Chocolate Covered Cherry Cake - Take 2

I had originally made this cake in April for our monthly office birthday party.  It turned out pretty good - had a very rich flavor to it, but I just wasn't too happy with the appearance of it.  Looking at the pictures - it developed a slight bulge around the top edge to it.  OK - but I wanted a more streamlined look to it.  So - since my boss fell in love with this cake (she lives for chocolate covered cherries) I decided to fulfill her request and do this cake again for September.  With a few changes.

This cake is a basic 10" white cake.  The first layer is trimmed, frosted with buttercream and then covered with approximately 3 boxes of chocolate covered cherries.  Which, by the way, are VERY difficult to find in the stores in September.  Who knew they were a seasonal item  - mainly for Valentine's Day and Christmas!  In the future, my friend Carli very graciously shared with me her recipe for chocolate covered cherries, so I can make this cake any time of year! 

Once I put the cherries on the cake, I frosted them with buttercream.  Basically making a 2nd layer of the cake.  Level the next layer of cake and add to the stack.  Crumb coat the entire thing with buttercream.  Then I stuck it in the fridge to chill while I got the chocolate ganache ready and crushed my Oreo's. 

Chilling the cake seemed to help the ganache to stick to it.  Last time I didn't use any ganache and had major difficulties getting the cookies to stick to the buttercream.  I just smooshed the cookies onto the ganache and then put it back in the fridge again to chill.  At this point, it was already smoother than the first cake, but I wanted to try making sure it had no bulges at all.  Once I had chilled it (for about an hour) I used a piece of wax paper and my fondant smoother on it.  It turned out beautiful and I loved that you couldn't see any white underneath the cookies. 

Pipe a few rosettes on the top with buttercream, top with maraschino cherries and a cookie and voila!  Everyone at work liked it better than the original - thought the ganache added an extra richness to the cake. 

Mum's The Word!

I've been in a slump lately.  It's been about 6 weeks since I've had a cake order and I'm going through withdrawals!  That means its time to bake and decorate.  So - the hubby got nominated (by me!) to take in cupcakes to work.  Since its September, I wanted to do something kind of fall related - hence the mum's.  However, I also wanted to use up extra sanding sugar I had, hence the spring colors. 

A friend of mine gave me the "What's New Cupcake" book recently and these nifty little cuppies were featured in them.  They turn out to be super easy to do - but a little time consuming. 

I highly recommend enlisting your child (Thanks Geoff) to help you cut the marshmallows.  I had doubled the batch in order to accommodate the hubbies work place, and you need 22 mini marshmallows for each cupcake.  I found that it was easier for me to cut the marshmallows with a clean pair of kitchen scissors, rather than trying to cut them with a knife.  I had small bowls of the sanding sugar set out and would dip about 4 marshmallows at a time in the colors.  You can easily store the marshmallows in ziploc bags if you want to do this in stages, which is what I did. 

The cuppies were white cupcakes which are frosted with buttercream and the marshmallows are adhered to them starting with the outer ring and moving inward.  The book recommends licorice pastels for stamens, but I was unable to find them in the grocery stores.  Instead, I just went ahead and filled in the centers with the marshmallows, which gave my mums a full look to them. 

This was a fun project and easy to do!  The hubbies work reported that they tasted great and looked great too! 

RV Cake

Our family loves to camp.  We started with the basic tent, moved up to a pop up tent trailer and just recently made the move up to an RV.  This was a LONG process - over 9 months.  I think we seriously had our RV sales guy thinking about running when he saw us coming.  Anyway - in order to thank Rex for all of his patience with us, I decided to make him a special cake of his own.

I have to say - I am NOT a big fan of carved cakes.  They get all crumby when you carve them and I have had troubles in the past with putting fondant over them.  This one, was actually a dream!

I started with a 1/2 sheet of triple chocolate fudge cake, split in in fourths and stacked it (with SMBC in between).  I then started angling the front with my bread knife, a little at a time.  I think I actually ended up making about 5 cuts before I got the angle right.  Once that was done, I crumb coated the whole cake with SMBC and then chilled it in the fridge.  While that was happening, I made the pine trees out of sugar cones and green royal icing and let them dry.  I also made the wheels, and the trailer hitch out of black fondant and let them all dry as well.  The hitch I put in toothpicks on the ends, so that I would be able to attach it to the trailer easily once I was done.

Remember the graduated color cake?  Remember how I made A LOT of green fondant.  Well, I used that to cover my cake board.  Things always happen for a reason.  :-)

Once the cake was chilled, I covered the entire thing with white fondant.  Once it was smoothed, I used a picture of our new RV and copied it as best as I could with the accent pieces.  The graphics were painted on with gel food coloring.  Then it was put it all on the cake board.  I had some leftover candy rocks from a golfing cake I had done, so I put them in a circle with pretzel sticks - voila!  Instant fire.

