Cakes Lately

Here are a couple cakes I've done this week - not much to it, but just thought I would share =) 

Miss Barbie Cake
This is The Best Chocolate Cake Ever frosted in Vanilla Buttercream.  It is covered/decorated with homemade Marshmallow Fondant.  The pearls are sugar.  I made this for a little girl's 7th birthday. =) 

Mardi Gras colored Birthday Cake.  Made for a co-workers birthday celebration.  It is Red Velvet Cake frosted and decorated with Cream Cheese Buttercream.  The flowers are fondant. 

Close up of the writing - I'm getting better! YAY! 

This is just my favorite picture of this cake =D 

Well, thats it guys! No crazy stories or anything, just a couple fun cakes!

Happy Baking!

The Cute Little Cake that Could!

After all the Christmas mayhem, I took a much needed hiatus from baking!  This is the first cake of the year, and who better to make a cake for than my sweet little sister?!  

This is a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, covered in fondant.  The flowers are gumpaste and fondant. Both recipes can be found in an earlier post, here.

 Boy does this cake have a story! I found out my sister was coming home and was 100% sure I had everything I needed to make her a Red Velvet cake.  Welp, I only had 1/2 cup of white sugar in my whole house! This never, ever, happens to me  (I blame the new WeightWatchers Diet).  On a whim, I decided I would use light brown sugar for the rest of what I needed (it has yet to be tasted, so I'll report back).  I had a wonderful time mixing the batter in my new Kitchenaid Pro600 (thanks mom and dad!), and I got the cakes in the oven.  While they were baking, I mixed up some cream cheese buttercream, and it looked/tasted great.  The cakes came out, and when I turned them out of the pans, parts of the bottoms stuck! UGH! I blame the brown sugar. I pop them in the freezer to speed cool and come back in about 30 minutes.  The cakes are fine, but my cream cheese buttercream has gone gloppy (I don't have a better word).  I try to frost the cake, but it is just not working out with this gloppy, yet delicious, mess of frosting.  I get very discouraged and almost give up, then I decide to just cover the sucker in some fondant I had - VOILA! Now, there are some problems at the bottom because the gloppy frosting wanted to come out (guess it didn't like being hidden, ha!), but I think it turned out just fine ... I will report back when the taste test comes in!

I made these flowers out of fondant and gumpaste a couple weeks ago, and they are my favorite.  I love them. 

Sweet For Sirten is on WeightWatchers! So, stay tuned for some lightened up cake and frosting recipes - this should be fun! 

Happy Baking! 

Holiday Cakes

This week, I made a couple small cakes for a good friend of mine for her holiday get-together.  She was nice enough to let me design them to help build my portfolio.  Here they are!

Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Chocolate Cream Cheese scrollwork.  Topper is silk.

Chocolate Cake with Cookies-n-Cream filling and Buttercream Frosting and decorations.

In other news, Sweet For Sirten now has a Facebook!  You can find the link on the left side of this blog - I would love for you to 'Like' it =)

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".

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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!

Red Velvet - Cupcakes and Kisses!

A few weeks ago, my mother had the most amazing red velvet donut from the Donut Hole in Santa Rosa Beach, FL.  This donut made such a buzz around our office, that Mom and I have been wanting to try to make them ever since!  Mom bought a mini-donut pan and all the  necessary ingredients for the batter, and I was to try and duplicate the magical donut.  We found a recipe at Devil-Donuts.com, and decided to go for it after dinner last night.  The final results did not render a perfect red velvet donut, but, rather, a mini-donut pan adventure and some delicious red velvet cupcakes, who knew?!

Red Velvet Kisses and Cupcakes Recipe
(from Devil Donuts)
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter, room temperature
2 eggs, room temperature
2 1/3 cups of cake flour (2 tbsp. cornstarch to just under 1 cup of all purpose flour)
2 tablespoons of Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of buttermilk or 1 tbsp. white vinegar added to 1 cup of milk
1 1/2 tablespoons of red food coloring
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of distilled white vinegar

This recipe made such a gorgeous batter! I creamed together the butter and sugar, then added the eggs in one at a time.  I mixed together the flour, cocoa, soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Then, I whisked together the buttermilk, red coloring, vanilla and white vinegar.  I added the dry ingredients into the butter mixture alternately with the wet ingredients - beginning and ending with the dry. 

Now comes the fun part!  For a mini-donut pan, you MUST fill the pan only 2/3 full or you get mushrooms, like this:

They may look funny, but they still taste amazing!

The hubby thought it was pretty hilarious!

I figured out that the best way to fill the pan is with a piping bag, not a spoon - it was much easier to control the amount I added. Once we filled the pan correctly, we got better results:

For the cream cheese frosting, I used my basic recipe:

1 cup Crisco Vegetable Shortening

8oz. softened cream cheese

1 tsp. pure vanilla flavoring

8-10 tsp. milk

3-4 cups powdered sugar

pink of salt.

Simply cream all the ingredients together and add sugar and milk to get the consistency you desire.

I must admit that this is the best red velvet cake I have ever made.  The texture is perfect and the taste is spot-on.  The only thing I may do differently next time is add a little more cocoa to the batter.  The red velvet kisses are going to be perfect for Christmas parties!

Next up - Daring Bakers and Birthday Cake! Happy Baking!

Practice, Practice, Practice

Lesson learned #1: decorating baked goods is difficult and should not be attempted in haste or before completing decorating classes.  I was so excited to get started that I jumped the gun and tried to make things pretty before I was prepared or ready.  The attempts were lots of fun and tasted delicious, and I like to think that that is the most important thing, right?

I made a red velvet cake for my Mom's birthday.  I used this recipe by Wilton and a basic cream cheese icing.  I researched a lot on trimming and icing the cake correctly, and that part went beautifully (I was actually very proud!).  However, the decorating part was not so perfect, and not what I wanted it to be at all.  Practicing with this cake made me very very excited for my class to start next week! Here are the results: