Rock Band KISS Cupcakes

I can barely believe I made these! I do not like the band KISS. I would never listen to their music. But my daughter is a different story. She got her father's taste in music. Sigh. I gotta say though - I had fun with this birthday cake idea. She got several KISS albums for her birthday so they helped me with the designs. I copied the word "KISS" and designed the make-up for the cupcakes onto paper, using the albums. I cut out the paper patterns with a small scissors and then I cut them out of thinly rolled fondant with a small knife. I did not even try to make eyes as I can never do realistic eyes in any medium. The whole family LOVED the KISS figures and the cupcakes were delicious!

These were chocolate cupcakes, covered in chocolate fudge icing. All the decorations are fondant. To make the 12 cupcakes, I divided the chocolate cake recipe in half and added 2 Tbsp. applesauce. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary cakes

Tomorrow is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  (It falls on the Friday following the Second Sunday after Pentecost). Saturday will be the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I was asked to make a cake that would celebrate these two events for tomorrow so here it is:

If you, like I, was wondering what these feasts are about, check here for Sacred Heart of Jesus and here for Immaculate Heart of Mary. It all boils down to love. Lots of love! The cakes are just heart shaped cakes on a base of two 9" square cakes. Chocolate cakes, buttercream icing. Orange peels for flames and the cross and sword are cardboard wrapped in tape.

Canadiens fooler cake

My son wanted a cake that would look like a puck with the Montreal Canadiens symbol on it. Only, since his name is Adam, he wanted an "A" instead of an "H" in the middle. Here's how it turned out:

The cake is a chocolate, two layer cake. All the icing and the filling is buttercream except the "C", which is rolled fondant. I had extra icing so I did the fancy 3-layer deep shell border, but I don't think Adam even noticed it!

A Flower Garden Cake

This could have been a Welcome Spring cake, or an Easter cake, but at our house it was a birthday cake for a four year old girl! She loved it.

It was a chocolate cake underneath, with a buttercream filling. Pretty standard stuff. Melody helped me make the 4 bugs on the cake and we had great fun doing it! Fondant and gum paste are just as much fun as play dough.

This is just a closer look at the details. The smiles on the bugs are an exact match of my pinky fingernail!

Cake from my "Beginner Cake Decorating" course

I just finished giving the course "Beginner Cake Decorating" to 4 lovely ladies. It ran Tuesday evenings from 7-9 at the local junior school for 3 weeks. This is the cake I made to demonstrate the star tip, the drop flower tip, the leaf tip, the writing tip and the techniques to torte and cover a cake in buttercream icing.

The orange flowers around the sides of the cake were made with Royal Icing. Everything else was buttercream icing. It was a chocolate cake.

Tomorrow I will show you what cute thing I made with the leftover icing!

On the final night of the course, there were only 2 students that showed up. Here is the cake made by the first one:

And here is the cake made by the other lady:

I'm proud of my students. I think they did a great job. Like this cake says, Happy Day.



Hockey Jersey Cake

For all you hockey lovers out there, this is a cake for you! I made it for my Canadiens-lover, who turned eight.

It was easier than I thought it would be. I cut a 9x13" cake into pieces. (Well, actually I did that twice, to make a 2 layer cake.)

The body of the shirt is a rectangle roughly 8x9" and the sleeves are what's left over, cut diagonally through the middle and attached to the sides of the shirt. I angled the top of the shirt to be the shoulders and used a small scrap cut off when I levelled the cake to make the neckline. I stuck it all together and crumb coated it with chocolate fudge icing.  Then I covered it in a single large piece of red fondant. I used my ribbon cutter to cut stripes in blue and white and laid them on.

I figured out this technique of rolling the stripes onto my rolling pin, which allowed me to lay them out on the shirt without them stretching like crazy. The rolling pin really helped the process go smoothly.

I used a knife to cut the number and letters. I even "stitched" some of the seams for the shirt with a small knife. It was lots of fun to make!

I had Adam's actual hockey jersey to go by. I was surprised how similar in size the cake turned out. My husband wants the same cake for his birthday!

Happy Canada Day!

Sorry, I'm a little late, but Happy Canada Day! I celebrated with a big bash and this awesome cake!

I actually made it to celebrate my mom and dad's 40th wedding anniversary. It was a labour of love. Each rose took about an hour to make. The three cakes took about 4 hours to bake. Then the buttercream, fondant and decorations took about 8 hours to do! The small cake was a white cake with a lemon curd filling. The medium cake was a carrot cake with a cream cheese icing filling and the large cake was chocolate with chocolate fudge filling. They were all so good. Only 5 pieces of cake were left at the end of the day. We shared it among the 43 of us.

Simple Lego Birthday Cake

This was Jonas's birthday cake today. How simple - a 9 x 13" single layer chocolate cake, decorated in white buttercream icing and piped dots as a border. Place a few key Lego figures on and it was done!

He's into the Lego police and robbers these days so that's what he wanted on his cake. It was fun and so simple!

We had the party and I did make the communion cheesecake. I'll show you that one tomorrow.

Two layer Chocolate Birthday Cake

Here's the resulting two-layer Chocolate Birthday cake with Orange buttercream filling:

close-up of the chocolate icing before the banner went on.

It was awesome! Everything about it was delicious! Melody thought it was great. I loved the orange flavor in the filling and the new chocolate cake recipe was lighter than my old recipe. When I make this recipe again, I will put some of the chocolate chips deeper into the batter. I really liked the contrast of the white filling against the brown cake. Very nice.

