Happy Birthday, Ryan!

It looks like a pretty boring and unassuming cake, right?

Well... You'd be wrong.

First of all, because it is delicious. So never assume my cakes are boring. Delicious things can't be boring, they just can't.

This cake happens to be red velvet with an Irish cream cream cheese frosting. A little awkward to say, but certainly not awkward to eat.

And also, I may be taking some liberties with the term "red" velvet. Because honestly, with a little food coloring, your "red" velvet cake can pretty much be any color ever.

Except maybe blue. Blue is apparently a really hard color to make, because the batter is yellow-ish already, and blue dye just kind of turns... green. Which is only a problem if you're trying to make a blue-and-orange Florida Gators cake, and end up with a green-and-orange Miami Hurricanes cake.

Right. It looks more blue in person, I promise! And while Ryan is definitely a ginormous Gators fan, and not so much a Hurricanes fan, he's kind of colorblind anyway, so I was able to convince him the cake was blue and orange! ;-)

The Cake is a Lie (Revisited)

So I finally got around to playing Portal, which you may or may not know, I've been meaning to do for a few years. But I got an xbox a couple years ago and bought the orange box on ebay, and here we are today.

Well, not quite. Not only did I buy the game, but I also finished playing it in time for my boyfriend to get me Portal 2 for Christmas. We've been playing the the co-op version of the game, which we just got around to finishing (we are busy people, ok!) and now I'm working my through the single player version of it.

And yeah, I realize I'm light years behind everyone else when it comes to this stuff. I'll catch up eventually.

But now, for real this time, here we are today, because in order to celebrate Valentine's Day,* and because I wanted to give this cake another try now that I actually know the backstory (instead of looking it up on wikipedia), I made another Portal cake:

This one (inspired by this recipe) has ghirardelli chocolate shavings (don't shave chocolate with a potato peeler, for God's sake! A knife is a bajillion times faster!) and brandy-soaked cherries for the filling. There's more ghirardelli chocolate mixed into the whipped cream frosting as well.

And, no lie, it was delicious.



*I mean, what are you "supposed" to get your guy for Valentine's day? Flowers? A giant teddy bear? A box of chocolate? Or maybe a cake inspired by that video game that the two of you play together.

Tickled Pink Elmo

I had a lot of fun with this cake! First of all, the gumpaste Elmo was a challenge, but I was determined to make him adorable and accurate-looking. I think I did a pretty good job; what do y'all think? I still maintain that making him furry was the hardest part of this cake, but I did find a pretty cool tutorial on Pinterest.

The cake is made with Fondarific, which is probably of the easiest fondants that I've ever worked with. (I also like FondArt but they dont' sell that in the Tampa area.)

I also used a lot of cutters from Duff and my rolling pins and modeling tools came from The Cake Tool Company (I won the supplies at the last FL ICES day of sharing). I'm really glad Michael's offers such a larger selection of cake supplies now, but I do wish there was a local cake supply store that sold more of the specialty equipment and hard-to-find items (like FondArt!)

Overall, I'm pretty proud of this one, it's one cute cake! Not as cute as the birthday girl, Marlee, though! She was just adorable! I definitely enjoyed getting the opportunity to make the birthday cake for such a sweet little girl.  Makes all the long nights and busy weekends worth it! :-)

Nobody likes you when you're 23

I have not one, but three friends whose birthday fell on the same day. So I had to double up on the cake decorating! They're both French vanilla cakes with Italian Meringue Buttercream...

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but that IMBC has the potential to give me a heartattack. I always think I've ruined it! (and to be fair, I did ruin one batch by not mixing the egg whites long enough and overcooking the sugar...) But in the end, if you just walk away from the mixer, then 9 times out of 10 (or at least 2 times out of three this week), when you come back in 15 minutes, your icing will be perfect.

Also! Add lots of flavoring! That's the secret! I learned that this go-round. At least a tablespoon, maybe two, and definitely more than you think you need. :)

Anyway, here are some close ups!

An attempt at Lambeth. (with buttercream, not royal icing)

I might have butchered the lyrics, but you get the point!

Ducks!

So in the town I used to live in for a couple months, there was a road called Duck Slough. I still don't know how to pronounce it. And that story has nothing to do with the duck cake I made, I just thought it was interesting.

