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!

Mini Margarita Cupcakes

When you have to ask your dad to go to the liquor store for you to buy some tequila, you know it's going to be an interesting day.

In my case, I asked him so that I could make mini margarita cupcakes for my friend Savannah's 21st birthday. And of course, for any 21st birthday, they need to be legit margarita cupcakes.

I'm not a big fan of the recipe that I used, which included frozen margarita mix and a splash of tequila; it was good but not quite the right texture for my liking. I'm a lot pickier than all my taste-testers, though, because nobody else complained. The frosting I made, however, was just amazing, if I can say so. I put about two shots worth of tequila and a little bit of lime food coloring in the frosting, and it just looked so good on top of the cupcakes with the green and white sugar "salt" I used to decorate.

I'll keep tweaking that cupcake recipe, though, and since we've still got a ton of tequila (I told dad I didn't need much!) and since my 21st birthday is coming up in five or six weeks, I've got plenty of reasons to keep baking!

Courtney's Cake

Who needs to study for finals when there are birthday cakes to be made?

OK, so maybe that's not the best logic in the world, but with only a few days until graduation, I didn't exactly have my priorities in order. And it wasn't just a cake for anybody. And I only had one final left anyway.

Ah, rationalizing.

So this delicious (if I do say so myself) red velvet cake is carved into a Tampa Bay Lightnings jersey, which combines two of Courtney's loves. (And, by the way, she is the biggest Lightning fan I've ever met, which is awesome, because hockey is awesome. I just wish Atlanta still had a team...sad day.) And if you weren't able to figure it out, the cake was for her 21st, hence the big 21 on the jersey and all.

In hindsight, the sleeves aren't exactly even, but I'm hoping I'm the only one who noticed (until I pointed it out to all of you),  and the Lightning logo probably could've been bigger, too, but that's what I get for doing something last minute.

One day I'll learn to stop procrastinating. Just not today.

Ooooh! And I got to use my airbrush machine too! The fondant I colored was a bit too light, so I mixed up my own airbrush color and just did a bunch of layers of color until it darkened up to the lovely blue that you see in the picture. Definitely enjoyed the practice. I also learned that you gotta be super careful when you put your fondant accents on top of your airbrushed fondant, because if you drip any water or gum glue or whatever you're using on the fondant, it makes the color run. And that's bad.

So there's my advice for the day! And happy birthday again to Courtney! :-)

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.

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. ;-)

Easter Cake Balls

I only got a picture of the purple ones, but there were also pink, white, and chocolate "eggs"

I am a terrible blogger, and I did not take any picture of the cute cake balls that I made for Easter, except for one poorly lit picture taken with my camera phone. I apologize.

They were nowhere NEAR as cute as the Easter Egg cake pops that Bakerella made, and I have insane respect for her cake pop making skills. I had no idea how difficult it was to make egg-looking cake balls, until I actually tried it.

It's a lot harder than it looks. Plus, you gotta get all the sprinkles on there, and sometimes the balls fall off the sticks, and they all looked lumpy...

I made 150 of the pops, though, to give away to my friends and professors on campus. Strawberry, yellow, and chocolate cake, with white (it was also pink and purple) or milk chocolate. Needless to say, I definitely got some good practice in. And thankfully, they still tasted amazing!

Maybe one day my pops will be good enough to be featured on Bakerella's blog in the Pop Star section, but then again, maybe I should just stick with cupcakes and cakes?

Edit: I lied. I did find one more picture saved on my phone:

Don't judge. This was only my first attempt. :-P

Valentine Cookies, 2011 Edition

So let's ignore the fact that it's no longer Valentine's Day, and no longer even February, and in fact, it's no longer even wintertime, and talk about how cute these cookies are instead.

I made these cookies to give away to my friends and family, so there are at least a hundred.

My goal was to make the cutest cookies possible, and I'm not gonna lie, guys, these definitely fit that definition.

These cookies were especially awesome. You just put a bunch of dots on the wet (royal) icing and then draw a line through them with a toothpick. And then they look like little hearts!

But I really think the swirly cookies are my favorites. Some of them have luster dust on them, but that was really time consuming, so some the cookies are just swirly, not sparkly.

I made the cookies the day before Valentine's day, so Michael's was already starting to put the Valentine's items on clearance. I got those really cute heart sprinkles for a really great price.

