19 Years and Counting

Happy birthday to me!

Yup, it's official, guys. I'm 19. (even though I've totally been telling people I'm 19 for weeks, it's just true now!)

And to celebrate, I made myself a cake. Well, a cake and cupcakes.

But I have this weird quirk that I had to overcome first: I hate starting a cake. Once I get going, I'm fine, but the beginning is rough. Which is probably why I end up decorating cakes at four in the morning the day before they're due. I am a true procrastinator, and it's an awful trait, but at least I have a good answer when job interviewers ask, "What's one of your weaknesses?" (Because "Tayor Lautner" probably isn't a very professional answer.)

Right. So it's 5:00pm Sunday and I still haven't started yet. Instead I'm half-heartedly looking through photos on Flickr trying to figure out how I'm going to tie my black/white/pink/girly/swirly/flower themed cupcakes into the cake topper, instead of making buttercream and covering my cake in delicious Duff fondant.

But fast-forward a few hours, and I have a fondant-covered cake (that smells amazing), and a handful of fondant daisies. And finally around midnight, I've finished the cake.... well, except for the 19 on top. That was done last-minute as party guests started arriving. And instead of the gumpaste 19 I wanted to do, it's made of fondant & cardboard & toothpicks & electrical tape. And it didn't fall apart until after we served the cake!

So this post is getting extremely long. I guess with age comes a verboseness I wasn't expecting. So how 'bout another picture?

It's not a perfect cake. I'm spoiled because at Bliss there's a fondant sheeter and ribbon cutters that I can use. I had to improvise here. :) I also couldn't get the pink buttercream quite the right color, so I did end up at Bliss this afternoon & bought some Fuschia Americolor gel. But really, other than that, the decorating and construction went smoothly. I was going to put a 3D daisy on top (next to the 19) but it didn't look as good as I thought it would, so Sarah ate it. :)

And the two flavors-- cookies and cream (the pink cupcakes & the top cake), and the mint chocolate (white cupcakes; the b/c was mint too!) tasted amazing! I'm so proud of this cake!

Now that the party's over, I'm going to enjoy the rest of my birthday by watching A Very Potter Sequel and recovering from my sugar-induced coma (which is a metaphor and not an actual diabetes-related medical issue, so no worries there!)

Roses for Maggie

Flashback time!

Today is my youngest sister's 15th birthday. Last weekend was her birthday party, when I made that Sword in the Stone cake.

Three years ago, I made this little number. Nothing too fancy; it's got three pretty hot pink roses (I. Hate. Roses. But these look so nice! How did I do that? And why can't I do that now??) and a classy basketweave border (an old favorite of mine). I remember when I made it, my dad wanted me to go around to all the bakeries in town and see who wanted to hire me. But considering that I was 15 at the time, I was too timid.

Seriously, though, this is a cute little cake. And you can see underneath it is the ever-present green tray that I use for pretty much everything. We still have it, and I'm pretty sure it's one of those things that we'll have forever. Not that I'm complaining. It's cute AND a good way to transport cupcakes!

Happy Birthday, Maggie! I love you!

Rosey Day Cake

I found my inspiration for this cake from a contributor's creation in Mailbox News magazine. I LOVED the colors and design and only made a few modifications.

My kids told me it needed something in the center, but I kinda liked seeing the buttercream spatuala marks in the frosting, so left it alone. Besides, it's really easy to overdo a cake. :)

Click the photo to see an enlarged view.

Happy Birthday to me!

I turned 18 a week ago! :D

For some reason, though, I always have trouble figuring out how to decorate my own cake.  When it comes to an idea for someone else, I'm usually quick to find inspiration, but for some reason, I'm more picky about my own cake.  Last year, I came up with an adorable idea, but this year I was struggling.

Eventually, though, the purple/silver theme took hold, and I decided to run with it.  Since doing the margarita cake, I really like the idea of ribbon roses, so I made a bunch of those, in purple and gray, and painted them with the trusty pearl dust/extract mixture to make them shiny.

The squiggles and swirls are also shiny because of the aforementioned pearl dust.  The candles, however, are not shiny, as they are old and left over.  After the fact, my mom told me she could've bought new candles for me.  Oh, well.

