Cat's Cakes

2012-02-27T08:45:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday! So sorry this one is a day late but last night was, after all, OSCARS! We have a party every year and celebrate it up big. More on that later.

Speaking of celebrating every year. This was my second year making a birthday cake for this special client! It was fun to sit down with her and let her design her heart out when it came to her cake. She loves Tiffany Blue and she loves Sterling roses. So I came up with this ultra feminine version of her favorite colors and her favorite flower.

The cake is a yellow vanilla cake filled with fresh strawberries and vanilla buttercream. Then I covered it with Tiffany Blue fondant and piped on dark purple filigree which I then embellished with candy pearls. Finally I added on a 75 petal sugar Sterling rose. She was simply delighted.

I love to feature cakes like this one because, while it IS an "average" 8 inch cake, it didn't have to be the "average" piped buttercream with shell border cake like you would get from the grocery store. The fun part of going to a cake designer is that you can have your "average" birthday cake be anything but average. There will be Big Birthday's in your life and for your loved ones, where you will want the Big Cake but every year you have your birthday and there is no reason to settle for an "average" cake when you can have something made especially for you!

As I mentioned, last night was our Oscar Party! This meant I was following a theme for the night. This year was "Night at the Movies" so the cake part of this had to fit in. What's better than Popcorn Cupcakes? No, that's not really popcorn. It's mini marshmallows!

I made the cupcakes...in this case just simple yellow cake cupcakes...and then I started on the marshmallows while waiting for the cupcakes to cool. The only baking tip here is that I knew I had the Cupcake Collars to go on these to cover up the actual baking liners but when people eat them they remove the collar and you do want a liner to match so I baked these in red and white baking liners.

Now the marshmallows. This is another one of those labor intensive decorating tips. I used 20 marshmallows per cupcake so it would look like a crowded box of popcorn. Each marshmallow was snipped with an X about 3/4 the way through it. I then "smooshed" each one so that the four corners of the marshmallow would shape more like popped kernels and finally dusted each of them with yellow luster dust. When I had all the marshmallows done for that cupcake I put a little bit of buttercream on it and randomly placed the "Popcorn" on top.

When I arrived at the party location I added the collars and set them out on the table. The guests had no idea that this was dessert! They just thought it was another form of popcorn holder! I have to say, that's one of the most fun parts of my job. When I can take cake and make it look like something that is not cake and have everyone believe that it's not cake...now that's FUN!

To see more Oscar Party ideas check out this week's Cherry Blog: http://thecherryontopevents.blogspot.com

More fun coming up this week. We are working a baby shower this weekend and I'm doing the cake as well! SO cute! Can NOT wait to share this one with you!

Cat

2012-02-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday! This week was, as you can imagine, full of Valentine's Day fun...you can see more of that tomorrow afternoon at our "Cherry Blog"
http://thecherryontopevents.blogspot.com/ . But this week, today actually, is also our younger daughters birthday. She is my partner in Cherry and also a caker so it can make it pretty hard to surprise her with new and unusual cakes for her birthday. Happy Birthday TORY!

This year I made her a Cherry Pie cake! She loves pie so I thought I'd make her a birthday cake that looks like pie! The cake is just a yellow cake that I baked in a pie pan. Then I covered it in vanilla buttercream and let that crust up for a few minutes. Then I tinted a little bit more buttercream with burgundy gel color and spread a very thin layer of that on top of the white buttercream. Next I used red decorating gel to put a thin film over the burgundy buttercream. Then I started working on the "cherries".

The cherries are simply red fondant that I added just a touch of violet gel color to darken the red up to a more natural cherry color. I rolled out enough fondant balls to pretty much cover the top of the "pie" making sure to vary the sizes and shapes and adding a little indent where the stem would be on a real cherry. I placed them one by one on the "pie" to get enough coverage and I placed them each at different angles.

I then put some of the red decorating gel on each of the "cherries" so it would look like they were swimming in the cherry filling. I added strips of fondant to make the lattice top and a fondant rope that I pinched (which is not as easy as it is with real pie dough!) at regular intervals. The last part was the handpainting. Using brown gel color mixed with vodka I painted on the first coat. The second coat I added in a little of yellow gel color to the brown and painted on another layer of color, making sure the edges were darker so it would look like it was a real baked pie.

The fun part was that I pretty much fooled her when she walked in the door and saw it. From a distance it truly looks like a real pie. It wasn't until she got up close enough to the pie that she realized something was "off" about it and it dawned on her that it wasn't a pie at all! LOL! That is truly the fun of my art when I can, even momentarily, have someone thinking that the purse, toolbox, tv, or, in this case, pie, isn't really anything but cake after all.

The Valentine's Day treats I made were actually a trio of desserts for the dinner party. The first of the three was a cupcake that was "pierced" with a fondant heart arrow. This is actually two fondant hearts cut out with a mini cookie cutter and then, while still soft, put onto a toothpick.

The next of the desserts is a White Chocolate Covered Strawberry. Temper your white chocolate and then dip your strawberries in and let them dry on parchment paper for a few minutes. Then, using a piping bag with a small writing tip, drizzle more white chocolate back and forth on the each strawberry. The final touch is gold large grain sugar. The perfect touch!

The last of the trio is a S'more Tart. I made graham cracker shells in these mini tart pans and baked them for a few minutes. Then I turned off the oven. I put three pink marshmallows into the shell and let them sit in the oven till they puffed up and slightly melted. Finally I put on a teaspoon of white chocolate and a little fondant heart into the center. To eat them you simply break them up with a fork and eat it like a cookie!

To see how the trio was presented on the table, and all the other decorations and treats for the Valentine's Day Dinner Party, make sure to check out "Cherry" tomorrow afternoon! Just go to:
http://thecherryontopevents.blogspot.com/

Also, though most of you have found this blog from our "Cherry" Facebook page, for those who haven't found us there you can visit by going to www.facebook.com/thecherryontopevents . There are daily tips, photos of all the cakes along with occasional treats given away. So stop on by and make sure to "Like" us!

See you next week here or tomorrow on our Cherry Blog!

Cat

2012-02-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday! With Valentine's Day just a few days away this Bridal Shower cake was a shoo-in for the Bride who loves Pink. I loved the fact that she's using mirrors on her table for the candles so I was able to use one of my surplus mirrors to display this cake!

This 8 inch Strawberry cake was filled with fresh strawberries and vanilla buttercream. I bet it will be gorgeous when cut and set out on her pretty pink, red and white heart decorated plates. What I love about this cake is that while it has the rose on top and hearts on the sides it's actually quite the architectural cake. So it wasn't just this little fluffy piece of pink, it actually has shape and structure. I love that.

It was, however, one of those cakes that takes tons of prep time. Days to make the petals for the huge rose and then dust it with pink luster dust and then more time to make the squares, which had to be totally dry and hard in order to put them onto the cake and then make the hearts and let them dry so they can be placed on the cake. But I have to say that I loved every step. It was fun to see how each piece came together on the finished cake.

Ok, so the tricks to share. The squares are cut using a square cutting set. Most people would cut out the big square and then use a smaller cutter to cut the inside out. But, for me, it is easier to cut out the small square and then use a bigger cutter to cut out a more even outside shape. Then I let them dry exactly where I cut them so that they will not lose their shape. The braids were made by using an extruder to make the long snakes of soft fondant then they are braided together and put right onto the cake with a little brush of water to hold them in place. You do not want to wait till these are dry because you want to be able to form them around the cake. The stripes are also put on while still soft so they can be placed over the edge of the cake smoothly. With those I brushed the line of water first and then laid the stripe down on the line of water.

Next week I will be able to share with you more Valentine's Day goodies! A few different types of desserts along with tutorials on how to make them!

Cat

2012-02-05T15:55:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday! This week we feature a beautiful little cake that could be for a Bridal Shower or maybe the top tier for a Wedding Cake but is, in fact, a very girly girl Birthday Cake for one of my favorite girly girl clients!

This 6 inch dark chocolate cake is filled with fresh buttercream icing and then covered in the same buttercream and decorated with 75 sugar Hydrangea leaves. Just enough cake for a small celebration of friends and family.

It seems like a rather simple cake but, of course, making the flowers started a week ago. It is a many stage process that starts out with fresh fondant being made for the flowers themselves. Once the fondant is ready, and there is a 12 hour waiting period before it's ready for use, I rolled out the sheet of fondant and used my hydrangea cutting set to cut and press the petals. These then have to set up for 12 hours and then I was able to gently fold them a bit to give them some movement like real flowers. Then they set up another 12 hours and I can finally begin the dusting process. In person they are a bit glittery but I used mat dusts to create the purple and blue colors and just a touch of the pink pearl dust to add the splash of pink and a little sparkle.

Each petal was first dusted with the pink in the centers. Then I went back over them with the purple and then the blue. This photo was taken right as I started the blue layer. I then went back over them again with purple here or there and finally finished them off with more of the pink. The wonderful thing about hydrangeas is that they are not all colored the same from petal to petal. The color variations is one of the reasons I find them to be so beautiful. They range everywhere from white to pink to blue to purple and every mix in between. I went with the purple variation. The next step is using water to set the candy pearls into the center of each petal. These set up again for about 6 hours and I was finally able to form them just a little more before letting them dry for 2 more days till solid. This turns them into fondant "candy" and they are, oh, so good!

Finally it was time to fill and crumbcoat the cake and let it settle overnight. At last the top coat of frosting went on, was allowed to "crust" up so I could apply the quilting pattern sheet. This, for me, is just a light impression. This is, for me anyway, easier to do on fondant than on buttercream so you have to be very careful to press lightly with the pattern sheet. Press too hard and breathe too hard at the same time and you have suddenly ruined your finish. Then you have to start the final top coat of frosting all over again. I use a rolling cutter to go over the quilted lines so that they are deeper into the cake and more noticeable.

I used a leaf tip, tipped to the side, to make the ruffled edges and then I put the first layer of petals onto the cake. Then, using more frosting, added the rest of the petals until they were all in place. The last touch is the candy pearls set into the joins of the quilting.

This little cake took 75 hydrangea petals. Can you just imagine how many would go on a full 3 tier Wedding Cake!?! Fortunately I can just imagine how gorgeous that Wedding Cake would be when it was all stacked and finished. Just remember that if you do choose to go with a multi-flowered design that each flower adds to the cost of your entire cake. This cake, without the flowers, would cost $45. But when you add the flowers it takes the cost up to $82. That is due to all the hours that go into making the flowers look real but edible. Since hydrangeas are toxic to humans, this is the only safe way to have them on your cake.

This upcoming week brings another shower cake...can't wait to share!

Cat

2012-01-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday! I believe that Bridal and Baby Showers have become such big events for our society because smaller parties are too expensive to have all of the time. So now people are having one huge party to celebrate. This usually requires a multi-tiered cake or lots of cupcakes for everyone. But not every party is a big one and sometimes it is a small cake that you want to make that big impression.

Today's Blackberry Rose cake was for a small party of 10. This 6 inch yellow cinnamon cake was filled with vanilla buttercream and fresh blackberries and then covered in more vanilla buttercream and topped with more blackberries. The party theme was English Tea and, of course, the color palette was different shades of purple. They wanted fresh berries, either blueberries or blackberries. I felt blackberries fit the color palette better and, here in the USA, we can get fresh blackberries this time of year. If you are somewhere where you can not get fresh berries you can use frozen berries that have been thawed or even pie filling with a lot of the extra liquid drained off.

To get the variegated effect with the frosting is very easy. First I lightly tinted the buttercream with violet Americolor gel food color. Then I put the large tip into the piping bag and, using a skewer that had been dipped into the jar of food color, I ran three lines of dye inside the bag. When you pipe the frosting out the color automatically attaches in those three spots to give you this effect.

Two things to note about using fresh fruit inside or on your cakes. Make sure the fruit is firm. If you decide, for the filling of the cake, to cut it, it seems too juicy, or you are using frozen or canned berries then make sure you stir it into the buttercream first or it will weep into your cake and possibly out to the outside of your cake showing blotches of juice. Even though these blackberries were firm I still put a layer of buttercream first and then nestled the berries into that before putting on the top layer of cake. On the top of the cake it is also important to put a moisture barrier of buttercream down on the top of the cake before adding the berries or you stand the chance of your top layer of cake getting soaked with juice and becoming squishy. If you want the look of the juice dripping down the cake you can add sugar to the fresh berries, let them sit for about 30 minutes and you will have a nice amount of liquid along with your berries to spoon on top and then, artfully of course, drip the liquid down the sides of the cake. It can make a very beautiful presentation.

When you add whole berries to the filling, like I did with this cake, you get the pleasure of having your guests oooh and ahhhh when they first see the cake and then ooooh and ahhh again when they are served the cake and see the whole berries in the filling! Not a single guest walked past the cake without noting how beautiful it was and that left a huge smile on the face of the hostess!

This week coming up I have a birthday cake as well as cupcakes for a CubScout Pinewood Derby Day! As always, can't wait to share them with you next Sunday!

Cat

2012-01-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday! Well this week brought me a fun time making up a dessert plate and so I thought I'd share each item with you and how to make it as well as present it. This was a week off for me and my own family dinner was the only "work" on the table so it was fun to get together a dessert that the entire family (15 people attended!) could enjoy.

First up were the Cream Cheese Balls. These we saw years ago at a Fondue restaurant named La Fondue in Saratoga California. They are like mini cheesecakes and OH so good! Take a small spoon, I actually have a little gold "tea" spoon like you would use if you were throwing a High Tea, scoop a small bit of cream cheese up and then roll it into a ball in your hand. Drop it into some graham cracker crumbs (these you can get on the baking aisle already ground up) and roll till covered. Stick in a toothpick and dip it into the chocolate and set onto a plate that's been lined with parchment paper. These will go into the freezer for a few minutes before you will be able to pop them off the paper and onto your tray.

Next up are these SO delicious S'mores Pops. All you do is put marshmallows onto skewers or lollipop sticks (even Popsicle sticks will work) and dip them into the chocolate and then roll them into the graham crackers. These were a huge hit at the party!

For those who were not marshmallow lovers I wanted to put something chocolate covered on the plate that they would enjoy. These round cookies are filled with vanilla cream. They come in a package, each about 8 inches long and in various flavors so pick whichever fits in with your party. I cut them in half and dipped the cut half into the chocolate, placed these on the parchment lined plate along with the cream cheese balls and put the plate into the freezer for 10 minutes.

Last on the list was Chocolate Dipped Strawberries. These are always a hit at any party I have ever thrown and they are easier than you think. The real trick here is letting them set up. I use cups to hold up the strawberries until they are totally dry before putting them into the presentation. Now I put one of them in before it was totally dry to show you how they look before totally set up and how they look after. Shiny is still unset and the mat finish is totally set. Now to do them all you have to do, after washing and drying the fruit, is put the skewer (that has had the pointed end cut off...you don't want your guest poking themselves when they take a bite) into the end of the strawberry. This is why you leave the green part on the strawberry, to help anchor your skewer. Dip it in, tip first, till the strawberry is covered 3/4 of the way in chocolate. Lift it straight out and move it around in a circular motion. This gets rid of the excess chocolate and forms the cute little curly-Q on the top. Then set it into a jar or cup that is deep enough so that most of the skewer is inside the cup and only a bit is showing. This will hold your strawberries quite stable while they set up.

While waiting for the strawberries I set up my tray with the rest of the treats. My tray, in this case, is actually a cake stand that had been turned upside down. Now this particular cake stand is made for this purpose and has the different divided wells for serving different foods but I think you could use any cake stand that has a lip on it to keep the food from sliding off. I removed the treats from the freezer and placed them in their wells and after the strawberries had set up I placed them into a mound of fondant to keep the skewers upright like a flower centerpiece. If you like you can just cut your skewers shorter so that the strawberries can rest on the lip of the middle piece like they did in the cups. You can also use part of a styrofoam ball, oasis, or clay you may have around to help hold them into place. When removing them just remind your guests to spin the stick first, to release it from what is holding it, and then pull up.

I always use the best grade of chopped chocolate that I can afford but a bag of chocolate chips melted over a double boiler or in the microwave would work just as well. I used a double boiler so it kept the chocolate nice and smooth the entire time I was dipping but when working with smaller amounts of treats I have used the microwave technique. You just have to be very careful not to leave the chocolate in the microwave too long because it can burn quickly. As with all chocolate melting, be sure not to get any water into the chocolate or it will seize up and you will have to start over again.

This upcoming week brings another dinner party for clients who have not yet been able to get together to celebrate the holidays so that means Dinner Party Cupcakes! This is the third order for the same client so I have to come up with something completely new...a real challenge that I can not wait to tackle! See you next Sunday!

Cat

2012-01-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

Happy Monday! In the US this is Martin Luther King Jr. Day so it's a holiday. So I'm a day late with the blog...not due to the holiday but due to all the client meetings I had this weekend out of town. This is the time of year that Cakers begin to book for the rest of their year. Some get booked the previous year but, for me anyways, January is when I book up. So I had meetings for 2 baby showers, 2 birthday parties, 1 Oscar party and a wedding this weekend and now I can NOT wait to get started on all of the cakes!

The cupcakes featured this week are edible demos for the wedding clients I met with for their wedding later this year. They are doing a combination of a wedding cake along with cupcakes for their reception. So I made up a sample of what they could have for their day. They are filled Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream swirled on top and decorated with a fondant medallion with a monogram in royal icing. They were filled with chocolate brownie buttercream.

So that's the "secret" today. How to fill your cupcakes easily for a wonderful hidden treat. Now, cake decorating books may tell you to use a small round piping tip on your bag filled with whatever flavor icing you want to use, stick that down into the cupcake, squeezing gently as you lift the tip back up out of the cupcake. This works by compressing the cupcake around the filling to make way for the icing. I'm not a big fan of the compression. I like light and airy cupcakes and the compression removes that airy part and it's hard to tell just how much filling you have injected into the center. So what I do, instead, is to use a small cookie round cookie cutter. The one I have comes from a set of graduating circles that grow from about 1 inch to 5 inches. So I use the smallest of the rounds. I press that into the center of the cupcake and then remove a little cake "plug" (wonderful for snacking!LOL!) and then, using a piping bag with no coupler or tip, just fill in the hole until it's level with the top of the cupcake. Then all you have to do is pipe whatever frosting you would normally use on top of your cupcakes to hide the secret filling. These are always a hit. In the case of this wedding we are matching the fillings of the cupcakes with the fillings of the cake tiers so that they match.

This upcoming week brings another dessert tray! Can't wait to share this idea with all of you so you can use it for Valentines Day (Yup, that means the centerpiece is chocolate! YUM!)

Cat

2012-01-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

Happy Sunday! The beginning months of the year is a Cakers slow time. It's a welcome break after such a hectic Holiday Season but we still have small orders to keep us going. January is full of birthdays and even small dinner parties with friends catching up and having their Holiday celebrations a bit later due to family commitments.

This week's cake was for just this sort of get together. To evoke the spirit of Christmas this cake is a Gingerbread Spice cake. To make it a bit more special for the dinner party it has Caramel Buttercream for filling and for the top and then was drizzled with even more caramel. This is a very rich cake so this little six inch cake feeds 12. Yup, tiny slices for a rich dessert like this one but oh so good!

To make this is fairly easy. Bake the Gingerbread Spice cake in a 6 inch pan and do not worry about leveling the dome. You want the icing to appear domed so your cake will help achieve that effect without having to use more icing. To get the icing just make your regular buttercream recipe and add in enough caramel to your taste. This will loosen up the buttercream so you will need to sift in more powdered sugar to make it the consistency you want and need it to be for the cake. You want to end up with something that peaks but doesn't crust up too hard, otherwise it won't sploosh out of the layers. I know, I know, usually you don't want sploosh in your layer cakes but with this cake you want to define the layers so sploosh is wanted and needed. Cut your cake into 3 layers and then, using a piping bag with no tip or coupler, swirl a dot in the middle of the bottom layer and then a ring around that. Add the next layer and gently push down just until the filling starts to sploosh out. As you add the layers it will sploosh a bit more due to the weight of the cake and icing so make sure not to push down too hard on that first layer. Once you have done the same for the next layer just swirl the icing on the top of the cake. Now let that sit up for just a few minutes and then, using a back and forth and then side to side motion with the caramel sauce, make your caramel pattern on top and let it drip down the sides. Done! You want it to set up so you don't end up with rivulets in your icing. This will take just a few minutes in between steps to allow your icing to crust up just a bit.

Now I bring you the other celebration popular in January and February...Birthdays! This "Coach" style purse cake serves 15. The trick to making a purse cake is your measurement of width vs height. You need to make sure your width is at least 2/3rds the height of your cake. Even so you will need to insert dowels into your cake in order to make it more stable. There are 4 in this cake spaced out evenly from end to end. You can choose to lay the base fondant on in one sheet but this can weigh down the cake so, more often than not, I use panels instead. Then all of the details are added except for the trim, zipper pull and handles. Once the details are on I added the trim which is just fondant snakes that have been added in, as often as possible, one long strip per section. The handles are a bit harder. They need to set up a little bit but not too much. You want them to stand up on the cake like real purse handles but if you get them too solid they will crack or even break when you try to curve them to the cake. A combination of both fondant and gumpaste or fondant and tylose powder will help it dry quickly but not too quickly so you will have a chance to mold it to your cake. Even so, with this one I used crinkled rolled up Press&Seal to hold the handles into place until they were dry enough to hold their own weight. The last touch was adding the zipper pull. Making these is really like you would do it with real leather. You make a long rectangle, cut it vertically to make the strips but do not cut all the way to the top. that way you have a solid piece with the strips below. Now let that sit up for a few minutes to dry out a bit. Then beginning with one end, roll up the solid piece and you will end up with the tassel effect. Next make a ball of fondant and then, using your thumb, start to hollow out one side of the ball until you have a cap for your tassel. Poke two holes into the top of it and then attach it to the tassel. Finally, using a thin rolled fondant snake, make a loop. Thread it through the zipper and then attach that to the cap where you put the holes.