And the heart shaped cookie cutter was only 50 cents! I did have a couple of cookie cutters on hand, but I left all my heart shaped ones at home! At first, I was just going to go with the circle and star shaped cookies, but thankfully, Michael's was right down the street!

I'm running out of interesting anecdote to tell you about these cookies, and I took a lot of pictures, so I'll just let the pics speak for themselves!

Ta-da! Happy belated Valentine's Day! :)

Chocolate Guinness Cake

So this crudely decorated cake actually turned out to be ridiculously delicious.

My friend Chad had a recipe for a chocolate Guinness cake, and since he knows how much I love to bake, he asked me to make it for him (and he bought all the ingredients, so I couldn't say no).

Just trust me on this one. It's got beer in it, so you're probably thinking, this cake is going to be awful. At least, that's what I thought. But surprisingly enough, it turned out to be a really good cake. It was really rich and moist, like the recipe said it would be...  but I did make a couple of changes.

First of all, I didn't have a tube pan, so I baked the cake in two 9" round pans, and decreased the cooking time (I don't remember exactly how long, since I just estimated, but it definitely was not for an hour) until a toothpick stuck in the cake came out "mostly" clean (see step 3 in the recipe).

Second, I iced the entire cake, even though the recipe says to "to capture the essence and simplicity of a pint of Guinness"by only icing the top. But since I made a layer cake, and not a bundt-type cake, I just iced it like a layer cake should be iced. However, this cream cheese icing is not your average decorator's icing, so there was pretty much no way to make this look pretty in the traditional, smooth sense. What I'm saying is, I just slapped the icing on there. It worked though, and even the pros (if I can call myself that) get lazy. And since I was baking in Chad's kitchen, and didn't have any decorator's tools with me anyway, I wrote "THE GAME" on top of the cake with a knife.

The point is, it tasted good. And that frosting I was just complaining about? It had whipped cream and cream cheese in it, which is why the cake was hard to frost, but the combination was light and fluffy and honestly counterbalanced the rich chocolate flavor of the cake very nicely. Next time I'll just have to find myself a 10" angel food pan and make my cake as pretty as the one on Design*Sponge.  :-)

Valentine's Day Preview

OK, guys, I know Valentine's Day was a week ago, but I haven't been able to get my cookie pictures (except this one; thank you Courtney!) on to my computer yet. Just know that I made some super cute cookies. :-) I've also got an awesome cake recipe that I need to share with you, so you've got something to look forward to.

Sorry I've been MIA lately, but I guess school's just been getting in the way, with midterms and all that. I'll try to get back on track with all my blog posts this week, but make sure to check my Facebook page for updates too!

XOXO

The Game.

OK, so 10 nerd points to whomever recognizes this cake design.

Anyone?

Well, if you still haven't figured it out, here is my inspiration:

Ta-Da!

I realize that not everyone play Portal (for example: me) but feel free to check out the Wikipedia page if you'd like to brush up on your nerd culture references. Or just read this little Urban Dictionary explanation about the phrase "the cake is a lie:"

Roughly translates to "your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator". Popularized by the game "Portal" (found on Half-Life 2's "Orange Box" game release for PC, X-Box 360, and PS3). During the game, an electronic voice encourages you to solve intricate puzzles using cake as a motivating perk. When you have "broken out" of the game's initial testing phase (from threat of death), you find scrawls on walls of the innards of the testing center warning you that "the cake is a lie".

So now you know. But my theory is that the cake (at least, my cake) is not a lie, but you can tell people that it is, in order not to share your delicious dessert.

In case you were wondering, the "cherries" on top of the cake are actually cherry-flavored candies I found at Publix. Basically, they are like Blow Pops, but without the stick. Joy and Haley and I wandered all over 2 groceries stores before we found them. (We could've used real cherries, but the juice would've gotten all over the cake and it was just very messy.)

And just so you know, the chocolate shavings on the outside of the cake? They are a labor of love. But I found out if you melt your Hershey's bars (just a little bit; don't over-melt) and then freeze them all together in a big lump, everything suddenly becomes a lot easier. Otherwise, the candy bar (which is really thin) just sorta falls apart in your hands and that makes a huge mess. Also, wrap the chocolate in wax paper because your hands will melt it otherwise. If you're interested in learning how to shave your own chocolate, here's an article. (I used 6 Hershey bars, the kind you can get in the checkout lane, for this cake.)

