A is for Andrew! And Alligators!

A means Andrew!  My little adorable neph Andrew turned 1!  And nothing says Andrew like an Alligator!  So to match some cute gator-plates, a gator cake was in order.  Nothing fancy, but big enough for a crowd - and something kids would like too.

I made my standard chocolate cake, filled with a yummo ganache and then a buttercream frosting airbrushed with my trusty Duff airbrush kit.  To make the gator, I considered a 3D "statue" of a gator but I wanted something BIG that matched the paper plates and decorations so I free-handed the picture with a toothpick on fondant and then just "colored" in by using my food colors as paint.  So cute, if I do say so myself :)  And I do!

To supplement, I added a dozen cupcakes with jimmies - in case the chocolate was too intense for anyone - and because who doesn't like variety!  I used an orange buttercream this time....

PacMan Birthday!

If there was an award for the worst blogger of all time, I would probably get it.  I’ve been so busy with work after a re-org that my writing has fallen aside a little.  Fortunately, I’ve still been baking, reviewing bakeries and keeping it real.  I’ve also developed an addiction for Fro-Yo.  What is it about self-serve frozen yogurt that gets people going?  Not to mention the ability to pour on the jimmies (sprinkles) until you can’t even see the fro-yo beneath only to have the high schooler at the register look at you judgingly?  Anywho, let’s talk baking!  One of my favorite days of the year is my birthday – if you know me and you’re reading this, you should know that!  Nine years ago on my birthday, my adorable sister did the unthinkable to steal my birthday thunder by having a child.  My nephew Braden was born and the entire family rejoiced in the hilarity that is having to share a birthday when all you live for is your birthday.  Incidentally, when Braden was old enough to understand that we “share” a birthday, he was none too pleased about it either.  In the years that followed “the birth” I have come to terms with the fact that a kid’s birthday always takes some sort of precedence.  So, as is the case, for many family birthday parties, I am the baker of choice for the cake! 

Braden is a huge video game fan.  He has all sorts of game devices:  a Wii, a Nintendo 3DS , an iPod touch pretty much devoted to game playing.  And through all of the amazing graphics and animations that are available for these systems, I was thrilled to find out that he is a huge PacMan fan.  I mean, what child of the 80’s didn’t love Pacman?  I still recall learning the ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ signs in elementary school by drawing a little Pac man symbol around them and reasoning that Pacman would eat in the direction of more little dots.  Well it turns out that Pac man is now all souped up with some amazing graphics and faster moving ghosts and now he even moves in other directions besides right angles.  (How much math did we learn from PacMan?!)  So when Braden said he wanted Pac Man for his cake, how could I do anything but a round cake with a chunk cut out?!    But any idiot could do that.  And this idiot did…..  but PacMan is not a one man show.  He would have nothing if not for Inky, Winky, Pinky and Clyde – the famed “Ghosts”!  so It seemed like the perfect time to break out the air brush machine. 

I made a combo of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes – just a standard recipe for each and then covered them with an drape of fondant which I airbrushed to the appropriate bright colors.  Then a dollop of white chocolate for the eyes and how CUTE did these turn out!  I’m totally in love with them.  Without having kids of my own, I rarely get to experience the thrill of having other moms be completely jealous of what you made for your kids’ party.  Eat your hearts out moms!

Happy Birthday Fishes!

Everyone loves birthday cake!  And everyone loves vegetables!  Okay - I love vegetables...don't even get me started on beets but I guess not everyone loves them quite as much as me.  One day I will make a cake with kale in it.  But this was not that day.  When a couple of good friends get married, you go to lots of parties to celebrate with them... a shower, a bachelorette party, a rehearsal, etc.  And when the bride makes a small request to help celebrate the groom's birthday, the day after the wedding, you do whatever you can to make it great for them.  When my friend, the Lovely Lauren asked me if I could make a cake in the shape of a goldfish cracker, I was happy to jump on it.  Turns out, her (now) hubby, eats the cute little fish with dinner instead of vegetables.  Maybe I should introduce him beets - the most delicious of all veggies. 

Anyway - this was quite possibly the easiest cake to make.  A simple dark chocolate single layer cake with a thin layer of buttercream and covered in fondant and airbrushed gold.  How cute is this little guy:

And because their wedding and his birthday was a weekend in May, it coincided with a First Communion for which I made cakepops!  And when a 7 year old says "Can you make pink cakepops with white sprinkles?  No! Rainbow Sprinkles!?"  You nod your head and say "Definitely!"  

Don't these look appetizing?

I've got so many more fun baking projects coming up!  And as always - Go Beets!

I likes my men young and my cakes tall.

