Happy Turkey Day!

As I am sure most of you are stuffed to the brim with turkey and left over turkey, and all of the trimmings!  How was your Thanksgiving?  Mine was really nice, couldn't ask for better company, food and weather.  I had the opportunity to make a cake for a family friend - she wanted something fun, holiday-esque and yummy.  I didn't have too much direction, so I scouted some examples online and created my own version of a Thanksgiving cake!

I layered chocolate and vanilla cakes (homemade) and then made a chocolate butter cream, because the cocoa powder creates such a lovely and warm chocolate color.  Then I made some bright fall colors, yellow, red and orange to decorate the rest of the cake with giant turkeys on the side, and leaves.   I think it was a nice mix of classy, fun, and festive!  What do you think?  Bake on!

AWESOME 80's 30th Birthday!

The 80's has a lot of well-known looks, big hair, colorful clothing, and who can forget the music! (Okay, okay...I was born at the end of the 80's...but I can still like the music!) This request was for a friend who was turning 30, she wanted to turn back time and have a totally awesome 80s birthday party, cake included!  After tossing out a few ideas - Simon (the light up - Simon Sez game), a boom box, or even a rubix cube...a mix tape with fun colors won out!

I thought it would be really cool to make the inside of the cake match the funky colors of the 80's so I Tye-dyed the inside. This was the first time I have ever attempted to Tye dye a cake and it was quite successful!  I separated the batter into different bowls and added, red, green, blue, purple, yellow, and teal food coloring to each batter and then mixed into the pan!  It came out super bright and fun!  Decorating the cake was simple - the hardest part was making sure it looked like a cassette...do you even own any of them anymore?  I think I had 3 cassette tapes in my life!

It was fun, colorful and yummy - the birthday girl looked awesome (hot pink hair, teased to new heights and colorful spandex!) and she loved the cake.  Her birthday was totally awesome...what do you think about the cake?  Bake on!

Fast Four!

My nephew just turned four, and every year I make him a different birthday cake.  I ask him each year starting in September what cake he would like, and normally it changes about five times before he finally decides on the cake he wants.  This year - it was all about CARS!  He wanted Lightning McQueen from the Disney & Pixar movie, CARS.

I had made one of these cakes before, but that was about 4 years ago.  And they wanted the cake to be butter cream, not fondant!  That's a ton of piping!  But it was good practice...just had red icing everywhere!  He enjoyed the cake, and it was super yummy!  Take a look and let me know what you think... remember to BAKE ON!

Isn't my nephew cute?!  I had to bribe him to take the picture with me!

Feeding My Coffee Addiction for A Cause!

As you all may know by now...I'm addicted to coffee - anytime, any flavor, any size, and I'm in love (just don't tell my boyfriend!).  As part of my cupcake experiments, I knew I had to test out some coffee flavored ones - I found these in a cupcake book my mom bought for me and they sounded delish!  Mocha cupcakes with whipped cream icing - and as part of my fundraising for my friend's mom - I thought it would be fun to make 'em MINI!

Mini Mocha Cupcakes (doesn't it just roll off of your tongue!).  Well - I made my first mini batch, and ESPRESSO explosion, oh yeah... super strong espresso flavor.  So, I emailed all of my customers (3 dozen - 3 customers!) and warned them of the strong coffee flavor.  But - I also added a whipped cream icing, some cocoa powder and a tiny piece of dark chocolate and since they are all bite-sized, I figured it would combine really well into a yummy mocha (mini) cupcake!  I think they came out cute, what about you?  BAKE ON!

Cupcakes for a Cause!

With all of my different experiments going on to try out new flavors for cupcakes, I decided that I might as well put my experimentation to good use!  A family friend's mother is battling cancer, and it's been a pretty uphill battle thus far - her son reached out to family and friends to come up with some ideas on how to raise some money to help her out.

Who doesn't love cupcakes?  So, why not take the cupcakes I was experimenting with and sell them?  I figured I would only sell 2 dozen each week and do it for a couple of weeks.  After posting my Caramel Apple cupcakes on Facebook - I received FIVE orders for 12 cupcakes!  Can you believe it?  So, I made a whole bunch of cupcakes (new apple spice recipe that I tested out..YUMMY).  Then I made a caramel buttercream from scratch, for the first time.  It wasn't so much of a piping buttercream, but more of a glaze!  The only thing is...the caramel overpowered some of the apple flavor, but combined it was one pretty sweet snack!

Next up - I am thinking some sort of java/chocolate/coffee flavored cupcake.  I will post on Facebook the flavor and when they will be available.  I think I may limit these to just 24 cupcakes because I don't have a lot of time in the upcoming weeks - but every little bit helps!  Take a look at the cupcakes below, what do you think?  Festive, right?  Bake ON!

Are You A Belieber?

This was a fun cake!  It was for my boss' daughter - she was turning 11 years old, and what else would an 11 year old girl want for her birthday cake?  JUSTIN BEIBER!  (When I was 11...I got *NSYNC).  I sent her some options from ideas I found on the internet - and she chose a rectangle, zebra printed cake with a giant photo of Justin Beiber at the top.

With multiple layers of chocolate and vanilla cake, and chocolate and vanilla buttercream, this was a MASSIVE cake!  But it was fun and easy - as the cakes were in the oven, I prepped the purple fondant starts and balls for the exterior. And covering the cake was surprisingly easy, it definitely is true, practice makes perfect.  I added some purple sparkles, some metal swirls, and then Justin!  I ordered an edible photo and made a stand out of graham crackers, and mounted that on cardboard to be sturdy.

The hardest part was delivery - the cake was beyond heavy!  But I made it up the elevator and to the bowling alley and Sami loved the cake!  It is by far my favorite cake of the year, what do you think?  Bake on!

Gum Paste Flowers!

Today was an adventure!  I bought a living social deal to try a cake decorating class on how to make sugar flowers from The Sugar Flower Cake Shop in NYC!  I signed up and showed up to this awesome studio bakery in the fashion district!

Once the class got started, after thoroughly washing our hands (sing Happy Birthday 2x) we stood at our tables and started to learn how to make orchid petals out of gum paste.  We learned the difference between gum paste and fondant (which I never knew before!) and got started.  It was definitely something different, and you had to be very delicate.  The gum paste takes about 24 hours to dry, so we used some pre-prepared petals to assemble, and our samples will be used for future classes.

We had to carefully assemble the flowers, piece by piece and then we assembled a butterfly.  I learned some tips on how to better use a piping bag to pipe a cake with buttercream - we made 4in. cakes to bring home.  After everything was assembled separately (and our cakes but in the refrigerator to harden),we used edible colored dust to make our flowers even more colorful and then placed together for our basket of flowers.  Take a look at my cake basket and let me know your thoughts...I'm looking forward to making some more flowers, so stay tuned and BAKE ON!