"B" Cake

My wonderful In-laws came into town this past weekend, so I decided I would make them a cake! It's no Butter Rum cake, but I did make them a chocolate cake with a caramel filling and fudge chocolate icing. It was pretty tasty if I do say so myself!

Jamie, my Mother-In-Law absolutely LOVES monograms and "B"s- so I saw it fit to make her a cake with a "B" on it. And yes, I used UMHB colors :) (That's where my husband, her son, went to school...and they are die hard fans :) ).

I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do with the B, but I like to make flowers-so I went with the flowers and did my first flower border on the bottom too! I used edible pearls as the center of the flowers too. I thought it turned out pretty cute.

Needless to say, we had a whole cake for 4 people...we ate some after dinner Friday night and again after lunch Saturday! Breakfast was an option too :) We managed to eat half of the cake and sent the other half back with them!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Filled Cupcakes

In my cake decorating class we learned how to fill a cupcake. I brought chocolate cupcakes and filled with with peanut butter frosting. SOO TASTY!!!

The process is quite simple. There is a tip to put on a cake decorating bag that is used for filling cupcakes. It's a long, skinny tip and you put whatever it is that you want to fill your cupcakes with inside the bag with this tip on it, stick the tip half way into the cupcake and squeeze until you feel a little "pop" or air bubble. If you don't feel the "pop", just squeeze for about 3-4 seconds. If you put too much filling into your cupcake the cupcake will crack at the top. But that's all there is to it! Your cupcake is filled and now you get to ice it however you want to!

I used a peanut butter frosting filling and then used peanut butter frosting and peanut butter chocolate frosting to ice the cupcakes. The mouthwatering recipes are below!

Frosting & Filling:

Peanut Butter Frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1/2 C creamy peanut butter
2 tsp vanilla
6 C powdered sugar.
2-4 tsp of milk until desired consistency
Beat cream cheese, peanut butter  and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Gradually add in powdered sugar.  Add milk, 1 tsp at a time until desired consistency. 

I took about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of the peanut butter frosting and used it as a filling for the cupcakes.
Divide the remaining frosting into two portions.  Set aside one for the Chocolate Frosting.

Chocolate Frosting:
1/2 of peanut butter frosting
1/2 C cocoa (or more to desired taste)
Add more milk, 1 tsp at a time until desired consistency.
Beat until well combined.

This recipe will frost and fill about 12 cupcakes- so double the batch if you are making 24 cupcakes!

To frost the cupcakes with both the peanut butter and chocolate frosting: 
Put the peanut butter frosting in one bag and the chocolate frosting in another bag, then put both bags into a larger bag with the icing tip you'd like to use. Then frost the cupcakes. This makes a clean divided line between the two frostings.

Enjoy!

Kitchen Conversion Charts

Thought these were cute and could be very helpful if you're in the kitchen cooking/baking a lot!

Click here to visit plucky momo's blog and download the free printable conversion charts! She has different colors that you can print and the process is very simple!
Enjoy!

Tip for making Drop Flowers

Drop flowers are so simple, yet so cute and fun! You can jazz up just about any cake with adding some drop flowers to it!

                                  Here are what the drop flowers look like once completed:

You can either make the flowers right onto the cake or you can make them ahead of time on wax paper and either let them air dry (typicaly overnight) or put them in the freezer and then place them where you want to on your cake. If you need to get the cake done asap then putting them directly on the cake is your best option. If you have some time and aren't sure where you want to put the flowers yet, then making them ahead of time will work for you- just make sure to make some extra in case you mess some up transporting them from the wax paper to the cake.

To make a drop flower you need to use tip 2D. The main thing you need to do is to start with the tip slightly touching the surface you are going to be putting the flower on. Then you squeeze some icing out using more pressure to create a larger flower and less pressure to create a smaller flower- then stop squeezing and pull directly up. You then have your base to your drop flower.

To complete the drop flower you will use tip #3 (round hole) and make a dot in the middle of the flower. To make the dot you want to put your tip in the center of the flower and squeeze with some pressure until the dot gets to the size you want it, stop squeezing and pull your tip at a slight angle to eliminate and point you would get on the center of your dot. You then have a completed drop flower!
show pic

You can make drop flowers with buttercream frosting or with royal icing. If you are using royal icing then you will have to make the flowers on wax paper before hand and allow them to dry before you put them on your cake. If you are using buttercream frosting you can put them directly on the cake, which I personally think is easier!