Yup, a lot of detail work goes into a cake like this but your guests will be amazed and will be talking about the cake for years to come. I know this for certain because this particular birthday cake was made a few years back and I still get requests for purse cakes because of this one! When was the last time someone brought up your floral centerpiece??? But a cake like this will be talked about for years to come....that sounds like a solid investment with the added delight of the joy from your birthday honoree and the delicious cake you get to eat as well!

This upcoming week is a cupcake week! They are wedding cupcakes so that makes it even more fun! I'll also be featuring a wedding cake in order to get everyone in the mood for the wedding season which is on it's way!

Cat

2011-12-31T16:19:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012! This weeks cake is for a small dinner party. The "theme" is silver and blue shimmer so I had to come up with a cake I thought would match the look of the theme. The cake is a strawberry and white marble cake and it's covered in a cream cheese frosting and then vanilla marshmallow fondant! The "bubbles" are actually candy pearls and the numbers are rolled blue fondant that's been covered in blue sanding sugar. Only the curly ribbon (which is part of the party decor) is non edible.

The ruffles of this cake are just strips of fondant that have been cut using a ruffled wheel cutter then folded in wavy ruffles around the cake. The "bubbles" were added by lightly brushing the fondant with water and then letting that act as glue for the candy. I used an extruder (handy little device that looks like a garlic press but with screens that have different cut outs) for the numbers but you could just roll out fondant snakes. The extruder just makes the process faster. Like the bubbles, I used a thin coat of water on the numbers and then added the sanding sugar. The ribbon is actually tied to a toothpick and then set into the cake so it can be easily removed for service.

You will be able to see more photos of the party set up on Facebook tomorrow. Just go to: www.facebook.com/thecherryontopevents to see how the cake fit into the party decor.

This week I was able to play with a few recipes as well. Making anything vegan taste as good as the regular version is a challenge but every now and then I come up with a new version that is lower in fat, calories but tastes really good too! Most of the time this requires the removal of the oil and eggs. Unfortunately it can also change the texture of the baked good and that can effect the way it tastes. This week I made a change to my normal chocolate chip cookie recipe. I took out the eggs and butter and replaced them with pumpkin puree instead! And they are SO yummy! The bonus here is that they are vegan too. So here is your recipe of the week...lower in fat, lower in calories and a great trade off for a chocolate chip cookie!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

15oz can pumpkin

1-1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

1-1/2 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

1-1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 bag chocolate chips

Mix all wet ingredients together in a large bowl. In another bowl mix all dry ingredients, except chips, together well. Then mix in dry ingredients with the wet ingredients will well combined. Add chips. Scoop out onto a heated baking stone by 1 TBS scoops. Bake 15-20 mins till golden brown. These are cake like cookies so they don't flatten out, they stay round and puffed up.

I hope you have a wonderful time celebrating tonight and ringing in 2012! Hope the next year finds you happier than the last one with more of your dreams coming true. I'll see you next week!

Cat

2011-12-24T12:20:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS! This week was FILLED with Christmas Treats going out to everyone from my family to a Dojo to a Senior Center. And it's been so much fun making them and then presenting them to everyone.

We start out with a Dessert Tray filled with all sorts of Treats. The crystal bowl holds the salty sweet treat of Rolo Bites. These are simply mini pretzels that have had a Rolo melted on top for about 5 minutes at 350 degrees and then a M&M smooshed right on top. (yes, that IS a technical term! LOL!) These are so good you really have to watch yourself so you don't eat the entire bowl! Next up are Marshmallow Pops and Marshmallow Bites. These are dipped in Dark and White chocolate and then either rolled in nuts or sprinkled with sanding sugar and some even got some M&M's added on top. YUM! Last, but certainly not least, are the Chocolate Dipped Pretzel Sticks. These are also rolled in Dark and White Chocolate and then rolled in nuts or sprinkled with sanding sugar. All in all this has something for just about everyone!

Next up are these adorable little Reindeer Cupcakes. With Mini Nilla Wafers for muzzles, broken Mini Pretzels for antlers and M&M's for eyes and Mini M&M's for noses, these delicious yellow cupcakes are SO good. The client simply adored them and these are grown men who gushed over them! Of course Christmas Treats bring out the little kid in all of us so it's totally understandable!

Finally the same type of cupcake was simply decorated with "light strings" and Mini M&M's as the light bulbs. This set was for the Seniors and they were simply delighted. Christmas Treats are not something they get every day so we make sure that they do get some at least one day every single year. Just a little community service and a lot of Christmas Cheer for some truly wonderful people.

For my family I also added in some fudge so everyone will have plenty of chocolate to snack on over the next three days! I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and friends whether you celebrate Christmas or not. I hope you find lots of love and generosity in your life and can welcome in the New Year with the hope of new beginnings and lots of really good times to come!

As for me...well, I'll see you next Sunday...we still have New Year's Eve to come!

Cat

2011-12-18T17:26:00.000-08:00

Holiday Marshmallow Pops

Happy Sunday! This week brought me one of many parties that required non cake like treats. So I started surfing the web to find something that caught my eye and found my answer on TV instead! LOL! I was watching Regis & Kelly one morning and they featured a woman who did marshmallow pops. Now she was designing for Halloween (yes, planning for Christmas starts in October) but it got my head thinking about what I could do for Christmas.

The only "trick" to doing marshmallow pops is to allow the chocolate to set up a bit before adding anything to it. Anything sugar based will melt if the chocolate is still too warm and it melts right into the chocolate and you can't see it. Yes, this was trial and error and I "disappeared" the ones I messed up on....yup, yummy!

First thing I did was put all my marshmallows onto the candy sticks and then put those through the spaces of a wire rack to keep them upright. Then I dipped all the chocolate pieces and while they were setting up I dipped all the white chocolate pieces. As I finished decorating the dark chocolate pops I moved them to another wire rack to allow them to dry and give myself some decorating space.

The snowmen were three marshmallows all dipped at the same time. I let them sit up for a couple of minutes then sprinkled them with very light blue sanding sugar so they would sparkle. Then I used pieces of candy corn, cut into triangles, for the noses and black tinted butter cream and a fine tip to make the pieces of "coal" for the face and buttons. Finally, using a toothpick dipped into the white chocolate, I attached the M&M's like little caps on the top. Once all that was done I broke mini pretzels into separate little curved pieces and dipped the ends into the white chocolate and then placed them onto the snowmen and they were done!

The reindeer I actually saw on a website called Pinterest. They were a bit more tricky. I had to let the chocolate set up before attaching the mini pretzels but found out that if you wait too long the chocolate won't hold and you then have to dip the pretzel into the chocolate and then hold the reindeer upside down while the chocolate sets...otherwise your antlers sadly slip down the head and onto the floor and you get to start over again. After the antlers were in place I just used chocolate mini M&M's for the eyes and nose. I let the logo face up for the eyes to help create a little character but hid it for the Rudolph nose. Too cute!

The others were just decorated with sprinkles of different types but you could use ground nuts or candy of any sort and they would still be completely cute and yummy! I had a lot of fun with this project and will most certainly be pulling this out again soon for all sorts of occasions. I put 3/4 of the order into a piece of styrofoam I had covered with coconut shavings and the other 1/4 were packed up in celophane bags and tied with ribbons to make it easy for some guests to take them home instead of eating them at the party. They were a huge hit!

Next week you will see more cake and non cake goodies with a Christmas theme! Can't wait to share!

Cat

2011-12-04T23:08:00.001-08:00

Peppermint Candy Holiday Cake

Happy Sunday! Sorry the blog is so late today...Blogger.com has gone through some changes and it's made it harder on me to get these posts online. I'm sure they will work out the bugs soon. If you have any issues reading this blog please do comment to let me know!

The cake this week is a "Party Cake". It's a 10 inch by 2 inch two layer cake. White cake with vanilla bavarian cream filling! Most party cakes are on tier because they are not meant to feed a lot of guests. A 10x4 feeds a little over 45 so a 10x2 feeds about half that many. Perfect for a small party or a large family dinner for the Holidays.

The "secret" of this cake is layering! I filled and crumbcoated the entire cake then covered the cake with white fondant. Then I layered on the red top pieces as well as the striped "ribbon" on the sides and then added the rope like trim. Last details were the little gold candy pieces and then the "peppermint" wheels on the top and front of the cake. A lot of rope making goes into a cake like this but I really like the effect in the end.

Some things I learned from this cake...it's really hard to make curved triangles all look alike and, if I ever need it someday, I now know how to make the top of a circus tent! LOL! So sometimes working on one cake can give you ideas for a few more that you'd like to make in the future. I also learned how to put the little gold dragees on the cake without using buttercream or royal frosting as glue. What you do is brush water onto the fondant and then roll the little balls into place. What this does is coat the bead lightly with water and helps it to stick to the fondant AND to the other beads!

Well, I have a busy weekend coming up this week so I'll be posting next Monday instead. I do hope you have a great week and come up with some of your own Holiday Party Cakes to share with your family and friends!

Cat

2011-11-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

Harry's Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday and for those of us in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving Weekend! For many of us this is the beginning of our Holiday Season but for some of us there are still some family holidays to be celebrated before Christmas or Channuka preparations can begin. I know a special little girl who became a woman this week at her Bat Mitzvah! And my own husband celebrated another birthday. So Mazel Tov to both of them!

I begin this week with my husbands birthday cake and for a very important reason. Not every celebration is a huge one with lots of people filling up the house and wanting to be fed. Sometimes it's just a small family dinner that you want to top off with a special cake or dessert for 4. This Birthday Cake is just a 4 inch Mexican Hot Chocolate cake, filled with vanilla bavarian cream filling and covered in vanilla buttercream then decorated with drizzled chocolate and Reeses candies (his favorite). The fun of making a cake like this is that the surface of the cake is not smooth so you really don't have to work about filling splooshing out a bit (yes, that's a technical term..."splooshing" LOL) and you don't have to worry about your crumbcoating having any bumps in it. I purposely left the dome on the little cake so that it would be easier to make this look like a huge mound of frosting covered in candy. This way the frosting layer can be thinner and there's more cake underneath. The initial was piped out onto parchment and left in the freezer for a few minutes to set up while I used the same tip and bag of melted chocolate to drizzle over the frosting and candy. Then, before the chocolate on the cake could set up, I peeled the initial off the parchment and used the melted chocolate to "glue" the cold initial to the cake. Little cake, HUGE impression for a loved ones birthday.

Graham Cracker Pumpkin Pie

Next up was Thanksgiving and, by popular demand, my Pumpkin Pie. I make a spicy pumpkin pie that my kids just adore, so while my younger daughter always gets tagged to do the bird, I always get tagged to bring the pie. This year I mixed it up a bit with wonderful results! I decided to try out a graham cracker crust and it was SO good. It brings a bit more sweetness and almost a nutty flavor to the pie which just adds to the spice and makes it even more perfect. There are two secrets I'll share in this week's blog...how to make my pie is the first. I use real roasted pumpkin. This is SO easy to do and you end up with roasted pumpkin seeds as a extra reward for your efforts. All you do is get a sugar pumpkin (tho' a regular jackolantern type will work too, you will just end up with much more pumpkin than you would ever want or need unless you are serious baker and a small sugar pumpkin is sweeter naturally) quarter the pumpkin after removing the stem area. Clean it out reserving the seeds to roast with a bit of olive oil. On a lightly grease cookie sheet (you can use spray) place the pumpkin, lightly salt it and then roast at 300 degrees for about 40 minutes. When it's soft, like a baked potato, pull it out and scoop the soft flesh from the skin. Mash it up and it's ready to freeze. Now, I take this one step further and I puree the pumpkin with some water to make sure it's really smooth for my pie. Then I freeze in one cup portions. I AM one of those serious bakers who will make cookies and muffins and cupcakes and pancakes, etc. all month long. Now follow the pie recipe as you always would on the side of the Libby's can (you can find it online if you don't have a copy) only DOUBLE the spices. Yup, I said "double the spices". Do not add any extra sugar, let it be spicy. Poor into your graham cracker crust and bake for 50 mins or till the knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Do not prebake the graham cracker crust...remember it's already cooked. And, yes, I used a prepared crust from the store for this...I find that there is little difference between the homemade one and the packaged one but you can, of course, easily make your own with graham cracker crumbs and butter. Now top with whipped cream. I love fresh whipped cream and how you can decorate with it so beautifully. Here is another use for your piping bags and extra large tips. Just drop one into a bag, fill with whipped cream and decorate your heart out! I just did a little "S" pattern and look how gorgeous it looks! In the end you get a pie that's sweet and yet spicy and Oh So Good!

Nana's Fudge

Ok, second secret...I'm the "Nana" in Nana's Fudge. But what makes my fudge so much better than most homemade fudge recipes is how I put the ingredients together and what I add to them. Most simple fudge recipes involve chopped up chocolate or chocolate chips along with sweetened condensed milk. 12oz chocolate to one can milk. You are told to put the chocolate with the milk into a double boiler and melt together then put into a buttered pan to cool. Unfortunately this can lead to a really grainy fudge that breaks, cracks or falls apart. Not exactly the rich treat you were hoping for, right? So here is my secret. I melt the chocolate FIRST. All by itself, no company. When it's all melted and smooth I turn of the heat, add the milk and when that is stirred smooth I add a teaspoon of good vanilla. Then I stir that till it's all incorporated and put into a buttered pan. I let that sit overnight in the fridge (at least 3 hours) before cutting into 1 inch pieces. This is treasured by my family because I only make it once a year at Christmas. It was a surprise for my daughters this Thanksgiving and, as you can see by the photo, our grandaughter couldn't wait to dig in! Yup, it's that good!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday, enjoyed some time off with your families and are looking forward to the upcoming month. For me and my business, the end of the year is one Christmas creation after another so I'll have plenty to share with you in the upcoming weeks!

Cat

2011-11-20T11:27:00.000-08:00

Melissa & Jason's Wedding Cake

Happy Sunday! Today we spotlight my last wedding cake of the year. This four tier beauty feeds about 170 people and weighs a ton! LOL! The Bride is in love with Anenome flowers but November is not the time of year to have them be your wedding flowers. Fortunately sugar flowers don't have a "season" so she wanted to incorporate them in a big way on her cake.

Wedding cakes are made over days and days before the actual wedding day. This is not to say that your cake has been sitting out for days and days. I started baking on Monday with the largest tiers and ending with the smallest tier on Wednesday. All cakes are wrapped in layers and frozen. Three days before the wedding, in this case Thursday since the wedding was an evening wedding, the cakes are removed and filled and crumbcoated. I did the largest two tiers on Thursday and the smaller two tiers on Friday. Once you crumbcoat a cake the moisture is locked inside. A caker is always worried about a dry cake and this is one way to ensure it stays nice and moist. Later that day, after the cakes had a chance to settle, I covered those two tiers and then filled and crumbcoated the last two. Those were covered on Friday and, at that point, the cakes were ready to stack. Since you are apt to touch the cakes as you stack, to position them, you are likely to leave impressions on your cake if you don't let the fondant set up for a bit. Overnight works quite well. The fondant is still soft to chew but more firm to the touch. The cakes were stacked and flowers added with melted white chocolate on Saturday afternoon then delivered at 5pm for the Bride and Groom, who were thrilled with the cake.

This cake has a different flavor for each tier. Starting from the bottom, there was white cake with raspberry filling, then Mexican Hot Chocolate cake with vanilla bavarian cream filling (the Grooms favorite), then yellow cake with chocolate brownie buttercream filling (the Brides favorite) and finally lemon cake with raspberry filling. The black fondant is Duff's black chocolate fondant and the white is vanilla marshmallow fondant. The flowers are made of vanilla marshmallow fondant with some tylose mixed in and the centers are the chocolate fondant. The only thing not edible on the cake is the topper and the stamen on the flowers.

As I have mentioned before, flowers take a long time to make due to drying time. The petals have to be formed first, then allowed to dry a bit, usually a day or so, before being glued together. Then, depending on the flower, you need more drying time before you add the centers. These took a full week to make due to the fact the glue for the petals needed to be totally dry so that when the centers were glued on the petals would not move.

The really fun part of this cake was that I worked the wedding as well. I got to cut the cake and watch as people not only enjoyed their pieces but came back for more! People who had tasted one flavor came back to try another flavor. Now that's one of the best endorsements of your baking that you can get!

The cake on the Cake Table

The really cute thing is that out of the kids it was the little boys who wanted the flowers! They were fascinated by the fact that you could actually eat them! After saving some for the Bride as keepsakes I handed out the rest to the kids. Hard fondant tastes like vanilla sugar candy and is SO good. No wonder the flowers disappeared quickly!

In the end, the Bride, Groom and their families were thrilled with the cake. They thought it was too pretty to cut but the cake inside was yummy enough to make up for the destruction of the artwork.

And that brings up something that I was asked several times last night as I was cutting the cake. Is it hard for me to cut into something I have spent so much time and put so much work in? A "standard" cake, one that is round or square, isn't as hard for me but the carved cakes are still very hard for me to cut into. When it comes to a shaped cake, like a toolbox, a purse, a TV, etc. I have put even more time and effort into making that item look like a real item and not a cake. So, yes, it's hard for me to dismantle those. But I can understand how someone might balk at cutting into one of my cakes. Years ago we were on a cruise and they had a midnight buffet where the chefs had spent hours creating these wonderful works of edible art. I took tons of photos but didn't have the heart to actually dig into any of them. I saw others hacking away at fruit sculptures that looked like real flowers and my heart hurt. So I can totally understand how it would be really hard for a client to cut into one of my carved cakes and want me to do it instead. Happy to do so.

And here's a secret. I really do like to hang out and cut the cake. I love celebrations. I love cutting and serving the wedding cake while listening to the toasts. Or while watching the Bride and Groom dance their first dance. Or the Birthday Girl open up her gifts. I do charge a nominal cutting fee but my real payment is being able to share a bit of the day with you...to share in your happiness for even that brief amount of time. It's wonderful being surrounded by joy.

Speaking of Joy! This week begins the offical Holidays for us and for my business so lots of holiday cakes and goodies coming your way over the next 6 weeks! With Thanksgiving coming up this week I will have pies to show off instead of a cake! Can't wait!

Cat

2011-11-13T18:21:00.000-08:00

Kali's Halloween Themed Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! Today I bring you the birthday cake and mini cupcakes for Miss Kali. She turns 7 this week and wanted to celebrate Halloween Style. Now I'd heard of this for kids born in October (and yet, never had my own birthday in this theme...hmmmm...maybe something to think about as my 50th approaches next year!) but have never heard of it for November kids until this year...and suddenly I keep hearing about all these kids who had Halloween Themed parties this year! Great way to get one more wearing of that costume!

The main cake is strawberry cake with raspberry filling covered in dark purple vanilla buttercream and decorated with black fondant bats and a witch flying over green buttercream brew. The original idea was just to have a round purple cake tier with the silhouette of a witch on top and then the rest of the cupcake stand would hold the 100 mini cupcakes. As an artist I wanted so much more for this idea so I contacted my client and asked if I could make this a witches cauldron instead and have the witch flying over the "bubbling" brew. She loved the idea so now Kali had a carved cake tier, not just a plain round one and a bobbling witch flying over green goo!

The mini cupcakes were pumpkin spice for the pumpkin minis, chocolate chocolate chip for the spider minis and white cake for the ghost minis. All together they made for a very cute presentation. I have made cakes for Kali in the past so she was very excited to see me with her birthday baked goods and was SO happy about her witch cake that I got a most enthusiastic hug from her! What a wonderful tip!

The one thing about this order is that the minis, like all cupcakes, have to be done in one day. Hopefully not more than 24 hours before the party so they are still really fresh. So I spent all Friday afternoon baking and decorating these so that they would look and taste great for the Saturday afternoon party. A lot of work all at once but so worth it for the completed look at the party.

This week I have a wedding cake coming up. If it turns out even close to my design it's going to be gorgeous! I'll be able to share that with you next Sunday! Have a great week!

Cat

2011-11-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

Sugar Rose Anniversary Cake

Happy Sunday! Oh, and Happy November and Happy Fall. (Although in many parts of the USA it feels like Winter already!) Today's cake is a special one for a couple celebrating 24 years of marriage. While not a "big" Anniversary they still wanted a very special little cake to share with family and friends. This one is 6 inches by 4 inches and will serve 16 "Wedding Cake" slices. The original colors for their wedding were black, white with touches of pink so that is what the color scheme for this cake ended up being as well.

Close up of Panel

The cake is Mexican Hot Chocolate Cake with Raspberry filling. It's covered in vanilla buttercream because the white buttercream makes for the perfect background for the offwhite flowers. It works as "filler" between the flowers helping to create the look of a full bouquet. The sides are panels of black chocolate fondant that have been marked in a Art Deco type chevron design and then placed on the cake. Now you can measure very carefully and place them one at a time, side by side, onto the cake but this is cake. There is going to be an extra half inch here or quarter inch there that you were not expecting due to cake or crumbcoat thickness, so what I did was to place one chevron panel in the front, then one directly in the back, then one on each side so that the four panels were now fairly equally spaced out. Then I used more chevron panels to fill in the spaces and overlap the panels. Finally the "ribbon" trim went on and bows were attached for added decoration. Then I placed the roses on top. This is much like fresh flower arranging and takes a lot more time than you would think to get the flowers to meet up just how you want them to and look right. You want them to be domed but not too perfect of a half circle. They are supposed to look like real flowers and you can't get a perfect dome from fresh roses.

A word about placing sugar flowers into cakes. Floral wire, often used in the making of sugar flowers, is not food safe. I use those little straw looking coffee stirrers, which are food safe, inserted into the cake first, then slide the wired flowers into the stirrers. This makes sure that the wire is not touching the cake or the frosting.

