Monster Birthday Cake

One of my coworkers (and friend) asked me if I could make a cake for her soon-to-be step-daughter.  I was very happy to make this cake for her.  She sent me an idea of a cake she wanted with the Monster (energy drink) logo on it.  The cake is a chocolate cake with butter cream icing.  The icing is also the filling in the cake.  My niece was a big help on this cake.  She helped my fill it and frost the first layer.  She is excited to learn and she did a great job!  The final result of this cake came out much better than what I expected.  I was very nervous about free-handing the logo because those of you that know me, know I cannot draw to save my life!  This may actually be changing because I think it came out pretty great!  What do you think?

Final Product!

He or She What Will It Be?

This family has been so good to me and my "starting up" business.  I was so happy to make this cake for a baby reveal party.  Their theme was a football theme and the cake idea they gave me so was much fun!  This is the family who absolutely loves the pineapple filling with french vanilla cake.  I was more than happy to make this for them.  My client came to me with an idea and she pretty much just let me run with it.  This takes a little bit of stress off of me because I know it doesn't have to be prefect!  She had decided on a football field cake with a blue and pink helmet meeting on the 50 yard line.  I loved this cake and I think they did too!

 It was a girl!!

Alien Cupcakes from Toy Story

Let me just start by saying I thought I was going to have so much time on my hands to blog this summer.  Boy, was I wrong!  I have been so busy doing things around the house that I have almost completely forgotten about my blog.

Last month my Godson celebrated his 2nd birthday!  He is just precious and he is also ecstatic about Toy Story!  There was no questioning what the theme of his party would be!  We decided to go with cupcakes because we were a little pressed for time.

We found the Alien Cupcakes and decided we should go with these. We just chose lemon cupcakes and butter cream icing.  While the cupcakes were cooling I made my icing.  I tried to get the color as close as I could to the sour straws and candy leathers.  Once the cupcakes were cooled, I frosted them with a Wilton 12 tip.

After they were all frosted I came up with this method to flatten out what would be the face of the alien.  I just boiled a little bit of water and placed my spatula in the water until it was hot.  I wiped off the water and gently placed the spatula on the frosting which melted and flattened the frosting.

The next step was decorating the face.  For the antennae you can cut the sour straws in four pieces.  The ears are cut from the candy leathers and the eyes are Mentos dotted with black frosting.  I also just drew the mouth on with the black frosting.

Final Product!

Alien Cupcakes on Toy Story Stand

Camouflage Cupcakes

A very special person in my life was a part of the military for a long time (close to 13 years).  I wanted to make something for him for Memorial Day.  He said, "I'm not dead," but I thought he deserved it either way for serving his time. 

I read online that this worked best with a red velvet batter but I thought the red would mess with the different colors.  I already had some lemon batter from a previous order that I used.  I just divided to batter into three different bowls.  I mixed the colors (brown, black, and green) until I was pleased with the different shades. 
Once the shades are mixed, you just start adding the batter by the spoonful until the liner is 2/3 of the way full. 

After the liners are filled

Here they are after they come out of the oven

Once the cupcakes are cooled, you can frost them.  I made my frosting a little camouflaged too.  You simply put two different colors of frosting in a piping bag and you will have multi-colored frosting!

Final Product

National Chocolate Chip Day

I found out today was National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!  I just had to whip some up!  I'm currently working on an order for this weekend so more posts soon!

Tip Tuesday I

I don't have a lot of tips to share yet because I feel I am a beginner, however, I have come across some things that make my life so much easier in my baking world.  I love how much technology has evolved even since I was little baking with my mom and sister but I just DO NOT like staring at a screen with dirty fingers trying to find my place in a recipe.  If I use my computer it gets dirty and if I use my phone it goes to sleep so often that it takes me forever to get through a few steps.  I came up with something that works out so great for me even if I am wasting a little bit of paper.

I print out all of the recipes that I like online.  I will also tear out pages of a magazine if I just have to have the recipe.  I put them all in sheet protectors and bind them.  I put two recipes in each sheet protector (so I don't waste those) front to back. 

This has worked so well for me.  I can have dirty fingers and touch the recipe to find my place and all you have to do is wipe it down and it is clean again!

I hope you find this as useful as I did!

Birthday Cake

A couple of weeks ago I made a cross cake for a college friend on mine.  Her family loved it and immediately asked for another one.  This time it was going to be for a man and a woman so they wanted it to be blue and pink.  The inside was the same as the cross cake.  It is a plain vanilla cake with a pineapple filling and vanilla buttercream.

Final Product!