Hope you enjoy!

Cupcake pops!

So, I have been blog hopping and looking for yummy cake like desserts to make. I had to make 6 cupcakes for my cake decorating class, but theres no cake batter that you can just make 6 cupcakes...most of them make 24 cupcakes. SOO I made 12 cupcakes and then used the rest of the batter to make cupcake pops!

Here's how you make them.

You start with a cake. You can either make a cake from scratch or use a box cake mix. Bake the cake as directed and then let cool. Once the cake cools, crumble it up and add some frosting to the cake. If you are using a box cake mix, use a canned frosting. That proportion seems to work well. Use the back of a spoon to mash up the cake and add in the frostin. Once the cake is all crumbled and is moist from the icing you are ready to make your cake balls (the base of the cupcake pop).

To make the cake balls you just take your cake/frosting mix and make about a 1in ball and place on a cookie sheet on wax paper. (If your hands get too sticky, you may want to wash and dry them after you make a couple of balls- they roll easier when your hands aren't sticky.)

After you have all of the cake balls rolled up, place them in the freezer for about 10 minutes. This just makes it easier to handle them.

Meanwhile, you can start making your cupcake base in the candy mold. To do this, you need some almond bark or candy melts and a candy mold (can be found at Hobby Lobby, etc). Melt your almond bark (usually 30 seconds at a time so you don't burn it) and then fill the candy molds 2/3 full. Take your cake balls out of the freezer and place one cake ball in each candy mold. When all of your candy molds are full with almond bark and a cake ball, place them in the freezer for about 15 minutes. You will know when they are ready when the candy mold tray is frosted over and the candy is hard.

To remove the cake balls, invert the candy mold sheet onto a cookie sheet with wax paper. They should just fall right out. If they don't slip them back in the freezer until they harden a little more.

Now it's time to insert the stick to make it a cupcake "pop". Most people say to just stick the pop in the bottom and it should go in, however, I kept cracking the bottom of the candy mold because it was too hard. So my solution...

I used a metal skewer and heated it on our gas stove. Then I used that to poke a hole in the bottom of the cupcake ball.

It worked perfectly! I then took the sticks that I was using to make them "pops" and put a little almond bark on the end and stuck it into the hole that was made by the skewer. The almond bark you put on the end of the stick will help seal the hole that you made.

I created my own little stand to hold the cupcake pops while I was making them. (Just used a cardboard box and poked holes to fit the sticks.)

Next is the top of the cupcake. Take your white almond bark and color it with any colored gel that you want. I chose pink :) Melt the almond bark and take your cupcake pop and dip it into the almond bark. You may have to move it around some to cover the cake ball that's exposed. Turn your cake pop right side up and add any sprinkles, M&Ms, or anything else you'd like to while the almond bark is still wet.

Your cupcake pops are now done! You can package them all together or individually with small treat bags and ribbon.

ENJOY!! :)

Idea came from Something Swanky.

Granny's B-day cake

My Granny's birthday was earlier this month, so I decided to test out a red velvet cake recipe and make her a red velvet cake for her birthday!

I used all cream cheese icing (made from scratch) to decorate the cake. I just used the same color and didn't try to color the icing- i'm not sure how that would turn out. I did some leaves, some drop flowers, the border around the top (using tip 3) and border around the bottom (using tip 12) and then used tip 1 to write the "Happy Birthday Granny" on there. The cake turned out to be delicious! Just goes to show that you can make the drop flowers and decorate a cake using color or you can use all the same color and you can still see all of the designs in the decorating.

Happy Birthday Granny!

Pattern Transfer Cake

In my cake decorating class we are learning how to do pattern transfers onto cakes and decorate them. We had an option to do a fish, a cupcake, or a hamburger...I chose the cupcake!

Using a pattern transfer just helps you to get the design outline onto the cake so that you have something to go by and not just having to create the whole design by hand directly onto the cake.