The cake itself was that ultra awesome amazing pound cake that I made for Maggie's birthday. It's still super awesome the second time around. :)

Finally, I made a variation of Wilton's chocolate buttercream. First of all, I doubled the recipe, because I had a lot of cake to cover. Secondly, I heated up the cocoa powder & melt over the stove, which means that I basically doubled the amount of milk the recipe called for, because otherwise there wasn't enough liquid to mix the powder with. Of course, adding more liquid did make the icing thinner, but because I was just using it to ice the cake, and not do any crazy piping, it worked out. The reason that I heated up the cocoa was because I read somewhere that it makes the flavor intensify, which I seriously believe to be true. There is one thing that I would do differently next time, is to let the cocoa/milk cool down before adding to the Crisco/butter, because it ended up all melted in my mixer, and you can't have fluffy icing if all your fat is melted. My solution? Just stick it in the freezer until it hardens back up, then keep mixing until everything is beautiful and incorporated! :)

So that's it for this week's baking adventures! Stay tuned next week for more! :-)

New York Cupcakes

This past week, my roommate and I had the amazing opportunity to visit New York City. And no vacation is complete without eating some delicious cupcakes!

In this case, we checked out the bakery Crumbs, which is so popular, that they have multiple locations, including the Newark airport, and are even expanding to DC. Joy and I happened to go to the store by the New York Public Library (which was also amazing, but I'm also a book nerd, not just a cupcake nerd!)

It was difficult to decide which cupcake to buy, because they all looked amazing (and huge!!) but we picked Gingerbread because it was festive and not minty (*somebody* doesn't like mint. Weird).

Let me tell you. That gingerbread cupcake was fabulous. It was so rich and decedent with the fluffiest icing, which was sweet but not too sweet. And the cake part? Oh. My. God. So moist. So flavorful. So spicy and gingerbread-y. The only problem was that there was no way I'd be able to eat a whole cupcake all by myself. So it's good that Joy and I split it. They're really messy and crumby too, which is kinda funny, considering the name of the bakery is Crumbs and all! :-)

And Joy's cousin Beth also bought us gingerbread cupcakes from Bella's Bakery in NJ, which were more reasonably sized and had cream cheese icing (Mmm mm!) The cool thing about Bella's, though, is that they  have nut-free cupcakes for kids with allergies and also make gluten free, vegan, and organic treats as well. I love the idea. The bakery was started because the owner's daughter is allergic to nuts and couldn't eat the cupcakes that the other kids would bring to class.

Anyway, if you're in New York or New Jersey, I would gladly recommend both Crumbs and Bella's to you if you're in a cupcake-y mood. As far as any of the other bakeries that are around, I have no doubt that they're delicious, but I just haven't tried them yet. Guess that means I have to go back!

P.S. Please don't forget to vote for me! <3

Christmas Cookies

As you can tell, I made a lot of cookies this year for Christmas. Joy and I estimate that we baked over 300. And by we baked, I mean, I baked. Although, don't get me wrong, she totally helped. She just didn't actually put anything in the oven. =P

We make all these cookies (and cake balls) solely to give away to people as Christmas gifts. I think it's a brilliant idea because 1) I love baking and 2) I love giving gifts. I love how excited and happy people are when they receive a tin of homemade goodies. Delivering them is seriously the best part (and eating the extras is pretty awesome too).

We ran out of room to put them all, too. Our apartment has been a little crowded (messy) lately, because we've all been stressed and busy with exams...some things (like doing laundry), get pushed to the side. Oh, the life of college students.

Nifty trick: the sugar cookies are just dipped in canned icing. I melted it in the microwave so it would get runny and added regular ol' food coloring (all my awesome gel pastes are at home) to make it redish and greenish. After you let them sit for a couple of hours (or over night), they get hard enough to package, but the icing is still soft when you bit into it. So simple, so brilliant. :)

The cake balls are strawberry/chocolate and carrot cake/white chocolate. I LOVE the strawberry. Once again, I went with the convenience of box mixes and canned icing. But with all the hard work that went into them, I'm sure nobody minded.

All in all, it was about a 3 day process. Joy and I did this last year too, and I love that we make a yearly tradition out of it (although she's been doing this for years before she even met me). One of our friends said our apartment looked like a bakery and our roommates and everyone who came by loved that we had extra cookies sitting around to snack on. Merry Christmas everyone!

