More Holiday Cakes!

I made a couple more Thanksgiving cakes for a friend last night - here they are!

Rustic Fall Trees
Chocolate Cake with Cookies-N-Cream filling.  Frosting and 'rustic' decorations are buttercream.
* This cake was inspired by Bakingdom's blog *

Fancy Thanksgiving Cake
Vanilla butter cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and scroll work.  Topper is silk. 

Last night was my very first "off" night when it comes to caking ... many lessons were learned and mistakes corrected! I guess it happens to everyone ;-)  I'm very happy with how these turned out and I hope my friend and her family enjoy them!

Wilton Flowers and Cake Design Final Cake

Tonight was my last class for the Wilton Flowers and Cake Design course.  We learned the basket weave and got to use our flowers on a cake.  Since my birthday was yesterday, this is my "Day Late Birthday Cake" for myself, so, naturally, it was chocolate!  Due to lack of time, I used a cake mix (gasp!) that I doctored up, and it turned out wonderfully. 



Devils Food doctored cake mix with chocolate buttercream filling and vanilla buttercream frosting



Close up of royal icing roses (made during the Greys Anatomy premiere last week!)



View from the top - I LOVE the reverse shell border!



Our class manual told us to bring 3 cups of frosting, needless to say, it wasn't enough - only half my cake got the basket weave!  My teacher was really surprised that the  manual thought 3 cups would be enough, I guess now we know! You can see where I had the rest of the cake marked for the basket weave.

 Doctored Chocolate Cake Mix Cake:
1 package of Devils Food cake mix
1 package of Dream Whip
1 tablespoon of Meringue Powder
1 small (individual serving size) container of applesauce
1 cup of water
4 eggs
Method:
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.  Beat on medium low speed for 5 minutes and pour into your prepared pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. This recipe filled my 8x3 round pan very nicely, but would be plenty for two 8x2 pans, as well. 
**After much experimentation, I have learned that greasing and flouring your pan and lining the bottom with parchment paper makes for the PERFECT cake release!

This doctored cake mix saved me SO much time - I baked, cooled (in the freezer), made frosting, and lightly iced this cake in just 2 hours. Next Monday, I start the Fondant and Gumpaste course - I am so excited!

Happy Baking!

Birthday Weekend!

My little boy turned 1 this weekend, so, we had a small family party for him!  I, of course, baked my heart out the day prior, and here are the results:

The Smash Cake - Vanilla butter cake, covered in marshmallow fondant, with strawberry buttercream and fresh strawberry filling.  The 1 is made of a gumpaste/fondant mix and the decorations are marshmallow fondant.



Football Cupcakes! Vanilla butter cake with chocolate buttercream, and fondant footballs with royal icing accents.

The smash cake was so much fun to make! My son's favorite food right now is strawberries, so I made him a strawberry cake. I used my vanilla butter cake recipe, found here, in an earlier post.  The strawberry buttercream was a basic buttercream recipe with about 1/2 cup fresh, pureed strawberries added in.
 

Smash cake torted and filled with fresh strawberries and strawberry buttercream

Smash cake covered in a crumb coat of strawberry buttercream.

The football cupcakes are the same vanilla butter cake as the smash cake.  The chocolate buttercream is a basic buttercream recipe with approximately 1/4 cocoa powder (to taste) added. 

I think he liked it!

Everything all together for his birthday table!

This weekend was also my friend from work's mom's birthday, so she asked me to make a few things for her.  I was originally going to make red velvet petit fours ... I attempted these and the results were delicious, but hideously ugly =(  SO, her petit fours turned into red velvet cake balls (bon bons) covered in chocolate.  I will never attempt petit fours again, until I am much more experienced! They were a horrible experience; so bad, I am not even going to post the pictures. In addition to the cake balls, I sent my friend with a mini red velvet cake and some strawberry cupcakes:

The cupcakes are the same vanilla butter cake and strawberry buttercream I used for the smash cake.  The flowers are some I made in my decorating class and have been saving to use for something "pretty".

<><><><><> 

Strawberry cupcake - vanilla buttercake with strawberry buttercream.  The purple and yellow flowers are gumpaste/fondant, the pink flowers are royal icing.



Some of my "left overs".  Chocolate covered red velvet bon bons, strawberry cupcakes, and a mini vanilla buttercake covered in chocolate buttercream.

 For the red velvet bon bons, I used my red velvet cake recipe, found in an earlier post, here.  I mushed up the cake and mixed it with some cream cheese buttercream frosting.  I then formed the mixture into ball shapes. I melted down some dark chocolate and white chocolate, and drizzled over the balls to achieve the look I was after.  I allowed the cake to show on the bottom, because I wanted to show the red velvet.  The ones pictured here are not the best ones, as I did not get a picture of the pretty ones I sent with my friend.  I have got to do better about keeping my camera handy!

I had so much fun this weekend!  I'm exhausted from being so busy, so I probably won't be baking again for a while, well, for at least a couple days.

Happy Baking!