Rex loved his cake, we love our RV - life is good! 

Graduated Colors

It seems like the latest trend in cake decorating has been graduated colors.  I have always wanted to try this, but thought it would be very time consuming and difficult.  While the first part is true - it IS time consuming, it really wasn't that difficult at all. 

Green is my favorite color, so I thought I would experiment with that.  The trick to doing the graduated colors is pretty simple - Thanks to Half Baked - a caking blog I follow - I too was able to figure out how to do this!  Basically you start with the darkest color you want.  Not the way I would have attempted it, but it makes sense - you do your first bottom row in the dark, then add some white fondant to it.  You then have the next step in color and it is not too drastic of a change. 

One hint though - the base color, before you add the white, halve the amount.  Otherwise, you end up using A LOT of fondant that you don't really need to and have a ton of color left over.  Don't ask me how I know this!  LOL 

My topper for this cake is simply a pear.  I considered using a Granny Smith apple, keeping it in the color scheme, but decided I liked the color and shape of  the pear better. 

Stained Glass & Shipping a Cake

My son turned 22 this month and all he wanted for his birthday was a cake created by mom.  Only one problem, my son lives in Alaska.  Sorry kiddo - no can do!  But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered... can I do it?  Why not try?  The worst that would happen is that he would end up with a box of cake crumbs. 

If I was going to ship this to Alaska - a buttercream cake was ruled out right off the bat.  Fondant, it is!  No pieces that stand up.  This needs to be a smooth cake.  I saw this cake - done much more professionally - on a blog site that I was browsing through.  Ah hah!  That's it - smooth fondant, but lots of color. 

This cake is a triple chocolate fudge cake that I crumb coated with swiss meringue butter cream.  Once it was chilled, I covered the cake in white fondant and smoothed it.  From there, I used a black edible marker and drew on the koi and the lily pads. 

I purchased from the craft store a set of paint brushes.  I used a stipple brush to do "paint" the light blue food coloring gel on the cake.  Let dry.  Switch brushes and color, paint in and let dry.  Repeat until all of the cake is colored in.  Once it is completely dry - I outlined everything in black food gel. 

To ship:  I covered the cake in saran wrap and froze it.  Once it was frozen solid, I wrapped it in bubble wrap and placed it in a sturdy box.  I filled the box with more bubble wrap, sealed it with duct tape and sent it off.  It was sent overnight and made it all in one piece!  Happy Birthday to my son! 

Plants vs. Zombies

My son loves to play Apple Ipod/Ipad games. He is a fan of Angry Birds, but most recently that lost top spot to Plants vs Zombies. So - when he turned 14 he asked for me to do that for his cake.

The cake itself is a chocolate strawberry marble 1/4 sheet cake. He requested cookies and cream for a filling - which I found a fantastic recipe for on a cake blog called "That Really Frosts Me". This filling I could just eat with a spoon, straight out of the bowl!

The flowers, peashooter, lawn mowers, potatoes and walnuts were all made several days in advance, as were the zombies. I used 50/50 gumpaste and fondant to make them, so I would have time to mold them without the fear of them drying out too fast. The zombies were the most fun to make - I didn't have to worry about perfection for them! They are SUPPOSED to look scraggly and a little malformed!

The lawnmowers were made in 3 steps. First red was formed into a rectangle, a smaller round piece was placed on top. I use almond extract for my glue. Then black fondant was used to make the wheels and the top of the mower. Take a toothpick and make holes on the top part of the back end - this is where your mower handles will go. Set aside and let dry. The handles are just white fondant ropes which I made into a "U" shape, the same width of my holes. Let dry. Once the handles are dry (I let them go 2 days) I painted them with silver luster dust paint. I make my paint with luster dust and a little bit of vodka. Mix it until you have the consistency you want. I store mine in small baby food jars with lids. Once the handles are dry - attach them to the lawnmowers with royal icing. Let dry again with the handles leaning up against something. I have a large fruit box that I use to store my fondant pieces while they are drying.

The fence was made with the same 50/50, however after I rolled it out, I used a wooden impression mat and rolling pin to make the wooden fence effect. I cut the planks out, let them dry. After a couple days of dry time, I put them together using royal icing to hold them together. Let dry again.

The worst part of this cake was piping the grass. Once I had my buttercream tinted the desired colors, I used the Wilton grass tip to pipe it all on. I used a ruler to measure out and mark the squares. I piped all the light colors and then piped the dark colors.