And finally, these roses are dusted with a sparkly pink luster dust. I didn't try to get the same amount of dust onto each rose but rather dusted them one at a time and let some get a lot of the pink tint and some only get a touch or sparkle. As I mentioned before, these are supposed to look real and the coloring of each rose is never exactly the same as the one it is gathered next to in the bouquet.

Halloween Cupcakes

As I mentioned last Sunday when I posted the other Halloween cupcake order, I had another for Monday, Halloween. These adorable little Jack-o-Lanterns were perfect for the Seniors they were meant to delight! Devils Food Chocolate Cake (perfect for Halloween, right?) topped with lightly tinted orange buttercream and chocolate fondant faces. The green stems are made from tinted vanilla fondant. These were fun to make and even more fun to hand out to the group of Seniors on Halloween Day!

This upcoming week brings mini cupcakes and a mini cake for a little one turning 7 this year. She chose a Halloween theme so I'm not done with the holiday designs quite yet! I'll share those with you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-10-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

Snow Leopard Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brought a birthday cake, several appointments for wedding cakes and, of course, time for Halloween Treats! I'll start out with the birthday cake first.

This little 4 inch cake was white cake with raspberry filling covered in black (chocolate) fondant and white (vanilla) fondant and decorated with handpainted fondant dots and details. The Birthday girl just happens to be an upcoming Bride that I'm working with so it was fun to be able to do a mini birthday cake for her as well!

This brings up a topic that I may not have covered before. Fondant. I have heard over and over again "I don't like fondant" or "I don't think I'd like that stuff". What they mean is that they have heard over and over again how awful fondant is or they have tasted old fondant. As with most of food preparation, fresh is best. If you are eating something that has been sitting in a can, jar or tub for months it may not make you ill but it just won't taste as good as freshly made. All of my fondant is either freshly made by me, within the week of your event, or is Duff's fondant. I have no idea how "fresh" his brand is but it tastes fresh. It doesn't taste chemically or like it's had all the flavor leached out of it and all that is left is something that tastes like you'd be better off chomping on the cake box than the cake. Without fail I have been able to make converts out of people once they have tasted my fresh fondant. The Birthday Girl this week is one of my newest converts. We were going to do a buttercream covered cake, now it's being covered in fondant because it's SO yummy! I also make my buttercream fresh each week. So that means not only do you have a freshly baked cake, covered in freshly made buttercream but it's also topped in freshly made fondant! In the food world, fresh is best!

Halloween Alien Cupcakes

Pictured is just one set of many that were made this weekend for a client. These funny little aliens are something you can SO easily make at home. I lightly tinted buttercream after baking the cupcakes and then used prebought sugar candies to make funny faces on top. These were intended to make lions, bears and clowns but I mixed up all the pieces, using eyes for noses, ears for mouths, mouths for ears, etc. to create some funny little Aliens.

These were yellow and white cake cupcakes and they were SO good that I wish there had been more extras of this order! Cupcakes are the one baked item that HAS to be made as close to delivery time as possible. The paper cupcake liners let alot of air into the cake portion of these and, for cake, air is the enemy! An unsealed, by icing, cake is prone to drying out very very quickly. This is why you crumbcoat a cake. It seals in that moisture. But you can't do that with a cupcake since a small bit of icing goes only on the top. So with time and air as your dreaded enemies you have to make sure that you deliver your completed cupcakes within hours of finishing the baking/decorating process or you end up with a dry crumbly cupcake. I actually had the client ask me how I could possibly have such moist cupcakes...aren't cupcakes dry and crumbly? NO! Cupcakes are suppose to be moist little morsels of yummy cake!

The kids thought these funny little critters were just hysterical. Since they were made for kids we were pretty happy to see the smiles and hear the laughs, followed by "these are GOOOOOD!" after they finally ate all the candy off the top and dug into the actual cupcake!

Since Halloween is actually tomorrow I do have have one more order of cupcakes to go. Those will be made fresh tomorrow and delivered soon after. I'll share those with you next week!

Speaking of next week...I have an Anniversary Cake order that I am SO excited to be working on! The design is so romantic and yet so avante guarde, I just can NOT wait to get started on it. I'll share it with you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-10-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

Cat's Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! Yup, you read the title under the cake correctly....that's MY birthday cake! As I've mentioned before, it's fun to make cakes for your loved ones. You have all the freedom in the world to create whatever you want for them. This is even more so when you make your own cake. You have the freedom to try out new techniques without worrying about what to do if it doesn't work out! As you can see, it worked out beautifully! But not without a few hiccups....

I'd been dying to work with chocolate but I wanted it to be different than the types you normally see. Normally the melted chocolate is spread onto acetate strips and then wrapped around the cake to cool. When you remove the acetate you have a very smooth collar of chocolate. I wanted a more textured, free form version of this idea. Having not really worked all that much, outside of ganache, with chocolate I wasn't too terribly sure how this idea would work out. Here is what I did...

First I took out a silicone mat and melted the white chocolate morsels in the microwave. You have to be very careful with this as chocolate burns very easily. So I started with 30 seconds and worked my way to melting point from there. After the white chocolate was melted smooth I put in another bowl of milk chocolate pieces to melt. While that was melting I put the white chocolate into a piping bag with a number 3 tip on it. This is a writing tip. By this time the milk chocolate was melted and I was able to spread it onto the mat with an offset spatula. One of the hiccups, and lesson I learned, is that you really need to spread the chocolate very evenly for clean breaks later...I managed to do this fairly well but not perfectly so I ended up with some jagged bits that I still put to work later (or my husband ended up eating as a snack!LOL!). As soon as I had the milk chocolate spread on the mat I took the white chocolate filled piping bag and started swirling the white chocolate over the surface of the milk chocolate. Since the milk chocolate was cooling but not yet set, the white chocolate settled down into it but held it's shape. Remember to keep your hand moving or the white chocolate will pool in one spot very quickly! I finished off the piping by piping a frame of white chocolate around the edges of the milk chocolate. Then the whole thing went into the freezer for a couple of hours. I'm not sure it really needed hours to set up but we went out for a few hours right after this step.

I had already filled and crumbcoated my cake at this point. It's an Almond Cake with Passionfruit filling. You may remember that combo from last weeks Jersey Cake..well, we got to try the trimmings off that cake and fell in love with the flavors! I just knew this was the combo I wanted for my birthday cake! When we got back to the house I put on the final coating of buttercream at this point so it would still be soft enough and able to act as glue for the chocolate pieces. Enter hiccup number Two!

Working in my own home is a tricky business. Unlike the commercial kitchen I normally use, my home has only one work area...the same one with the oven and the dishwasher. Well, the oven was currently cooking our dinner and the dishwasher was cleaning up the mess from the chocolate and cake baking process. So it was warm AND humid in my decorating area. This is where my inexperience with chocolate made itself well known. Chocolate planks don't do well with any heat and they surely don't like humidity added to the mix. I took the mat of chocolate out of the freezer and it began to melt immdiately. I was able to get some full planks but then the thinner and the melting sections broke up into jagged pieces. Now if this had been for a client I would have started all over again...and that would have been unfortunate. The combo of planks and jagged pieces ended up really working well together and giving me the texture I had been going for all along in this design! So, as you can see, not all mistakes are fatal...some make your design even better.

After I got the planks and pieces onto the cake, which was fun...sort of like putting together a puzzle with the added challenge of the pieces melting...so speed puzzle making! LOL! I then topped the cake with fresh raspberries and drizzled on more melted white chocolate. I added the sunflower just for me. I had made it, trying out new cutters I had just gotten as a gift, just for myself and I thought it added a beautiful accent to the cake.

Now here is where we found out a delicious secret. When you combine all of these flavors into one bite...the almond, passionfruit filling, chocolate planks and raspberries...you get one really perfect bite! It's is delectable together! Who knew? I figured that the chocolate and the raspberries would be eaten seperately but when combined with the cake and the filling it was sublime!

This year was a treat for me. My younger daughter, and partner in our business, is a caker as well. She always makes me the most yummy and beautiful cakes each year. But this year they took us out to a fancy dinner including a really fancy dessert the weekend before my birthday. So for my midweek birthday I got the treat of making my own cake. Hope you like the outcome of my little experiment with chocolate! I sure do!

Next week is Halloween!!! So I will get to share with you some Halloween confections next Sunday since the client needs them that day, not actually on Halloween! See you then!

Cat

2011-10-16T19:15:00.000-07:00

Oliver's Baptism Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brings two celebration cakes! The first one is for baby Oliver who was baptised this weekend. Topping this cake was Little Louie the Lamb. We had become quite attached to Louie over his drying time but his new family loves him and thinks he's just as cute as we all do!

Louie is made of fondant mixed with tylose and yes, every single curl is handrolled. I took this photo in the middle of this process so you could see the shape of his head and how his feet are constructed with half toothpics so they fit into the body the next day.

The next morning I continued with the curling and assembling of Louie. I used extra curls for the bottom and to cover the toothpics on the legs and to act as extra glue to hold the feet to the body. The bow was the very last piece to add to the piece and then he was ready to dry for about 2 weeks.

The cake is one tier almond cake with raspberry filling and one tier chocolate chocolate chip cake with chocolate brownie buttercream filling. After covering the tiers with vanilla marshmallow fondant I divided and colored the left over fondant. Then I mixed in tylose with a small bit of the blue and rolled out enough to make the bow. After forming the loops around paintbrush handles, I let the bow dry the rest of the day. Then I cut out the thick strip for the top tier and the thinner strips for the bottom tiers and used water to glue those to the white fondant. I stacked the cakes and then started the time consuming part of the cake. Rolling out all of those fondant marbles. After using water to glue them to the cake tiers I added the plaque. The plaque was cut out at the same time I made Louie so it would have time to dry. Since it had to be thick enough to hold the bow on the bottom tier I knew it wouldn't stick to the cake with just royal icing. So I placed the plaque, with royal icing on the back, onto the cake and then I used two toothpics inserted into the cake under the plaque so it held the plaque up. I let this dry for about a half hour then rolled out the green trim for the plaque and glued it to the plaque. I then made the bow and slipped it over the toothpics and glued it to the plaque as well as to the cake. Then, after letting that dry up a few minutes, I pushed in the toothpics just barely enough so that you can't see them and the cake was done!

The client was thrilled with the cake, as were her family that were at the house when I delivered it. Truly a wonderful feeling to have someone appreciate your work that much! And speaking of appreciation....

Vic's 40th Birthday Cake

Here is the second celebration cake this weekend. This was a complete surprise for my clients husband who had no idea at all that she had such a grand gift in mind for his big birthday! When we delivered this cake to the restaraunt he was just shocked and thrilled with this cake.

Meant to resemble the jersey of a certain Bay Area team, this cake was fun to do but a challenge as well. As with all copyrighted items you can't copy a logo exactly without breaking the law but you want people to know what you were after so it has to be close. Well, close enough for this birthday guy!

I baked then froze the almond cake and while still frozen I filled it with passionfruit buttercream filling and then immediately carved the shape out and crumbcoated it. Then I let it set up and thaw out before covering it with the fondant. Put together much like a real jersey, this cake is covered in fondant pieces rather than in one solid sheet. I then covered the "seams" with rolled fondant to give the impression of the raised seams on a real jersey. I used my Cricut Cake to cut out the letters/numbers and made the logo out of ovals of what I hoped was just the right colors. I matched it as close as I could without getting TOO close to the actual team color. I let these dry up over night so that they would be stiff enough to place on the cake. I used very little water to glue the letters/numbers to the cake. You have to be SO careful when you do this. Once you touch the colored fondant to the white fondant you are committed! The colored fondant instantly stains the white fondant so you have to be sure that you are placing the colored fondant in just the right places. It's a little nervewracking until it's done! I then trimmed the cake with flattened snakes of the red fondant to make the jersey really pop off the base.

The last touches were the ones on the cake board with the logo being the very last piece to this cake puzzle. My own husband being a huge fan of this team was my critic and fact checker on this project and he said he'd be thrilled to have this be his cake. I couldn't wait for Vic to see it! And I was not disappointed. The whole table was impressed with the cake but you could tell that the Birthday Guy and his loving wife were thrilled with it. As I said, no better feeling than to know someone loved and appreciated your hard work.

Well, this upcoming week I get to share with you MY birthday cake! Usually my partner, and younger daughter, makes my cake but we went out to dinner this weekend and I had a fantastic dessert there. So I get to make my own creation this week and I have some GRAND ideas! I'll share them with you on Sunday!

Cat

2011-10-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Hunny Pot Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brought a Baby's 1st Brithday Cake for Joey. His party was decorated Winnie the Pooh but, as I have mentioned before, I can't do a copyrighted piece but I can do a "background cake". To show you how it all ends up on the table I made sure to take this "Before" photo and, below, the "After" photo where all the trimmings have been added to take this Hunny Pot Cake to a Winnie The Pooh Hunny Pot Cake!

Fully Trimmed Cake

Joey's Mom had all these really cute paperwear for me to match the cake color with and help make the cake feel like it was really part of the party. I also added the little "smash" cake on the right so that Joey could have a personal cake to dive into all for himself! I added their figurines to the cake base as well as tied in the dots from the paperwear into the banner for Joey's cake.

Now, the secrets for this cake! The cake is actually baked in Pampered Chef Measuring Cups! Yup, they can be baked right into the bowl and they come out the perfect shape. You have to treat this as a tiered cake so there are actually four layers to it. Two on the bottom, cup side up, and two on the top, cup side down. There are dowels and a cakeboard in between the two layers. However, unlike a typical two tier cake the tiers are stacked before crumbcoating, then they are crumbcoated and then covered with the very long fondant snakes. Start from the bottom and work your way up to the top. There is also a very long skewer right down the middle of the cake and into the cake drum below to keep it steady even though it's tall compared to it's base.

If you look at the cake I featured last week you will see the similarities but also the differences in the two cakes. The original looks more like a bee hive and this one more like a pot. The first has the hive texture all the way up while this one has a "collar" and the first one doesn't have a lid and I truly think the lid on this one makes the cake! They both have bees buzzing around. Remember to NEVER stick wires straight into the cake. They are not food safe so I use coffee stirrers stuck into the cake first and then the wires are placed inside the stirrers. The final touch was the banner. There were adorable dots in all of the paperware for the party and I so wanted to incorporate them into the design. I rolled out a white banner then cut out the dots in the coordinating colors and, laying them down one layer at a time, I rolled them into the white banner to make a multilayered, colored dot banner. Then I used white royal icing to pipe the saying and trimed the whole thing in a very long fondant snake the same color as the pot. As you can see by the "After" photo, it fit right into the decor!

Happy Happy Birthday Joey! You are simply adorable and it was wonderful to be part of your day!

See ya'll next week when I will have two very special cakes to share!

Cat

2011-10-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Winnie the Pooh Hunny Pot Cake

Happy Sunday! This is the second week of my vacation so I thought I'd bring an oldie but a favorite cake to share with you! This Winnie The Pooh Hunny Pot Cake was done for a baby shower a few years ago. It was a two tier cake, top tier was lemon cake, bottom tier was marble cake. It was divided in the center of the pot and then sliced from there. The covering is marshmallow fondant as were the bees.

As a cake artist it is illegal for me to sell copyrighted cakes. That means if I make a figure that looks like Winnie or Mickey or Hello Kitty, it has to be a gift, it's can't be sold. The way around this, and what supermarkets have been doing for years, is to make a "background" cake and place the copyrighted figurines on top! In this case, the theme was Winnie and Friends and the favors were little honey pots so making this a Hunny Pot cake was a natural way to take the design. It wasn't the easiest cake I have ever done. I swear it felt like I rolled fondant snakes for hours in order to complete this cake! But it is one of the most popular designs I have ever done. Oh! And the figurines were actually a brand new bath set that the baby was able to play with later on!

And I'm spotlighting this cake because I'm making a mini version of it this upcoming week. That brings up another part of being a cake designer that is very different from working at a bakery or supermarket bakery. Those places make the same designs over and over and over again. But for a cake designer we like our edible "works of art" to be different each and every time. So when designing say a Wedding cake, we ask that the Bride sends or brings in 5 designs that she likes and then I sketch out a new and original design based on those choices. So, in this case, the Mom of the 1st Birthday Boy wanted the Hunny Pot design but we want it to look original just for his party, not a copy of someone else's party cake. So next Sunday I will share with you the new Hunny Pot and you will be able to see the simliarities of the two designs and how the new one fits in with the whole party concept better than the original design would have!

I also have a Memorial coming up this week. A Garden Dedication in the memory of someone we loved. I'm making garden themed cupcakes for that one and can't wait to share them with you. Yup, Fall Cake orders have begun and I'll have tons of new stuff to share with you!

Cat

2011-09-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Spider Halloween Cake

Happy Sunday! I'm on vacation this week and next but I'm sharing easy cake ideas for your upcoming parties! This week is Halloween!

You would think this cake would be hard but it wasn't...not at all! The base cake is just a round four inch cake that I didn't level off the dome and covered in fondant "scales" (just round pieces of fondant layered over each other to cover the cake). The face is just a ding dong covered in fondant and attached with dowels and buttercream to the body! The legs are just fondant mixed with tylose then allowed to dry over night after forming them into legs and then attached using water as glue. The hat is a cardboard cone that was covered with colored strips of fondant. The hardest part of the cake was figuring out how to draw the face on so it would show up and not be scary! So if you are thinking about stretching your cake skills with a "carved" or "character" cake then this is the one for you to give a try!

As mentioned before, I do make my own marshmallow fondant and this was no different. I just made it chocolate fondant by using cocoa powder in place of some of the powdered sugar. Learning how to work with fondant is a challenge and can take some time to learn what is the perfect texture and how to correct it if the texture is off in some way. SO for a beginner, who has not learned or is still learning how to make their own fondant, I highly recommend Duff Goldman's brand of fondant at Michaels. It tastes good and is really easy to work with. It is a "soft" fondant which means if you want to make any of your pieces hard to stand up, like the legs on this spider, then you will want to mix in a LOT of tylose and let the pieces set up for at least a week, two weeks if you have the time. But for a beginner this is just the easiest fondant to use for covering a cake. As with any pre-made packaged item, it is expensive. I can make my own chocolate fondant for about $5 and Duff's is priced at $20. So make sure to use that Michaels 40% or, even better, 50% off coupons to help with the cost of this fondant. I use this fondant whenever I need a bright or dark color, other than brown, for a cake. So if you see red or black or navy blue fondant on one of my cakes chances are it's Duffs!

If you are brave, want to learn how to make marshmallow fondant and learn how to work with it just comment here and I'll happily let you know how to make it! Or message me on FaceBook! You can find us at www.facebook.com/thecherryontopevents on FaceBook.

Have a great week! See you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-09-18T10:26:00.000-07:00

Jeff & Amy's Anniversary Cake

Happy Sunday! I hope you like my creation for this Fall Flower themed Anniversary Party! The top tier is Choco Choco Chip Cake with Chocolate Brownie filling. The Bottom Tier is Lemon Chiffon Cake with Lemoncurd Buttercream filling. It's covered in fresh vanilla buttercream, trimmed in green buttercream grass and stems and the flowers and Monogram are fondant.

The only tip I have this week is to place the flowers onto the buttercream while it's still fresh and has not had a chance to fully crust up yet. The buttercream acts like glue. For something heavier like the monogram I actually hid toothpicks at strategic places to hold it up onto the cake.

The Cake Table

We actually worked the event so I get to share with you some of the fun photos from the set up. A lot of people think the cake table just has to have cake on it. Not true! You can add some of the other coordinating elements to help boost up it's visual appeal. In this case I added the "Favor Cake" to the table to help boost the themes colors and fill up the table. The lanterns you see below started out as regular white lanterns and then I simply added strips of scrapbooking adhesive down the ribs and stuck on squares of tissue paper. Too cute!

Close up of the Favor Cake

The favors were simply boxes of M&M's in the themes colors. To help boost the color palate I took strips of the colored tissue paper, all three colors in the boxes, and laid one strip going one direction, one going another direction and the third sort of crumpled into the bottom. Then I added the candy, folded the strips over, alternating colors, and put the top on. This way when the guests opened their favors they would get a burst of the red, orange and yellow colors from the paper and the candy. The boxes you can get at Michaels as well as the ribbon I used for the trim. These were so simple to do but a big hit with the guests.

Orange Fizzy!

And speaking of easy to do! For the drink table we wanted to put out drinks that were family friendly for this family event and yet easy to make adult if the grownups wanted something a bit stronger. So we set up punch bowls of Orange Fizzy and Lemonaid Fizzy, a hit with the kids, and a bottle of vodka for the adults to make their mixed drinks. Perfect! To continue the flower theme we added slices of lemons and oranges with cherry halves on top. The fruits had been "zested" in strips down the sides so that when they were sliced they would have a "petal" effect to them.

Personalized Water Bottles

As Summer drags out into Fall having water available at an event is always a great idea. But why have it just sitting there not adding to the decor or the theme??? We created these personalized water bottles which looked wonderful on the drink table and made for an extra favor to pass out as our guests were leaving. Set in between the two diffferent punch bowls they extended out the theme and added another punch of color to the table!

Speaking of Fall...I get a bit of a break! After a Summer filled with events I get to take a couple of weeks off. BUT I won't be leaving you guys high and dry. I'm going to post each Sunday with some ideas for Fall cakes and cupcakes so you can start to plan for your Halloween parties. I know, I know, it's still 6 weeks away but it will be here before you know it!

You can see all of the event photos, including the entire drink table and the buffet table, to get more ideas for your next party over at our Facebook page! http://www.facebook.com/thecherryontopevents

And speaking of Facebook! Our Prize here goes to Adrienne Fey! I'll be contacting her to see which book she would like for her prize. We'll have another contest in 6 mos and I hope more of you reading this will participate..Adrienne ran off with this!

See you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-09-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

Golden Starfish Dinner Party Cupcakes

Happy Monday! Running a day later than normal due to our observance of 9-11. But I have two creations to share with you this week! (Oh, I don't miss the CONTEST at the bottom of this week's blog!)