Now, to the cakes!

My roommate loves rubber duckies! And why not? They're cute! And since I knew she loved duckies, they were the basis for the birthday cake I made for her. Birthday cake AND cupcakes. Because, well... why not?

The only problem is, I am a procrastinator. Surprise. I swear that's what gets me everytime I go to make a cake. This time it was because I couldn't find the candy molds I needed, and I didn't have time to order them online. So I called or visited 4 or 5 craft stores, and none of them had rubber ducky molds!

Then inspiration hit, and I remembered the cake decorating supply store in Tampa. So I called them up, and guess what? They had one mold left! So I had to book it there before they closed, and silly me, I had to drive there in rush hour traffic. (Terrible idea, by the way. Someone on 275 totally almost killed me.) Never again, I say, will I procrastinate! Oh, how I wish that were true...

I am really glad that I finally made it out to Cakes Plus. It. Was. Awesome. They had a ton of display cakes that were gorgeous, and sold all kinds of supplies that I'm sure I'll need/want some day. Gumpaste flower molds, fondant, cake pans, you name it! I was like a kid in a candy shop. (That's funny right? Because they sold candy... It's a little funny?) :)

And luckily traffic wasn't too bad on the way home, so I got back in time to make the little candies, and decorate the cupcakes to look like bubbles. The cake, of course, was decorated in the same theme. (I tried to "ombre" the cake, but the buttercream I used wasn't smooth enough. I can do it at work, no problem, but the buttercream there is a lot smoother and lighter. I bet IMBC would take to the ombre effect perfectly!)

And that's the story of how I once again procrastinated, but somehow pulled off another awesome cake.

Happy Birthday Danielle!

Mom & Dad's Cake

I'll preface this by saying that I'm really bad at surprises. Mostly because by the time I come up with an awesome idea, I never leave myself enough time execute the plan in secret. Like my dad's Father's Day cake. The whole cake was supposed to be a surprise, and I was going to create it while he was at work, but I didn't leave myself enough time, and I ended up having to tell him I was making a cake and that he couldn't see it yet so he wasn't allowed to go in the kitchen until I finished. So the design was still a surprise, just not the cake.

This time, I wanted to make a super special cake to celebrate my parents' 25th wedding anniversary. 25 years is kinda a big deal, ya know?

Though I think I pulled off the "surprise" aspect of it better than I expected.

I've got quite a few cake projects scattered throughout my house: gumpaste flowers, a competition cake I was unable to enter and still haven't finished, boxes of supplies I keep meaning to organize but haven't...

So I guess they thought this cake was just another one of my mini projects. (It probably helped that I baked, frosted, and covered the cake somewhere else.) I don't think they knew it was for them until I put the 25 topper on and told them I finished their cake! 

The cake had to be chocolate AND vanilla, because my dad basically only eats chocolate and my mom is not a big fan. As far as the icing goes, it's a vanilla butternut flavored IMBC with a chocolate cream cheese filling. (Don't judge me; I used canned cream cheese icing mixed with melted chocolate chips, that stuff was delicious)

Aren't they cute? Here's to another 25 years! I can't wait to see what last minute design I come up with for their 50th anniversary! ;)

Happy birthday to me!

My birthday cake this year wasn't anything too grand or exciting, because my work schedule was a little crazy and I didn't have time to plan anything over the top, but I did make a cute little strawberry/lemon cake and some cake balls for my birthday party. And since it was my 21st birthday, afterall, I dressed the cake up with some limoncello and strawberry vodka. Also, I made cake pops. Because everybody loves cake pops.

And of course I did the rosette style on the cake, because a) it's really super fast and easy, and b) it looks really pretty! So everyone wins! And I tried to do an ombre thing, but it was a bit of a rushed job and (don't tell anyone) I used canned frosting. I KNOW! I'm ashamed to even admit it. I wanted to make an IMBC, but I just ran out of time. It took 3 cans of frosting to do that 8" cake, though. Crazy, right? It still tasted good, though. :)

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!

tye dye cookies

I love playing with colors, especially when there's icing involved. So when my mom asked me if I'd make cookies for my brother's disco-themed end of the year party at school, I immediately thought: tie-dye.