Cookies as Wedding Favors

Our niece got married over Memorial Day weekend.  Since she lives in NC, there was no way it would be possible for me to do her cake for her.  Instead, I made her wedding favors - sugar cookie wedding cakes. 

I used my sugar cookie recipe and flavored it with lemon extract, instead of vanilla.  Again, I pre-cut the fondant to use as an icing layer.  Once the cookies were baked and cooled, I started the process of piping the cookies with royal icing and adding silver dragees. 

The finished product was put into a cookie bag and topped with cutout cardstock that I made beforehand.  Overall, I really like the look and feel of this method of bagging the cookies.  More work than the way I usually do it, but I think I will take the time to do this on my Christmas cookies this year. 

Kickin' it with Key Lime

You've heard of Key Lime pie, right?  Well, I was recently reading through on one of the many cake blogs I follow and ran across someone who made this cake.  It sounded wonderful and refreshing, so I thought I would try it. 

I made a trial run on this cake for my mom's birthday.  On that cake, I followed the recipe to a "T" and only had two layers of the cake.  The flavor of the cake was great, but the cake was very, very dense.  I much prefer a moister, "fluffier" cake.  The key lime flavor of the icing was very good as well - just a little lime tartness.  After the trail run, I decided I needed to tweak the recipe a bit for the cake, but left the icing alone. 

The second cake (pictured above) I added another layer and adapted my Orange Dreamsicle recipe, substituting orange juice for key lime juice.  This helped quite a bit in making the cake less dense, but I think it still needs to be tweaked a little more.  I think I will try adding some meringue powder to the batter next time and see if that helps. 

Overall - this was a quick cake to make!  The icing is great in flavor, but it does not pipe well in heat.  Don't allow your child to bake brownies at the same time you are icing your cake!  ;-) 

Mud Cake

Mud cake is an appropriate title for this cake - it is messy, messy, messy to make!  It is also not the best looking in appearance - I like the overall look with the buttercream and the marischino cherries.  It reminds me of a black forest cake a little in appearance. 

This was a two layer plain white cake.  Between the layers, however, I put a layer of chocolate covered cherries.  Once the cherries were placed on top of the first layer of cake, I iced them with buttercream.  Next time, I think I will try putting them in a cake pan, icing them and then freezing it.  It might work better having a solid layer before adding a top cake layer. 

The cake was then crumb coated and then frosted with buttercream.  Next time I make this cake, I want to try putting a layer of  chocolate fudge or ganache over the top of it before I frost.  I think that this will enhance the flavor of the cake, but it will also make it easier to frost. 

Now the messiest part.  If you make this cake - make sure to put wax paper or parchment paper around the bottom of the cake drum.  After crushing chocolate sandwich cookies (I used Oreos) just start scooping them onto the buttercream.  Try to do this as evenly as possible.  I may try putting some of the crushed cookies into the buttercream BEFORE  I frost the cake - I wasn't very pleased with how the white showed through.  Another thought may be to skip the buttercream entirely and just go with the gananche and top with crushed cookies. 

Top it with the dollops of piped buttercream and Maraschino cherries and in the center a large swirl with an Oreo. 

This was done for the April office birthday cake - everyone loved the flavor, even those who don't really care for chocolate covered cherries. 

Toy Box Cake

An old co-worker asked me to make her baby shower cake. I had seen this cake done in Cakes and Sugarcraft magazine and was anxious to try and replicate it. The original cake was done all in fondant, however my co-worker was having pregnancy cravings for buttercream and asked if it could be replicated in buttercream with fondant accents. I thought - why not. Let's try it an see. I think overall it turned out all right, but I see why it was orignally done in only fondant and that is how I would do this cake if I have the chance to make it again.

The cake is a basic strawberry cake, cut and layered to the approximate shape of a loaf cake. I had spent the three weeks prior to her shower making all the different toys for the cake. My favorite is the little yellow duckies. I covered my cakeboard with chocolate fondant and used an wood impression mat to make it resemble a hardwood floor. The rug is white fondant which I decorated with food markers, once it had dried and hardened.

Once I frosted the cake - I used a ruler to make the wooden plank lines in the sides of the toy box. In the original, this would be strips of dried fondant planks, like the ones on the top of the toy box. I had to use the fondant strips on the edge of the box in order to have the toys hang off of something.

From there is was a matter of placing the toys on the toy box and the lid on top of the toys. Next tip: if you do this with buttercream - let the fondant strip adhere overnight before placing the toys - it may help with the sagging of the box.

