Happy 1st Birthday, Ezri!

Happy 1st Birthday, Ezri!

My baby is finally 1 year old!  She had a wonderful birthday party filled with family and friends.  Her party theme was storybook fantasy (blame her mom for recently re-reading Lord of the Rings and watching Game of Thrones).  I wanted her party cake to look like an old tome of fairytales (a la Grimm brothers).

Stats:

• 9" x 6" pound cake iced and filled with Swiss meringue buttercream
• 8" x 5" chocolate cake iced with chocolate cream cheese frosting
• cake boards covered with fondant
• color washed with brown airbrush coloring
• painted with gold luster dust + Everclear

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the cake in progress (I had a lot to do!), but I can explain the process.  I have Sharon Zambito's Book Smarts DVD (which I love) but didn't quite do that same process for this cake.


The book covers were fondant covered cake boards (2 per book).  I textured the fondant after covering the boards by crumpling up foil, flattening it out, then pressing it against the fondant.

The cakes were sitting on a cake board slightly smaller than the book covers.  A strip of ivory fondant textured with an all-thread rod covered 3 sides of the cake.

A strip of fondant for the spine was sandwiched between the cake and the covers.  The brown fondant spine accidentally didn't cover all of the cake at one end but instead of re-doing it, I left it looking more old then originally intended!  This is probably the first time my crummy fondant job actually worked in my favor!

I diluted brown airbrush coloring with Everclear and "washed" the fondant to make them look dingy.  The embellishments were gold luster dust mixed with Everclear painted on.  Specifically for the text, I had printed out "Happy Birthday Ezri" with Ruritania font on a piece of paper.  Then I free-handed painted the letters using the printout as reference.  That's why the spacing is inconsistent for the different words!

The cake was put right in the middle of the serving table surrounded by food.  Apparently some people didn't realize what it was and were really confused why I (of all people) didn't have any cake!

Decorator's Triangle

Decorators Triangle

On Sunday my family attended a memorial for Bill, a lovely man that always had the biggest smile.  I brought a last minute cake with left over icing, mix, and some apple filling that I had in the pantry.  As I was icing it, I figured the cake shouldn't look too fancy, but it should still look nice.  In the back of my cupboard I had the Wilton Decorating Triangle.  I had never used an icing comb before, but gave it a shot and was pleasantly surprised.

This was an all-butter American buttercream.  With the comb gently against the side of the cake, I gave the turn table a spin and that was that!  For the top I gently placed it so the edge of the comb was in the center and spun again.  You can't press too hard or it will scrape away your icing and you'll see cake underneath.

I was pleased at how thin and sharp the plastic was, making the icing shapes smooth and consistent.  I'll have to try out the other sides with future last-minute cakes!

Happy 1st Birthday, Kai!

Happy 1st Birthday

My co-worker's special little man, Sai, just turned one year old!  This was a fun, stress-free cake.  Sai's mommy requested buttercream, so I only used fondant for the accents.  

Stats:

• 6" x 5" round white cake
• 8" x 5" round chocolate cake
• 6" x 2" round white smash cake
• filled and iced in American Buttercream
• fondant accents

Sai's mommy Amy has been taking some decorating classes at Make It Sweet.  She requested that I use that shop's cake mix and icing recipe, which made things super easy for me!  The American buttercream was made with high ratio shortening.  It's been a long time since I've iced a cake with American buttercream, so I relied on Sharon Zambito's techniques and busted out the Viva paper towels!  

I'm not so good at getting straight buttercream :(  Hopefully no one really noticed.  Here's some wavy fondant accents to draw away attention

The texture for the darker green was from rolling an all-thread rod against the fondant.  The lighter green had texture from the JEM fabric texture roller.  Looks like crepe!  

The plane was cut by hand from gumpaste.  I cut 3 of them, staying on the safe side, which turned out to be a good choice.  My first one broke while drying.  The second I outlined with black royal icing, but didn't like it because I didn't have black anywhere else on the cake.  The gray outline worked better with my colors.

The plane was secured to a wooden skewer with left over royal icing.  The cloud puffs were piped buttercream, gently shaped with a flat paintbrush dusted with powdered sugar.  I never knew you could sculpt buttercream this way, but I figured the sugar would allow me to manipulate the buttercream without it sticking to the bristles.  Worked well!

