Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas 2008

I made this gift box cake out of a Devils food chocolate cake mix and frosted it with the Swiss Meringue Butter cream. It was yummy!







Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Happy 14th Birthday Maggie!

This cake was my first real trial with fondant. I used the premade Wilton fondant. It didn't taste very good, but it was easy to work with and the cake turned out pretty! I used pre-dyed Wilton fondant for the butterflies.






Christmas Tree Cupcakes

These cupcakes were made for our Christmas party this past weekend. I got this cute Christmas Tree cupcake holder from Germana . The cupcakes were delicious and the display was a big hit!








Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Gobble Gobble

I made these Turkey Cupcakes for our Thanksgiving dinner. They were originally intended for the kiddies, but they turned out to be a big success with everyone! I got the idea online from a Betty Crocker website. The cupcakes were yellow cake and the icing was buttercream. The feathers were candy corn...my favorite!








Halloween Creations!

I made several Halloween baked goods this year. Unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures of the Frankenstein/Pumpkin cupcakes i made for work. Here are pictures of the other two:


I made these "Ghost Cupcakes" for a Halloween party we went to. The cupcake is a devils food cake and the topping was a whipped Meringue Icing. I had A LOT of technical difficulties with the meringue, and in the end it was a melting ghost mess! They looked cute at first, but I definitely won't be using that recipe again!





I made this Red Velvet/Buttercream cake for my co-workers. Frankenstein was a big success!






Saturday, April 26, 2008

Whipped butter cream cupcakes



These cupcakes were made for the Unit Secretaries at work, in honor of Administrative Assistant Day. They were chocolate cupcakes with a whipped, butter cream topping. I grated a little unsweetened chocolate over the tops. Easy and delicious!

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cake





I made this "Chocolate Covered Strawberry" cake at the beginning of April for my brother and my grandmother's birthday! I started with a strawberry box cake mix. I split and filled the cake with butter cream and fresh strawberries. The outside of the cake was covered with butter cream as well. I then made a chocolate ganache and attempted to drip it over the top of the cake. It wasn't as runny as I had hoped, so I had to give it the appearance of dripping over the sides myself. I decorated it with butter cream and fresh strawberries! It was a really yummy, rich cake. I loved how the inside was pink! A great cake to make in the beginning of spring.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Easter Flowers Cake




I made this cake for my family's Easter celebration. I used a delicious "Almond Cake" recipe that I got from my friend, and fellow baker, Stacey. It was basically a white cake mix with a few added ingredients, including almond extract. The frosting was butter cream. I got the idea for the ruffle and pearled border from my Martha Stewart magazine. The flowers, I came up with myself. This is one of my favorite cakes I've decorated so far. It turned out just how I had it in mind: Pretty and springy!

Sunday, March 16, 2008

St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes







I made these green cupcakes for my co-workers on St. Patty's Day. I dyed a white cake mix green with food coloring. The cupcakes look a little yellow in the picture, but they really look green in real life. The frosting was green butter cream. I tried to make the icing resemble a four leaf clover. Very fun and easy!

Monday, March 10, 2008

Drill/Graph Cake




This cake was made for Germana's brown bag lunch at work. She wanted a cake with the lunch's logo. The last picture is what the cake was based off of. I overestimated the black icing dye and so the cake turned out quite a bit darker, but I like how the bright colored graph lines ended up standing out more. I used 2 yellow cake mixes and made two 9X13 cakes. I filled and frosted the cake with Swiss Meringue buttercream. It was a tricky, but fun cake to make!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Pineapple Cake



I made this Pineapple Cake for my brother, Joe. He loved the icing on the Daisy cake and he loves Hawaiian things! I had quite a bit of icing left over from the Daisy Cake. I made a Butter Cake Recipe and let it cool completely before I cut it into a pineapple shape. Don and Rocky (the raccoon) enjoyed the leftover scraps of cake.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Martha Stewart Cake




I made this Martha Stewart "Daisy Cake" for Spaghetti Night '08 at my cousin Emily's. The cake itself turned out tasting and looking good, but it was a PAIN to make. It was my first homemade cake, and the first time I made an icing other than butter cream. I thought Martha would make it easy, but of course she didn't. I got the recipe from a little magazine/booklet that I picked up at Michael's. This cake was on the cover and looked so gorgeous! Unfortunately, I didn't have the right icing dye OR icing tips in my Martha Stewart cake decorating kit...go figure. The cake was a Yellow Butter Cake and the icing was a delicious, heart attack inducing (hello, 8 sticks of butter!) Swiss Meringue Butter cream. I ended up baking the cake twice because the first cake was raw in the middle. The icing was amazing to work with. It went on so smooth and was easy to make it look flawless. The end result might have been more of a Chrysanthemum cake rather than Daisy, but it was yummy!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Monster Cupcakes!



I made "Monster Cupcakes" this Saturday for a family get together. They were a big hit with kids AND adults! the cupcake part was a French Vanilla mix. The "fur" was buttercream. I used Wilton tip 133 to make the fur, and just different size circular tips for the eyes and pupils. I tried to position the pupils different ways to give each Monster a different expression. They were very fun and yummy!

Friday, February 8, 2008

Grace and PopPop's Birthday Cake



I made this cake last night for my cousin Grace's 8th birthday. It was a combined party for Grace and my PopPop. We had 8 small candles for Grace and a big "8" and "2" for Poppop.

I used a friend's "Ho Ho Cake" recipe for the cake portion. Instead of frosting the cake with chocolate like the recipe and "ho ho's", I used buttercream so that I could make it pretty. The polka dots are made out of fondant and dusted with silver sparkly dust. It didn't show up too well in the pictures or in person.

Ho Ho Cake:

1 Box Devil's food Cake Mix

1 Cup Water

1/2 Cup Oil

4 Eggs

Mix well and pour into three round cake pans. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Cool well.

Filling:

1 8oz Cool Whip

1 8oz Cream cheese (softened)

2 Cups 10x sugar

Beat cream cheese with sugar. Fold in Cool Whip. Spread between cake layers.

Spread 1 can of chocolate frosting* evenly over entire cake. Refrigerate.

*I've made this cake previously with chocolate butter cream frosting. I'm sort of against canned frosting.

Cakes I have made so far: Part 4


Superbowl XLII cake! Go GIANTS.

Just made this cake last weekend for the Superbowl. I'd like to think that it helped the Giants make their win. It was a 9x13" chocolate (for dirt, of course!) sheet cake. It was frosted with buttercream frosting. The only part left off the cake was the "Giants" endzone. Yay!

Cakes I have made so far: Part 3




Another cake made for Maggie. This one was for a farewell party being thrown for Lauren, my pseudo-sister, who is moving away. It was a 9x13" sheet cake-yellow, if i can remember correctly. It was frosted with buttercream frosting. It had "Maurice" and "Yo Mamma" written on the sides per Maggie's demands. From what I heard, it was a hit at the party. Especially when Lauren smashed her face into it. Lovely!

Cakes I have made so far: Part 2





This is probably my favorite cake so far! For taste and for looks. Red velvet cake is so pretty and it tastes so good!

I made this cake for Christmas 2007, and it was a big hit! I got the recipe from The December 1998 edition of Southern Living Magazine. Basically it's a white/redvelvet marble cake with peppermint cream cheese frosting...YUM! I garnished the top and bottom with crushed and whole candy canes, starlight mints, and sugared mint leaves and maraschino cherries.

One of my favorite things about this cake, besides being delicious, was how pretty it looked when you cut a slice out of it. I thought it was the perfect dessert for Christmas!