So my first venturing into the world of tie-dyed sugar cookies was both a huge mess and a great success. I say it was a huge mess because I had six different colors of royal icing in zip lock bags with a little corner snipped off, and there was no way to get the icing from the bag to the cookie without also getting it all over the everything else. (Shout out to Katie for helping me finish the cookies at one in the morning!)

But basically what I did was take the icing, which was a drippy consistency, as I learned from Cookie Craft, and randomly drop it on the cookies, then swirl it around a bit with a toothpick. So it was pretty psychedelic. 

For future cookies, I'll probably go back to using a squeeze bottle, instead of zip lock bags (I was too lazy to find some) and get some electric gel paste colors from Americolor. Now THAT would be fabulous!

I've even played around some with blending buttercream icing together, like this cake I made at Betty Cakes many weeks back. I love how the purple/blue/green blended together. The orange/purple and the green/pink, not so much, but this is something I want to look into more, because if I had placed all the colors together correctly, I think I could've made them all blend together in one beautiful rainbow of a cake.

I know this is weird, but even though I hate cleaning out icing bags (it's just so messy and greasy and colorful), when my hands (and, admittedly everything else) were all covered in a bajillion different icing colors, it looked so colorful and beautiful in a weird, avant garde sort of way.

Also, painting with royal icing: Is that a thing? Does it sound as awesome to you as it does to me? I need to find some painting classes to sign up for.

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! 

Your Cakes Are Falling Apart, or: Why Cake Related Nightmares are the Worst

The night before my best friend's brother got married, I barely slept at all. And surprisingly, it's not because I shared a bed with a puppy and a small child (beds were hard to come by that night, lots of family from out of town and all that). No, it's because I had awful, terrible nightmares.

And honestly, I can only remember one other cake which struck such terror into my heart, and that was the peacock cake that I had to deliver the week my boss was out of town (and which went over much more smoothly in real life than it did in  my dreams). 

Why do I keep putting myself in these situations?

The central theme of these nightmares (yes, that's plural) was that the cake fell apart, which was a real fear for me because a) I was making this wedding cake completely 100% by myself (which some untrained help in the form of my best friend), and b) because I had to take apart and re-bake the 2nd tier on the cake mere hours before the wedding. Ok, so it was just the day before. But, still. Nail biting stuff!

Everything about the cake went ridiculously smoothly the day of and the day before the wedding. Before that? Not so smoothly. I completely understand all the ridiculous melodrama on cake shows now: that stuff is not made up. There was the fact that my A/C went out in my apartment, that I completely ruined an entire batch of icing, that I had to rebake 3 layers of cake because they cracked and crumbled, that I got Rickroll'd by Pandora (I mean, so traumatizing, right?), that I kept knocking over the green petal dust for the BILLIONS of leaves I made...

Can we just have a moment to admire how
smooth this fondant is?

But once I started frosting those cakes and covering them in fondant (ok, I'll admit that I did re-cover the 8" and 6" tiers because I couldn't get them smooth enough the first time) and cutting dowels and stacking them (that was the exciting part!) and airbrushing the leaves and intricately placing them all over the cake at 2 in the morning the day before the wedding as the groom's mother rushed around getting everything perfect (and it was all perfect)... everything came together. It was beautiful. It was bliss. It was zen.

And when I got the cake to the reception and it was all set up on the cake table with the cake topper and the bride and the groom saw it and everyone said it was beautiful and delicious... I remembered, over and over again, why cake decorating is not just my job, but my passion.

Now if only I could remember to make business cards...

Uh, Hey Guys.

I'm still alive, even if my blog.... um, isn't. I cannot believe it's been almost 3 months since I've posted anything. That's really pathetic. Y'all should've called me out on this. Especially considering that I've had a lot to post about. Like this:

And this:

And this:

And even this:

Lots of adventures in cake, just not enough time to write them all down. Probably because I feel like I'm perpetually covered in buttercream.

Well I guess there are worse lots in life.

xoxo

The Dummy Cake

For my entrepreneurship class, I'm doing a presentation of my business plan next week (and my business plan is obviously a bakery). I decided to make a fake cake for part of my presentation, and I've been working on that for the past week.

It's a 6 tier square cake covered in marshmallow fondant with royal icing decorations...

