I decided to move my blog to blogger. Over the next several days, or weeks, I will move my old posts. For now I will only add new posts over there.
A new post is up. Please visit me over there: http://rachescakes.blogspot.com/
Snowman Cake January 14, 2009
Apparently I have reached my space limit for pictures so I can’t post a picture of this cake. I don’t know if I want to put links to my pictures, move my blog, or pay for the upgrade.
The cake was a 12″ vanilla cake. I stirred half a cup of soft peppermints into each layer. I used my regular buttercream recipe, with 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract instead of vanilla.
I left the icing white that filled the cake, but I tinted the icing blue that covered the cake. I made a snowman out of fondant.
If you ever need to crush candies, I found my nutcracker to work quite well. I tried a rolling pin, meat tenderizer, and food processor, but for various reasons, none worked real well.
It was a really cute cake and all reports say it was tasty. Hopefully I’ll figure out how to continue posting my pictures.
Mummy Cake Update January 11, 2009
The cake was a hit, the perfect amount of strawberry flavor.
I also found out the Sarah-Jane uses rolled fondant for her version. That really explains why her’s look so much neater. I’ll have to try it her way.
Mummy Cake January 8, 2009
I have only done one cake between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was supposed to do a cake this week but it got postponed which left me time to make a cake for a friend’s birthday.
I have been wanting to try another of Sarah-Jane’s designs for awhile, a mummy cake. It is one of her designs that she does for weddings.
I learned that I really need to work on my hand strength, but I can’t wait to try this cake again.
I also tried something new, I made strawberry buttercream instead of my regular vanilla. The cake is also strawberry with strawberry filling. The buttercream is very lightly flavored so it isn’t very strong. Hopefully it isn’t too much strawberry, I’ll know later tonight. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.
In other news I am going to my first ICES meeting later this month. The woman I spoke with was quite friendly and excited to have a new member. There will be a demonstration/workshop on making a teacup and saucer out of fondant. The woman teaching the class has amazing cakes, I am looking forward to a real lesson from an actual professional.
Bummed December 5, 2008
I was hired by my husband’s company to make cakes for their monthly employee appreciation lunches. It is a pretty good deal, they pay slightly more than they would pay Kroger, I bake a higher quality cake, and I get to experiement with decorations. It is a great learning experience. I saw a cake design on My Sweet and Saucy’s blog. Scroll down to the 4th and 7th pictures. The cake with the dots, yep that was my inspiration.
I knew mine wouldn’t be quite as nice since I was using cream cheese icing instead of fondant. I spent tons of time making the beads, even more time placing them on the cake. They had to go on individually. I kind of imagined being able to sprinkle them on and only having to place a few, but I was wrong. Normally when I send cakes to my husband’s work, he just takes them. Since this was a stacked cake, I didn’t trust it traveling in the car pre-stacked. I went with him before work this morning and stacked it there. The dowels I used to support the top layer were slightly too long, even though I had checked last night. When I set the top layer on, there was a huge gap! I fortunatelyhad icing along to cover the cake board, so I just left the tip off the bag and filled in the gap as best I could. Since the cake was cold, the icing wouldn’t really smooth out though.
The other problem is that I envisioned tall layers like my inspiration cake. Even with 6 layers, this cake doesn’t look as tall as the one I was copying. Even though I am disappointed, the cake still looks OK. I guess the amount of time I spent on it just doesn’t translate to how well it turned out. I didn’t want to take pictures, but, as my husband pointed out, this is all about learning how to improve and documenting my improvements.
Oh and if you are ever making beads or pearls for a cake, buy a silicon bead press or buy them pre-made. They aren’t difficult to make, but they are tedious. The presses are kind of pricey if you plan to do lots of wedding cakes, you will easily earn back the cost in time saved. The press can be purchased at Sweetart County Kitchen. Pre-made pearls in white can be purchased through Earlene’s Cakes. I’ll probably do a post in the next week on how to make the beads.
My son’s 1st birthday November 24, 2008
Yes, I spent way too much time on this cake, but my son only turns one once. The characters are all fondant. The cake is buttermilk devil’s food, iced in white chocolate cream cheese icing. The cupcakes are Funfetti with buttercream. The kids loved the cupcakes and the adults loved the cake!