First up is something that is growing with popularity for my business...Dinner Party Cupcakes! Seem grown ups like the idea of a cupcake but most cupcake designs are for little kids, not adults. So lately I've been tasked with creating grown up versions of these little yummy bites of cake! These cupcakes are Devils Food cake with a brand new version of my chocolate buttercream that we have decided to name Chocolate Brownie Buttercream because of how it tastes...like wonderful rich brownies in icing form! YUM!

Thankfully, the stores are also beginning to realize that we need grown up versions of wrappers and liners and I was able to find these fun gold petal wrappers. Now a wrapper is different from a liner. The liner is the paper cup that you bake your cupcake in the pan with but the wrapper is for after the cupcake is baked but before it's decorated. There are tricks and tips for using these. First off, whether you make them or buy them, you really need to be sure that the buttercream doesn't touch the sides of the wrapper. Buttercream is made with some sort of oil or oils that will stain through the wrapper and destroy your elegant look. Once your cupcake is totally cool then you can place it in the wrapper and then carefully pipe on the buttercream and add the embellishments. In this case I used gold sugar which looked nicely elegant on top and gave some texture while eating! Last part of this process is presentation. Obviously the clients cupcakes went out in a cupcake package for travel but, since the order was for 15 and the recipe makes 24 I had some leftover for my own girls night out so I set it up as you see it in the photo. I chose a square woven tray to set off the gold and the brown and then, once the cupcakes were in place, sprinkled the tray with the gold sugar. This little bit of dressing up helps the wonderful impression of these gorgeous little desserts!

Jackie's Crocheted Birthday Cake

Our second creation of the week was based on the 1970's panel purses. The panels were crocheted then stitched together with more crochet. Thankfully I actually DO crochet so I was able to copy the stitches...and here is how I did it! The first thing I did was mist the crumbcoat of buttercream to help the panels of fondant stick to the sides of the cake. I used 3 inch squares of fondant and let them set up on the cake for a few minutes. Then, using a flower petal cutter (actually part of an orchid cutting set) I cut out the mint green fondant and placed them into the center of each panel using water as "glue". This was as far as I went before starting the royal icing "stitches". The first thing I did was draw the lines down the panels to "join" them. Then I scalloped sideways "c"s down the line on one side then did the same, meeting the loop together, until I got to the bottom of the cake. Now I tried to just make "o"s and then draw a line over it but it didn't look like a stitch so there's no shortcut here unfortunately. Then I did the same process at the bottom but I piped the first line really close to the bottom of the fondant squares so that when I added the final loops they would actually go from the cake to the plate. That was when I piped the outline for the mint panel pieces and placed the tangerine flowers with the pearl candies in the centers. The last thing I did was place the circle on the top of the cake. I cut out a 7 inch round of fondant for a 6 inch cake and then, using my rotary cutter on the textured wheel, I cut around again about a half inch. I placed it on top of the cake and, using a ball tool, helped it to sort of waffle around the edges. This had to set up for awhile before I could pipe the stitching around the edges so while waiting I made the circle decoration on top. This is easier to do if you use a circle cookie cutter and gently press that into the top of the cake. Then you can follow the impression with your tip and have a nice round design. Once the round of fondant had a bit of stiffness to it I was able to pipe the edging stitches and place the flowers.

Now I know a lot of people, and I use to be one of them, don't like royal icing. Well, here's why. Most royal icing I have tasted has been commercially produced without any added flavorings. So it tastes like powdered sugar, which, unfortunately, tastes a bit like cardboard if you don't add flavoring. Come to think of it, that might be why commerically produced fondant doesn't taste all that good! But when you make your own royal icing, or fondant, you can add any flavoring you want it to taste like and it will be GOOD! I usually use vanilla to flavor mine but you can use almond or lemon or strawberry...anything you would think would go well with your cake! This cake is Mexican Hot Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream filling so the royal icing was flavored with vanilla. Now here is another plus to using royal icing. It dries really hard and crunchy. This turned out to be wonderful texture when eating the soft fluffy cake and soft fondant. Making royal icing is really really easy and you can make yours taste so much better than the commercially produced versions so I hope you will take a chance and give it a try!

This week brings an anniversary cake that I've been working on the pieces for about a month now and just can not wait to see it all come together! We are working this event as well so I'll post lots of photos next Sunday so you can see how it all turned out!

BUT...Before you all go for the week...I have a CONTEST going on with our Facebook site! We are giving away one of three different prizes...YOU get to pick which one you want to win! Just go to http://www.facebook.com/thecherryontopevents and "LIKE" us...then get your friends to "LIKE" us too and post your name on the Wall. The person who gets their name posted the most between now and next Saturday will win the prize of their choice!!! See you on "Cherry"!

Oh...and would you like a second chance to win??? Just post a comment on this week's post telling me which of my cakes is your favorite! I will be drawing one name from this blog to win one of the prizes too! Play here and on Facebook and you could win 2 of the prizes!!

Cat

2011-09-04T09:43:00.000-07:00

Sheri's Fabulous at 40 Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brings a 3 day weekend for me and lots of relaxing time! But it also brought this incredibly fun to make Birthday Cake! The only guidelines I was given was that it had to be black (over the hill motif) and flowers and fun. So this is what I came up with! It was a hit with the client...hopefully just as big a hit at the party today!

Cakes like this LOOK complicated but in fact, what they are is very detailed and not very hard to do. This means they take a lot of time and patience to finish. Step one, of course, is to cover the board with the fondant and let it set up, at least over night, till firm. Then cover the cake and let that sit for at least an hour. After placing the cake onto the board I started on the flowers. When I made the fondant I took sections off of the beginning white loaf, colored those my four colors and then placed those in baggies. The color will darken up and be more vibrant if you let it sit for 24 hours. The Black and the Red fondant for this cake is Duff's Fondant bought from Michaels. The colors are great and it tastes good so I buy that brand. Tip here...wait for a Michaels 40-50% off coupon to buy it since it's a bit spendy!

Now the flowers. I didn't use tylose to firm up the petals because these flowers were going to be eaten and I wanted them soft like the black fondant covering the cake. This does mean they are a bit trickier to get onto the cake! They wanted to move and stretch out. So I made them a bit thicker than normal and I used an offset spatula to place each petal on the cake after I had very lightly brushed it with a damp paintbrush on the backs. The petals that extended past the end of the cake were trimmed immediately level with the bottom of the cake. Once I had placed all the different flowers onto the cake and rolled out my "snake" of red trim I then trimmed the bottom of the cake petals to allow the rolled trim to fit right under them nice and snug. Then the real work began.

I make up huge batches of royal icing and then store them in the fridge in canning jars. I go through it rather quickly but a full batch of royal icing will last me a month. Since they are in individual jars I don't have to expose the whole batch to air (very bad for royal icing since it dries up so quickly) and just use a little at a time when I need it. For this cake I used about a half of a jar that I had colored bright yellow. That went into a piping bag with a #3 writing tip on it. Then, very patiently, I piped on all the lines and dots that you see on the flowers. I would finish one flower, move on to the next and when I was done with the second flower I would go back to the first and gently push down the little points to make them flat. If you try to do this too soon they stick to your finger and pull up the whole dot/line. If you try to do this too late and they will be dry and it will be too late to push down without cracking your design.

I did the trim to the board while all the flowers were setting up. I didn't want to do the writing right away in case I bumped one of the flowers. I wanted the royal icing to set up nice and hard before I tried that. The trim is simply strips that have been cut using the wavy edge of my handheld double wheel cutter. I then used water to "glue" them to the edge of the board (the black extends all the way over the top and sides of the board so you are gluing your trim to the other fondant). Then I embossed them using a small piece of nonskid shelf liner but you can use anything to texturize fondant as long as it's very clean and foodsafe. I used this same technique on some of the flowers on the cake so this tied in the texture from the cake to the trim on the board.

Finally I piped on the words and designs. Now I do this freehand but there are plenty of press sets out there that you can use to gently press the letters into the fondant and then pipe over the outlines.

I hope you enjoyed this weeks' cake! I was a bit out of my element doing a black cake but it turned out so striking that I'm really pleased that I did it! This next week brings some more of the "Dinner Party Cupcakes". These are becoming a hit! I guess grown ups love cupcakes as much as the kids but they want their own grown up version for their parties! Can't wait to share what I have planned for these!

Cat

2011-08-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

Jilly's 2nd Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday and HAPPY BIRTHDAY JILLIAN!

Jilly's actual birthday was earlier in the month but since they live in another town we decided to have a 2nd party for family and local friends here this weekend. She's lovin' Mickey Mouse these days so it was easy to come up with a theme and I knew pretty quickly what I wanted her cake to look like!

This chocolate cake is filled and covered in vanilla buttercream and decorated with red and black fondant strips and marbles as well as yellow and black "Mickey Ears" out of royal icing. The Mickey Ears hat is also made of fondant and is not filled with cake but hollow like a real hat. We did get photos of our grandaughter wearing her fondant Mickey Ears after cutting the cake and she just loved them!

The Cake Table

The cake is a simple 3 layer 8x3 chocolate cake. What makes this cake is all the details. From the different width stripes to the handrolled marbles of fondant to the Mickey Ears that spell out her name around the cake base to the Mickey Ears on top. Even the cake base is covered in blue embossed fondant and trimmed in red fondant squares with yellow dots. None of these details are particularly hard. They just take time and planning. The Mickey Ears hat started out in a half ball pan that had been lightly smeared with crisco and then the black fondant smoothed into the pan. I let that set up for a day then popped it into the freezer and gently, using an offset spatula, removed it from the pan and very gently turned it over onto a wire rack to keep drying for several days after. The ears were cut out using a round cookie cutter, flattened along the ball pan on one side and then dried on a slightly concave flower former for several days. I made the red/white/black emblem on the hat using circle cutters stacked on each other and glued together with water. I let them set up that way on a wire rack for several hours the adhered them to the hat while I could still mould it to the shape of the hat. When all the pieces were dry I used black royal icing to "glue" the ears to the hat and then let that dry another two days before it was time to decorate the cake. At the same time as I moulded the hat I cut out the Mickey Ear shapes so I could spell out Jilly's name. I let them dry for 3 days on parchment then piped her name in yellow royal icing onto the shapes and let that dry until cake decorating day. About midweek I covered the cake base with the blue fondant and embossed it using round cutters, making sure not to cut all the way through the fondant to the base. Then cut out little red squares and adhered them with water to the blue fondant and finished it off with yellow royal icing dots. It was important that there be at least two days of drying time for the base so that when I placed the cake upon it there would be no marks left from the spatulas used to place the cake. If the fondant is too soft still it will imprint easily and mess up the look of your base.

When it came time to decorate the cake I smooth iced it and then let that crust up for a couple of hours. Then I cut out the stripes and added them to the cake using water to adhere them to the icing. Then, after rolling out the marbles, I used water to adhere them around the cake. This is easier said than done since, well, being marbles, they want to roll right off so it takes more time than you would think to get these all the way around the cake! Then it was time to add the royal icing black and yellow Mickey Ears between the stripes. Quick and easy! The very last thing I did was to place the Mickey Ears on top and then using water and royal icing, adhered the Mickey Ears shapes that spell out her name to the cake base. I let this dry for a few hours before I even considered moving the cake so that the hanging letters could dry solidly. Obviously the round cake base is on top of another cake stand to give it enough room off the table for the hanging letters. The only nonedible piece is the Mickey Mouse Candle.

So, as I said before, it's not hard to do, it all just takes planning and time. But I simply love how it turned out and so did Jillian. We had a wonderful day today celebrating her turning two. I know I'm getting myself into trouble...making elaborate birthday cakes for her at this age....can you imagine what she'll want for her wedding day!?! But I can't resist...especially for my grandchildren!

This week brings a grown up birthday cake! I'll share that with you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-08-21T11:33:00.000-07:00

Bunny Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brings a birthday cake for a special little girl. I've mentioned before that the really fun cakes for me are the ones I do as gifts for my family. I have so much fun designing them and bringing the joy to my loved ones when I present them with these edible gifts.

This week's cake was for my neice who was turning 5. Miss Sarah LOVES her bunny and when asked what kind of cake she wanted she was very very clear that she wanted a "bunny cake" so I created her this dream cake for a bunny...one covered in carrots! Sarah is a very girly girl so that meant her bunny needed to be a girly girl too. So she got pretty flirty lashes and a "goin' to Sunday School" hat complete with a little flower on top. The bunny, carrot and the "S" are all fondant with some tylose mixed in. With all figures you have to make the pieces then, after they are dry, assemble them together with some water or "gum glue". Gum glue is simply some gumpaste or tylose that's been disolved into some warm water till it has a glue consistancy. It glues the pieces together fairly quickly making a bond between the sugars.

Close up of the Bunny

And what goes with bunnies better than baskets? I have done the basketweave technique on round cakes before but had never tried it on a square cake, much less on the top of one and thought that it would make for a very interesting background texture for the bunny and the carrots. I love the way it turned out. For those who have never done a basketweave before I thought I would attempt to explain it. As with most techniques, you can find video on YouTube.

Start out with a good crumbcoat on your cake. I used tip #48 which has a jagged tooth design on both sides of the opening. There are tips out there that have a smooth side and a jagged side but for basketweave I use the double jagged sided tip. That way, as I work my way around the cake, and as I twist my bag to keep icing in the tip, I don't have to worry about which side of the tip I'm working with, it's the same on both sides! You start from a corner, on a square, with a solid vertical line down the cake. Then you do another small line at the top, the middle and the bottom horizontally over that first straight line.
Here I tried to show how I "tucked" the horizontal lines and brought them over the vertical line. I followed these horizontal lines with a straight verticle line down the cake and then three horizontal lines. It's important there there is some of the horizontal line under the vertical line. This is what gives the woven effect and makes it look bumpy like it's really a basket.

I trimmed the cake with a leaf tip and green icing and then tucked in royal icing carrots I had piped out onto parchment paper and allowed to dry for a few hours. If you are doing small royal icing pieces like this then they will dry in a few hours but if you are doing larger or thicker royal icing pieces you may need to let them dry overnight so they are solid enough to pick up. Use an offset spatula to gently lift them from the parchment and always, always, always make at least double what you think you will need since royal icing breaks easily! I made about 100 carrots and used about 75 of them.

Next week's focus is another family cake! My grandaughter turned 2 recently and we are having a family party in her honor. And, of course, Nana gets to make her cake! I'm so excited to share this one with you all next Sunday night!

Cat

2011-08-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

Daisy Bridal Shower Cake

Happy Monday! Yup, running a day late for the blog due to a very very busy work and family weekend! Featured today is a Bridal Shower cake that has a lot of techniques that you can use to make your next celebration cake!

Not all cakes are towering masterpieces that require days of work. Some just need a day or two of prep time and then an hour to actually decorate the cake. Since the flowers needed to be very stiff on the cake so they sort of stand up on the sides, they needed to dry for two days before placing on the cake. For this I used fondant with a bit of tylose mixed in to help them dry quickly. If you want to keep the flowers all fondant then allow at least a week drying time for them. I used the Wilton Daisy Cutter Set to cut out the daisies out of fondant I had dyed pink with rose gel dye and green with leaf green gel dye. Then set them out on a piece of styrofoam to let them dry overnight. Then I added the centers, poked those with a fondant tool that looks like a pencil and then dusted them with yellow luster dust to give them a little bit of shimmer. The centers were glued to the flowers by using a bit of water on a paint brush then I allowed them to dry again overnight.

There are several techniques you can use to make the sides of your cake look more interesting. Since I knew the daisies were going to cross the cake diagonally I thought the stripes up the sides would add to that illusion of movement. What you do is ice the cake like you normally would and then, picking what you consider the "back" of the cake, start at the base of the cake and using the back of your offset spatula just lightly drag the icing up to the top at an angle. You can also do this straight up the cake if you don't want the diagonal pattern but do want the stripes. Make sure you drag the icing all the way up past the top of the cake. When you have gone all the way around the cake you can then smooth the icing along the edges onto the top of the cake. This will be covered by the trim design you decide to use. This worked out well in white icing but it's even more dramatic in chocolate!

This cake was made to match the Bridal Shower invites and to fit in with the decor of the Shower. Don't be afraid to try to match the cake to the party. You don't have to be complicated with your design. It can be as simple as daisies travelling up to the top of the cake to encircle the initials of the Bride and Groom! Congrats again to Toni and David!

Have a great week! A special birthday cake will be spotlighted next week so hope to see you back here on Sunday!

Cat

2011-08-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

Tiffany Box Style Wedding Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brings a new Demo cake to share with you. This is actually the mock-up for a Bride who is getting married next summer. She's a friend and I thought, while I have to do a topsy turvy demo cake I might as well do this one up for her. Yes, she loved the way this turned out!

When you visit a cake designer, verses a bakery or grocery store, you start out with an initial meeting where the designer gets to know you and your expectations for a cake. The basics are covered like: theme, colors, flowers, but also the little details of your life like: hobbies, where you two met, where you are going on your honeymoon. Things like that can really help to refine what the client wants and helps to turn out a more personalized cake in the end. But, with a designer it doesn't end there. Once this initial meeting is done it's time for the designer to get to work. Just like a custom wedding dress, a custom cake needs sketches! I sketch out 4-5 designs and then let the client choose from those or they can tell me what they like from the different designs and then I can give them a sketch that incorporates all of what they liked into one cake. A bakery will give you the first consultation and you will decide what your cake will look like right then and there. A grocery store will tell you the 4-5 different cakes they make and you will choose which one fits your day. But with a cake artist you get a truly personalized cake. In the end I want your cake to be a one of a kind centerpiece for your event whether it's your wedding day, your birthday or just the 4th of July!

Now, you knew there had to be a tip or trick this week, right? Well, there are a couple of tips for those who are learning to work with fondant. In my opinion, and not everyone agrees, square cakes are easier to cover with fondant. When you lay the fondant over the box shape you start at the corners and make those as crisp as you can get them. Then you start to smooth down the sides. As always, trimming your fondant, after laying it over, will help you to smooth it easier because you will have trimmed away the extra weight. Before adding any further details you will want your covered cake to set up for about a half hour. This will help the surface to get a little more mar resistant. For this cake I needed fondant "ribbons" and bows. The bows were made a couple of days in advance and tylose was added to the fondant to help it set up. I used paint brush handles to keep the bow part round until it had dried 12 hours then gently removed them and added the center gathered piece to complete the bow. The ribbons were cut out of very thinly rolled out fondant. This is easy to do on the small box but harder for the larger boxes. The small box, from side to side, is 4+4+4 or 12 inches of ribbon each direction. But the next size box is 4+6+4 or 14 inches and the biggest box is 4+8+4 or 16 inches. I have a 12x12 measuring mat (one of those that has a grid on it for rolling out fondant) so while the first one was easy the others had to be pieced out. Since they would be covered with the bows or other boxes I didn't worry too much about how they met up in the middle of the top of the box. So the second box was actually 4 pieces of 7 inch long "ribbon" and the bottom box was actually 4 pieces of 8 inch long "ribbon". For the larger boxes I started at the center of the box and laid the "ribbon" over the edge down to the bottom of the box. Once it was where I wanted it to be I lifted it from the bottom and used a paint brush to brush on a damp amount of water then laid the ribbon back down and smoothed it to the bottom of the box. Then I trimmed the ribbon and used a fondant tool to tuck the edge under the box.

So you are probably wondering how the topsy turvy effect is achieved. Well, for a demo cake it was really easy. I simply put bows on each box and used those to tip the box above. Secured the box with royal icing to add stability. But, for a real cake it's a bit different because you are dealing with the weight of a cake. For that we use cake boards on the bottom of each tier and dowels of different lengths inserted so that they stick up out of the bottom cake just a little bit higher on one side than the other and tip the cake up just a bit. Royal icing is also used as "cement" to stablize the cake. The final touch is a very long dowel that is inserted into the top cake all the way to the base of the bottom cake. Then the final bow is placed on top to cover where the dowel went in. Sugar roses are added to the design to help cover the structure part of the cake as well as to add a bit more to the cake design.

This upcoming week brings a Bridal Shower cake to share! Bridal and Baby Showers have grown to larger parties than they were back "in the day" where it was 8 women around a coffee table. This shower is for 25 and we have worked showers where there were double that amount of guests. My theory is that, due to the economy and tighter budgets, we have stopped having the smaller gatherings of family and friends and have started making the bigger events in life a bigger celebration that includes all of our family and friends we have missed throughout the year. It certainly makes it more fun for the cake designer who makes a larger cake and thus ends up with a larger canvas on which to create their work of art!

Have a great week! See you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-07-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

Ruffled Skirt Wedding Cake

Happy Sunday! Ok, so some of you may be looking at this and saying "It's Saturday" but due to events tomorrow I know I won't have time to post the blog and, well, it's Sunday in other parts of the world! LOL!

This week I get to share a small wedding cake that was so much fun to do that I hope to get a chance to do a larger version of it someday. This cake is enough to feed about 20 people at a small family wedding. Covered in pure white vanilla marshmallow fondant and decorated with royal icing swirls, candy pearls and sugar roses. The only non edible part of this cake is the jewel in the center of the main rose. That is a rhinestone.

For those who work with fondant or are new to fondant you will find that making a "skirt" is actually very easy to do. Just roll your fondant out, trim in an even circle and then adhere it to your cake making sure to give ruffles and folds like a real skirt would have and not smooth it down to the edge like you normally would. Now the ruffled part of the skirt is an advanced technique called frilling and you can find a tutorial on youtube how to do it. It's not really hard. Basically you roll fondant out till it is very thin, cut circles out of it, then cut a hole in the middle of the circle. Then, using a toothpick, holding it flat on the table, you roll the ruffles around the edge of the circle. When you have the entire circle ruffled then you cut it at one point and use that to add ruffles to your piece. that is how I made this ruffled skirt. I used several lines of ruffles, beginning at the bottom of the cake and moving my way up. After putting on the "over-skirt" of fondant I cut away enough to show the lace and tucked the edges under to make it look like a skirt that had been gathered up and "pinned" with a jeweled rose.