Royal icing "1" on top of a buttercream "1".  The clouds here are also piped and sculpted buttercream.  At the party some people had never heard of a smash cake.  Wonder if it's a regional thing?  

Happy Birthday

Fondant Accent Tutorials

Fondant Accent Tutorials

Today I had a wonderful time demonstrating some fun things with fondant to my local cake club, Capital Confectioners.  Here are the links to my new tutorials!

Scratch It: Wacky Cake

Wacky Cake

from America's Test Kitchen

I've been following America's Test Kitchen's "Cooking Through the Decades" contest and this week's recipe is from 1945: Wacky Cake.

Even in wartime Americans were not about to deprive their sweet tooth. Unless they were dabbling in the black market or using precious ration points, homemakers found ways to avoid butter and eggs in their desserts. Wacky Cake sounds goofy but it is really a domestic science experiment gone completely right, in which the chocolate cake is moist and fluffy despite containing no eggs or butter. American bakers learned to have their cake and eat it too, realizing that serving their country and serving dessert were not mutually exclusive.

This is probably the easiest cake ever to make.  The lack of dairy makes it vegan too.  From my internet research, some people suggested that this recipe was made during the Depression and others from WWII.  Lots of people have made this from recipes passed down generation by generation.  It's definitely wacky, from the ingredients to the mixing process.


My first reaction was, "Meh ... not the best chocolate cake I've had ..."  Then I looked down at my plate and wondered where my slice went.  Apparently I inhaled it.

The texture is pretty impressive for a cake with so few ingredients.  It was fluffy and moist.  You could really taste the natural cocoa.

I baked this cake early Saturday morning.  My daughter woke up and came downstairs by the time I was taking pictures of it.  Lucky her got cake for breakfast!

 I kept trying to get this top-down picture of a cake slice on a plate, 

but she kept taking the plate for her to eat.

Scratch It: Cold-Oven Pound Cake

"Cold-Oven Pound Cake"

by Cook's Country

Color me happy!  I'm pretty sure I knocked this recipe out of the park.  In all fairness, it was pretty simple, but still!  I followed all the directions correctly (except using 2% instead of whole milk) and didn't over-bake it.  This cake is probably the best scratch pound cake I've had so far.

This recipe uses cake flour and was baked in my Chicago Metallic Angel Food cake pan.  The trick to this recipe is not to pre-heat the oven.  While I was getting my ingredients together, I actually made the mistake of turning on the oven right away.  Felt pretty weird to have to turn it back off.

It's been over 24 hours since this cake was made and the house still smells amazing.  Nice, tight but tender crumb.  And the taste?  Pretty darn good.  Yup, this one is going in "the binder" (my collection of printed-out internet recipes that I've made successfully).

Scratch It: RLB Yellow Cakes

"Buttermilk Country Cake"

and

"She Loves Me Cake"

by Rose Levy Beranbaum

I'm still working on scratch baking with the help of some experts.  I've recently purchased Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum as suggested by fellow CakeCentral.com members.  Several people said it is worth it to own both her Cake Bible and Heavenly Cakes.  My most recent scratch cakes are her "Buttermilk Country Cake" and "She Loves Me Cake" (featured in photos), both of which are variations of her "All-Occasion Downy Yellow Cake".

On the books' suggestion, I spun some sugar in my blender to make "super fine" sugar.  I don't recall seeing super fine sugar at the grocery store, but next shopping trip I'll take a closer look.  I can't really tell the difference in the final product, but I'm hoping experience will help me with that later.

Scratch baking is not easy.  I have yet to really follow a recipe 100% correctly.  With the "She Loves Me Cake" I poured all the milk into the liquids bowl, not reading that only 1/4 cup should have gone in.  The rest was to go with the butter into the dry ingredients.  I also over-baked it :(  That's probably why my cake came out dry.

With the "Buttermilk" cake, I didn't follow the directions on my powdered cultured buttermilk container.  If you mix the powder directly with water, it clumps up.  You're supposed to add the powder to the dry ingredients and add the water to the wet.  I tried to split this recipe into 2 6" round pans and that was wayyyy too much batter.  It overflowed in the oven and made a big, burnt, smelly mess.  The cake that I salvaged was moist but very delicate.  It crumbled when sliced.

Please don't judge these cake recipes on my failures because I'm sure I messed them up!  Instead, give me a virtual hug and know that, if you're also one who can't seem to read ahead, I'm right there with ya!