Also, did you see the bulge around the side of the cake?  I still can't get rid of that and it's infuriating.  I think that (I hope, really) that if I ever cover a cake totally in fondant, that should take care of the bulging problem, but I'm not entirely sure.  And I was going to attempt to cover this cake, but I didn't have enough store bought fondant (which I used for the flowers, etc.) and the homemade fondant was all crumbly, which happens to me every time I make it (or at least, the only 3 times that I've made it so far).  So, I figure I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

And I'd like to give a shout out to Chris and Sarah who arrived before I finished decorating and helped make the squiggles and swirls with me.  That was fun! :D

I leave for college at the end of this week, and unfortunately, I don't know how much baking I'll be doing since there's no kitchen in my dorm room.  However, I'm going to try to get a job working in the cafeteria, and I'll be sure to keep you informed of how that's going.  I'm really not sure how much baking and blogging I'll be doing between classes and work and all that other college stuff, but I'm not going to stop baking if I can help it.  It's still my biggest dream to open my own bakery in the future, and college will hopefully  be a step in that direction.  If you don't hear from me in a while, though, don't worry, I promise I will return!

Baby Shower Cake

I have never made a baby shower cake before, but I'm happy to say that now I have.

This cute little cake was made for a friend of mine, her mom's baby shower is today.

The cake is lemon with lemon buttercream  (it smelled amazing, and the cake scraps were yummy).  I got the cake recipe from Elisa Strauss' book, Confetti Cakes for Kids .

The blocks are made of rice krispie treats, covered in a double layer of fondant and decorated with more fondant.  Of course, after I spent a good 2 or 3 hours on them, I found out that there does indeed exist an easier method .  Oh well, maybe for next time.

The flowers, borders, and letters are all buttercream.  Because I fail at making flowers sideways, I piped them onto wax paper, froze them (they need to be in there a good twenty minutes to solidify), then stuck them on the cake with a dab more buttercream.  Add some little leaves, and viola!

I'm off to make my sister's birthday cake now.  All the cool kids have birthdays in August. :-)

More Cupcake Cuteness

I had a few leftover cupcakes from Harry Potter in the freezer, still undecorated and in need of some love.

There's not much to say here, I just cut out some little flowers out of fondant and sprinkled them on the cupcakes.  But the pictures speak a thousand words.  Aren't they cute?!

Felicidades!

 

This is the fastest rush job I've ever done.  From start to finish, the cake only took an hour.  OK, so it wasn't from the very beginning, but after I baked and iced the cake, creating the "blank canvas," the clock was on.

I had to get home from school, mix up some icing, decorate the cake, and take it back to school for the Sociedad Honoria Hispanica induction ceremony-- in an hour and a half!  I was going to decorate the night before but I was really tired, so I decided that I would have enough time Thursday afternoon.  It turns out that I did have enough time, but barely.

The red took the longest to mix up, of course, but I was pretty happy with the shade I got.  The roses, I think, turned out supurbly.  I'm definitely getting better at them. :-)  They didn't have enough time to freeze, unfortunately, so when I put them on the cake, I had to be really careful that I didn't smush them because they were so soft.  Thankfully, I didn't!

Oh, and the message says, translated, "Congratulations to the new members!"  It's not exactly centered; I could have put the message lower on the cake, but it still looks fine, I think.  The only probably I really had was that after I put the roses on, I realized the first exclamation point was covered up, so I repiped it.

In conclusion, I was able to decorate the cake, change clothes, and get back to school in time so that I wasn't late to the ceremony.  Afterwards, I had the pleasure of serving the cake (which might have been a disaster because I forgot to bring a serving knife, but someone had a plastic knife, so that was nice) and everyone told me that it looked (and tasted) really nice.  Which I was very happy about, because I'm always afraid that when I make a cake for someone I know, it will be a disaster.  Thankfully, it wasn't.  Also, one lady who ate the cake told me that I did a wonderful job on it, which was quite a compliment, because she used to be a caterer and she knows her cakes!

Despite the crazy afternoon, the induction ceremony, cake included, was definitely a success.  And all that craziness definitely keeps life from being boring!

Sweet Stuff

I have two or three cakes (at least) coming up in the month of March, including another anniversary cake, a birthday cake, and maybe another birthday cake.  Until then, I will tide you over with a couple of old pictures from January and early February.  The cake is for my grandma, and the cupcakes were for a "cupcake walk"-- like a cake walk, but each of the kids that won got a cupcake for the prize.

 

My plans for the future include attempting to cover an entire cake with rolled fondant (I've only tried decorations so far) and possibly making gumpaste figurines, so stay tuned for more!

9 Month Anniversary Cake

9 Month Anniversary Cake, originally uploaded by Kelsie <3.

Happy 9 Month Anniversary to Josh and Emily!

I had a lot of fun making this cake, which Josh asked me to make last week as a surprise gift for his girlfriend. It's amazing to think that just 24 hours ago, this cake was only two layers of vanilla cake cooling on the counter. Look at it now!