And let me tell you, this has been the most painful cake I've ever made.

I don't know if it's because I've had to roll out all that fondant by hand (in addition to actually making the fondant; there's a lot of kneading involved) or because I piped 6 tiers worth of decorations in one sitting, but my muscles are so sore! (I guess it could be because I'm trying to go the gym everyday too...)

Anyway, I'll keep you updated with my progress, but I decided to wait a few days so the muscles in my right arm have time to heal and stop cramping up on me. It seriously felt like I got a Charlie horse in my forearm. Yuck.

But, no pain, no gain. And this cake is going to be totally gorgeous and worth all the trouble :)

The 90th Birthday Cake

Here we have a lovely two-tier square cake that I made for a 90th birthday party. It's a red velvet cake with cream cheese filling, Italian meringue buttercream, and fondant accents. Oh, the bow on top is gumpaste. Wilton gumpaste, not Bakels, because I learned my lesson with that one (Bakels never dries hard enough. It's quite tragic, considering how much cheaper it is.)

And I got a chance to try out my airbrush machine again! You can't tell in the picture, but the gold is very shiny and metallic.

The idea came from a larger, four tier cake I found on Google Images when I was looking for inspiration. The only thing I really had to go on was a suggestion for gold & black accents, and white frosting. So that's what I did! I wanted this cake to be really special because turning 90 is really special too! 

I'm so honored to be able to help celebrate such a momentous occasion, and for such an incredible, kind-hearted person. And shout out to my roommate, Joy, for setting me up to make the cake and assisting me along the way! :D

Marching Band Cookies & Cake

One of the band directors at my sister's school is leaving, and I was volunteered to make the going-away cake. It's a yellow cake with Italian buttercream frosting (seriously one of the best things ever), decorated with rosebuds (which I learned in my Wilton class!) swags and shells. There's also some cornelli lace going on, which makes the cake a little more interesting

It's not the Chris Brown you're thinking of...

And I also made 108 cookies for all of the band members, which took a lot of work, but they look nice. I designed them after the band's uniforms. Thankfully it was only 3 colors and I got them all done in one night.

Sometimes, I think I work too hard.

Fondant Finale

So I don't know how this cake turned out so fabulous, but somehow, it did. This is the cake I made for my Wilton gumpaste/fondant class. I honestly don't know how it came together. The colors I chose based on the gumpaste and fondant I already had. I just mixed in a little extra color to make them brighter, and some how arrived at this pink/yellow/green scheme.

I've decided that the ruffle border we did in class that night is my new favorite. It looks really cute, and gives the cake a fabric-y look. And the daisies along the border? Ah! Not only did they hide the seams, but they just look like they belong there.

And the flower arrangement on the top was literally a last minute decision. My Wilton instructor and I were just playing around with the cake until it looked good, and this is what we got!

I'm so proud of this cake. Even though I stayed up too late to bake it, and got up too early to crumb coat it (and cut my finger in the process of leveling the cake-- ugh!), this cake is totally worth all the hard work! (Although if I had to do it again, I would be more careful with the knife! Kelsie, don't try to cut cakes before you've had breakfast!!)

Porsche Cake

Just the logo for today's cake. Maybe I'll make a replica of Dad's car next year? We'll see!

20 years ago, for his very first Father's Day, as a gift to himself, my dad bought a Porsche. I'm not really sure why, or what that has to do with being a new dad, but he really wanted one, so he got it, and it's still sitting in our garage right this very second.

Bam! Do you see how smooth that buttercream is?

But let's get back to the exciting stuff: the cake. For Father's Day '11, I went with a chocolate cake. Surprised? Yeah, me too. I thought for sure that Dad would want a plain yellow cake, or maybe lemon, but he went for something totally different and asked for chocolate. Go figure.

So chocolate he got: chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, chocolate chips, chocolate syrup, chocolate fondant.

The baking and the buttercream-ing of the cake was the easy part. It was when the fodant came in that I started having trouble. First of all, I used Fondarific, which is a terrific, tasty, and rather expensive fondant that we use (and sell) at work. The chocolate flavor tastes a little like tootsie rolls, so that's awesome. The problem, though, is that I'm used to using a dough sheeter to roll out the fondant, and today I had to do it by hand, with a wooden rolling pin, and a lot of elbow grease.