The top tier is decorated with royal icing as well in a pattern called Cornelli Lace. Someone once described it as drawing cursive lowercase r's all over the cake. I have found this easier to do on a square cake or hexagon cake than round ones just because you have well defined edges and can work in sections. But it's a relatively simple technique and always looks so beautiful on a wedding cake!

I really wanted to do this little cake to show that you can have an ornate wedding cake even if it's not 4 feet high and needing to feed 400. Even a small family wedding of 20 can have a beautiful wedding cake to top off their wedding day.

Close up of the rose

Candy pearls are one of my favorite embellishments but they do take a steady hand. I would recommend cake tweazers to help place them. But they are an inexpensive way of adding beauty and elegance to any cake. Royal icing is relatively easy to make and takes almost no time at all. The one thing you do have to remember is that it dries out very quickly so you will need to keep cleaning the tip of your piping tip and keep the extras stored in an airtight container. With a little practice, learning what consistancy works best for what you want to do with the icing, you will be able to add quick drying details to any cake. Since it does dry quickly it is perfect for painting over as well.

Next weekend brings a very special wedding cake. Have a great week!

Cat

2011-07-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

Pink and Brown theme Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! This week was a very very busy one for me. Being all by myself in this business means there is only me to rely on when the week gets busy and, for me, this means anytime I have more than 2 cakes or one wedding cake. Well, this week I had a wedding cake, 48 cupcakes AND a birthday cake! Today I'm sharing the cupcakes and birthday cake so I can share those techniques with you. Next week I'll share the wedding cake!

So the chocolate cupcakes in the photo are just regular cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and chocolate sprinkles but the pink and white cupcakes are strawberry cupcakes with swirled pink and white vanilla buttercream and there's a fun trick I'd like to share with you so you can do this same design on your next dozen cupcakes!

First pick out which cupcake tip you'd like to use in your piping bag. Now these are those large tips you see at the store that don't use a coupler in your bag. I prefer the large star tip for something like this. Put it into your large piping bag and set aside laying it flat on the counter. Now take some vanilla buttercream and color it any color you would like. Put that into a small piping bag with no tip or coupler and slide that inside your large piping bag which is still flat on the counter. Now do the same with some white vanilla buttercream and slide that bag in so it lines up with the colored icing bag. Carefully pick up your large piping bag so that, hopefully, your two smaller bags inside will slide down to the large piping tip inside the big bag. Pipe a little of your icing out into a bowl until you can see the twin colors coming out. Then pipe onto your cupcakes like you normally would! You will see the two colors swirl out on top! The fun thing is that you can do this with 3 colors if you'd like a more rainbow effect...just add another small bag of colored icing to your large bag. It's fun to see it pipe out onto your cupcakes and your guests will love, and marvel, over the effect!

Bordeaux and Gold Birthday Cake

Onto the birthday cake! This is a little 6 inch cake feeds 12. Since it is 4 inches high you don't want to cut more than a small slice for each person so you cut it in half then cut six slices from each side. Inside is luscious lemon chiffon cake with lemoncurd buttercream. Recipe secret here...I either use jarred lemoncurd or fresh, when I can get it, to make this. It's about a half jar of lemoncurd to 1 cup buttercream to make this filling. Then I mix in enough powdered sugar to make it stiff enough that it doesn't all run out. It's so good I could eat it like pudding!

Outside I used rose, navy blue and burgundy gell colors to create this dark wine colored, or "bordeaux" colored, buttercream. For such a dark color it actually took very little gell to make it this dark and vibrant! This means you don't end up with that chemical dye taste in your frosting. I did the normal fairly smooth crumbcoat and final coat of buttercream in this color. Then piped the edge. I let that set up for a few minutes while I colored royal icing with Buttercup yellow gell till it was a dark gold color. I had to add in more powdered sugar to make the royal icing stiff enough for piping. You can test the firmness by piping a bit onto a plastic lid then tilting it up for a few seconds..if your icing slides then you need to firm it up some more with powdered sugar. I started with the center of the cake and just started freehand swirls and create a "river" off the side of the cake knowing my rose would be at the top of that "river". You can use a patter maker to make swirls for you to follow if you wish. Any cookie cutter very gently pressed into the buttercream will give you a pattern you can pipe over easily! Some of the top pattern went over the sides but I carefully left out a bit of room on the side for the "L" inital of the birthday girl. When I started piping the sides the inital was the first thing I did. Once the piping was done it looked like a wine colored cake with dark yellow squiggles on it. So I took old gold luster dust and mixed in some clear alcohol (I use vodka but you can use clear vanilla extract as well) to make it into a thick paint consistancy. You do not want it watery otherwise it will drip off your royal icing onto your dark buttercream and show. Then, using a detail brush, about the same width as my piped lines, I handpainted the gold onto the royal icing. Because I had colored my royal icing this was a quick process. If I had left my royal icing white I would have had to paint and repaint the lines over and over again to get the true gold I wanted. Once I had all the lines covered and looking shiny gold, I took candy pearls and dumped them into the paint. Rolled them around in the paint and then onto parchment where I rolled them around with my paintbrush until the excess paint had been rolled off. Then I allowed them to dry before adding them to the cake and then did a final touch up with more gold.

Now that last tip is mainly for Californians. Some lawyer upstate decided that if you ate 10 pounds of these metallic colored pearls you might get cancer so he sued the state over it. Never mind that most people never eat more than 5 pearls at a time much less 10 pounds of them...it's still in litigation so none of the cake companies here will ship the gold or silver balls into the state and we are forced to paint our own when we need them. If you don't live in California you can probably go to any supermarket or cake or craft supply store and buy a jar of gold or silver balls. I envy you! For now, I have to either color my own or beg out of state friends to bring them to me when they visit!

The rose on top of the cake is just a white sugarpaste rose that I used some of the gold paint to paint the edges. You can buy these roses already made at any cake supply store or even order them online for you to color however you wish if you don't want to make one like I did.

See you next Sunday! I'll share with you the wedding cake and some of the techniques used to make it!

Cat

2011-07-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Haywoods Wedding Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brings a wedding cake. Summer is my busiest season for weddings, bridal showers and baby showers so the next three weeks I have this type of wonderful celebration cake to share with you.

This cake is covered in fresh vanilla buttercream and then decorated with handrolled black fondant and free form hot pink royal icing flowers. Buttercream is hard to use in the summer. Heat melts it, humidity makes it harder to spread on smooth. But I use what is called a "high temp" buttercream recipe that, fortunately, tastes wonderful and stands up to heat. So far I've tested it up to 104 degrees! If any of you would like this recipe just let me know and I'll be happy to share it! Fortunately it wasn't that hot this weekend. We are enjoying a cooler summer this year and it was only 85 yesterday. That is wonderful weather for a backyard wedding!

Close up of rolled fondant and flowers

The second "secret" this week is the black fondant. Any caker will tell you that black, red, navy blue and purple fondant is the hardest to make. Black can be made with chocolate fondant that you have to add a bunch of black gell food coloring to but it doesn't taste very good and tasting good is as important as looking good! To make any of these vibrant colors you have to add a lot of food coloring which changes the taste as well as the texture of the fondant. Fortunately there are some companies that produce these colors and they taste pretty good too. Duff's (from Ace of Cakes) produces a yummy black fondant. It sort of tastes like a tootsie roll! It rolls out easily, goes onto a cake easily as well but it's not great for doing things like cake toppers. Because it's such a soft fondant you will need to add in a whole bunch of tylose in order to get it to dry up enough for a cake topper or other decorations that stand out from the cake. The other downside to buying your fondant is that it's very expensive. Duff's is available at Michaels and I always use one of their coupons to get it. They had a special 50% off coupon this week so I was able to get this for less than normal. I have another cake coming up soon that is going to need a lot of black so this was great timing for that coupon for me! Fondant, stored properly, can stay fresh up to 2 months and can be used for decorations up to 6 months. So this black fondant, though it was expensive, will be used up before the holidays.

Free form hot pink royal icing flowers

The flowers were pretty fun to do. I don't use a lot of royal icing. One batch will last me a month easily so this was a first for me. I am mostly self taught so off to YouTube I went to see how to make these. Now I get to pass it onto you! First you cover a hard surface, such as really thick cardboard or wood base, with parchment paper. Just tape the edges over to the back of your hard surface. Then mix up your colored royal icing. Put that into your piping bag with the tip you want to use and then cover that tip. Royal icing dries out VERY quickly. If you want to follow a pattern just print it out and place it under the parchment before you tape it down. Then just carefully pipe out the royal icing over the pattern lines. These flowers were supposed to be whimsical so I just jumped in and started piping. Remember to pipe at least double what you think you are going to need...triple if your tip is very small and your pattern delicate. You will have breakage. I piped out 30 knowing I'd need 14 and broke 3 of those. After piping let them sit for overnight to dry hard. Then, using a palette knife, gently lift them up off the parchement. You can attach them to the cake using more royal icing. In fact, if you cover the tip of your piping bag from when you piped your design out onto the parchment, and then seal that up into a ziplock bag, it will still be fresh for you to use for placing your royal icing pieces onto your cake.

Close up of the cake topper

As I mentioned, it's hard to get the black purchased fondant to dry up hard enough for a cake topper. So what I did was mix in a whole bunch of tylose powder, kneaded it well, and then formed my pieces. I made a center post with a dowel and covered it with the black fondant. I stuck that into a styrofoam block and let it dry. Then I rolled out the curli-ques and let those dry up over night. Even then I probably could have let them dry for another day or two to get really hard. I used royal icing that I had tinted black to attach the pieces to the center post and then let those dry for about an hour. Finally I added the royal icing flowers, placed it into the top of the cake and decorated with hot pink buttercream and candy pearls to match the decorations on the side of the cake.

The cake fit the black, white and pink color scheme perfectly and looked beautiful on the cake table for the event! Everyone thought it was just gorgeous. And that's a huge paycheck for a caker!

Next week brings cupcakes again and the two weeks after that bring two very different wedding cakes! Lots to share with you! See you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-07-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

Picnic Basket Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! This week brings a Family Reunion Picnic that required Picnic themed cupcakes! These are some of the finished cupcakes before they were packaged up and delivered for the picnic. I made both chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, all topped with vanilla buttercream as well as the fondant tablecloths, baskets, flowers and royal icing ladybugs I shared with you a couple of weeks ago.

There are two things about cupcakes. One is that they seem like they are easy to make. The other is that they go stale really quickly. Compared to a wedding cake, cupcakes are easy to make. But whenever you try to make any more than a dozen they become a bit more challenging than one would expect. But since they are baked in paper cups that allow air to permeate them and start to dry them out you will find you have a more limited time span in which to make and decorate them and still present a fresh product.

There are a few tips that will help you out in a case like this where 3 doz of these were needed. First off, as you noticed from my previous blog, the decorations were made a couple of weeks in advance so it was more assembling the pieces to the cupcakes after baking than decorating them. You can bake the cupcakes in foil wrappers which will help with drying out but, in most cases, the wrappers will be paper. So the best thing to do is bake them at the last moment possible. I aim for less than 24 hours before they will be served if possible. So I bake them, cool them and then place them into the carriers. You can get these at any Michaels or cake decorating store or even just save the plastic carriers from the muffins you buy at the grocery store and, after cleaning and drying well, use those for transportation and to help your cupcakes stay nice and moist. After placing inside the carrier then top with icing and any decorations you may want to use. This leads to less handling of the cupcakes, less air that gets into the sides where you touch the wrappers and less of a chance that you will mess one up after the icing and decorations are placed on top. To place this type of decoration I used royal icing as "glue" between the pieces. The tablecloths stuck to the fresh buttercream but then to adhere the baskets and flowers I used royal icing. It dries hard and fast so you take less of a chance of the decorations getting broken during transportation. Even if that transportation is from the counter of your kitchen to your kitchen table.

Close up

But, in the end, it's fun when a client sees something like these adorable Picnic Basket Cupcakes and thinks they are the cutest things she's ever seen. That's big payment for a caker and she gets to be proud of what she is serving all day long.

This upcoming week brings a wedding cake! Lots of work to get it done but I'll share the finished product next Sunday!

Cat

2011-07-04T10:05:00.000-07:00

4th of July Pinwheel Cake

HAPPY 4th of JULY USA!

I hope everyone out there has a wonderful holiday filled with family and friends, fun and fireworks! We sure are!

In order to celebrate this holiday for our family I decided a special cake was in order. And, as always, I decided to try to extend my caking knowledge at the same time by learning a new technique and pushing myself a bit more!

Since I had to learn a new technique to make the pinwheel design I had decided upon I thought I'd share all of those steps with you! Step One is pictured below:

Step One: Blue square and stripes

First I had to make a square of colored fondant that was mixed with tylose so it would dry faster. I made it a bit smaller than I wanted to end up with since I knew I'd have to roll it out again after I added the stripes. The stripes were cut from white fondant with a ruler. Then I brushed just a bit of water on the back of each stripe and laid them out on the blue fondant. I let this set up for a minute then carefully rolled the piece out again. You have to be very careful to roll it out a bit in each direction, horizontally, vertically as well as corner to corner in order to preserve your white fondant design and not distort it too much. You also do not want to roll hard enough that you press the white design all the way through your colored fondant. You want the back of the piece to be one solid color.

Step Two: Trimming and cutting

The cake I made is a 6x4 so I knew I wanted the pinwheel to hang over just a teeny bit so I trimmed the final square to 6x6 then cut in the fold lines for the pinwheel. These are cut all the way through for folding later on when it sets up enough to do that. Then the piece is left to dry for a few hours. The trick is to let it set up enough that it will roll without collapsing right away but not so set up that it cracks. So check it about once an hour till you reach that stage.

Step Three: Folding and Supporting

The final step before allowing it to dry completely is folding the pinwheel into it's final shape. If you have ever done this with paper then you already know how to fold it up. The only difference is that you are not hooking the fondant onto the fondant but rather, folding the tips down so they can be used to adhere the rolled pieces to the flat pieces with a bit of water. If you don't know how to fold a pinwheel you can do what I did and find a video on Google. They are easy to learn how to make. Once the rolls where adhered to the flat corners (I could let go and they didn't come back up again) I used rolled up plastic wrap (I use Press and Seal) to make round supports for the rolls so that they wouldn't collapse before dry. Then I let it dry for 24 hours. I then removed the supports and let it dry for another 12 hours before placing it on the cake.

Step Fou: Placing the Pinwheel on the Cake

To place the pinwheel onto the fully decorated cake I made a base out of the same color of fondant with tylose that I used to make the pinwheel out of in step one. I made the circle a bit smaller than the center of the pinwheel, about 1-1/2 inch, stuck a small dowel into it to look like the "stick" of the pinwheel and then set it onto the center of the cake. I then brushed the top with a bit of water and placed the pinwheel on top. I gave it a few minutes to set up then used red frosting to make the "button" in the center.

This was so much fun that I'm now planning a cake with lots of mini pinwheels on it for Easter next year! Lots of different colors and decorations, of course!LOL!

I hope you all have a great week. Those cupcakes I told you about last week are up for me this week. I'll post final photos of how those turn out on Sunday! Have a very Happy 4th of July!

Cat

2011-06-25T15:06:00.000-07:00

Step One: Making Miniature Picnic Baskets

Happy Sunday! Today's post is all about the work that goes into making the little sugarpaste pieces that go on a custom cake. One of the most common questions I get about custom cakes is why they cost so much. A "grocery store" cake is typically a standard buttercream and takes all of 20 mins to make...not including baking time. You do a quick icing job then pipe around the cake, using a textured tip, and trim with another textured tip...top with buttercream flowers and you are done. A custom cake often has sugarpaste pieces that go on it as well as intricate piping that could take days for the pieces and hours for the piping. Today's project is an example of the work that goes into a custom sugarpaste piece. I have an order for 30 custom cupcakes coming up in two weeks so I'm working on the sugar pieces that go on top. I begin with marshmallow fondant (which is marshmallows and powdered sugar) and add tylose to it so it will dry quickly. I formed a "snake" out of it and cut more or less the same size pieces for my baskets. I rolled them into balls then, using the matt as my flat surface, I gently squared off the sides to make rectangles. Then I used the exacto knife to gently score the "lid" of the basket. Then let them dry overnight.

Step Two: Basecoat of the "paint"

Next comes the painting of the "wood" color. This is just vodka, or any clear alcohol, and gell food dye. In this case, chocolate brown was used for my primary wood coloring. This takes a few coats and you have to let them set up and sort of dry to a tacky finish between each coat. I used the exacto knife to score the center of the lid after the first coat went on so that the color of the second coat would help define the lid opening. Once again, these need to set up and dry overnight.

Step Three: Detail painting

Using a regular brown "paint" I used a detail brush to paint on the basket weave lines. I had saved my paint from the night before to help brush out anywhere the original paint color didn't cover evenly. Then I let it set up again overnight.

Final Step: Adding the "leather" straps

Day three of this project and I'm finally to the "leather" straps of the baskets. This is just a darker colored fondant that's been mixed with a whole lotta tylose so it dries very very quickly. It's rolled out thin and trimmed into a square of 3 inches wide by 4 inches long. Then that is divided into 1-1/2 inch by 4 inch sections and then strips are cut..making each strip 1-1/2 inches long. They are pressed onto the basket and using a skewer I positioned them so that they are in a "carry away" position. Then let them finish drying. You will only have a few minutes to mess with the straps before they are dry to use the skewer to arrange them into whatever position you want them very quickly.

So there are the baskets, completed and ready to go onto the mini tableclothes I made along with the flowers and grass. So before the cupcakes are even baked I have spent at least 3 hours making the pieces as well as 3 days of drying time for the handpainting. I'll post the completed cupcakes the weekend of the 9th! In the meantime all of this has to dry solid so after the cupcakes are baked and iced I can simply top them off with their mini cake toppers for presentation!

Next weekend is the weekend of the 4th...only one cake that weekend but I have grand plans! Can't wait to see how a new technique turns out!

Cat

2011-06-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Star Trek Father's Day Cake

Happy Sunday and HAPPY FATHER'S DAY! This week's cake is for the Father's in my life. Both my husband and my son-in-law are Star Trek fans. Unfortunately I don't get to make these cakes for clients since it's copyrighted (can't make money off of copyrighted items) but I DO get to make them for family! And this one was fun to do but a challenge when you know you are going to be critiqued by true fans. In fact, there's a third Trekkie coming to dinner who will be taking a look too!

This cake is handcarved from a half sheet cake. It's yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling and then covered in buttercream and then fondant. The fondant was handpainted with two colors of gold and trimmed in black. The black was shiny and picked up the gold off the board so that it looks like there is gold in the trim but it's solid black. As I have mentioned before, it's easy to paint on fondant. You just use a clear alcohol of some sort, like vodka or clear vanilla, and mix it with either luster dust or gel food colors to make a thin paint consistancy then paint on in layers. For this cake I painted on a darker "old" gold luster dust paint and then a shiny "new" gold over that to give it a bit more depth and add to the design of the insignia. Just make sure to stop and let the paint dry between coats or the new coat will start to "pick up" the old coat and you won't get an even surface.

The "secret" this week is about carving. I always freeze my cakes (bake, cool, torte or level as needed then wrap well with cling wrap or, my favorite "Press and Seal" wrap then freeze over night up to one month) because it gives moisture inside the cake that makes it taste much better. But for carving freezing is a must. The cake doesn't have to be hard frozen but it helps. I use a serrated bread knife for the large cuts and a small paring knife for the fine cuts. This is much easier to do when the cake is solid and not soft like it is when it has thawed out. You can either fill the cake before or after carving, your choice. I usually fill before carving but in this case, with such a flat cake, it was easier to fill after. Anything with fine edges or curves should be carved after filling. Then I covered it with a crumbcoat and let it sit overnight to thaw and settle. It doesn't have to be that long, you can wait 3 hours and then finish but I prefer to let it settle overnight when time allows.

There are two reasons for waiting for the cake to thaw and settle. If you try to put the final buttercream or fondant layer on a frozen cake, as it thaws it will release gasses that can escape the crumbcoat layer but not the final layer and you can end up with gas bubbles on your cake. In buttercream they will pop and part of your buttercream will just suddenly fall off your cake. In fondant it will make a huge bubble on the side of the cake and even if you pop it you will not be able to smooth it out. The second reason to let it sit for awhile is to allow the spaces in the filling part of the cake to settle. Some of your filling could squish out and create a bulge around the middle of your cake. If you wait till it settles then you can smooth this bulge out and have a smooth cake side.

Last tip that someone gave me this week on frosting a cake. When you finish frosting with buttercream, before adding the final trim of frosting or ribbon to the bottom, run an offset spatula between the cake board and the cake, just an inch or so from the edge, to break the seal. This will allow any trapped gas or air to escape. Give that an hour or so then trim as normal. This helps the gas/air to escape from between the crumbcoat and final buttercream layer. If you are covering your cake in fondant remember to either mist the cake with water or spread on piping gell so the fondant will adhere to your cake. By the time the cake has set for 3-24 hours the buttercream crumbcoat will be dry and the fondant will have nothing to stick to so make sure to moisten it so it will.

Next week I begin work on miniatures for cupcakes that are coming up early next month for a family reunion. I'll share with you the steps and the final products next Sunday!

In the meantime we are going to have a great day filled with BBQ, yummy cake and two great Father's to honor!

Cat

2011-06-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Goofy Themed Grad Cake

This week's cake was a Graduation Cake for a special Grad I've been blessed to get to know over the past 4 years. This kid is something special so it was a wonderful thing to get to design and then present his High School Grad Cake to him this weekend.