The easist way to do a pattern transfer is to have the outline of the shape or pattern you want (you can even use coloring book pictures or pictures from the internet) and tape a piece of wax paper on top of the pattern. then you will use what is called piping gel to outline (on top of the wax paper) the pattern of the picture you have. Once the gel dries and after you have your cake frosted and are ready to decorate, you take the wax paper with the pattern on top and turn it upside down onto the cake, press lightly so the pattern will transfer from the wax paper onto your cake. You now have an outline of a pattern that you want to put on your cake. You can then decorate it however you wish! Simple as that!

                              Here is my cupcake cake using a pattern transfer of a cupcake:

I wish I would have taken a picture of just the pattern before I filled it in and decorated it, but I didn't. The cupcake patter was very simple, but it was used as a guideling for me to know where to fill in and make the cupcake even and proportional.

*Piping gel- you can buy it in small containers and walmart, hobby lobby, michaels, or any cake decorating store. The purpose of the piping gel is to make the icing you use a little more elastic so it stretches and moves around a little better. You can do your pattern transfer with straight piping gel (use tip 1) or you can add some piping gel to your thin consistency icing (use tip 2 or 3) and do your pattern transfer that way. Piping gel is also good to use in your icing if you are going to be writing words onto the cake.

Yummy Carrot Cake

My carrot cake recipe is the first cake recipe that I made from scratch and everyone LOVED! My dad's favorite kind of cake is carrot cake so I decided to try and make him a carrot cake for his birthday a couple years ago- it was a big hit! I have made it multiple times since then.

Carrot Cake Recipe
1 cup pecans toasted, coarsley chopped
3/4 lb raw carrots (2 1/2 cups finely grated)
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup veg. oil
2 tsp vanilla
*1/2 cup apple sauce- to make more moist add the 1/2 cup apple sauce with the oil and vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Butter or spray 2 9x9 in cake pans
Toast the pecans for about 8 minutes or until lightly brown. Let cool, then chop coarsley.
Peel and finely grate carrots, set aside.
In a seperate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt & ground cinnamon. Set aside.
In a bowl, with an electric mixer, beat the eggs until frothy. Gradually add the sugar and beat until the batter is thick and light colored. Add the oil in a steady stream and then beat in the vanilla extract. Add in the apple sauce (this is what makes it so moist!). Add the flour mixture and beat until just incorporated. With a large rubber spatula, fold in carrots and pecans. Evenly divide the batter between the 2 pans and bake 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick is inserted and comes out clean.
Remove from oven and let cool 5-10 minutes


Cream Cheese Icing
1/2 cup melted butter
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 lb powdered sugar

Combine the butter, cream cheese, and vanilla, mixing well.
Gradually add the powdered sugar, beating well until smooth.
Ice the cake and enjoy!

Sorry, I don't have any pictures of a carrot cake I have made :(... I'll take one next time!!

Sharing with Joy of Desserts

Tip for Filling a Cake

Filling your cakes with something other than frosting can be a yummy treat! You can fill your cakes with just about anything you'd like to! Fresh fruit, pudding, jams, etc. All you have to do is have at least two layers to your cake and you can put some kind of filling in it!

The trick to filling your cakes though is to pipe a dam around the bottom layer of the cake. Like so:

You just take your tip #12 and go around the outside edge of the cake to make a "dam" of frosting so that the filling won't run out the side of the cake. To pipe the dam you just use the frosting that you are going to frost your cake with, but you need to make sure that the dam is STIFF consistency frosting and not the THIN consistency that you use to frost the outside of the cake with. You want to use the stiff consistency frosting so the dam will hold up and not squish down like the thin consistency frosting would. Make sure to pipe the dam and then allow it to crust over just a little so the frosting will set in and you are sure to keep your filling from spilling out and making a complete disaster of your cake! Once your dam is piped and has set you can put any kind of filling that you want to in between the two cake layers. Then you just frost your cake like normal and enjoy the surprise filling inside!

*Make sure that your cakes are leveled before you pipe your dam and put filling between the two layers!

Cake with Drop Flowers

I tried making a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting earlier in the week and it turned out OK..it was kind of dry and the buttercream icing isn't my favorite. So, I found another yellow cake recipe and tweaked it a little and added my own little touches and it came out so moist and delicious!! And I used a different chocolate icing recipe that is more milk chocolate and not as bitter as butter cream is.

