Carrot Cake

I made this cake for a family dinner, and it turned out great! The frosting is white chocolate cream cheese frosting, which was a great compliment to the dense carrot cake. Here are a few pictures:

I also made a candied carrot flower for the top. I thought it turned out pretty cute.

Click here for the recipes that I used.

Cake Decorating Final!

I graduated! But before I could I had to make this final cake. It was supposed to be a wedding cake, but it was like a mini wedding cake. We had to meet certain criteria, and I tried to make that work as much as possible and still have a cute cake. I think it turned out pretty good! It is covered in Italian buttercream, and has fondant and buttercream accents. Here are some pictures:

The tealish stripes are fondant and the flowers on top are made out of gum paste. Gum paste is like fondant but it can dry much harder than fondant. 

I think that having fondant and gum paste accents on a buttercream covered cake is a great alternative to having a cake completely decorated in fondant for a couple of reasons. Reason one, I don't think fondant tastes that great, and yes people can peel it off but buttercream is just so much more delicious. Reason two, I think it is really cute! You can still do everything you would do with a fondant covered cake. Reason three, it is cheaper, I know some people are not concerned with this, but for those of us that would rather pay less, you get a better tasteing cake for cheaper, and it can look just as great! Win Win Win!

Rock Cake

My aspiring culinary artist, sister-in-law, Mariah, had a birthday and she asked me to make a cake for her. She said that her favorite color was blue so I wanted to have a blue theme for the cake.  My wonderful husband Adam and I love books, so naturally we like book stores, we stop by Barnes and Noble fairly regularly, and I go straight to the cook books and he goes to nature/religion/hiking books. As I was looking last time I found this cake decorating book that had some cool ideas. One I really liked was a cake that had rock candy all over it. I thought it looked very cool. So I took that idea and ran with it all the way to ABC Cake decorating store in Phoenix. I found some rock candy and was ready to roll. Here is the finished product:

I made Italian butter cream and I split it into 3 different colors, all different shades of blue. I swirled them altogether on the cake, then added the rock candy. Good news: She loved it. I think it turned out pretty cool.

Desert cake = delicious cake!

A few weeks ago we had the assignment to make a dessert cake. The purpose of a dessert cake is to taste amazing. So it is more of a focus on flavor and less of a focus on decoration. We were in pairs  for this project, so my partner and I decided on a marble cake as our base. So we baked our marble cake (white and chocolate swirled together) then we torted it and filled it with this soft creamy cream cheese mousse intermingled with fresh raspberries, then put on the top layer of cake, and covered it in a chocolate Italian butter cream. Now Italian butter cream is a very deceptive frosting. Its texture and taste is very light, and could make you think that it is almost healthy, but I assure you it most definitely is not. The base of Italian butter cream is a meringue (egg whites whipped with sugar) then you slowly add in sugar that has been cooked to 240 degrees with some water, then you add butter, and some more butter, and some more butter. It is delicious, and with the addition of chocolate it is even more amazing!
So with our further adieu, I would like to present to you, THE DESSERT CAKE!

 It is not much to look at, but what it is lacking in fanciness it makes up for in utter scrumptiousness.  I only got one picture and it was with my phone on my camera, ( not our fancy camera we bought ourselves after christmas) but it turned out okay.

Kissing Cake

My next assignment for class was a children's cake. Now for this cake we had to use marzipan to mold little characters for the cake. Marzipan is made of almond paste, so it tastes like almond extract and it is the consistency of play dough. For my cake I did not want to try to make a character that every one would recognize, so I made my own. I wanted to do something a bit whimsical and fun. I had this idea of a it being "woodsy" themed... so I made the cake itself look like a cut of tree, with my little kissing couple on top. Here are some pictures of the final product:

The cute couple on top, the mushrooms, and red flowers are all molded out of marzipan, all the rest is just American butter cream. American butter cream is just butter or shortening or both whipped with powdered sugar and a little milk, it is probably the easiest butter cream to work with, because it is very stable with the addition of the shortening.

Another element of the cake that we worked on was a two toned cake, the sides are a different color from the top, it was the first time I had ever done this. It gave it a cool affect.

Class Cakes: Birthday Cake

During the last month in my cake decorating class we have been doing  different cakes, focusing on different techniques. On this cake we focused on piping, we practiced chocolate writing, drop flowers, and cornelli lace (the squiggly pattern). I had to incorporate all of these techniques into one cake.  Here is a picture of my cake:

 There is a piece cut out of it because my teacher checked every ones layer to make sure the cake and filling was even.  When you are building a cake you bake layers, after they are done you have to level off the round top, then tort (cut the layer in half or thirds, depending on the eight of the layer) the cake. For this cake we baked one layer and torted it once, then filled it with butter cream. I think this cake turned out pretty good, my teacher really liked it. Here are some more pictures:

Kristina's Wedding

This weekend I made and cake and catered a reception. For the dinner made a taco bar, with shredded beef and chicken with all the fixings and fruit and vegetable platters. The cake was fake except for the top, it was covered in French butter cream and the flower is fondant and gum paste.

Wedding Cake

I just finished  wedding cake this weekend. I think it turned out pretty good. It was a lemon cake with Swiss Butter cream. The roses are butter cream and so are the black dots. So here is is:

I have another wedding coming up next week, so I will post those when I get done.

Birthday Cake

I made this birthday cake for my friends birthday. It is a yellow cake with grapefruit curd filling and swiss butter cream. I got the recipe for the frosting from Martha right here. I think it turned out pretty good! Here are some pictures:

Also this next month I will be doing two wedding cakes so I will get those posted as they get done.