We are all Disney Fans in both families but due to copyright law I can't make a Disney figure without their permission...easier to buy Trump Towers...so I needed to fit the licensed figurine into the design instead. Well, this kid has had some uphill climbs in his life and this was a big one for him to finally reach the top so the idea was to have his favorite character standing on top of the mountain of boulders, each step noting a year of school that he completed. You can see a close up of the steps below: And he's a chocolate fan...ok, he's beyond a fan...so there was no question on what flavor the cake was going to be. I have made him my "there can't be too much chocolate cake" cake and he ate it up with delight so my challenge here was to top THAT cake with even MORE chocolate! The answer seemed clear...top my normal chocolately cake with ganache! YUM! So this cake is my triple chocolate cake with fresh chocolate buttercream filling then covered with chocolate buttercream and finally topped with a thick layer of chocolate ganache. That was the ticket! The Grad and his family loved the cake...and that was, after all, the goal. So Happy Graduation Nick! We are proud of you!!

Ok, so each week I share a "secret". Well, this weeks secret is for the more advanced caker. For the boulders I "marbled" fondant. I used white fondant then with skewers I spread on lines of cream, brown and black gel food coloring then gently kneaded it into the white, making sure to only make a few turns. Then I flattened it out and drew more lines of black. This is because I wanted the predominate color of the boulders to be grey. Finally I made a snake of that marbled fondant and a snake of white fondant and laid them side by side. Then twisted them, flattened them out and twisted again. Finally I was able to make a snake, cut it in half (so one side is flat, one rounded) and mould the boulders out of that. Finally, once they were all in place on the cake (yup, there's frosted cake under there) I used a misting spray bottle to spray the boulders to give them a bit of shine. Give it a try..it's a LOT of fun!

This upcoming week brings Father's Day and a very special First Father's Day Cake! Can't wait to share it with you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-06-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

Salzburg Old Town Waterfront

Hello everyone! I'm back from my incredible Castle Tour in Europe! As promised, here are some of the best photos. Above is the Salzburg Castle up on the hill overlooking the gorgeous Old Town. The whole city is a gem to be admired but this was my favorite shot of Salzburg. (just click on the photo to see the larger view)

Neuschwanstein Castle

The highlight of this trip for me was Neuschwanstein Castle. The castle in Disneyland was modeled after this real life castle in Germany. It is truly the most romantic castle I have ever seen. You can really see how the heroic and romantic knights tales were created from sights such as these!

Lucern

And, finally, my favorite city, Lucern. You have to love a place that has so much amazing architecture and swans swimming in the lake! Of course the Alps towering over it certainly helps! It's not a large city and we were blessed to be staying near the heart of it so walking tours were wonderful!

Giraffe Bridal Shower Cake

But, finally, I'm back home and back at work. This week features a Bridal Shower cake for a special client. She is having a destination wedding (with a marvelous wedding package) that, unfortunately, does include cake but doesn't include a custom cake so we created one for her Bridal Shower instead. The Bride-to-be loves giraffes so it was a cute personal touch to make these for the cake topper. They are hand moulded from sugar paste and fondant and are completely edible. The daisies echoed the theme of the entire shower as did the colors yellow and brown.

This week's secret is a simple one. If you look on the sides of the cake you will see the sugar daisies along with the ones piped onto the cake. All I did to make sure I got uniform flowers was to use a cookie cutter daisy, in two sizes, and after letting the buttercream frosting firm up for an hour, gently pressed the cutter into the frosting and then, using royal icing which dries quickly, just piped over the outline! Easy peasy!

This upcoming week bring Graduation in our area and a special grad cake for a Disney fan! Also, a quick thank you for anyone who has been reading this blog over the past year! Yup, it's been a whole year since my first post! Hopefully I can keep coming up with interesting cakes and tips to keep your reading for at least one more! Do me a favor and post a comment to this post if you have been reading since last June! Thanx!

See you Sunday!

Cat

2011-05-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

Disney Themed Mother's Day Cake

Happy Mother's Day USA! Hope you all found a fun way to celebrate...even if it was just finding "me" time and a way to relax. We had a huge family party with a very special theme to celebrate and the cake pictured above is the cake I made for the occasion.

My mom has a "big" birthday this year and for the past few years she's been talking about going back to Disneyland. So we, as a family, decided to take her for her big birthday to Disneyland, as a family vacation. So we gathered up as much of the family as we could, some live out of state, some couldn't attend, and invited them all for Mother's Day Dinner. Mom had no idea that the second reason was to surprise her with the birthday gift/vacation. It was a wonderful surprise, we took her breath away, and at the end of the dinner were able to enjoy the cake!

Now with the cake it was a bit hard to come up with a design since it was a "big" birthday cake, a Mother's Day cake as well as a Disney themed cake. I settled on making her favorite type of cake, lemon coconut creme, and using her favorite color, yellow and topped the cake off with a fondant flower "Mickey" ears topper. Since not everyone likes coconut I made the second tier a mexican hot chocolate cake with buttercream filling. It was delicious! Now you are probably wondering what the bottom tier is...it's a dummy tier! It's sole purpose was just to make the cake design look grand!

And this is where this week's secret comes in to play. When ordering a special occasion cake, or if you are a caker yourself, when designing a cake like this one, you can use a cake dummy to boost your design rather than getting more cake than your party can actually eat. So you don't waste food and you end up with a more impressive centerpiece. Quickly, a word of caution here: using a dummy tier is not going to save you much money with your baker. This type of tier is usually priced at 80% of what a real cake would be priced since most of the work is still done on the outside of the cake dummy...the same work that is done on the rest of the cake. The only advantages to using a cake dummy is to get a grander looking cake and not wasting food. Obviously, for this design, those were two big factors on why I used it.

Now here is a second secret, if you are a caker. I use crisco all over the dummy tier if I'm covering it with fondant. This makes it easier to remove the fondant when the event is over. I don't bother with this for buttercream since it will easily wash off with hot soap and water. However, you can extend the life of your dummy if you cover it in plastic wrap first before putting on your buttercream layer.

I hope you enjoyed the cake this week as well as the story behind it. Surprising my mom and being surrounded by most of my family, including all my kids and grandkids, made this the best Mother's Day celebration ever for me.

I'll be out the next two Sundays but then returning on the 28th! I'm vacationing with my mom for two weeks in Bavaria! Yup, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Leichtenstein...a castle tour! I'm so excited to be going and seeing and doing this with my mom! When I get back I will post what I'm working on as well as a photo or two of the best of what I see on my vacation! Hope to see you back here then!

Cat

2011-05-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

Chocolate Decadence Cake

Happy Sunday! These week brings a little bit of indulgence that you can enjoy! This Chocolate Decadence cake is a Mexican Hot Chocolate Cake filled with fresh buttercream then covered with a layer of buttercream, then ganache and finally whipped ganache and white buttercream!

Now here is how you can make a version of this cake. There are tons of ganache recipes online. Find one and make it. It's really really easy, it just looks hard! It's really just shaved up chocolate, or even chocolate chips, and hot cream. You simply pour the hot cream onto the chocolate, give it a few seconds to melt then stir! Let that cool down a bit then pour over your cake. Yup, that easy. Now let me give you a few tips for this. Use a glass bowl if you can, the cream gets hot and the glass will conduct the heat into the chips of chocolate better. Stir the mixture till very smooth and shiny. Let this set up till it thickens a bit before pouring. Now fill your cake and put it onto a wire cooling rack. Set up foil, with the edges curved up, under that to catch the drippings of ganache and so you don't waste it. Once your ganache is thickened use a big spoon and begin pouring the gananche from the center of the cake and watch as it spreads out beautifully over the cake. Now I covered this cake with buttercream first to add a layer of flavor but you can just pour the ganache right over the bare cake. Once your cake is covered let it set up for a few minutes so you can see any spots you missed. Use the drippings you collected in the foil as well as any left over in the bowl to recoat the cake. Remember to put down new foil before doing this. Then let your cake set up about a half hour before you try to move it to your cake plate or serving platter.

If you want whipped ganache to decorate your cake with then you will need to let the leftovers set up in the refridgerator for at least 12 hours. When totally stiff you will want to whip it with a mixer till light and fluffy. At this point you can spread or pipe it on like you would regular buttercream icing. You can just use the same tip you bought for the rose cupcakes! It will instantly look like a fancy bakery treat!

Hope you get a chance to make this up...I'm sure any Mom in your life would love it!

And speaking of Mother's Day! Next Sunday is Mother's Day here in the US so I will be posting Saturday instead. I have a very special cake planned for our dinner on Saturday night and can NOT wait to share it with all of you!

Cat

2011-04-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

Benjamin's Baby Shower Cake

Happy Monday! Ok, so I'm a day off of my usual due to Easter and travelling. I just got back from a wonderful rollercoaster week at my daughter and son in laws house...they had their baby on the 14th and I stayed to help. I'm missing my new grandson already! A few days after his birth I had a baby shower cake to complete...nope, this biz doesn't stop for babies!LOL!

The Mom to be is a past client, I did her Plumeria Wedding Cake last summer! I wanted this cake for her to be extra special but with my daughter about to have a baby I knew I couldn't promise too much. So what I did, and you can do this too, is to make all the pieces that went onto the cake and then let them dry out. Carried those with me, packaged carefully to prevent breakage, so that if I had to do so I could buy a store bought cake and put the decorations on it. Yup, that's a "secret" that I passed onto you a few weeks ago! This was my back up plan in case we were at the hospital the day of the shower. Fortunately my grandson made his entrance 3 days before so I was able to get the cake made and decorated in time for the shower.

All of the decorations, from the hat to the booties to the sports balls and the letters are all made from fondant that has had a bit of tylose added to it. Tylose helps the fondant to dry a bit quicker. The cake is frosted in fresh buttercream and the pieces were added on with royal icing as "glue". The actual cake is lemon with lemoncurd buttercream, the Mom to be's favorite cake. The cake is offset to show off all the little balls on the cake, including the two on the back. There is only one hockeypuck as a mini spotlight to the Mom to be and Dad to be's passion for the sport..and their team, the San Jose Sharks.

And check out the water bottle next to the cake! Those are part of our event companys work. We do custom water bottles for any event. This one was, of course, sports themed so the water bottle lables were customed designed to match the rest of the decorations for the party.

Next week we dive into some chocolate decadence! See you Sunday!

Cat

2011-04-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

String Work Cake

Happy Sunday! It's a very happy one for us since our grandson arrived on Thursday! We have been enjoying his company since!

Today's cake is a demo cake. I had been taking a Master Decorators class. I wanted to work on detail work which included different piping techniques as well as sugar flowers. Over the next few months you will see examples of the new flowers I learned how to make but this week you get to see the piping techniques. I was required to show 7 different techniques in this one cake for my final "exam". For this cake I used bridge work, string work, line work, coronets, ruffling, sugar flowers and shell work. That's a lot of different looks to try to put into one cake and we had to come up with our own design, not copy from the teachers work.

I have to say this is the hardest bit of piping work I have ever had to do on a cake. The instructor warned us that for every 1 string we got to string properly we would end up wiping 3 away. I had no idea that was an understatement! It took me two hours to do the string work alone! The fun new technique that I learned was the ruffling. I've done a form of ruffles before but this is such a more realistic, not to mention easier, version of what I've done in the past!

Now you are probably wondering why I bring up my classwork here in the blog. For one thing it was something that took me 3 months to learn and a whole lot of work and I wanted to show you all that I'm still learning. No matter how much I think I know about decorating, there is still more to learn and it's fun to discover new things to do with sugar and icing. But the other reason is to encourage others here that may be reading this to go out and explore the classes in your area. Michaels has several levels of classwork and many cake supply shops also offer them. Lastly, check online to see if you can find one that works for your interests. If you still can't find something that works for you then please do explore YouTube. Yup, you'd be amazed at how much I've learned thanks to that website! Tons of videos that you can play over and over again till you get the technique down and all for free! Can't beat that.

More cakes to come over the next weeks. Next week I'll share with you a baby shower cake I delivered just this afternoon!

Cat

2011-04-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

Rose Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! As promised from last week, there's more on the "rose" technique that you used on the cupcakes last week. Since I found the tutorial (http://iammommy.typepad.com/i_am_baker/2011/02/rose-cake-tutorial.html) to make this lovely design I have seen the design popping up all over the place in one form or another. This is my own version.

Due to the fact that this is a very small cake, just 6 inches by 3 inches tall, I didn't want too much buttercream frosting on it in proportion to actual cake. The roses take a lot of buttercream to make so I decided to lightly frost the sides and save the roses for the top. Now if this was to be a larger cake, say a 10x4, then roses all over it like in the tutorial would be fine. There would be a lot more cake to icing ratio then. Lastly I wanted to add a bit of "bling" to the cake and that's where this week's secret comes in!

If you visit Michaels, or any other craft store that has caking supplies, you will see a whole section dedicated to sprinkles and sugars and glitters in which to embellish your cakes and cupcakes. Edible glitter is in flakes, not sprinkles, and can give your cake that little bit of extra sparkle when you need it. It's inexpensive and a little goes a long way. Unlike sanding sugar or other types of sprinkles, edible glitter doesn't alter the texture of the icing very much so you don't end up with a gritty feeling in your mouth from it. One of the many reasons I prefer it to sanding sugar.

Over the past few months I've been taking "Masters" classes. Next Sunday I'll share with you the outcome from my final "test" for the course!

Cat

2011-04-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

"Rose" Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! This week brings some new fun stuff I can share with you! Fun stuff YOU can do for your own cupcakes that is easy to learn! These cupcakes require only some buttercream icing, a piping bag and an extra large open star decorating tip. This tip looks like a pointy top crown.

Put the tip into the bag (no coupler needed) and fill the bag with buttercream. Twist the top of the bag and hold it straight up and down about an inch from the top of your cupcake. Starting from the center of the cupcake swirl the icing around in a flat circle and when you've covered the entire cupcake let up the pressure and angle down to finish the line and stop and pull away. You can practice this on wax paper a couple of times to get the hang of it but once you do this will be SO easy for you to do quickly!

Close up

Now another fun tip for this design. At Michaels you can find spray cans of food safe dye that you can use to add color to your roses. Lay your cupcake onto wax paper and, holding the can about 6 inches away, lightly spray on your color. A fun combination for this is to spray on some yellow and then a lighter layer of pink. This makes some really beautiful "roses" for your party!

More on this technique next week!

Cat

2011-03-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Critter Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! The rains in Northern California have been impressive over the past few weeks. Torential downpours, hail, flooding, the whole 9 yards. It has made outdoor activities almost impossible but our local CubScouts weathered the rain for a trip to the fish hatchery (and the rain held off for a couple of hours for them too!) and needed a bit of a treat for the trip.

I have made this type of cupcake before but with pretty butterflies on top. Somehow I don't think the boys would have been too happy with butterflies! LOL! So spiders and ladybugs (for those who couldn't make themselves chomp into a spider) became the "critters" for this go-round. Those were piped out of royal icing. The kids were delighted. And they are Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes so the parents were pretty happy too!

The "secret" this week is that you can easily do something very close to this yourself in your own home kitchen without needing a piping bag or tips or much skill. All you have to do is color icing in two colors of green, one a few shades darker than the other. Put those into ziplock bags and cut a small bit of a bottom corner off on each. Now, using the lighter green first, "pipe" dots on to the cupcakes in a random order. Then, using the darker color, fill in the leftover spaces. Finally, you just use a fork and dip it into the icing in a straight up and down manner to create your grass "spikes". After that you just need to put candy bugs or worms on top!

This week I learned a new technique that I will share with you all in the week to come. This one is so easy and beautiful that you will be happily using it for your Easter cakes this year!

And speaking of April! Many of us are watching the preparations for the Royal Wedding which is coming up on April 29th of this year. Well, today they announced who the cake designer will be and what she will be creating! The lucky designer is Fiona Cairns and she will be using the Joseph Lambeth technique on several fruitcakes to create the wedding cake. The Lambeth technique is where they use intricate piping to decorate the cakes. English wedding cakes are not like ours. They don't stack the cakes and the cake inside the fondant or Marzipan covering is a heavy fruitcake. Yup, similar to that stuff your Grandmother has been trying to get you to eat for years. They are not fluffy chiffon type cakes like we have here in the US and while our current trend is clean lines and just a hint of decoration here or there, the Lambeth method . So it's fun to watch the Royal Website for the preparations and see how differently it's done on the other side of "The Pond".

For those interested:

The Royal Website: http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/

Fiona Cairns Website: www.fionacairns.com

Have a great week, I'll see you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-03-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

Baby Ballcap

Happy Sunday! This week has been a challenge. If you take a look at the photo above you will notice that cap has many pieces that make up the whole. Well, the rain this week, and it's been pouring in Northern California all week, has made for a rough journey to completion for this cap. I have earned my money on this one!LOL!

Step one was to make the bowl of the cap. To get the right "newborn" size I actually covered my son's magic 8 ball with plastic wrap, then crisco and then smoothed the circle of sugarpaste over that, trimmed it and let it set up for 24 hours. Normally this would only take an hour or two but the humidity was making everything dry at a much slower rate. Once that was set up enough I could add the ribbing and letter and then let it set up again for 24 hours. At that point I could attach the blue section of the bill and it took the full 24 hours to set up and allow the "glue" to dry enough to hold it onto the bowl of the cap. At that point I could put on the trim around the bowl/bill and let it set up. Finally, 24 hours later, I was able to add the red piece to the bill of the cap and 48 hours after that I could pick up the cap and hold it in my hands. I'm very happy this cake isn't due for 3 more weeks since it needs to get rock hard before I can place it on the cake and with the rain that is still predicted for around here I think it's going to take every second of those 3 weeks to dry as solid as I need it to be.

But, as with all patience trying aspects of caking, the end result is so worth the time and effort it took to get it from powdered sugar, tylose and marshmallows to the finished product that could just fit a newborns teeny head. I can't wait for the Mama-to-be to see the cap and shoes, both personalized with a B for the baby's first name, on her baby shower cake!

There is no "secret" this week. Decorating a baby shower cake can be as complicated or as simple as you'd wish it to be. But if you are hiring a cake artist to do something really special for your shower, or a friends shower, then going for a "realism" look with the embellishments might be the way to go. In this case it's the baseball cap and teeny sneakers but on your cake it could be a realistic looking stork with a baby bundle as a topper or a cake shaped like a crib or bassinette. Giving you the wow factor for your party is why we cake artists do what we do!

I also did cupcakes today for our CubScouts but I'm going to save those for next Sunday so I can give you lots of tips and tricks that you can use to make your own Springtime cupcakes for your next outing!

Cat

2011-03-12T14:29:00.000-08:00

Baby Converse Sneakers

Happy March! Spring is beginning to poke out here and there in Northern California. It's a bit confused with it going from warm to freezing to warm again but it looks like warm is currently winning and the flowers and trees are beginning to bloom everywhere. With the Spring comes the Spring babies and the Baby Showers for the new Mom-to-be's. This weeks project is for an upcoming shower cake for a first time Mom.

They chose a Sports theme for this shower and it's for an expected baby boy so everything is very athletic and very blue and very very small! Since the embellishments for this cake need time to dry hard as a rock I needed to take some time and get that done now so they would be ready to set on the cake in a few weeks.

First up are these adorable newborn sized sneakers. The challenges in doing this type of work is that the items are so very small but also you are working with fondant that has tylose added to it which helps it to dry quickly. So you cut out the pieces, just like you would if you were making real shoes, and then assemble as quickly as possible before they get too dry and start to crack. The other challenge is to add the details needed to make them look like real shoes. For these I added the baby's first initial to make it even more personalized.

This weeks' secret is for those who want to add embellishements to their own cakes without having to spend the time or money to make the sugarpaste pieces. Look for a local cake supply store in your area. Inside you will find all sorts of plastic and sugarpaste embellishments to help you to take your simply iced cake and make it something really special. From there you can add a bit of color to a white iced cake or even to a store bought cake and make it more personalized for your party.

Next week I'll share with you another embellishment for this cake which is presently drying enough so I can take photographs of it! See you next weekend!

Cat

2011-03-07T20:47:00.000-08:00

Hippo Themed Baby Shower Cake

The beauty of this business is that when you have a special family occassion for your own family you have the opportunity to create your art for the ones you love and pour your heart into your work. This week's cake was for my younger daughter's baby shower. It's their first baby so this was a special cake for a truly special occassion!

I started work on this cake over a month ago. Starting with the sculptures, which are all hand molded out of fondant, and working my way to the palm leaves and then the boulders, each piece had to be molded, painted and left to dry. More detail painting was added then another drying period. All leading up to three days before when the actual cake was baked, then wrapped, frozen and finally two days before the construction of the cake began. Since this was for my baby girl, I wanted to add as much detail as I could so this was a project that took several more hours than an average baby shower cake but when the trees were finally set into place the cake was just perfect.

From the baby hippo sleeping on the top of the cake under the palms and next to the water...

to the Daddy Hippo tubin his way down the waterfall...

to the Mama Hippo lounging in the pond on the cake board, this cake was perfect for my daughter and her vision of her Hippo Themed Baby Shower. Right down to the cup of tea next to the Mama Hippo since the shower was held in a Tea Room!

Inside the cake was also tailored to the Mama to Be. Lemon pound cake filled with lemon curd buttercream is my daughters favorite cake so there was no doubt what the shower cake needed to be!

As I've mentioned before, my younger daughter and I also run an event company so this was a fun way to combine both businesses on one day...with a twist. My oldest daughter is who threw this party for her sister so I got to work with her for a nice change to help her bring our Mama to Be's vision to life. What a wonderful day it was too!

The next few weeks brings me some detail work for yet another shower cake so I'll be sharing with you the bits and pieces as they come together! See you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-02-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

2011 Oscar Night Cake

So this week brought the 83rd Academy Awards and along with that an Oscar Party! The theme was Mann's Chinese Theater so there was Chinese Food, Fortune Cookies and, of course, the Chinese Food Container Cake! This cake is actually 2 tiers, one Gingerbread, one Yellow and serves 20. Everything was edible except the handle and the "fortune".