Overall - she was very excited about the cake. Her favorite toy was the white bunny and she got her buttercream craving satisfied.

Ninja's

My nephew has been taking karate lessons this year. So, of course, when it came for Auntie to make his cake he wanted a ninja cake. This cake is actually a compilation of a couple of cakes I found that reflected ninja and karate themes. Because he is in the first grade, I wanted something simple for him. He also had ideas on what he wanted for his cake as well - fortune cookies for the eyes and ninjas. As you can see - the fortune cookies didn't make it on his cake, by his vote.

You remember that I got an airbrush for Christmas. Of course this was the perfect opportunity to play with it and work on shading for a cake. I wanted to blend the colors to make it look like that time of night when dusk falls. The top layer I used as his head and the bottom layer was not only the "body" of the cake, but I also wanted to reflect some of his karate moves too.

I had my nephew show me a couple of his katas and then I sketched them and cut out stencils of them. I then cut them out of black fondant and placed them around the body of the cake. The Asian pagoda was also cut from black fondant and put in the center of the cake. The face was a piece of skin colored fondant with black fondant folded and placed around it. The eyes ended up being fondant instead of the fortune cookies. The Ninja stars were made out of snowflake cookie cutters and a round hole cut out of the center. I painted them with silver luster dust paint (luster dust and vodka).

Overall, I really liked this cake. It turned out very cute and age appropriate for my nephew. He was thrilled and all his friends wanted a cake like his.

Pot 'O Gold

For March's birthday cake - of course there had to be some kind of St. Patrick's Day theme. Also, the birthday girl requested it! She also requested a German chocolate cake with pecan frosting. Hmmm... a challenge!

The cake ended up being German chocolate cake, but instead of frosting it in the pecan frosting, I used that as the filling. The pot was made with a Wilton sports ball pan and covered with black fondant. The bottom layer was covered with buttercream and then frosted with the grass in the center. The coins themselves were foil covered chocolates, purchased at the local grocery store.

I attempted a new technique - as usual - on the bottom layer with the brush embroidery. I like the look of that, however, I think I need a different size brush. Basically you pipe an outline and then use a dry paintbrush to fan out and brush the edges. The brush that I have on hand was a small detail brush and I think perhaps a fan brush would work better.

Overall - I think this is one of my favorite cakes. Next time, maybe add a colorflow rainbow....

Crazy For Cow's

My sister-in-law was in town this year for her birthday, so of course she had to have a birthday party complete with cake! SIL collects cows, so it was a foregone conclusion on what the theme to her cake would be!

I made Ferdinand out of 50/50 about two weeks prior to her birthday. I wanted to give the cow plenty of time to dry as it was so big. I also made some daisies out of 50/50 to accent with as well.

The cake was a triple chocolate fudge cake with my basic buttercream.

I made the cow spots out of black fondant, just by making random cuts. They were placed on the cake and I then piped with a star tip instead of the grass tip, just as an experiment. I think I prefer the grass tip, but I did like the effect this gave for this cake.

Ferdinand was placed carefully on the top of the cake and the daisies were added, after I piped the border.

Cute cake! I liked the way this turned out and SIL did too!

Basket of Bones

Our vet keeps a basket of dog cookies on his counter for his patients.  Our boxer recently had surgery to remove a tumor.  As a thank you to our vet, I decided to make a cake for he and his staff. 

This is the same method I used for the other basket cakes I have made.  (See the basket of roses cake).  The difference here, was I made the "bones" out of sugar cookies. 

I have finally discovered a sugar cookie recipe that I love!  It is called No Fail Sugar Cookie - and it really is true!  I followed a helpful hint that I got a couple of years ago for icing the cookies - and it is a little time consuming, but worth it.  Once the cookies have been rolled and cut, I also cut fondant using the same cutters.  When you take the cookies out of the oven, use the cutter on them immediately - this will make them have crisp edges.  Then you take your pre-cut fondant and put on the top of the hot cookies.  The heat from the cookies will melt the fondant just enough that they stick to the cookies.  I don't know what it is - but fondant on cake has a VERY different texture than fondant on sugar cookies.  The cookies just taste super yummy and no texture issues.  I do this at Christmas time as well, with all the sugar cookies I mail out.  It doesn't have quite the bitter taste that royal icing can sometimes have. 

Once I baked my cookies, I stacked them on the top of my basket cake and attached them with a dab of royal icing. 

Delivery to the vet the next morning and now the staff had their cookies and the patients had theirs! 

Pink Fantasy

The office birthday cake was for me!  :-)  I have been experimenting a little here and there with adapting recipes and looking for unique flavor combinations.  For this cake I wanted to not only incorporate a girly theme, but also wanted to practice piping skills and use my office as guinea pigs for the latest cake I was trying.