Smooth fondant! (mostly)

Anyway, after some sweat and tears (no literal tears, but I did feel like crying at one point when I still couldn't get the fondant thin enough and I was worried I'd have to start all over again), I got the cake covered. Is it as smooth and professional as you see on the TV shows? No. But was my Dad happy? You bet. It's all about pleasing the customer, right?

The logo was a lot of fun to make (though not necessarily easy). I printed the logo from Google Images, used it to trace onto the fondant, and did the same for the center part and the red and black stripes. I don't have an X-acto knife but I realized today that it's going to be my next decorating investment. The lovely gold sheen was achieved with lemon extract and "old gold" luster dust (usually I use vodka, but we didn't have any of that and it's Sunday, plus I doubt my parents were going to buy me vodka anyway, even if it was only to paint a cake). I free-handed the horse and the writing, which turned out quite spiffy, if I do say so myself. (I can never draw horses, but it turns out I can paint a tiny silhouette of one!)

Oh, and Adam helped me put the ribbon around the cake. If you look at the back side of it, you can see his little thumb prints. Which is why it's on the back.

It's not exactly the neatest cake in the world, but I'm hoping that everyone else doesn't notice all my flaws, so I'll try not to point them all out. I'll keep my perfectionist comments to myself!

Happy Father's Day!

Ribbon Roses

Something Youtube was never able to teach me: Ribbon roses

I finished my cake decorating course!

And you know what? I did learn something from it.

I learned how to make roses.

And ok, not the 'traditional' buttercream roses that you see everywhere, and the kind that I've been trying to master for 4 or 5 years. But they're still roses none-the-less. And I still made them! :)

And yes, my co-workers did tease me a lot for spending money on the class. (Thank you, Mom & Dad!!!) And yes, they can (and have) teach me so much more about decorating (and the cool thing is that I get paid to learn it and I'm having fun and I work with amazing and talented people and I'm basically just living the dream right now...) I'm just trying to diversify my portfolio of skills, and sometimes you have to take a refresher course before you can learn the advanced stuff. I have a feeling I won't be so good at the fondant/gumpaste class I'm taking next.

So, overall, I'd say the Wilton class was fun. Kind of a pain to get all the icing and tips and everything ready before class. But once I was there, it was a good way to spend 2 hours a week.

Am I crazy for voluntarily decorating cakes after spending 40 hours a week doing that as my job? Probably.

But no one said following your passion would keep you sane. ;)

Wilton Classes

So I'm taking this Wilton "intro to cake decorating" class--- okay, I get it! I don't need to take this class, but I do *want* to.

I already know the basics...I taught myself back when I was 14 using my aunt's old Wilton books (from the 70s? 80s?) and YouTube, but I never got professional instruction. So I guess you could say I'm just doing this out of order. Or you could say that I've been procrastinating for 5 years...

And even though the class is kinda sorta super easy for me, I am still picking up some tricks, and once I get through this class, I can take the next one (flowers!), which is where the fun really starts (hopefully).

I know that I learn a lot more about cake decorating at work (and get paid to learn, to boot), and that the instruction is definitely more advanced than how to crumb coat a cake or ice a cupcake or make buttercream frosting, but... well... it's kinda a refresher course! ;-)

I really don't think I have anything to lose from taking the class, and who knows, maybe I'll be teaching them one day!

Italian Cream Cake

For my roommate's (that would be Joy) dad's birthday, I made him an Italian Cream Cake, as per his request.

I've never actually tried Italian Cream Cake before, but I believe that I was missing out. It's quite the amazing cake.

Totally horrible for you, what with all the sugar and all, but there are walnuts (nuts are good for you, right?) and cream cheese (calcium? check!) and coconut (ummm, is coconut a fruit? Let's say that it is. Fruits are healthy) so it's not totally sinful.

What am I saying? It's so sinfully delicious. ;)

I suppose this is where the irony of being diabetic and a baker comes in.

I got the recipe on the Food Network's website, courtesy of Emril.

You should definitely consider making this yourself. Or building a time machine and going back in time so I can serve you a slice of the one I made. Because Lord knows I ate way too much of it myself. ;-)