Fudge Chocolate Icing Recipe
1 lb powdered sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
1/4 tsp salt
6 tablespoons boiling water
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened at room temp

In a large bowl, combine sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. With an electric mixer, beat in boiling water, vanilla and butter until smooth and thick. Yields 2 cups.

You may want to double the recipe if you're going to ice a 2 layer cake- especially if you're icing a 3 layer cake!

It is a chocolate fudge icing and taste so yummy! You can add more powdered sugar to make it a little thicker if you are going to decorate your cake with it. The only downfall with this icing is that you can't get it as smooth as you can get a butter cream icing.

This is my finished yellow cake with fudge chocolate icing! The flowers on the cake are made out of buttercream and are called drop flowers. I will give you a couple tips on how to make the drop flowers, leaves, and how to color your icing in other posts.

Stay tuned!

Tip for Leveling Cakes

Remember how I talked about the "huge hump" that you get in the middle of your cakes while baking them? Well, this is where you learn how to get rid of that hump and LEVEL your cake. There are different kids of cake levelers out there or you can use a bread knife to level it. If you are using a cake leveler, make sure that both ends of the leveler are on the same notch to level. You want the line to go just below the top rim of the cake. Push the cake a little until you feel the leveler start to cut into the cake.

This is a cake leveler. 

Then push the cake through and the cake leveler will cut off the hump of the cake. And then you will get a flat surface for the cake.

This is what your cake should look like after you level it. When you go to place your cake on whatever surface you are using to store the cake, you want your leveled side to be up. You will ice this side and then the second tier you will place the leveled side down.

Leveling your cake is extremely important! It helps to keep the cake from not tilting or sliding off.

Enjoy!

Cake # 2

I decided to try another cake recipe with Chocolate Buttercream icing this time. I made a yellow cake (I may try to find another recipe that makes the cake a little more moist.. but it still turned out well!) and covered it with chocolate buttercream icing.

I tried to do different kind of flowers on the cake... still need some practice!

Below is the buttercream icing recipe that I used for the cake: (although I think I may prefer milk chocolate icing and cream cheese icing instead of the Buttercream...Butter cream is just great to use for decorating cakes because it hardens just a tad).

Buttercream Icing Recipe (stiff consistency):
1 cup solid white vegetable shortening (crisco)
1 tsp of flavoring (Vanilla, Almond, Butter, etc- you can mix and match too as long as you put 1 tsp in)
7-8 tsp of milk or water (milk gives it a creamier texture)
1 lb pure cane confectioners sugar
1 tbsp meringue powder
pinch of salt (optional)- this makes it not as sweet

Cream the shortening, flavoring, and water/milk. Add dry ingredients and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together. Blend an addition minute or so until creamy. Makes 2 1/2 cups.

For Chocolate Buttercream icing just add 3/4 cup cocoa and 2 tsp (maybe a little more) of milk/water.

*For a medium consistency add 5tsps of milk/water.
*For a thin consistency add 10 tsps of milk/water to the stiff consistency. This is the consistency you want if you are going to ice your cake.

Happy Decorating! 

Tip for Cooling your Cakes

Letting your cake cool is one of the most important aspects of decorating a cake, yet most of us are impatient and want to ice the cake before the cake has cooled completely. Thus, the icing starts to melt and you can't decorate it how you really wanted to and the cake starts to look droopy.

A quick tip on how to cool your cake: once you take it out of the oven, leave it in the pan (place on a wire rack to allow air to flow under the pan) for 10-15 minutes and then remove it from the pan. Don't let it stay in the pan the whole time while it cools- that continues to cook the cake and thus makes it drier. Taking the cake out of the pan after 10-15 minutes allows the cake to cool faster too! So it's a win-win!

Here is the cake cooling on a wire rack (the lines on the top are from flipping it over onto another wire rack- they are ok to be there because you will be leveling the cake and thus getting rid of the lines.)