The cake itself is a raspberry dreamsicle cake.  I basically took my orange dreamsicle cake and substituted raspberry guava juice instead of orange.  I really wanted straight raspberry, but it was difficult to find but you really couldn't taste the guava in it.

The cake was a basic design - as I said I am wanting to practice on my piping skills with the goal of one day being able to learn the Lambeth method of decorating.  Lots and lots of piping, bridgework and stringwork. 

The flower was a gumpaste fantasy flower, learned in the Wilton course I took.  I did flavor my basic buttercream recipe with a little of the raspberry/guava juice as well, just to keep it consistent.

Happy Birthday to me! 

Just Foolin' Around

Ah, February!  The month of love.... As you can see from this cake, I was feeling the love (and trying to get rid of extra buttercream and hearts!).  This is a single layer cake that I made for my family - yes, the ones who NEVER get cake since it goes out the door as quickly as possible! 

I had some fun making the Corelli lace pattern and then topping it with the pink hearts I had leftover from another cake.  The nice thing is that this cake a year or two ago would have taken me much longer to do.  My skills are getting better!   

Cup of Cocoa

Did I mention that I got a new airbrush for Christmas?!  LOL - I have a feeling that a LOT of my cakes this year will feature airbrushing, for a couple of reasons.... 1.  I must learn to use my new (toy) tool!  2.  Because its fun to use! 

I am fortunate to have a work place that allows me to make the monthly office birthday cakes.  They purchase the supplies, I get to make whatever cake I want.  This allows me to practice different techniques and build my skills up.  Occasionally, I will get requests for cake flavors or a specific design from the birthday people.  This month's birthday girl wanted a cake with snowmen on it somewhere. 

This cake is my best fondant work to date.  Usually I have trouble with the fondant ripping, tearing, cracking  - you name it - when I try to cover a cake.  I got a new mat over the holidays, which I think played a big part in how I roll out my fondant.  Also, I was given a tip to use shortening instead of cornstarch on my fondant - cornstarch dries it out.  Amazing difference!  While it is not perfect - I feel much better about my ability to get the one piece of fondant to cover my cakes.  It's gonna be a great year for cakes! 

On this cake - lemon with raspberry filling - I experimented with the airbrush some more.  By moving in closer, I was able to get the dark blue color (the actual color in the bottle is a sky blue).  If I moved in TOO close, I got darker patches and spatter marks.  Turns out the birthday girl has a mug with those same type of markings.  LOL! 

The snowmen are fondant that I cut out with a cookie cutter and then decorated.  The snowflakes are white edible pearls adhered with a dot of buttercream.  The "whipped cream" is just buttercream applied with a 2M tip and then sprinkles added.  The chocolate is actually a round bit of chocolate fondant that I put on the top of the cake and then applied the edge of the mug to later. 

Overall - liked the cake, loved the fondant work and absolutely am in love with the airbrush! 

Starting 2011 the right way!

First cake of the new year - I am loving it!  My grandmother turned 92 this month and requested that I create a work of edible art for her.  She is a big fan of roses - has tons of them growing in her garden.  I got a new airbrush for Christmas and was dying to use it.  Hmmm.... and idea was born! 

My friend Melissa recently showed me a super easy way to make fondant roses.  Much, much easier than the way I was making them before.  Sitting down one evening, I made a ton of roses, all different sizes out of plain white 50/50.  Once they dried, I used the airbrush to color them different colors. 

Something to note about the airbrush - the fine mist goes EVERYWHERE!  I have "constructed" a painting box and that caught most of it - but after I was done, there was a fine layer of colors on the counters. 

I have a large egg carton that I saved, which makes it perfect for putting the roses in to dry.  It took about 24 hours for things to completely dry and I was then able to make "paint" out of luster dust and vodka.  I painted the edges of the rose petals to make them pop just a bit and give it a little more definition.  The white roses I experimented with and painted the entire petals with a pearlized white - it made them come out sort of satiny looking.  Very pretty! 

Constructing the cake - triple chocolate fudge with raspberry filling - crumb coating and then airbrushed the cake brown.  I wanted it to match the color of the fondant strips I made to give it a basket look in case I had any large gaps.  The fondant strips I cut and then scored with my gumpaste tool to give it a wood grain look.  Each strip was applied and I made them long enough to overlap on the top and cause a "bump".  That way when I put the roses on the cake, I had a ready made height in the center.  Roses were added, gumpaste leaves added and voila!  One very happy grandmother - and me too!  :-)