I was really pleased with how classy and elegant this cake looked. I wasn't really sure at first how to go about things... all I knew was that I needed a pink cake with flowers on it to be delivered after church tonight.

So I perused Cake Central, and saw a pretty 50th anniversary cake with all the swirls, which is partly my inspiration. By the way, I freehanded all the scrolls with a #3 tip. I just kind of went by what was in my head more than any set pattern or any pictures that I saw. The dots/pearls are either #3 or #5, I can't remember which.

The green is actually left over from the Advent cake that was still in the freezer, but I added some juniper green icing paste to make the color less spring-y (something that bothered me a teeny tiny bit when it was used for the wreath).

I owe a lot to Katie for the flowers. Originally, I was going to do dark pink or yellow flowers, and probably fondant ones too, but Kate convinced me to make white buttercream flowers. (She says the buttercream ones look prettier, but I'm not so good at making them.) The gold dust came later when I was testing a rose, just to see how it looked. Well, it looked gorgeous, so I colored the other roses just the same. For the final touches, I added some green leaves, and, ta-da! I was done!

(Secret tip: instead of using a blob of piped icing for the roses' centers, I used Hershey's kisses. Yummy!)

I really hope that Emily loves the cake as much as Josh did when I gave it to him. He was so excited! I'm really glad that he asked me to help him celebrate doing what I love best! ;-) And just like the cake says, "Happy 9 Months!"

Fondant Festivities

 

The title might be a little misleading.  The only fondant on this cake is the 4 candles and their "flames."  But I couldn't really come up with a better title since I used "Happy Liturgical New Year" for last year's Advent cake.

And, if you're a long-time blog reader, you might remember something else from that cake which I made one year ago:  I had some crazy cake ideas.

A year ago, I didn't really think what I would be doing in 2008.  I was a bit too preoccupied with 2007, although the promise of my last year in high school did excite me.  But I'm talking about cake.  Last year, when I said that I wanted poinsettias and fondant candles, I didn't think that a year later, I would make the perfect cake.  I just thought, oh well, this cake is nice.  And if you're not a long time blog reader, then I'll show you what I mean:

Yeah, I know.  It's a far cry from what I made this year.  Wow, when you look back like that, you discover how much of an amazing difference a year really makes.  Okay, I'm done reminicing.  It's time to talk about the Cake of the Moment...

 

This cake has got to be the best one I've made.  (I say that a lot don't I?  About the purple cake, and the Patrick cake, and the penguin castle cake...  But I mean it this time!)  First of all, the cake mix was great.  Such a deliciously moist chocolate cake!  And then, the oven cooperated.  It had some help, of course.  Halfway through the baking process, I turned the cake pans around so that it would cook evenly on both sides.  And it helps that I have the nifty new cake pans, too.

The icing was very nice to me.  I actually posted a recipe over here, if you want it.  The green wasn't quite as friendly as the white, but much less of a grouch than the red.  I need to get some dark green icing paste (kelly green? moss green?).  The red, I have to admit, came from a Betty Crocker tube.  I was lazy, and I had a coupon, so I bought some red icing.  That came back to bite me, though.  The red icing bled some because of the cake's high moisture content.  I suppose I should have let the icing crust over a bit before putting the cover over it.

The bleeding cake really would have been a problem, because I didn't take the final pictures until the day after I made the cake, when I finally added the candles.  Thankfully, the bleeding was only on that side of the cake, so I just turned the cake around for the photo shoot. :-)

Speaking of fondant, I have a word or two to say about that.  I don't know how Duff does it.  When I watch Ace of Cakes (I kind of had a tivo maraton of the show on Sunday, before eating the cake), I watch with amazement as the artists deftly put smooth fondant all over the cake.  My fondant is never that smooth, which I just can't understand.  Maybe it's because (this time at least) I used some old gumpaste mixed with the fondant in order for the candles to dry and stand up straight.  (I made the cake and the candles on Saturday and served the cake on Sunday.)  I'm really not sure what the problem is, but it's frusterating.

Finally, the cupcakes:

 Yes!  I finally got to make my poinsettias!  They were a little droopy, and before I added the leaves and center dots, my mom thought they were octopi, but for my first time, I think I did really well.  Some of the cupcakes are also holly leaves, because I was running out of red.  Actually, they aren't really holly, because they don't look like the traditional holly leaves.  I just took the leaf tip (I can't remember what it's called, but it looks like a bird's beak) and squeezed out a bunch.  That's basically how I did all the leaves on the cake/cupcakes.

