The Super Awesome Porsche Cake

A few days before Father's Day, I decided to go really, super crazy, and make a totally-out-of-my-skill-set-and-comfort-zone cake for my dad? Why, you might be thinking? I had a few reasons.

First, the best time to make a crazy, potentially-disastrous cake is for someone you love. That way, if the project completely tanks, they'll still love you. It's only cake, after all.

Second, I wanted to tackle a project of this scale on my own for a while now...just to see if I could. Also: good practice.

And third: my dad has been incredibly helpful this year, and I wanted to thank him the best way I knew how, with a cake. He helped me pick out my new car, and did all of the scary haggling with the even scarier car salesmen, he helped put me through college, he loaded up all my stuff after graduation, and he's graciously (slight sarcasm here) letting me live at home until I can find a place to live.

You might be wondering why I didn't make a super fabulous cake for my mom, since, after all, she's done just as much as my dad in those areas, if not more, if you include all the times she took me out to lunch, or listened to me complain over the phone, or just put up with me in general.

But I also thought that since a) my mom isn't a huge dessert person (unless it's lemon or key lime flavored; I did get her cupcakes!) and b) I think she's more grateful that I didn't destroy her kitchen or get cake crumbs everywhere.

OK, OK, OK, time for the big reveal:

BAM!

And yes, if you've been following my twitter or facebook, this isn't such a surprise. But I really tried hard to keep it a surprise from Dad. At first, I was going to do all the baking and everything when he was at work, that way he wouldn't even know I was making a cake, but since I'm terribly disorganized, and have the worst time management, it was pretty obvious that I was making a cake. But I wouldn't let him see me decorating it, because the final design was still going to be a surprise! I didn't even tell my other family members, but eventually my mom guessed that it was the Porche. (Adam thought it was a taxi. Uhhh, what?)

Since we had a ton of family over for Father's Day, I gifted this lovely chocolate pound cake to all of the fathers in attendance: Uncle Kerm, Uncle John, Big Adam, and Dad. Thank you for being such amazing role models and fabulous parents!

The Hunger Games

Guess who got to make the cake for the premier of one of the hottest, most anticipated movies of 2012? (If I sound biased, it's because I am.) Me, of course! ;P

The local movie theater asked Betty Cakes if they wanted to make a cake for the midnight premier of The Hunger Games, and as the resident Hunger Games fan, I was asked to design and decorate the dummy cake to be displayed. Yay! 

It took me about five hours to decorate the four tier dummy cake, and although it wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be (like, I ran out of gray fondant, so I kinda had to MacGyver the bottom tier), and the medallion on the top of the cake broke at some point before the movie started, so I had to make another one a couple days later. I was so disappointed when that happened! I don't know if the buttercream "glue" just didn't hold and it slid off, or if someone touched it and it broke that way, but either way, it's a little heart breaking when the cake you made falls apart, even a little bit.

Other than that, though, I believe the cake was a big hit, and the sheet cake slices that we made at Betty Cakes and gave away for free were a big hit. Who knew movie theaters were such great promotional locations for bakeries? The downside was that they ran out of cake so quickly that my roommate and I, who were attending the movie premiere, didn't even get a slice! 

Harry Potter Cake & Cupcakes

Well, I am still alive. But (surprise!) I've been super busy at school and haven't really been blogging like I should. Before I left for school, though, I made these adorable cupcakes and a matching Harry Potter cookie cake. Sorry the pictures suck, I took them with my phone, and the REAL pictures are still on my Dad's camera.

(So Katie, whenever you can email those to me, I'd really appreciate it!)

I got a job here in Florida, actually. It's a lot of fun and it's keeping me out of trouble, so I'll have to share some of the fun stories I've got from working in a bakery! :D

The Golden Snitch

In honor of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 2) premiering tonight, my best friend Hillary and I made some Potterlicious cake balls. And obviously we chose the snitch because it plays such a vital role in the movies plot, and has nothing to do with the fact that snitches are round and therefore the perfect cake ball shape.

I found out that making cake pops is a lot easier than it was last time, because I found out you gotta put chocolate on the stick before you stick it in the cake. Like so:

The wings were a pain in my backside, though. I had a huge problem painting them silver. Originally, they were going to be spray painted silver, with Duff's cake graffiti...