Apparently the star of this blog aside from me is my buddy Trevor.  You may remember him from such posts as my trip to Ireland, the Trevor Cupcake, and the beer caramel sauce recipe post that featured his beer company:  Evil Genius.  So when his birthday rolls around, I know it's time to show my appreciation for him listening to all my daily crap.  He's a chocolate lover so I roll with my standard chocolate cake recipe.  I make three layers of the cake and filled them with chocolate ganache and white chocolate fudge frosting.  Then I topped the whole thing with a milk chocolate fudge frosting.  (hmmm - no buttercream this time - that's weird).  Anywho, the combination of all the chocolates was awesome and everyone loved it.  But my favorite part was the decoration this time.  I used a simple but new (to me) technique to make the topper.  I wanted to do his company logo but instead of the
"Evil Genius" in the circle, I wanted "Happy Birthday".  So I tried my first buttercream transfer - brilliant!  

Here is the logo  (just the circle part - not the black square):

And here is my cake:

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not QUITE as perfect as I would have liked but really really not bad.  The logo is actually buttercream.  I used the Wilton premade black because it's too hard to make black frosting.  The lettering I freehanded and but you have to do it backwards!  All you have to do is print out a mirror image of your picture and then put a piece of parchment over the picture and trace the picture with frosting.  Once your have all the front facing things on the picture colored-in, you just pipe on a thick layer of buttercream over the whole picture and put the whole thing in the freezer.  Freeze at least overnight until solid and when you're ready to use it take it out and carefully peel off the parchment - it comes off pretty easily.  Finally just cover up your edges with a border- see my ropey type design around the circle and voila!  Done!  

The buttercream thaws nicely and doesn't run at all.  You can cut right through it after a few hours out of the freezer.  

YAY!  Happy Birthday Trev!  <3

Why are there so many cakes about rainbows?

This weekend I had the profound pleasure of celebrating a friend’s 40^th birthday.  He threw a huge bash with fun party treats like glow-necklaces, birthday cake martinis (shut up!), blinking ice cubes and a playlist that had me strap my groove on by 8pm.  No one throws a party like a gay dude.  I’ve had homosexuality on my mind recently for a few reasons – 1.  The awesome party that I knew was coming.  2.  A friend recently came out to our group of pals and 3.  The ridiculousness of how people’s personal lives are intertwined with our political system.  This isn’t a political blog so I won’t get too far into my opinions but when did a candidate’s religious based opinion become how we judge what is right for the country – in my book, if someone isn’t hurting other people and doesn’t break the foundation of our country’s values of everyone’s right to pursue happiness, then it shouldn’t be anyone’s business and certainly not part of a campaign platform.    Anywho, how can you celebrate the fabulousness of diversity without cake?  I made the cake below based on Whisk Kid’s idea for a rainbow layer cake.  I used a completely different vanilla cake recipe and used plain buttercream instead of the Swiss meringue version.  Her delightful recipe and pictures can be found here:  Whisk Kid RainbowCake.  Thanks for the brilliance Whisk Kid!

Here is what I learned –

Whisk Kid used 6 layers instead of 7 – but there are 7 colors in the rainbow.  But 6 is probably easier to stack.  Maybe that’s why she was on Martha Stewart and not me.

Even out your cake layers or your layers will break   and your cake will be round on top.  Whoops!

When you make this as a birthday cake for a straight dude, you’ll get funny looks and questions.

I apparently have no idea what color indigo is.  Blue?  Purple?  Purplish blue?  Wtf?!

Use more food coloring than you think you need – in rainbows there is no such thing as too much color.

Nonetheless - this one was a hit - really yummy and HUGE!

Not quite finished but already tall!                 

When the cakes began

I think so many home bakers start out by just making treats for the family.  I don't have kids - thank @#$! but there are plenty of kids in my family.  I think my passion started when people actually started asking me to make stuff instead of me just forcing my treats upon everyone.  When my twin niece and nephew turned one, I was honored that my sister-in-law called me to see if I'd make the cake.  It was a simple design - she had found a shaped pan from Wilton and even ordered it.  It's the Wilton Monkey Pan and was a decent enough product to work with.  I think now I'd prefer to attempt a monkey without the help of a shaped pan now but at the time I didn't care.   I used the directions that came with the pan as a guide for decorating but I put this cake on top of a double layer sheet - or half sheet I guess.  I filled it with a buttercream - yum.  One other added feature - my SIL also bought some little royal icing jungle creatures which I stuck on the sides of the cake just to work them in. They are hard to see in the picture but if you look under the monkey's foot you can kindof see one.  It's not my best work but it was brilliant at the time!  The little flowers are just a basic buttercream.  I clearly need to practice my writing.  Happy birthday Spencer and Scarlett!  I can't believe you'll be TWO soon!