Because, seriously, other than that, they were PERFECT.

Etsy Love

Short post today...

I realize that blogging about Etsy is not a new idea. I've read plenty of blogs where the author gushes about her love of cute, handmade treasures. So I'm just going to right ahead and jump on that bandwagon, because while I was looking for birthday gifts (for myself), I found two particularly adorable baking-related items (along with a sweet HP necklace, t-shirt, and macbook accessories).

For starters, this necklace:

SOOOO cute

Also, I have a thing for girly aprons:

Look at the bow! The cupcakes! The pastels!

So there you have it, my friends. Jewelry and aprons. I'm such a girly girl.

Gorgeous Cupcake Liners

Now we all know that with that advent of trendy cupcakes, comes trendy cupcake liners. And most of the cupcake liners I've seen are either of the paper variety, or the wrapper variety. I think the wrappers are really cute and creative (I've worked with them at Bliss before), but they are an extra step in the process.

The problem with paper wrappers is that sometimes (especially with a dark cake, like chocolate) you can't see the pattern very well...

Problem solved!

My friend Melanie also made cupcakes for Vannida's party on Saturday. She made some amazing red velvet in the cutest cupcake liners (see above picture). They're lined with foil so that they "stay vibrant when baked" (I'm quoting Reynolds here). Even though I had never even heard of Reynolds StayBrite fashion-inspired cupcake liners before Melanie used them, I now think they are the coolest thing ever.

So thank you, Melanie, for opening my eyes to a cool and fashionable cupcake accessory! :)

Oh, and you can buy them here if you can't find them at the local supermarket.

In Which We Have A Sleepover And Bake Cupcakes

Yesterday was my favorite day of the week. And I don't mean because Friday starts the weekend (for me, my weekends are whenever I get 2 days off from work, like last Tuesday & Wednesday). It was Bliss day!

A good, crazy, hectic time was held by all. I modeled some gumpaste and ate some cookies and was surrounded by the delicious smell of baked goods and buttercream. C'mon, what's not to love?!
Yesterday I worked on a spiral notebook cake with Meagan, another intern. We also iced cupcakes and made cookies and chocolate covered Oreos. Last week, we worked on the tractor trailer cake, and the week before that was the Post-It note retirement cake (check out Bliss' website for the pictures!)

Adam doesn't know how to use a flash!

Then I came home and planned an impromptu sleepover with my best friends and made cupcakes for a party tonight. The party is for our friend Vannida who is going to Stanford next year, so we're celebrating her awesome achievement! :) Cake mix was on sale at Publix! (Yes, I still use cake mix sometimes. So I'm not perfect and I might be occasionally lazy, but the cupcakes will still taste good.) And I picked up my paycheck. Ka-ching!

The cupcakes were chocolate with red & white buttercream-- swirled of course. And for some reason, it is still ridiculously difficult for me to put two different colored icings in the same pastry bag. But I'm working on.

And the gold stars at a nice touch, don't you think?

Icing Mustache!

Con-GRAD-ulations! :)

(That was a purposeful spelling mistake. If you check the cake, I obviously know how to spell congratulations! ;) )

Sorry for the delay, but I finally downloaded the pictures off my sister's camera of the graduation cake. One of my sister's friend's mom's asked me last month to make a graduation cake for her son and daughter-in-law. (I made her daughter's birthday cake last year.) I was really worried about this cake because I just started working the week before it was due. Would I have time to make it? Would everyone like it? Would the gumpaste melt in this humidity?!

Good news all around! I have enough free time to make the cake which was received warmly, and the gumpaste survived this Georgia summer! 

The decorations were all gumpaste and buttercream. I used a dome-shaped measuring cup (greased up with lots of Crisco) to model the cap, and a thoroughly cleaned up Play-Doh clay gun to do the tassel (normally, I wouldn't use Play-Doh products for food, but 1.) Play-Doh is non-toxic, and 2.) no one was going to eat the gumpaste anyway). I just eye-balled the diploma to get a rectangle shape. Sometimes, you just gotta get creative when working with gumpaste! The cake was yellow, and I used the cake I made myself last year as the inspiration. I think the little graduation caps along the boarder is my favorite part.

In the end, my worries were for naught, and this festive little cake turned out beautifully. As Ms. Brown told me on my Facebook page:

The graduation cake was awesome and very good. You got a lot of compliments and people could not believe that you were a teenager. They thought I bought it at a bakery.

I'm so glad that everyone enjoyed it and that in my own little way, I could help celebrate this happy occasion!

Stars and Stripes... And Sparklers

I may not have made a July 4th cake this year, but that doesn't mean I've never made one before! When I first started decorating cakes for real (about 5 years ago), I made this awesome little flag cake. I say it was awesome because-- even though the icing was canned, and the red was pinkish, and i used that old-school-cover-everything-with-little-stars decorating approach-- I had 50 stars and 13 stripes and it took forever to pipe but...just look for yourself!

I was a dorky little freshman, wasn't I? At least the cake's cute

And more recently (2? 3 years ago? Ah, I don't remember!),  I made this star-shaped number. Again, a fairly basic cake, compared to my most recently fondant-y, detail-oriented creations. But it was cute and we stuck a bunch of sparklers in it to celebrate.

The pan wasn't big enough. Obviously I hadn't discovered cake boards yet. :)

Hope everyone had an enjoyable July 4th this year Maybe next year I'll do something along the lines of those cute cupcakes I made last year?

Lemon, uh, Cupcakes

(Adam, uh, gave me the suggestion for today's title. He wants me to hurry up and post it so he can read it, in case you were wondering!)

Well it may not be the most patriotic batch of cupcakes, but I had been meaning to try this flavor combo, and today's holiday presented the perfect opportunity. Holidays and cupcakes go together like Chinese food and chocolate pudding.

I made blueberry cream cheese icing (it's super sweet, but still yummy) and lemon cupcakes. How summery is that? And I think the liners (from Cake Art) are simply the cutest!

Since I made the cupcakes so long ago and froze them, I was afraid they'd be dry.  Well a whole bunch of lemon-extract-flavored simple syrup prevented that problem. Were they a little too moist? Maybe. But, hey, who wants a dry cupcake?!

They'd be a lot better with fresh blueberries on top, right? We have trees (bushes?) in our backyard but the crop was awful this year. And by awful I mean nonexistent. But you take what you can get sometimes, I suppose. And we had apple pie (at Publix, we made seventy apple pies yesterday alone. What's more American than apple pie on Independence Day?! Except maybe cupcakes and fireworks) and tons of grilled food and guacamole and Varsity leftovers. So we didn't starve without our berries. :)

I hope everyone else had a beautiful and blessed day too!

And check back on Tuesday for a snapshot of what our July 4th looked like four years ago...

Cassata

I have no idea what a Cassata torte is. Well, only kinda. It's some vanilla/rum/cannoli flavored cake of deliciousness, if the above picture and accompanying description are any indication. I found it while looking through Publix's Big Book of Cakes (or whatever it's called) trying to find the Caramel Pecan Crunch cake for a customer.

So I went home and Googled it. Apparently, it's Italian, and who doesn't love Italian food?! (Although the cannoli should've been a sign of the country of origin.) I also found a recipe. Not quite the same as the Publix version, but obviously they put their own spin on it. I'm not a fan of the almonds, but I do like the little cannolis on top. So I've definitely put Cassata cake on my to-do list. It looks pretty, it sounds unique, and I think it would be a fun recipe to try... ooooh, and how cool would it be in cupcake form?!

Ahh, the gears are turning. Time to turn on the oven! :)