Moms Club Cake

I made this cake for our moms club year-end celebration. I asked our members to give me one word or image that reminds them of our group and then piped those images on the cake as decoration.

The cake is a double layer butter cake with colored buttercream. I used the crusting buttercream recipe which allowed me to smooth the cake surface with a papertowel. This is the first time I used this method successfully, and I'm pretty pleased. I don't like the taste and texture of fondant, so I would much rather opt for the buttercream. And with these results, I think I'll have to try more like this!

Race Track Cake

This cake is made with 2 9x13 sized chocolate cakes, with chocolate icing in the middle. The top is frosted with white icing (colored green for the "grass"). The "2" is piped in with chocolate icing, and then topped with sugar (colored black/gray) to simulate asphalt. The sides are a mix of graham crackers and chocolate covered raisins (rocks).

I printed the START and FINISH flags and glued them to toothpicks, and borrowed the rest of the props (car, cones, tires) from the kids toy box.

I had a lot of fun making this cake, and my favorite part of it was the "asphalt" because the sugar really gave it the appearance of a road.

Diego Cake

I made this cake this past winter for my nephew's birthday, and I'm just getting around to posting pictures.

The bottom is a 9x13 cake, and then I made two 10" rounds to carve out the waterfall. The first round sits right on back left corner of the bottom. The second round is cut into two pieces (one smaller than the other) to give the step appearance of the waterfall.

After icing, I borrowed heavily from my son's Diego and Lego toys to decorate (after washing very well). I used chocolate covered raisins for the path and rocks.

For the water, I colored white icing with blue food coloring, but didn't mix it perfectly on purpose to give the water some shadows and white water effect. To add to the white water effect, I sprinkled white nonpareils where the water would crash.

Strawberry Layer Cake

I had the honor of making my sister-in-law's birthday cake this year. I'm good at coming up with ideas for kids cakes - it's pretty simple to take the theme of the birthday and run with an idea. But Batman and trains weren't going to cut it for this party. I had to go grown-up this time - and that meant coming up with an idea for a cake that was pretty and simple, but still fun!

Ask me any day what my favorite cake flavor is and you'll get a loud "CHOCOLATE!" My SIL is not a chocoholic like myself, so I went with a nice strawberry layer cake with strawberry and banana filling. I have to say, it turned out pretty good considering there wasn't a speck of chocolate in it.

I took a white cake mix from the box and replaced the oil recommended with 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce and mixed in just over a cup of fresh strawberries that I had pulsed a bit with my hand blender. I baked them in two 9" rounds until they were done (test with a knife or toothpick in center, should come out clean).

While they cooled I got to work on the strawberry and banana filling. I sliced about a cup of fresh strawberries and sliced one whole banana. I added about 1/4 cup of strawberry jelly to the mix and used a fork to mash slightly, just so it would be easier to spread.

Once the cakes cooled, I plated the first round and leveled the top with a serrated knife. Then, I put some white icing into a ziploc bag and cut a tiny hole (about 1/8" long) at the corner. I piped a dam of icing around the top edge of the bottom layer, so that when I added the filling it stayed in the middle. (Don't worry about appearances here, just pipe the dam and you can smooth it out later. Make sure your dam is thick enough to hold the strawberry/banana filling.) I then carefully poured and spread the strawberry/banana filling on top of the bottom layer.

Once that was in, I put the top round on and pressed gently to secure. I frosted the entire cake with a layer of white frosting and then put it in the refrigerator to firm before decorating.

While the cake was in the fridge, I prepared the colors for decorating, using the rest of the white icing and gel food coloring. I made pink, purple and light green and added each color to it's own small ziploc bag, and cut a tiny (smaller than 1/8") hole in the corners.

I piped a picture of balloons on the top and then decorated the sides with alternating dots and lines. I had leftover icing, so I piped a green border around the top and bottom of the cake for a finished look.

I'm not sure the pictures do it justice, but you get the idea. The cake tasted great and the party was a blast!

It's a Batman Birthday!

It was a Batman birthday for my four year old this year. My husband and I admittedly got a bit carried away with the dessert preparations - from the obligatory cupcakes for school to the cake at our family party at home. Enjoy the photo journal!

I made the cupcakes and frosted them with white whipped frosting + yellow food coloring gel.

My husband took over with the Batman logo - I bought a package of those soft Dutch cocoa sugar cookies. Next, he used a measuring cup and a pairing knife to get the logo just right...

These cupcakes were the talk of the school yard!

Now onto the cake for the family party - I made a box cake mix (added some of my own ingredients to make it a bit homemade) and baked in two 9" rounds. All of the colors shown on the cake (gray, blue, yellow) were made with white whipped frosting and food coloring gel mixes. The black was premade icing from the store. We picked up the Batman figurine at Toys R Us for about $7.

The city scape on the side of the cake took longer than expected, but it wasn't impossible. I made my own piping bags out of Ziplocs with a tiny hole cut at the bottom. I piped the outline of the city and then filled it in. The yellow "windows" were my husband's idea, and I think they made the cake work. Instead of piping a frosting edge at the base of the cake, I just poured chocolate chips around the edge to fill in the gap between cake and plate. It better resembled a pavement or road - not intentional, but it definitely worked.

Birthday boy is super excited! Happy Birthday, Nathaniel!