The "secret" for this cake is to use a non edible item like the paper fortune, instead of and edible one. Most of the time I really try to make everything edible but there are times when going the extra mile is not only not worth the extra work but can also be a dangerous idea when it comes to transporting the cake to the client. In this case, to make the fortune look like a real paper fortune, I would have had to make the fondant very very thin and in transporting it over bumpy roads for 130 miles the chances are overwhelming good that the thin fortune would have snapped in half and destroyed part of the presentation of the cake. So the lesson here is to let yourself off the hook from time to time and learn what is better to use out of the real thing rather than make it's faux edible double.

The other tip has to do with the wire handle. Made from 20 gauge wire, this is not only not edible but it can't touch the cake or icing at all. In order to be able to use it I cut a food grade plastic coffee stir stick in half, put half in one side of the cake and half in the other side, making sure not to slide it all the way into the cake. Then, using royal icing as glue I was able to insert the wire into the stir stick and seal it with the royal icing. So all the wire touches is stir stick and royal icing, both which are removed with the wire when it's time to cut the cake!

Mini Birthday Cake

This tiny 4 inch mini cake was meant to feed just four people. Since it was for my daughter's birthday I wanted to make sure it was really special so I spent the extra time and effort to make this mini cake perfect for her. Lemon Chiffon Cake filled with lemon-lime curd buttercream, her favorite, was decorated all in fondant, also her favorite, and embellished with royal icing swags as well as hundreds of royal icing dots to give the feel of Wedgewood China. It was a big hit.

This next week brings a very special baby shower cake. For the same daughter that was mentioned above, this shower cake is to welcome her first child due mid April. And I can't wait to share it with you all next Monday!

Cat

2011-02-20T10:46:00.000-08:00

Blue & Gold Dinner Cub Scout Cake

Happy Sunday! For some of us this is a three day weekend. From my day job I do get the time off but this only gives me time to work at this job which is quite a treat! I have a few big jobs coming up so the extra time to work on the little details is wonderful.

This week brought the annual Blue & Gold Dinner for Cub Scouts. I try to come up with something new each year and this year I found a wonderful new twist on a very popular combo. My lemon chiffon cake with lemon curd buttercream is always a crowd pleaser but this year I came upon a jar of lemon-lime curd and couldn't wait to try it out! Sure enough it was just outstanding. So don't be afraid of using something new and unusual to pump up the flavor of your cake fillings!

The "secret" of this cake is the logo. I'm a passable artist. I can sketch out a cake well enough that a client will understand what the design is but I can't really draw. In the case of logos there is a work-around that works beautifully. You just need to know the secret of how to use it and make it food safe. I find the logo online, print it out and then laminate it. Now you can't just plop that onto the cake because it's not food safe so all you need to do is put down some wax paper or parchment first then layer on the logo and seal the edges with buttercream piping. Before serving the cake simply lift the logo/paper off and serve!

One of the things I do love about this time of year, my "slow" time of year, is the freedom to take on last minute clients and get fun little projects like the one below.

Pretty Princess Cupcakes

These little lemon cupcakes are topped with fresh buttercream and baby pink sugared fondant crowns and candy pearls. The crowns are easier than you would think but make a big impact. Just cut them out a day or so before, lay them out on a plate or baking sheet, brush with a teeny bit of water and sprinkle the sanding sugar on. Then let them dry for at least 24 hours. 48 is better to get them nice and hard like candy. I have a Cricut, which is a wonderful machine that cuts out multiple items in one pass, but you can easily do this with a cookie cutter in almost no time at all. Then just pipe on the buttercream and stick on the crowns and you are done! I went a little bit farther by piping on curly ribbon like swags and decorating them with candy pearls which added a nice little elegant touch.

But sometimes it's the little touches that mean the most. It takes a very steady hand to do smooth swags but I wanted them to curl a bit so I let the thin line of icing wiggle a bit as I piped it. Then just pressed in the pearls. The two year old recipient was thrilled with her Princess cupcakes and that's just a wonderful payoff for me!

Next week brings an unusual cake and a new day for the blog. Due to work obligations this upcoming weekend I will be posting the blog on Monday instead of Sunday...in fact, this will be the case two weeks in a row. So I'll see you next Monday!

Cat

2011-02-13T18:09:00.000-08:00

Hugs & Kisses Valentine's Cupcakes

Happy Sunday and Happy Valentine's Day! As you can see, my display cake hit a delay for the best of reasons...paying clients such as the one who ordered 2 dozen of these fun little Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes decorated with fresh cream buttercream and adorable little x's, o's and hearts for her office party. Of course I made a few extras for my family to enjoy and they were completely YUMMY!

Once again, presentation is everything when it comes to a cupcake. Being such a tiny slice of cake there's just not much to decorate but you can make a big impact with additions such as the fondant candy (cut out with mini cutters you can find at Michaels Craft Stores) and silver cupcake liners. As I mentioned last week, present these on pretty dessert plates and you have a beautiful little gift for your sweetheart.

This weeks "secret" is what is hidden inside...a Hershey Kiss! What you do is put in a scoop of batter into your cupcake liner. I use a large cookie dough scoop. Then put the unwrapped kiss into the middle and press part of the way down (not all the way to the bottom) and then top with a teeny bit more of the batter. Bake as you normally would. Even when cool the kiss is soft and wonderful to bite into and makes for a very nice sweet surprise for your Valentine to discover!

The next few weeks are booked solid so my display cake will have to wait till I get an opening in March but this next Sunday will bring the Blue and Gold Cubscouts cake for me to share with you all. See you then!

Cat

2011-02-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

Sunshine Lemon Cupcakes. Lemon Chiffon cake topped

with creme cheese buttercream and fondant candy sunflowers.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! I'm taking a highly unpopular stand in my neck of the woods and rooting for the Steelers but, in reality, just hoping for a good game and funny commercials!LOL!

Today's cake is actually easy, fun little cupcakes. Cupcakes are a quick and easy way to have cake in your life and an inexpensive gift to a friend for their birthday. Of course I go a bit farther and handmake the flowers but you can buy them easily! So there's "secret" number one....topping your cupcakes with a cute edible flower or sugar piece. They don't cost much, usually come in sets of 12, perfect for that dozen cupcakes you are making, and have begun to taste pretty good. If you want to make your own though, it's still pretty easy. It just takes a bit of preplanning and a teeny bit of work. These were made with a "daisy" cutter. You can find a set of three at Michaels. I cut out two different colors of fondant, dried one flat and one with the curled up edges (just use your fingers and the wooden end of a paint brush to curl them up). I brushed the darker flat pieces with a paint like consistancy of gold luster/pearl dust and clear vanilla extract and dusted the curled pieces with dry gold luster/pearl dust. Stacked them, using a bit of water as glue, with a little dark brown disk of fondant that I'd poked a few times and that was it to make the sunflowers!

The other "secret" to todays cupcakes has to do with presentation. Dessert plates are one of my favorite things to collect but you can just use decorative paper plate saucers to dress up the cupcakes instead. The plate pictured cost a dollar at Michaels in their dollar section...yup, a set of six for $6! And dessert plates are easy to store. I buy in sets of 4 or buy them seperately in sets of 6. That way, whether I'm serving a birthday cake or valentine cupcakes, I have a pretty way to serve them up. It really makes a difference. So no matter what you are serving, give a little thought to what you are serving your cake on and you'll get rave reviews!

I'm working on a large display cake that I hope to show you next weekend. I've finished the roses, now it's just time to actually do the rest! Since I also have the cake for the CubScouts Blue and Gold dinner I may not get the display cake finished but I will have photos of the Scout cake and at least a teaser of the display cake for you all next Sunday!

GO STEELERS! (had to get that in...)

Cat

2011-01-30T10:14:00.000-08:00

The "Amelia"

Welcome to Shower Season. This is the most popular time of year to hold a Bridal or Baby shower. There are the obvious choices for the cake when it comes to these events and then there are more elegant options. The "Amelia" could be used for a very elegant Bridal Shower cake. The delicate sugar paste bird is so very obviously female and lovely that symbolically she could easily represent a Bride. In fact, inspiration for this cake came from a wedding invitation. This is a very popular thing to do as well...base the cake on the invitations! What a lovely way to color coordinate.

Now, below, you will see another way to present this cake.

With just the small addition of two small speckled fondant eggs this cake becomes an elegant baby shower or Mother's Day cake. In fact, as many, or few, eggs could be added depending on if the Mother-to-be is expecting her first or her third baby. Everything, with the exception of the real ribbon trim, is edible on this cake.

This week's "secret" is to use cookie cutters to cut out the fondant then, using a bit of water as glue, just stack the cut outs on top of each other to create this cute layered look. Even the leaves are cookie cutter cut outs! You could easily coordinate cupcakes to match this cake as favors simply by cutting out more of the flowers and leaves, letting them dry till they were solid then placing them upon whipped buttercream. Put those into the little see through plastic boxes you can find at a craft store such as Michaels and tie them up with a coordinating ribbon and you have a very cute and tasty favor for your guests to take home with them!

I'm currently working on a very large display cake that will take a few weeks to make due to the 36 sugar roses needed for it so next week I will have some birthday cupcakes and I will spotlight a cake from the past with some new tips to help you make your next birthday event special!

Cat

2011-01-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby Racing Cupcakes

Happy Sunday! This weekend began with the annual Pinewood Derby. This is a racing derby where the Cub Scouts carve out wooden cars and decorate them then race them for trophys. This was my second year of providing a dessert for the event. Last year was a cake and I found that it was hard for the younger Scouts to eat so this year I thought cupcakes might be more fun. But, of course, I couldn't just do average ordinary cupcakes so these are just a tad different and that's where the "secret" of the day is hidden.

Cupcakes are rather easy to do but because they dry out quickly you have to make them and serve them within 24 hours or they get dry. But it's easy these days to dress them up with colorful wrappers and fun picks to go into the icing. So the cake batter and the icing is where you get a chance to play it up a bit. For these I was trying to please a large group and since some people don't like chocolate (yes, unbelievably, some people do not like chocolate) I made half of them chocolate and half of them vanilla. Then I topped them with creme cheese buttercream. Now this is easier to do than you think and it's something you can even do with canned frosting you get from the store. Just start out with a brick of creme cheese from the store. Full fat creme cheese works the best. Whip that with a mixer till smooth, creamy and fluffy and then start your buttercream recipe as normal. If you are using canned frosting this is where you would use the mixer to beat in the canned frosting into the creme cheese. Because canned frosting is already fairly loose the creme cheese may make it a bit too runny so you may need to add some powdered sugar to your mix to get the icing stiff enough for your cupcakes. My buttercream recipe is already pretty stiff so the addition of the creme cheese made it just the right consistancy for piping onto the cupcakes and still hold it's shape. Then it was just a matter of sticking in the flags and getting them to the venue.

Two more "secrets" for you. When doing a large amount of cupcakes that you will be traveling with it's easier to put the unfrosted cupcakes into the box/carrier and then frost them in place than trying to put them into place after frosting. This way the frosting isn't jostled or messed up as you place them into the box. The other tip for you is presentation. There are many cupcake display stands out there in the stores and online. These make a bigger impact when it comes to serving your cupcakes up in style than a regular plate or platter would. Pictured below are two versions of cupcake stands that help to make a big impact. These are wired stands but there are plenty of disposable cardboard versions out there too.

The final display

Finally I leave you with a small taste of next weeks' cake! I have an auction coming up benefitting our school so I needed a small but elegant display cake. "Miss Amelia", pictured below, is part of the topper for this cake which could be used as a birthday cake or bridal shower cake.

"Miss Amelia"

She is not based on a real bird but is colored to suit the cake she will perch upon. Made entirely of fondant I handpainted her to match the colors on the cake. You will get to see the entire cake next Sunday! Have a great week!

Cat

2011-01-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

The Jeanette Wedding Cake

Happy Sunday! January brings Display Cake design for me and football playoffs for my husband. So while I sculpt, carve, cover and place, he's yelling in the background at his favorite team! Today, of course, it's the Chicago Bears which are, happily for this household anyways, beating up on the Seahawks.

This week's cake is a Display Cake modeled after a Bride who would like a Winter Wedding. This doesn't always mean snowflakes for a wedding cake. In this cake I put the "winter" into it by adding the blue sanding sugar as well as the "bling" of rhinestones and used the color blue. This makes for a very elegant cake to match the Bride and the wedding as well as one appropriate for a gorgeous Winter Wedding. The size of this cake is also something different. Many wedding cakes these days are grand confections that could feed 150 to 300 people. Yet many wedding guest lists don't top 75. So how do you get a "grand" look without wasting cake? You simply take the grand design and make it smaller. This cake has an 8 inch base, 6 inch center tier and 4 inch top tier. Perfect for a wedding of about 50 people. Also, using one big flower will give a small cake a bit of drama without overpowering it like tons of flowers would. This sugar Camellia, pictured below, was also dusted with ivory luster dust to give it a bit of drama as well.

This weeks "secret" is the sanding sugar. You can find this wonderful cake decoration in any craft store that carries cake supplies. Once you have frosted your cake with buttercream you can just sprinkle it on to add a bit of glitter to your cake. If you are working with fondant all you do is either mist on a fine layer of water with a spray bottle or use a new paint brush and lightly paint on a bit of water and then sprinkle on the sugar. Make sure you have something under the cake to catch the excess that will fall off as you sprinkle or this can make quite the mess. But it's an easy touch and one that makes a big impact on any cake. The second "secret" is the "bling". It's very easy to bring a small bit of glitz or a large touch of glam to a wedding cake just by using rhinestones. These can be purchased seperately or in strands, as on this cake, but you can also you a family broach or necklace or even a barrette to adorn your cake and become a stunning piece of "Cake Jewelry"!

January also brings The Pinewood Derby for Cub Scouts. I always do something for the local pack and this year it's going to be cupcakes! So check out next Sunday to see what I come up with.

Cat

2011-01-09T10:35:00.000-08:00

The Krista Princess Wedding Cake

Happy Sunday! As promised here is the Display Cake that I have been working on this week. If you've been following the blog then you know that this is the third in a series of six that I need for a Bridal Faire this upcoming summer. The first was a Seahorse cake, the second the Wedding Words cake and now this one. I have plans for three more and working on those designs now. It's lots of fun being able to design whatever I want but at the same time I'm also designing with particular brides in mind.

Today's cake is based on what I would have liked to do for my daughter Krista's wedding when she married almost 5 years ago in 2006. Her wedding was in Las Vegas so I wasn't able to do the honors of making the cake so I decided to design this one with her in mind. She's my "pink girl" so I thought "pretty, delicate and pink" when coming up with this design of drapes, sparkly light pink roses and pink ribbon to match. The cake is covered in white marshmallow fondant and the "drapes" and their fasteners are also fondant. The roses are sugar dusted with pink luster dust to match the real pink ribbon trim.

This week's "secret" has to do with the tools we cakers use and some of the odd places we find them. The little embossed fastener pieces that hold up the "drapes" on this cake come from a mold I found in the clay/sculpting section of the craft store. Molds made especially for caking can tend to be very expensive but you can find the same type of patterns for about a quarter of the price in the sculpting section if you are lucky.

The Lenox China bowl on the top is actually one from my own wedding. These were also used in our younger daughters wedding so I thought it would be perfect to add that touch to this cake designed for my older daughters wedding cake as well. Using a family heirloom as part of your wedding cake is a very nice sentimental touch so think of using a china piece, a broach, even a bracelet that belongs to your mother or grandmother to add that touch of family into your wedding cake.

This next week brings another Display Cake. This one designed for a Winter Wedding. I've finished the flower for it and am so excited to share it with you all. See you next Sunday!

Cat

2011-01-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

Yellow Chiffon Cupcakes topped with Ivory Buttercream,

sugar confetti and fondant candy!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome 2011! May it be a very good year for us all!

As promised, this week's cake is cupcakes! We celebrate Kwanzaa each year which includes alot of handmade creative projects. This year we made a gingerbread Christmas Tree from a Wilton kit I got at the craft store. These are great for kids because it comes with all the necessary parts, nothing has to be baked and they get a chance to catch a little of the decorating fever! Our baking project this year were these yummy yellow chiffon cupcakes topped with ivory tinted buttercream, sugar confetti and handpainted fondant candy. Jack helps with the actual making of the batter and topping with the decorations while I do the baking and icing. Of course, he's convinced that they taste even better just because he helped to make them! Whatever the reason, they were a big hit at the New Year's Eve dinner party we all attended!

The "secret" this week is the fondant candy. Oddly enough I know how to do this because of another ribbon craft that makes curly hair ribbons. The same concept is used here. Just take strips of fondant, I mix in a little tylose powder to speed up drying time, and curl it around a skewer. Let it dry and then slide it off and stick it right into the buttercream! If you roll the fondant out very thin the curlys will look more like the paper they are supposed to resemble but they will be very fragile. They will dry quickly but also break quickly so make double the amount you think you need. Rolling the fondant a little thicker means it will dry slower but will be more sturdy so you won't have as much breakage. Either way, if you make them the day before they will have plenty of time to dry before you need them.

As a cake artist I am aware of the pace of my business. After the busy summer wedding season there is a small slow time before the holidays begin and then another one after Christmas when people are feeling the monetary pinch of the holidays. This gives me time to work on some fun projects like my flyers and display cakes that I will need for Bridal Faires later this year. I have a few fun designs swirling around in my head I can't wait to get into cake form so I'll be working on those the next three weeks. Then business hits again and I'm busy for a few more weeks. So this is my fun time. My I-get-to-create-what-I-want time. I'll share the first of these fun display cakes next Sunday!

Cat

2010-12-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

White Birch Yule Log Cake. Yellow cake with vanilla buttercream

filling covered in handpainted vanilla marshmallow fondant

and decorated with a sugar pointsettis and fondant mushrooms. All edible.

One of the great things about being a cake artist is when the holidays hit you get to make a great cake just for you and your family. The only time schedule you have to follow is your own and the only artistic input needed is your own imagination. This week's cake is the one I made for our own huge family Christmas dinner.

When deciding what to make I took into account the other holiday cakes on the books and suddenly knew I wanted to do a very different type of cake for our holiday celebrations this year. A Buche Noel, or Yule Log, Cake is usually a rolled sponge cake that is covered with chocolate buttercream icing that is scraped to look like a wood finish. The mushrooms are usually white to stand out against the chocolate coloring of the log and they are usually made out of meringue. Well my son is not a fan of chocolate and my youngest daughter is 6 mos pregnant and chocolate is just not part of her palate choices right now so I wanted to make something very vanilla for my kids. And, yes, if my other daughter had been here this year she would have appreciated the anti chocolate theme as well. Go figure, eh? LOL. So while the usual choice for a yule log cake is chocolate buttercream I chose vanilla fondant instead. So my thought was to make it look like a white birch log which is one of my favorite trees. Then, having just seen The Nutcracker this year, I thought why not make the mushrooms the red capped variety so they would stand out against the white fondant as well as represent a favorite thing to do with my kids during the holidays, which is see The Nutcracker. (For those who have never seen this ballet, there is a certain part where lots of red capped mushroom children fill the stage).

The work began weeks ago when I made sugar pointsettias for a client cake. I made an extra one just for us to use on whatever cake I decided upon. Then a week ago I formed the mushroom caps and stems and set them aside to dry. They need to be totally dry before painting. Getting a bright red is not easy to do so I handpainted the caps with several coats of red gell color mixed with vodka. This took a few days to get the depth of color I wanted. Everything else with the cake has to be done last minute so I could get the fresh taste and texture I wanted for the final result. Now the secret of the week comes with the cake. I bake all of my cakes a few days before I need to decorate them then I wrap them well and freeze them. After I take them out of the freezer, unwrap them and fill them with whatever filling I am using I then "crumbcoat" them with buttercream and let them thaw out for several hours before the final coat of buttercream or fondant goes on. The freezing captures the moisture inside the cake making for a wonderful moist cake when you finally do cut into it. The crumbcoat seals in that moisture as well. Once the cake comes out of the freezer it doesn't go back into it or the fridge for more than a few minutes to set up icing coatings, nothing more. The fridge will actually dry out your cakes! So there's your tip of the week...just make sure to wrap the cake well. My wrap of choice is Press and Seal. LOVE it!

For this cake it was just a matter of looking at what a real white birch tree looks like and try to copy the look of the bark on the cake. And I have to say that once you get to the finishing touches like piping the "grass" then setting the mushrooms into place, it all starts really coming together and what started out as a vision in your mind comes to life in cake. It truly feels amazing.

Today began our holiday celebration of Kwanzaa and it goes on till New Years Day so the only cake in this house will be cupcakes my son and I will make later this week for New Years. I'll post what we come up with next Sunday! In the meantime I hope you are enjoying your holidays and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Cat

2010-12-19T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yellow cake filled with Raspberry Buttercream and

decorated with colored vanilla marshmallow fondant and buttercream!

Another Holiday Cake to share with all of you this week. This cake was for an office party and rather than do a typical sheet cake we decided to do something a little more fun. There is a home craft out there called a "Brick Santa" and it's made by taking a regular brick and painting on a face, belt and buckle then using a special acrylic "snow" to make the beard and fur for the hat and pom pom. So I figured with this cake I could do that same thing using edible materials.

The cake is a standard 10x10 size cake that's been leveled and then cut directly in half then stacked upon eachother to make a 10x5x4 inch high cake. This feeds about 25 people. For the fondant I started out by coloring white fondant with a brick red gell coloring. Then I painted it with a vodka and Christmas red gell coloring mix and quickly textured the surface with a net bag to make the appearance look more like a real brick. After waiting a short while for this to dry I then was able to create the face and finally finish it all off with the swirled buttercream! Such a fun little cake to present to the office full of people.