But for some reason, the spray can stopped working after I did 2 pairs of wings. I'm really disappointed. I'm also sad that I still haven't gotten my airbrush machine, then I could've sprayed the wings silver and the cake part gold (Michael's doesn't sell gold cake graffiti). I ended up painting the wings with a silver glaze, which I personally think doesn't look as neat.

Plus, the painting took forever, and it was super messy.

The final cake balls looked really awesome, though. I used yellow candy melts, and gold dust mixed with lemon juice to make it sparkly and snitch like. Pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself. :)

When I ran out of wings, I covered the pops in gold sprinkles. Totally messy and not as pretty but they tasted good!

We also make cockroach clusters!

With real cockroaches! Just kidding. They're made with potato sticks and they are delicious. And also messy, but that's because it's hot and the chocolate melted.

So that's our adventure making Harry Potter sweets for the last movie! The candy trolly lady would be proud.

Captain Rex on Deck!

The cake I made for my little brother's 7 birthday was definitely a labor of love. I think the amount of time that I put into it more than makes up for the cake I didn't make for him last year.

He wanted a Captain Rex cake, and I've known for years it was only a matter of time before he asked for a Star Wars themed cake. This kid knows more about Star Wars in his 7 years of life than I do in my 19 years, 1 month, and 2 days of living. Thankfully, though, he didn't say anything about the realistic-ness of the gumpaste Lego figure on top. James, however, was not so kind. But hey, I think it looks a lot like this photo, soooo whatevs.

One big problem with the cake was the humidity. The fondant was so sticky and so hard to work with, and the gumpaste never dried properly (as you'll be able to see in the following photos). Plus, I ran out of powdered sugar half way through decorating, I didn't have a turn table or toothpicks (but I definitely bought some of those), and then there was that awful crater in the center of the top tier. You can't see it because I filled it up with another cupcake!

 I did the lettering out of a gumpaste/fondant mix. It took an hour to cut them all out, using a pattern I printed off the computer (I downloaded a free Star Wars font, and cut the letters out individually). A word to the wise, don't roll out the letters too thin or they will tear.

Do you see the trouble this cake gave me?! I didn't even notice that the "Birthday" was drooping down the side of the cake. You can't tell in this picture, but the H also cracked and tore a lot. It was a sad moment . :( I thought about re-doing it, but the cake was due in 20 minutes, and I figured no one was going to notice, except self-deprecating lil ol' me. (And now all of y'all because I pointed it out to you.)

And here we have another photo of the headless Rex Lego dude. The little black thing next to the cake is his blaster, which, if properly dried and hardened, would've been in Rex's hand, pointed down like a #7. You won't see the blaster in any other photo because Adam ate it.

 But we got a nice sparkly #7 candle at the ghetto Walmart, and the star candles, because they didn't have any birthday candles.


It was my mom's idea to prop Rex up against the cake. She's brilliant. However, she did think the pattern was margarita glasses, and not Rex's helmet, so.... yeah.

This is the other present I got Adam (the cake being the first). It's a Toy Story mixing bowl set with a spatula and cookie cutters. He can't wait to make cookies with me! :)

Despite the many, many problems this cake gave me over the last 24 hours, it was totally worth it to present it to Adam and to be able to see him (and my entire crazy, lovable family) on his birthday!

Oh, Crumbs

My first ever Harry Potter cake. (This is the second. And these are the cupcakes.) I've taken it out of the secret vault of Kelsie's Cakes of the Past to share with you all today. But after this, it's going back into the vault. Because this cake was... crumby.

I think it's also my first carved cake too. With canned icing, dyed "Golden Snitch yellow" with...liquid food coloring. I know, I know. But I've said it before (and you're probably really tired of me saying this): I've come a long way.

This box mix chocolate cake did not have the luxury of a crumb coat of decorator's buttercream, and there was no gold luster (lustre?) dust on wings. Heck, I didn't even know such a thing existed when I was 14! But if I were to make this cake today, it would probably be a three-dimensional orb with gumpaste golden wings.

Oh, that's my sister Maggie by the way. I keep talking about her because her birthday was Sunday. But this is the last Maggie-centric post for a while, because MY birthday is next week. Then you get to hear me talk about myself for a few days. Won't that be fun?! :P

Hogwarts!

Well my friends, I pulled it off! The Hogwarts cake which I've been dreaming of making for years now, and which Hillary forced me to make, is finally completed. Although now it's just half of a 10" cake and a box of castle turrets sitting in my kitchen, because that's all that's left after we ate it.