Taking the cake out of the pan can be tricky too, especially if it's still hot (which it should be if you're taking it out at the appropriate time :) ). First, you need to make sure that BEFORE you put the batter in the pan you prep the pan. To prep the pan you can use pam, butter, flour, etc. I use something called Cake Release that you can get in cake sections at Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc. That helps prevent the cake from sticking to the pan and breaking when you try to get it out. Second, once you take the cake out of the oven and put it on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes to cool, then you need to get some wax paper and another wire rack. You will place the other wire rack on top of the cake (so the cake, in the pan, is sandwiched between the two wire racks). Then grab the two wire racks and turn the cake over. Pull up on the bottom of the cake pan to allow the cake to release onto the second wire rack(the cake will be upside down). Take your first wire rack and place a piece of wax paper on top of it. Then place that wire rack with the wax paper on it on top of the cake and do the same thing again. This will allow the cake to be turned right side up and the wax paper helps to prevent the lines from the wire rack from indenting the cake. Your cake should be turned right side up, on a wire rack and will be able to cool completely from there! It sounds like a lot, but it's quite simple. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Tip for Baking a Cake

Bake your cakes at 325 degrees instead of 350 degrees- You know how you bake two round cakes to stack on top of each other and they come out with huge humps in the middle of them (and then you try to put them on top of each other and fill the extra space with icing!)? Well, decreasing the temperature and increasing the baking time will help to reduce the hump in the middle of your cakes. They also have things called bake-even strips that helps to bake the cake evenly and you will have an even smaller hump, if you have one at all.

When you decide you want to bake a cake, whether from scratch or from a box, make sure that you only fill your pan half full. Don't over fill your pan or your cake will over flow or you will get a huge hump in the middle of your cake!

More fun tips on leveling your cakes, filling your cakes, buttercream icing recipes and more to come! Let me know if you have any other baking tips!

My first decorated cake!

I decided to practice all of the things I learned in my cake decorating class. So, I made a butter cake from scratch, buttercream frosting from scratch, then iced it and decorated it. There are lots of fun tips that we learned from our class that I will share with you throughout the week!

This is the cake after I just iced it with Buttercream icing.



I waited a little bit for the icing to "crust" over and then decorated it.

This is my finished product! I practiced the "star" technique that we learned in class and then took on the dots and the border on the bottom myself. (I think we are learning how to do that the proper way next week!). It has been fun so far and I hope you enjoy all of the tips I get to share with you!

"Metal Work"

I have learned and picked up a new hobby... I'm not exactly sure what it's called, but i've heard it called Metal Work. I have made several things already, but can only post one as the others are gifts for people that have not received them yet :) They will be posted after I give them to their owner.

Some good friends of mine, Mitchell Martin & Chrissy Schoelman, just got married this past weekend and I wanted to give them a wedding gift that was a little more "personal" and not the typical wedding registry gift.

So I made them this:

I have really enjoyed making things like this for friends and just for fun!

Cake Decorating - Part 1

I love to bake... and have thought about taking the cake decorating classes that Michaels and Hobby Lobby offer, but just never got around to it. Well, since we moved to Cedar Park, I have a little more time on my hands and have started the Basics level cake decorating class! My best friend growing up, Courtney, is taking it with me! :) We were best friends until I moved away in 8th grade and haven't seen much of each other in the last 12 years...but now we only live 20-30 mins apart! So we have ventured into taking the basics level cake decorating class together.

We are first working on making "stars."

There will be more to come! I am going to try to make a cake today and see how I can decorate it using the star technique that we learned. I mean, that's pretty basic, but I gotta practice!

I also tried making some sugar cookies using Royal Icing to decorate them. I colored the icing and was just playing around, and this is how they turned out:

The icing wasn't thick enough, so it ran some, but they still tasted great! The cookies with the icing tasted like those cookies you get in the fancy cookie bouquets. And making the Royal Icing is simple.

Royal Icing Recipe:
2 large egg whites
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (you can use the lemon juice that comes in a bottle)
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted - add a little more if you think it needs to be a little thicker

In the bowl of your electric mixer, beat the egg whites with the lemon juice. Add the sifted powdered sugar andbeat on low speed until combined and smooth. This will usually take about 5-7 minutes of beating to get it the right consistency. The icing needs to be used immediately or transferred to an airtight container as royal icing hardens when it is exposed to air.

And that's all! It's super easy, just have to make sure to keep it covered when you're not using it.

The start of a new blog :)

So, I have decided to join in and start blogging. My husband and I have just moved to Cedar Park and I have been able to work from home for him- which leaves me some time to do other fun things that I enjoy! I have started making lots of little crafts and thought I would share :)