What a Week!

Wow... the week of Valentines Day proved to be one of my biggest challenges to date... For the first time ever, I actually promoted specific cakes/cookies for a holiday... namely "Valentines Day".... Super busy and successful promotion!   I offered three different "sweet heart" cake flavors and orders were pretty evenly distributed between the three flavors.... feeling like I made good choices and feedback was great!

Here were the scrumptious offerings for this Valentines Day:

Chocolate decadence with caramel, pecans, and caramel swiss buttercream (my favorite)

Vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream and white chocolate dipped strawberries.  

Chocolate cake with raspberry filling and covered with chocolate ganache... 

And... the cookie!  Heart shaped for your sweet heart...

What I hadn't planned for was this... On top of the Valentine orders, I ended up with additional orders of three pies and six.. yes SIX birthday cakes.  Two of the cakes were simple round cakes with borders and "happy birthday" written on them... easy peasy... the other four... not so much. I felt like I was up to the challenge so I carefully scheduled my time and planned accordingly...

Here are the results...

3-D Fire Hydrant Cake... complete with
Dalmatian and fire hose!

Minecraft... so many squares... so little time...

Personal Favorite since the technique was an experiment...
 tie- dye effect with buttercream.... 

I think the "groovy" dancing silhouettes were the perfect touch for this Disco/70's themed cake!

One of the "simple" cakes.... lemon cake with raspberry filling and lemon buttercream (yum!)... took advantage of the opportunity to practice some scroll work on the side of the cake...

Rose covered cake for a precious 15 year old girl.... love the elegance and simplicity of this design...

Whew!  I am beat... but it was a good week.  Now... on to the next cake.... or "cakes" rather... and cookies... oh my!

Minecraft Cake - It's Easier than you might think:)

 If you have a child ages 6-12, you have probably heard of minecraft... a very good friend of mine asked me to make a minecraft cake for her 7 year old son's birthday.... I think the results were really cute and was relatively simple to create.... Here's a step-by-step tutorial of how to make a minecraft cake that looks like this...

First... a square cake is necessary... and it needs to be tall.... Not quite "a cube" but tall enough to create the illusion of a cube.

Next... ice the cake getting it as smooth and level as you possibly can.

•  Tip:  I always freeze my cakes before I decorate them... even if it's just for an hour or so on the same day I bake them.  It is MUCH easier to decorate a cold cake than a room temperature cake!  Plus, if you freeze the cake while it's still warm you "lock in" the moisture:)

The entire cake is going to be covered either with "grass" or "dirt" so you don't need a perfectly, perfect final coat of icing... 

Now... THE DIRT:

• I used Oreos that I had run through the food processor until they were, well.... like dirt!  I used two rows of the oreos, but I think one would have been plenty for this 8 x 8 square cake.
• I used a large baking pan to cover the sides of the cake with the oreos... it was easy clean up and the unused oreo crumbs were perfectly usable for my next project (which turned out to be just a few days later!)

• Depending on the softness of your icing, you may need to press somewhat firmly into the cake when applying the crumbs. 
• When you are finished, tap the cake board a few times to shake loose any excess crumbs.

And... the Grass...

• I did use three different shades of green for the grass... it created that pixeled effect from minecraft.  Here's a photo showing how I wrapped each color in plastic wrap.  I simply snipped the end of each color and put all the colors into one piping bag.  That way, I still had three different colors of leftover icing in the piping bag, rather than one, new, shade of green.

TIP:  Storing icing in plastic wrap is a quick and economical way to keep the icing fresh and easily load it into a piping bag when you need that color again - without using up your stock of decorator bags and couplers!

• After piping the grass, I put the cake in the fridge so the icing would firm up.  After it was nice and firm, I used a large spatula to score the grid marks for the minecraft cake.  I spaced them about an inch apart in each direction.

The cake after scoring the 1" squares

• To put "Happy Birthday" on the cake, I used a 1 inch square cutter and cut black squares of fondant for each letter, plus just a few extra.  The letters are the basic letter cutter set.  They are just under 1" in height. 

Here is the finished cake!

This was loads of fun to make and the birthday boy really enjoyed it.

Happy Baking and Decorating!

Tie-Dyed Buttercream Cutouts

The tie-dyed cake was a big hit!  It turned out really nice (if I do say so myself).... I was so inspired by the batter, I decided to try a similar technique with the buttercream... check out the results....

I was inspired to create tie-dyed buttercream cut-outs.  I had never heard of such a thing, and had obviously never done it, but I thought "what the heck".... so I decided to give it a try.

First I tinted buttercream and dolloped it onto a wax paper covered cookie sheet.  I tapped the cookie sheet (quite hard) on the counter to get the buttercream to settle and flatten as much as possible.

I took a toothpick and swirled the icing together to create a tie-dye effect.

Next, I put another sheet of wax paper on toop of the buttercream and smoothed it flat with a fondant smoother.  I put the sheet in the freezer so it would get good and firm.  NOTE:  I used a combination of Swiss and American buttercream... I don't think this would work with just American buttercream alone.  Shortening doesn't get as firm as butter when it's cold, and there is a LOT of butter in Swiss buttercream (yummmm.....).

Isn't it gorgeous?  I was on pins a needles at this point... it was so beautiful, but if the cut outs didn't work, then there was a waste of time and buttercream.... plus I still needed to decorate the cake in some way....

I found that metal cutters worked better than plastic (the plastic is too thick and the buttercream was more prone to stick to the plastic).

I carefully removed each cut out and placed it back into the freezer.  I needed them to be good and cold before handling them to place on the cake.  I think they're so fun and so pretty....

I would absolutely use this technique again... A couple of notes... I think using Swiss buttercream alone would cut better and cleaner, plus remain firm enough to handle for a longer period of time.  These cut-outs were in and out of the freezer a LOT...

Second note?  They really did need to be thinner... next time, I would pipe the buttercream onto the wax paper.  I think I would have more control over the thickness of the final product. 

This project has really set my mind on a creative tangent... when the holiday season is over, I am certainly going to try some of my ideas.  Like, for instance, a tie-dye wrapped cake???? Sounds cool doesn't it?

Happy baking and decorating everyone... I hope you enjoyed my buttercream experiment... I know I did!