Mmmmm…Pumpkin Cupcakes November 21, 2008
Last year for my work Thanksgiving party, I made a pumpkin roll cake. It was delicious. When I was hired by my husband’s company to provide their cake for Thanksgiving, I thought of doing it again. I didn’t though because my company did a potluck and his company is having a professionally catered event and I wasn’t sure how to fancy up the pumpkin roll
Many hours on Flickr have taught me the current popularity of a cupcake tower, so that is the theme I decided to go with.
I originally was going to use the Ginger-Cream filled Pumpkin Cupcakes byChocylit. I had never cooked with fresh ginger before, it made the whole house smell so good. Instead of the chocolate ganache I used cream cheese icing. The cupcakes turned out wonderful but the hint of ginger was so slight, I decided not to fill the cupcakes for my actual order.
The cream cheese icing recipe I originally used didn’t make much icing so instead of fancy swirls, I just spread on the icing on as neatly as I could. The finished project was not incredibly professional looking, although it was tasty. I am so glad I did a trial run, one should always practice before trying something new.
I also originally planned to donate the practice batch to the Ronald McDonald House, but forgot to drop them off. By the time I remembered, the candy corns had started to melt and left orange stripes on the cupcakes. The other problem is that the nutmeg I sprinkled on top looked more like dirt than decoration. It was tasty just not the appetizing.
For the second run, I used the Martha Stewart Pumpkin cupcake recipe. It is delicious and not very complicated. I used a cookie scoop to make sure I used the same amount of batter in each cupcake. Two scoops in each resulted in 32 cupcakes instead of the 18 her reciepe states it will yield.
The Wilton recipe ofcream cheese icing was my base. I ommited the orange juice and zest. Instead I used vanilla, cinnamon (about 1/2 tsp.), nutmeg (about 1/4 tsp.) and allspice (about 1/4 tsp.). It made a pretty and delicious icing.
My husband delivered everything to his office so I didn’t see the final set-up. Here is the practice run I did at home though:
At K-Mart I discovered this handy cupcake carrier. It uses a cupcake tin for the bottom layer and then has a plastic tray for the second layer. The lid snaps all the layers together. It only holds 24 cupcakes, so I had to improvise with a baking sheet for the rest of my cupcakes.
Cupcake Papers November 18, 2008
My husband’s work hired me to do cakes for three events this fall. This Friday I am making a cupcake tower of pumpkin flavored cupcakes and most likely cream cheese icing. The icing flavor is still up in the air.
I was hoping to find some pretty cupcake papers but all I could find locally were pastels, silver foil, or ones appropriate for kid birthday parties. I happened to stop into Pier 1 tonight and the fall things were on clearance. They had some beautiful Halloween cupcake papers 75% off. There was only one box left, but I snatched them up for next time.
My next stop was Hobby Lobby, their fall things were also on sale. They had gold papers with maroon and green leaves on them. They also had sunflower papers. I bought 5 packages of 50 papers for $2.50. I am using the leaf papers on Friday, the sunflowers could be used for a fall or summer theme, whichever comes up first. If you go to your Hobby Lobby, they weren’t in the cake decorating section, they were in the front near the fall decoration items.
Normally I don’t stock up on things, but since I had such trouble finding them, I feel it was worth it.
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DC Rose, thank you for the award. I have tried to comment on you blog several times, but my computer locks up every time I visit your blog.
Sarah-Jane Cake November 7, 2008
I created my first “Sarah-Jane”cake today. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache between the layers. The icing was cream cheese & white chocolate. Then I used white chocolate shards and curls to decorate the cake. It turned out quite beautiful.
I learned a little more about making the shards and can’t wait to try this cake again. Thank you Sarah-Jane of Cake That! for the idea.
Groom’s Cake October 18, 2008
I’m two weeks late, but late is better than never, right?
The wedding was beautiful and it was so fun to see all my family. My brother requested a cake with a loon and a pheasant, the state bird of his and his bride’s respective states. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything that was similar of both birds. I did however, find many, many loons. He was disappointed, but when I showed him the only cake sized pheasant I could find online and in 6 states, he consented to an all loon cake.
The cake was 6 layers of chocolate with chocolate fudge icing. Half of the cake had lemon filling, the other half chocolate fudge. Around the edges were Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Rolled Wafer cookies in chocolate fudge and French vanilla. The cake was a hit!