Wow.  I was really talkative today.  Sorry about that, but I guess I was just excited about finally making this dream cake. :-)  I'll stop raving and tooting my own horn about how wonderful this cake was.  I'm looking forward to whatever is next in my baking future, though!

Cupcakes in Bloom

What an adorable little gift from Flowers.com - Cupcake in Bloom is:

an unforgettable sweet surprise--our fabulous floral cupcake-shaped arrangement of fresh white carnations! It's an Everything Cupcake� for every occasion!

How cute - and Flowers.com also deliver REAL cupcakes , including these yummy looking Snowflake cupcakes, so you could send a bouquet and cake!!! Why can't Interflora do that???

Always Have A Plan B

I made this cake as practice for the birthday cake that I'm delivering this weekend. And by practice I mean practice using the new pan I bought and exercising my creativity to make a cake however I wanted to.

So, don't expect the picture of the cake to look anything like a Georgia Bulldog :)

The 9" x13" cake pan that I bought on Saturday ($5 with coupon!) turned out nicely, although the cake did break, so Dad suggests that I use parchment paper next time. Other than that, the pan didn't warp or do anything crazy like that.

I made some icing (a double batch with 4 pounds of icing! Good thing Mom went to Costco!!), but ran out of Almond Extract!! And if you've ever had buttercream with just vanilla extract, then you wouldn't eat buttercream again. At least, I wouldn't.

So, I pulled out my other extracts: mint, brandy, strawberry, and orange. Of the four, orange was my favorite, so I put a tad bit of orange extract in the icing. The icing is still pretty sweet, but the orange adds a nice aftertaste that I think (I hope!) will taste good with the chocolate cake.

Now to the decorating part. I iced the cake in white, then added a 2nd layer of icing. I think I waited too long after I put on the 2nd layer before smoothing the icing with a Viva paper towel. However, when I did the Cornelli lace, you really can't tell.

Speaking of Cornelli lace (inspired by this cake), it's pretty painful. And by painful I mean I got a hand cramp from squeezing so much icing out of a little tiny #2 tip. I had lots of breaks during that part of the decorating. I think I may have made the lace too tight in some places, but I'll do better next time.

When I did the centerpiece of the cake, i wanted roses. But the icing was too soft. So I tried drop flowers. And promptly decided that I wanted roses. What is a decorator to do? Use fondant!!

That's right, I got out the MMF and colored some pieces and actually made roses! And they turned out waaaaay better than I thought I could make. All free-handed, too! :) What I did was make little cone shapes, then I flattened out the bottoms. I flatted out a long (in comparison) piece of fondant and wrapped it around the cone to form a little peak. I took little pieces of fondant, flattened them into oval shapes, and pressed them against the cone to make petals: 3 petals in the first row, then 5, then 7. A few of the roses only have 1 or 2, not 3 roses, and the little bud only has the little peak, and then some leaves.

Okay, now that I've described the cake, I think it's still to end the suspense and reveal the "practice" cake that I made today:

Eireann go Brach

This is the cake I spend Saturday (and a bit of Sunday) making. I am quite pleased with the result! I need to work on the icing consistency, as I would sometimes have icing that was too thin, or too thick, which isn't good for piping. I unfortunately had a bit of cracking on the icing but I covered that up with some shamrocks. Also, the cake slanted slightly.

Despite these flaws, I really think that this is one of the most beautiful cakes I've made. I just love daffodils! (Wouldn't it be cool if I could make these?) Last year I made an awesome St. Patrick's Day-type cake for Katie's birthday. I don't have any digital pictures of it, but it was better than this one, I think. (A fondant leprechaun and a candy rainbow adorned that cake.)

I am just so glad that this cake turned out as well as I had hoped. Especially since all I knew going into it was that I wanted daffodils, and the base icing was going to be light green. I just came up with everything as I went along.

The transport to school went well, and I safely carried the cake to its recipient. I think she liked it. ;) One of the assistance principals at school also commented on it. How awesome?! That really buoyed my spirits before math class! :)

No cakes for a while after this one. Just kidding! I still have Katie's cake and some cupcakes for this week, so stay tuned, and happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone!

Royal Icing Roses

So with the excess royal icing from the gingerbread cookies, I made royal icing. I had to stiffen the icing up a lot with corn starch and powdered sugar. Not my best, but they look pretty decent. Took about 3 days to dry completely; I've heard they last indefinitely if stored correctly.












I apologize for the fuzzy photos. I'm not the best photographer, but I'm sure you could tell. Some of them turned out really well, though.

Grandma Flower Cake

I made this one for my Mother-in-law a couple months ago. Very simple, yet pretty!