The "secret" on this cake is that you could just use colored buttercream that's been almost smoothed out for the covering of the "brick" and then use regular buttercream to create the face, beard and fur. This would be a wonderful beginners cake for any inspired baker. My only advice would be to go onto wilton.com and look up how to make a true Christmas Red. It's hard to dye either fondant or buttercream any vibrant color such as red, black, dark blue or purple. But the result is worth it!

This upcoming week I have another holiday cake. My own twist on a Buche Noel! Have a Very Merry Christmas and I'll see you here the first day of Kwanzaa!

Cat

2010-12-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

Holly Berry Cake. Double chocolate cake with Raspberry buttercream filling covered in

fresh vanilla buttercream and decorated with fondant holly leaves and chocolate candy berries.

This week was a busy one so I have 3 cakes to show you! The holidays are usually filled with home cooking, home baked cakes and cookies so for a cake artist it is usually the slow time of year. But, recently, it has become a trend to take a pretty cake or cupcakes to a party as a Hostess Gift so this year I'm a little busier than usual. The Holly Berry Cake was fun for me to do because I don't work a lot in buttercream and I love to play with fondant. This gave me the opportunity to do both! Being Disney fans, and that's putting it mildly, it was also a chance for me to create my own "hidden Mickeys" on the cake! So this ended up being a very nice Hostess Gift for my client to present to her friends.

Mom's Birthday Cake. Double chocolate cake with Apricot filling covered in

fresh vanilla buttercream, edible transfers and topped with a sugar yellow rose.

This next cake is, as the title says, Mom's Birthday Cake. Every year I make my mom something special for her birthday. We have a family dinner and the cake tops off a wonderful meal. It's a challenge to come up with something new each year and see if I can top the year before! This year, and this weeks "secret", I got some of Duff Goldmans edible cake "tattoos". What you do to apply these is just put on the final layer of buttercream and while it's still "wet" you smooth on the edible transfer. And just like that your cake is decorated! You can find these at Michael's Craft Stores in the cake decorating section and they are really just that easy to use. You do have to be careful to place them exactly where you want them because they are just sugar. Once they touch the buttercream the sugar melds with the buttercream and you will not be able to move it. Then it's just a matter of adding a trim to your cake and some candles! In this case my Mom loves yellow roses and requested one for her cake this year so I made a huge yellow sugar rose and placed the wired flower into a coffee stirrer. The stirrer was just a teeny bit taller than the cake so that the rose didn't actually sit on the buttercream. This meant that she could remove the rose easily and be able to keep it as a keepsake. Sugarpaste, or "gumpaste", dries rock hard and you can keep it forever once it is totally dry.

Holiday Cupcakes. Gingerbread cupcakes topped with fresh

vanilla buttercream, colored sugar sprinkles and a chocolate candy berry.

The last "cake" of the week is actually cupcakes. I love baking these cupcakes because the smell of gingerbread brings back all my childhood holiday memories. As I mentioned above, these would make wonderful Hostess Gifts if you are going to a party or potluck dinner. These were treats for a senior community. Helping those who can not bake for themselves have a little taste of home baking at the Holidays. The Seniors eyes lit up at the site of these gingerbread treats and it was wonderful payment for this caker and her son.

This upcoming week brings another holiday cake. This time a 3D one! Can not wait to begin work on this one since the theme is such a fun one to bring to life. I'll post it next Sunday!

Cat

2010-12-05T16:17:00.000-08:00

Double Chocolate Cake filled with Chocolate Fudge and covered in

Vanilla Buttercream and decorated with sugar Pointsettia flowers

Happy Sunday! Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We certainly did and I enjoyed having a whole week off. Having a full work schedule is surely something to be grateful for but a week off from work is certainly wonderful too!

This week brought a Christmas Party Cake for friends. They throw this amazing party each year and so I created this cake as a centerpiece for their event. Now, I've made it fairly clear that I'm not a buttercream fan, more of a fondant girl here, but this turned out so pretty I was thrilled to be able to present it at the party. Unfortunately 150 rough graded freeway miles had a different idea for me and my creation. Delivery is the worst part of this job in my opinion (others would say it's cleaning up from this job but I think delivery is horrid!LOL!). You spend hours upon hours working on what you hope is just this side of perfection only to take a huge risk that your edible work of art will end up in a pile of cake rubble. Fortunately, for me, cake rubble wasn't quite how far it went but about 75 miles into our trip I saw that the buttercream was literally sliding off the top tier of the cake in a nice neat line. Think of rolling down a window...only with icing slowing revealing the cake underneath! Having delivered cakes for a few years now I always carry a kit with me and knew that I could fix what needed to be fixed when I arrived. Once we did arrive I seperated the tiers, found out that only the bottom one was needed (the top tier was frosted and used as a treat in leftovers), removed the damaged front pointsettia and the damaged trim and gold decorations, reiced the whole cake, retrimmed with buttercream and new gold decorations and placed the pointsettia cake topper on top of the now single tier cake. I added a few new decorations on top and...

The final version of the cake.

Fortunately, in this case, the cake was for friends and it wasn't a set design but rather left up to me and that there was plenty of cake still for their guest list. Sometimes as a cake artist you have to think quickly on your feet because it IS cake and anything can happen. I do have a fancy cake delivery case which prevents toppling of a cake but nothing can prevent vibration damage. You just have to learn how to work around it when the damage happens and worse comes to worse??? Apologize and refund if the damage is total and you have nothing to deliver but cake rubble. Thank goodness I was able to put a beautiful finished cake on the table for this event, their guests none the wiser!

This upcoming week brings two smaller cakes. One is for a birthday and the other is a simple holiday cake. I'll share those next Sunday!

Cat

2010-11-21T19:25:00.000-08:00

Kali's Castle Cake. Vanilla Chiffon Cake filled with Vanilla

Buttercream and covered in Vanilla Marshmallow Fondant. All Edible

Kali's Curly Q Cake. Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cake filled with
Raspberry Buttercream and covered in Vanilla Marshmallow Fondant

Vegan Chocolate Cake filled with Apricot Buttercream and

covered in Vegan Buttercream. All Vegan except fondant flowers.

This was one busy week for me and for my client! All three cakes went to the same client for family events. The Castle cake is based upon a drawing by the 6 yr old birthday girl. She drew it out and colored it and I did my best to capture her design in cake. The look on her delighted face was all that I needed to know that there was a happy ending to this Castle Tale. This was for the kids bounce house party. The "secret" to this cake isn't much of a secret. The turrents are actually cut down sugar cones. Normally I would just fold food grade cardboard into a cone and cover it with fondant but I wanted it to be as all edible as I could make it for this charming little girl. Even the crown on this cake is made of fondant with candy jewels adorning it so that the birthday girl could just take a bite out of any part of it if she wished! She promptly called the figure and the crown as her own!

The second cake is the Curly Q cake. Now this cake was for the family dinner celebrating both the birthday girl's day as well as her grandmother's birthday. So while the Castle Cake was for the little girl and she got to pick out the flavors and filling for that cake, the Curly Q cake was more for the adults of the family so her mom decided a little more grown up version for the family dinner. The chocolate chocolate chip cake is a rich moist cake with little pockets of chocolate all through the body of the cake. Add that to the rich taste of fresh marshmallow fondant and you have a decadent dessert that the adults just loved. The kids loved all the candy curly q's! They are the "secret" to this cake. For this effect all you have to do is use wooden skewers and wrap strips of fondant around them, swirling from bottom to top, and then let them dry till firm. Then, using coffee stirrers to hold them up securely in the cake you just slip the curly q's right over the stirrers and stick them into the cake!

The last cake was my biggest challenge. The birthday girls grandmother is a vegan. Now, no dairy can mean no cake but there are ways around this and you still end up with a tasty dessert. Using some caker contacts I found a great recipe for dairy free chocolate cake and for dairy free buttercream. The cake turns out to be more like a brownie in consistancy. So moist but very dense. To me the buttercream was the bigger challenge. How to make something based from dairy products taste like it has dairy products when it doesn't is a huge challenge. Thanks to one caker friend who suggested using Vanilla Almond Milk I was able to get buttercream that is vegan and tastes amazing! It got rave reviews from not only the grandmother but also from those who didn't think a vegan cake could taste good!

This week I will learn how to make a new flower. I have a Christmas cake coming up next week so this week I get to learn how to make sugar paste poinsettias. I'll post my results next Sunday. In the meantime have a great Thanksgiving. I am personally thankful that I get to use my art to create such yummy masterpieces!

Cat

2010-11-14T10:25:00.000-08:00

Lemon chifffon cake filled with lemoncurd buttercream. Covered

in handpainted marshmallow fondant and trimmed

with fondant candy pirate coins.

All edible except center coin, keys and cake topper.

Happy Sunday! This was a busy week for me. Lots of baking went on in the kitchen followed up with a whole lotta decorating! First up is the Mickey Pirate Cake. The rum cask is made up of handpainted "wood" panels trimmed in edible gold painted straps. The coins were the fun part of this project. Planned months in advance I was able to pick up certain items when we visited Disneyland in April in order to make this cake work. The cake topper is actually a frame. I simply removed the plastic photo holder and replaced with with the handpainted scroll. The coins were made from fondant circles that were embossed using the collectors pin in the center of the cake. Once they were embossed they were allowed to dry overnight then sprayed with edible gold paint, allowed to dry another day before handpainting them to bring out the texture of the embossing. The "sand" is just ground up graham crackers. Normally I'd use ground up animal crackers because they look more like sand to me but I wanted the color of the grahams this time. The real "secret" to this cake is how it's baked. I used two small 2 cup pyrex cups from Pampered Chef to bake the cake in. These are made for baking so check first to make sure yours can hold up to the heat of the oven. Once they are fully baked you can trim off the dome and then invert one upon the other. You do need support for every 4 inches so put a piece of cake board inbetween and dowels in the lower section. I even put a long dowel into the top going all the way to the bottom for more stability. This worked in two ways...it gave more stability and helped hold up the topper! To cut a cake like this you simply remove any extra embellishments and then seperate the layers. It was a real hit with the birthday guy!

Dark Chocolate Cake fill with Raspberry Buttercream and covered in

vanilla marshmallow fondant. Trimmed in sugar roses and silk flowers.

The second cake this week is a wedding cake for Diane and Mike. They will be married today in a local venue which is a renovated barn. The sugar roses match the ones that will be in the Brides bouquet and the silk flowers match the flowers she is using in the centerpieces for the table. This is a wonderful way of incorporating your bridal style into your cake. Remember if you use real flowers to make sure they were grown organically or that your Cake Artist is using the proper tubes to insert it into your cake. More flowers than you know are actually toxic to humans or are sprayed with insecticides that you don't want anywhere near your cake. Silk flowers are a nice way to get the look. Just wash them carefully and let them dry thoroughly before placing on the cake. These are actually placed on top of buttercream piped around the bottom tier so that if any of the flower touches the cake it's only a petal or two. The sugar flowers, which are on wires, are inserted into food grade coffee stir sticks and then into the cake so that the wire doesn't touch the food. Check out the website later today for photos of this cake on the cake table at the venue! Http://www.thecherryontopevents.com/cakes.html

This upcoming week brings three cakes! This client has a family birthday party for her daughter plus a friends party at a jumphouse party place plus her mom's birthday as well! All in the same weekend! So I'm making three small cakes for those occassions. I'll share those on Sunday!

Cat

2010-11-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

Yellow cake with dark chocolate buttercream topped with

candy corn and trimmed in chocolate filled cookies

As mentioned in a previous post, rain makes working with fondant a chore and things go much slower than planned. The flowers for the wedding cake for next weekend are taking forever to make because of the high humidity making the petals very slow to dry. So I will be able to share those with you next week on the actual cake. Since I can't share something new with you I thought I'd bring out a cake from last year that is not only a huge hit with the clients but is an easy one for you to make too!

Known as a "barrel cake" this is a crowd pleaser that is quick and simple to do if you know what to do! First bake whatever flavor cake you like. Make two layers, fill them, frost them and don't worry about leveling the top layer or how pretty your frosting is on the outside. At this point, while the frosting is soft, place the cookies around the outside. You will want to measure the first cookie so it is only tall enough to clear about a half inch above the edge of the cake. Then use that measurement to trim the other cookies. Once they are all around the entire cake use a pretty ribbon (wired works best) to tie around the cake and "hold" the cookies into place. Finally, top with whatever candy you'd like. It only takes a thin layer to "fill" the barrel. The really cool thing about this cake is that it's easy to make for any holiday. Use candy corn or halloween colored m&m's for Halloween, red and green m&m's for Christmas, heart shaped candy for Valentine's Day, chocolate eggs for Easter, etc. Just tie with ribbon that fits your theme! You can also use anything long and thin as your trim. Use the pirouette cookies like I did or Twix candy or Lady Finger cookies. Anything long and thin will work to create the "barrel" effect. Take this to a holiday party and see everyone go crazy over it!

Coming up this week is a 3D birthday cake as well as the 2 tier wedding cake to go along with the sugar flowers that I will continue to work on over the next two days. See you next Sunday!

Cat

2010-10-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

Halloween Mini Cupcakes. Dark chocolate cake filled with raspberry buttercream or yellow cake filled with lemoncurd buttercream and topped with either vanilla or chocolate buttercream and fondant decorations.

This week brings Halloween! This is a major holiday in our house and we are big party people so Halloween is the perfect excuse to have a big party! As an event planner as well as a caker I always feel the pressure to make the party even better than the one before so when it came time for dessert I knew we had to have some form of cake but we were also going to have a chocolate fountain so it couldn't be alot of cake. This is what makes the mini cupcake so perfect. You can have just a bite of cake on the plate along with the other treats on a dessert table or for a dessert bar.

The secret this week is the little decorations that go on the cupcakes. Every year you see the mini cookie cutter sets. These are perfect for tiny decor like these little fondant bats, skulls, pumkins and ghosts. All you do is cut the shapes from different colored fondant and then add the tiny details such as eyes or stems with edible markers! This is especially easy to do with the new cupcake wrappers that are popping up everywhere. No longer are you stuck with blue, pink, green, yellow or white...now you can have bats or spiders or Christmas trees and holly for cupcake wrappers! When you pair the fancy wrappers with the little edible cutout shapes on top you get a wonderfully special effect.

This upcoming week brings more sugar flowers. I will be making a few very large peonies for a wedding cake due mid month. I'll share the results next Sunday. Happy Halloween!

Cat

2010-10-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

Disco Birthday Cake. Disco ball is lemon chiffon cake filled with lemoncurd

buttercream. Green tier is white cake filled with lemoncurd buttercream and blue tier is chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream. All is covered with colored vanilla marshmallow fondant.

This week's cake was a challenge. Humidity can make fondant very hard to work with so with the rain in Northern California this week I was challenged to the point of frustration. Add in the fact that the can of silver food coloring spray malfunctioned and suddenly I had to handpaint all those tiles..well, it was a frustrating day. BUT, if you keep with it, keep your patience, take needed breaks and come back to the project then you will be able to finish it and have it make you happy.

The secret of this week's cake was supposed to be the silver spray on food coloring but since it didn't work and I had to handpaint them all I don't really have a "secret" to share. So I'll share a tip instead. When working with fondant that you want to stand up, like the stars and numbers, you want to make sure you assemble the pieces a few days ahead of time so that the fondant has time to set up. If you try to do this last minute the stars would just flop right over. So I cut out two of everything using cookie cutters and, using water to adhere the pieces together, I sandwiched the two pieces together with a stir stick in between. Then I let them dry for two days. The stars are grey fondant that I then painted silver after they were totally dry. The numbers were painted with white sparkly luster dust mixed with a bit of vodka to a paint like consistancy. So there you go...if you want to make cute little pieces to stand up on your cakes or cupcakes it just takes a little planning ahead!

Speaking of cupcakes! This week is our annual Halloween Party and I have cupcakes to design and make..wish me luck! I have made cupcakes before for our Halloween Party so I have to come up with something completely new for this year. Cupcakes are always a challenge for me since you have this tiny canvas to work on. I'm making mini cupcakes this year so the canvas is even smaller!LOL! So, yes, wish me luck and I'll post the results next week!

Cat

2010-10-17T19:48:00.000-07:00

Fern Wedding Cake. Top tier dark chocolate cake with fudge filling.

Middle tier yellow cake with fudge filling. Bottom tier lemon chiffon cake

with lemon curd buttercream. Covered in vanilla marshmallow fondant

with handcut and placed fern leaves with a fondant waterlily cake topper.

This week's cake is a wedding cake for two dear friends of ours. Working out the design for a wedding cake that didn't really look like a wedding cake was challenging for both me and the bride. In the end she wanted a modern look without a frilly feel so the Fern cake seemed to fit the bill perfectly. For a change the sugar flower cake topper was not the hard part of this cake. It was the handcutting of each fern leaf and then placing them onto the cake that was painstaking work and worth every minute I put into it for the final look.

The secret about this weeks cake is actually the cutters I used to make the fern leaves. Gumpaste cutters often look pretty much like cookie cutters. Often they are just the shape you want them to be but more often than that they are parts of a whole puzzle that you must cut out, shape and piece together. This is a fortunate thing for those of us who look for shapes that will fit what we want to do rather than always completing the "puzzle" the way it's meant to be. I had seen fern molds and just didn't like the way that they looked so I went on a hunt for cutters that I thought would make the shapes I needed in order to make the fern leaves look the way I wanted for the final look. So in the end I ignored what the cutter are supposed to be used to make and just started to look for the shapes I wanted and was able to find them at one of my favorite websites: www.globalsugarart.com

The other secret of this cake is the filling for the top two tiers. I often make a chocolate fudge buttercream filling but the Groom loves fudge so I actually made the candy fudge as a filling. Very firm it made for a wonderfully rich filling. Sometimes a non-traditional filling is the right fit for a non-traditional wedding cake.

The last part of this story ends with some luck. Wedding cakes, or tiered cakes of any sort, are a construction project using wooden dowels and cardboard rounds to provide the structure. In other words, your cakes are not really sitting on eachother, they are sitting on the cardboard which is sitting on small wooden dowels. One of these dowels slipped inside the cake somewhere along the way and, thanks to my cake safe, the cake held together all the way to the venue over 2 hours away. Once we set the cake on the cake table we saw that one part of the structure had begun to lean but were lucky enough for it to hold all the way to the cutting of the cake looking like it was tilting just a bit but it did not collapse. I was very thankful for that! Once I dismantled the cake I quickly found the tilted dowel and realized that it was only because the other dowels held up that my cake didn't collapse. But when dealing with cake you have to remember that it's not a solid medium, things move and shift and sometimes it's luck that sees you through to the finish line. The Bride and Groom loved the cake so at the end of the day it was worth everything.

This week brings a Disco Fever Birthday cake for a 10 year old girl. I'll share it with you next Sunday!

Cat

2010-10-10T16:38:00.000-07:00

Dark Chocolate Caramel Cupcakes

Well, once again this week didn't turn out quite like I thought it was going to work out but that's ok, I got to do something new and make someone very happy at the same time! The cutters for the demo cakes water lily flower didn't show up till late in the week which is ok since it's for a demo cake and not for a clients cake but it was still disappointing. BUT fate stepped in and gave me a cupcake order instead! And I was given full reign with it as long as it was chocolate and had some sort of caramel decoration. The photo above shows the outcome and the client was blown away.

The best part of cupcake orders is that there are always a few left over for the rest of us after packaging up the client order. Most of the time with a cake I get to taste the components that go into it but not all together. With cupcakes you always get to sample! YUMMMM! So my family always enjoys it when I get a cupcake order. It's not often since cakes are the focus of my business so it's a sweet treat for us all when I get one!

The secret about these cupcakes is the caramel. Not only is it drizzled on top but it's actually inside the cupcake too! I have a tool that allows me to inject the filling right into the cupcake so when you bite into the cupcake you come away with a gooey yummy center surprise! So for these I injected the caramel sauce into the cupcake and then drizzled more caramel sauce on top and then decorated it with handpiped chocolate candy. The cool thing is that you don't need the tool in order to get the same effect. You just take a teaspoon, scoop a little of the cupcake out of the center, pour in the sauce or filling of your choice, and then replace the scooped out cupcake. Then frost to cover the area you dug out and just like that you make your cupcakes even more special!

The demo cake keeps on getting to wait because I have a very special wedding cake coming up next week! See you Sunday!

Cat

2010-10-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

Poured Sugar Tiles

Happy Sunday! Due to the fact that I was off this weekend photographing a friends wedding (got into the wedding biz this way) I knew I wouldn't have much "cake" time between the day job and the time spent away at the wedding. I have a demo cake coming up next weekend and I wanted to use sugar tiles to decorate it. Now, as explained with the sea horse cake, I really haven't worked in sugar much. Anyone who DOES work in sugar can take one look at these tiles and agree very quickly that I still don't really know what I'm doing! LOL! If I DID know what I was doing these tiles would be completely translucent and look like clear glass, not have a million champagne like bubbles in them. However, this is a happy mistake as far as I'm concerned since I think the bubbles make the tiles look sparkly...perfect for a wedding cake!

As with all of cake making there is a steep learning curve. As an artist I want to push my skills with each cake that I make. Trying new stuff all the time is one of the fun perks of the job. However these are learned skills and you don't really learn to do those things overnight. They take practice and lots of it. So I'll keep working on my sugar. I'll find out why there are bubbles (especially if I want to repeat this "mistake") and learn how to make them clear as glass but I'm sure I'll have to spend many more times hunched over the stove melting sugar. And, really, as "dreary" as I'm trying to make that sound, working with poured sugar is actually a lot of fun. Sort of like magic how you can put together sugar, corn syrup and water along with some gel color and come up with something so beautiful when it sets up. Oh, and you can add flavoring so it tastes yummy too!

I had mentioned last week that I was going to learn how to make a water lily. Well, that was held up because I found out I couldn't purchase the sugar paste cutters locally and had to order them online. So this week I will get the cutters and you will see the finished product on the sugar tile decorated cake next Sunday. Have a great week!

Cat