(Just a quick reminder to let you know that you can vote every 24 hours for the "Show Your Duff" contest, so if you voted yesterday, don't forget to do it again today! I noticed that my entry is on the 2nd page-- there are 10 pages right now-- of cakes with the most votes, so let's see if we can move on up to page #1! And to everyone who's already voted: Thank you! You have no idea how much this means to me! I wish I could give a Christmas tin full of cookies to every one of you, for voting, for telling your friends to vote, for liking me on Facebook, for reading my blog, for encouraging me to go after my dreams. I love you all! <3)

Disaster!

I think the biggest disaster is that I always spell it "diaster."

Nah, not really. I think a volcano being attacked by a shark, giant octopus, wolf, The Cold, and an encroaching ocean is pretty disastrous. Oh! Don't forget the meteor and wrecked helicopter.

See, this is a cake that I was planning for Hillary's 19th birthday, and now it's 2 months past her 20th birthday, so to say this is belated is quite an understatement. Anyway, we love watching cheesy corny disaster movies together ("The Day After Tomorrow," "Absolute Zero," "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus," "2012" for example) so this cake takes its inspiration from all of those movies and more.

The cake turned out a little more cartoonish--maybe it was the fondant octopus or the light blue icy lava-- than I was originally picturing in my head, but it turned out really great. The "lava" and ocean are made out of royal icing, which made cutting into the cake a little more difficult than originally planned, and the meteor, octopus, and shark fin are all made of out Wilton fondant (why Wilton? Because it's cheap and no one was going to eat the pieces anyway). The volcano is chocolate buttercream, and the cake is coffee flavored.

Shout out to Sarah! For telling me how to make coffee cake, and to pass it on, I'll tell you now! (Because have you ever tried to google "coffee flavored cake recipe?" It doesn't work, I tell you!) OK, so you take your cake recipe (or box mix) and instead of putting water or whatever liquid, use double-brewed coffee instead. And my dad says there's some secret "thing" about double brewed coffee, like it will break the coffee maker or something...so I just asked him to brew the coffee for me.

So there you have it! The Disaster Cake. While not as epic as the end of the world, this cake was pretty grand, and according to Chris, the best tasting cake I've ever made!

Cake Balls: The Pictures

So here's the pictorial evidence of the candy corn cake balls that I made!

First, the candy corn:

Here we have a picture of the newly chocolated cake balls. (of course "chocolate" is a verb!) You might be able to see that some of the candy corn melted and leaked out of their shiny, tempered chocolate shell. Also note the beautiful sprinkles that Haley & I decorated with:

And finally, the close up:

These were oddly and surprisingly delicious.

Riley's Cake

Riley is seriously the cutest little two-year-old I've ever met. He calls me Peaches (that's my nickname down in Florida... Since I'm from Georgia, y'all!) and he's got the sweetest little smile.

His birthday was also this past Wednesday (just like Joy) but his party was today. So since he's part of Joy's family, I made his birthday cake too!

The theme was Jeeps and I used this cake as an inspiration. Of course, it didn't matter how inspiring the picture is, if you can't find any toy Jeeps to put on top! I think we spent 10 minutes looking through the Hotwheel and Matchbox cars before we found the right cars.

As far as the decorations go, it really wasn't that hard. I made a 9x13" cake, and  9" and 6" rounds, then I just sorta cut up the round cakes and strategically placed them on the sheet cake so it looked like hills and valleys. And it didn't really matter that the cake crumbs (marbled yellow & chocolate) got in the icing, because it looked more like dirt.

The trees are just ice cream cones cut down to smaller sizes, then covered in a leaf tip (#67, I believe), and I used that same shade of green for the grass (grass tip, obviously). The thing about the grass, though, is you gotta make sure the icing isn't too thin, or the blades of grass will just look all droopy and such.

The mud hole is just chocolate icing and piping gel mixed together to look all dirty, with some Oreo crumbs sprinkled in. And the trail? Graham cracker and Oreo crumbs.

The river is white icing with blue-tinted piping gel smoothed on top so it looks all watery and such. Joy and I ran the little Matchbox cars all over the cake to give it "tire tracks" (although to be honest you really can't tell) but when Joy put cocoa powder on their tires, it looked awesome.

My favorite part, though? The candy rocks:

We got them at Wal-Mart. How amazing is that?! And they tasted delicious too, in addition to looking perfect.

So that was Riley's cake. I wasn't able to go deliver it with Joy, but she told me it arrived safely and everyone at the party (including the birthday boy) loved it.