The party that we had on Saturday was a belated celebration of Wizarding Independence Day, normally celebrated on May 2nd (not to be confused with May 4th, which is Star Wars Day). As Hillary tells it,

I just successfully had a party because I wanted a pumpkin pie cake shaped like Hogwarts. And it was doubly awesome, because I got to see all of my friends.

Sounds like a good party to me!

Now, more about the cake, because I'm sure that's why y'all are here in the first place. I made two cakes, a 6" and a 10" out of two batches of Martha Stewart's pumpkin pie cupcakes recipe. If you remember, the last time I made this recipe, I used pumpkin pie filling instead of just plain ol' pumpkin puree, and it turned out to be a success. This time however, Dad bought pumpkin, and guess what? It still tasted really good!

The cake is covered in marshmallow fondant, which is not vegetarian friendly, if you did not know. Also, if you didn't know, working with marshmallow fondant gets easier every time. And I realized that heating it up in the microwave for a few seconds before rolling it out makes it waaaay easier to cover the cake.

I got the cobblestone texture by rolling it out on an impression mat that I bought at Bliss and then painstakingly painted with icing paste color and lemon extract (vodka works too, but I don't know where my parents keep that). Just make sure you don't get it on the floor:

The towers were also covered in fondant and painted, and the door is fondant too. The cake took a whole two days to work on, and only a few minutes to demolish-- I mean eat. :) But it was sooo tasty and definitely worth all the work. The cake didn't exactly survive the trip to Hillary's house, and when I got there, I had to "glue" the top three towers back on with white candy melts. Still worth it!

Long live the Boy Who Lived!

Adam’s Birthday

Well, guys, I'm sure my blog is totally boring you to death now that I'm not baking anymore (insert dramatic sigh here), and frankly, I feel like an immensely more boring person. Baking is a part of me, and I feel like that part is missing.

And speaking of missing, know what else I miss? Adam. Yessiree, my baby brother. Except he's not a baby anymore- he's 6, and his birthday was last Friday. I didn't get to make him a cake, unfortunately, although Katie baked him some cupcakes (and called me that morning- woke me up!- to ask for some advice. I guess it wasn't really morning, though, it was around 1:00pm…). I did call him, though, and sing to him, and sent him a card. But it's not the same, ya know?



In honor of Adam's birthday, this post is dedicated to a cake I'm sure you've never seen before (unless you've check out my Flickr account recently): Spongebob Squarepants!

The prequel to the Patrick Star cake, and inspired by one of Adam's favorite cartoons, this cake is definitely a favorite of mine- and Adam's. The limbs are sugar cookies, and that lovely sponge shape comes from a 9 x 13" baking pan. What I remember having trouble with on this cake is the eyes- I used blue piping gel, and it had melted or something, because it was really runny. The picture is a little grainy, but if you look closely, the pupils are a little wacky. Not that Adam cared.

I actually made a Spongebob cake for Adam's second birthday too, but unfortunately there's no evidence of that cake. We were on vacation at the beach, and I had very limited supplies: a disposable cake pan, a box mix, a can of icing, some piping colors, aaaaaand… that's it. I didn't even have chocolate icing for his pants, so Mom & I (she's so smart) crunched up some chocolate cereal to use for his pants. Talk about limited resources, eh?

Not only do I love baking for Adam, but I love baking with Adam, too. Exhibit A: The gingerbread cupcakes:

I made these for James' first grade class' Christmas party. Let's see, he's in 5^th grade now, so that was 4 years ago, just when I started really getting into this whole baking thing. The little gingerbread men are actually chocolate. (If you didn't know, chocolate candy was actually my gateway into the cake decorating world. I'll have to tell you the story sometime!) And the buttercream is covered in cake sparkles (it's supposed to look like sparkly snow). I think the cupcakes went over well with the class… Ok, ok, they're first grades presented with a dessert, of course it went over well!

Oh, wait, I'm supposed to be talking about Adam, not James. He'll have to wait until October for his time in the limelight. So, Adam:

Ain't he sweet? I love this picture! First of all, I can't believe we still have those aprons. They're all torn up and worn from years of use now, but I'm pretty sure they're still sitting in the same drawer just waiting to be put on and covered with flour. I do wish I had a new apron, though. However, Adam's apron, which Grandma made (I got my artsy/craft gene from her. She's amazing with a sewing machine.) out of a tea towel and some string, no longer fits him. I remember every time I pulled out my handy dandy Kitchen Aid, he would run over to the drawer and hand it over for me to put it on him. And he always wanted to help, once he got over his fear of the loud noise the mixer made, that is. Oh, and that orange/pink thing hanging on his neck is a toy monkey. Actually, I think it's James' toy monkey.

Back to the present, I'm working on my job application at the cafeteria right now. I'm really hoping and praying that I can get this job… even part-time, once a week would be better than nothing. I haven't made anything since those cakeballs right before I left home. I'm having withdrawals like mad. If worst comes to worst, I'll beg one of my friends to take me home one weekend and steal their kitchen for a few hours. J

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?

Daily Double

Part A:  Hillary's Birthday

Ta-Da!  Hillary's fantastic 18th birthday cake to go with her fantastic birthday and party.  Sorry I didn't get a better picture but as it was already safely packaged in the box, I didn't want to risk making it un-safe. ;)  The theme was Jeopardy, because that is such an amazingly fun show and my BFF is uncommonly good at shouting out the right answers when watching it. (Fun Fact:  After we ate the cake, we actually watched the show.  Good timing, huh?)  The cake was also deliciously German Chocolate.  You know that super awesome coconut/peacan stuff that they put all over German Chocolate cake?  Yeah, I put it all over this cake, too, even if you can't see it.  It's between the 2 layers of cake and around the sides.  The buttercream icing on the top is flavored not with vanilla extract, but with coconut.  It smelled heavenly. =)

The party was a lot of fun, too.  There was a pool full of jello, two birthday girls, two cakes, a sombraro and lots and lots of fun.  I guess I already said that it was fun, but that's the only way to describe it!

So, Hillary, I hope you had an amazing 18th birthday and I'm very, very glad that you loved the cake so much!  It was an honor to make it for you!

Hillary took this picture after we sang "happy birthday".  There are holes in all the 6s because there were only 6 candles; 6 x 6= 36, the combined ages of Hillary and Sarah.

Time for cake and singing "Happy Birthday!"  Sarah's hand is green because of the Jell-O pool.  And she didn't realize that she was lighting "magic" candles that don't blow out. ;-)

Part B:  The 100th Post

Do you remember in elementary school when you celebrated the 100th day of school?  There were all kinds of fun activities:  counting out 100 pieces of fruit loops to string on a necklace, making 100 hats, counting to 100, counting to 100 by 2s or 5s or 10s...

In elementary school, 100 was a big deal.  Well, I may be as far removed from elementary school as a public school student can get, but the number 100 is still a very important number.

For example:

This is my 100th blog post!

Yay!  Fanfare!  Applause!

As far as the 100th post went, this wasn't the most exciting post:  I didn't have 100 fireworks, or 100 cupcakes, or even 100 pictures or something.  As a blog post about cake, however, I think my best friend's 18th birthday is terribly exciting.  And I hope that you do as well.  But, if you've stuck around for 100 posts (or even if you've only been reading my blog for a little while) then I think we probably do share the same ideas about exciting cake moments.  So to end this for today, I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your support, encouragement, stories, and pictures with me and I hope that you stick around for the next milestone!  Now I shall go and get ready for post #101 (cupcakes)!

Success!!!

I finally finished my Webkinz cookies Thursday night (really late, actually, since I didn't start until 7), and they are beautiful! I was so proud of my work and took lots of pictures... there are 20 cookies in all.

Actually, I'm saying words like "are," in the present tense. But I should probably be saying "were" since I don't know how many have been eaten by excited little Webkinz-loving children. (Personally, if I were one of those children, I would never eat something so adorable... but that's just me, and I'm a total pack rat. I hope some people got to enjoy eating the cookies as well as looking at them.)

I'm totally digressing. Friday morning, I delivered the cookies to my brother's 3rd grad class. I am happy to report that everyone loved them! It was so sweet, actually, because his class thanked me for the cookies. They're such cute little kids! 3rd grade is a fun year, I think. (Shout out to Ms. Reese!)

Mom told me just today that the cookies in their entirety sold for $40. Although the PTO family night's fund raiser was supposed to be a silent auction, the cookies were sold individually (which is cool with me, since they earned so much). All that money went to Relay for Life.

I am so proud!! Those cookies were fun and they were for a good cause. Baking at its best, I believe.

And now for the photos...