It was a simple cake to decorate, since Melody wanted "just chocolate icing". I just spread it on roughly and poked in the fondant flowers I made a while ago and added a fondant banner that I piped with piping gel. I liked this cake. It had more cocoa than my other cake and tasted more chocolate-y. I certainly recommend it! Enjoy!

Rich Chocolate Cake with Buttercream Filling

This is actually part one of the birthday cake for my soon to be 3 year old. The original recipe calls for peanut butter and milk chocolate morsels and a creamy peanut butter milk chocolate frosting.

 But, I followed my plan from yesterday and made it with chocolate chips instead. I had to trim the tops flat and that is where most of the chips were, sadly. Here's the recipe:

Rich Chocolate Cake
2 cups all purpose flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
2/3 cups cocoa
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
1 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2/3 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9" round cake pans.
Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixer bowl. Add milk, water, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Blend until moistened. Beat for 2 minutes (batter will be thin). Pour into prepared pans. Sprinkle 1/3 cup chips over each cake layer.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

I did all that, and then I trimmed the tops flat (where most of the chips were, but I'll save those for later).

Then I filled it with orange flavored buttercream icing.

I'll show you how I finished it and decorated it tomorrow! I will also tell you how wonderfully delicious it was, I hope!

The chocolate cake dilemma

After the monumental chocolate cake from the last birthday that lasted me about 7 servings, I decided I don't want chocolate cake again for a while. I still love chocolate, but thought it might be time for a change.

Now here's April, and the youngest makes a request for her cake: "I want chocolate cake with chocolate icing and flowers coming out of it like Kimberly's." She's turning 3. How can I say, "no"? Therein lies the dilemma.

So, I started looking for a different chocolate cake recipe that might be a bit lighter. I compared at least 6 recipes. Tomorrow I shall bake one that is called "Rich Chocolate Cake with Creamy Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Frosting". Sounds devine. Although, I plan to make it with Orange flavored butter cream filling and frost it with my usual chocolate fudge icing. There is a lot more liquid in this recipe than my usual chocolate cake recipe. There is also some baking powder. We'll see if it leads to a lighter cake.

Two Tier, Two Layer Chocolate Birthday Cake, part 3

Remember me? The two tier, two layer Chocolate Birthday cake? Of course you do. I've been eager to get back to this one and finish it. Today was the day! I had a lot of fun! Every step of this cake was an "I love you" to my daughter.

When I last showed you this cake, the four pieces were still separate and the filling was made. I filled them that day and they've been tightly wrapped in the freezer until today. I made up a batch of buttercream to, as the Cake Boss would say "dirty ice them."

Here is what they looked like after being "dirty iced". The smaller one is directly on a tinfoil covered cardboard that is just its size. I set it on a cookie tin so I could pick it up without mussing the icing. I stuck it to the cardboard with a small blob of piping gel. I wanted to make sure my top layer doesn't squish my bottom layer, so I inserted 5 separators (I cut 2 bamboo skewers to size and pushed them in.)

This was just to show you... then I pushed the spacers in all the way. The dents around the top were made by a plate the size of the smaller cake, so I could be sure the picks would be within the edges of the upper cake.

Next, I used my handy dandy Wilton's Easy Roll mat and rolled the green to size for the smaller cake. Love the round markings - you can get the fondant the perfect size the first time! Then you just invert the whole thing over the cake and smooth it down. This hunk of fondant was, I realized too late, a little small for my cake and I had to do some stretching, which left it a bit bumpy around the edges, but I will cover that with the decorations. I did the pink the same way and then carefully set the green cake on the pink one. So far, so good. 

Funny, I didn't mean to leave anything but the cake in this picture, but it is a clear picture of what tools are essential to the process: offset spatula (on the left) to smooth buttercream and fillings (I LOVE that tool!), white smoothing tool, to ensure a smooth fondant layer, the shortening wrapper - use a dab of shortening to prevent sticking to the fondant and finally, a pizza cutter - to trim the fondant nice and neat around the bottom of the cake.

"Hey, it's starting to come together", I thought, as I added all those bowling pins and balls. I stuck those on with a bit of piping gel. The black details are tinted piping gel. I rolled the green and pink fondant in the ziplocks into long strands. Using the circle markings on the mat, I made them long enough to fit around the larger of the two cakes. Then I cut them into bits with the pizza cutter (but not on my precious mat!) All the bits were the same size so I could make them into even little balls to trim the cake. Remember how "every step of this cake was an 'I love you' to my daughter"? Well, let me tell you, there were a lot of "I love you's" when it came to rolling the 92 balls I made and applied to the cake! 

And there you have it! Took all afternoon and into making supper time, but it was fun and it looks just like I wanted it to. I take no credit for the idea, by the way, it was on the internet at CakeCentral.com, but the execution was all me!

Happy Daisy Cake

Today I went to work, baking up a storm. After making a dozen oatmeal chocolate chip muffins, a dozen and a half apple oatmeal muffins and two and a half dozen blueberry bran muffins I realized I had nothing new to show you! So, I looked through my old pictures again and found the birthday cake I made last March. I'll call it my "Happy Daisy Cake".

It was a chocolate cake (do you see a trend yet?), with chocolate fudge filling. I covered it in butter cream icing and a layer of yellow fondant. I made this cake as the final cake in my Wilton's fondant and gum paste flower making class, which is where I easily learned how to make the daisies and the leaves and the swags. They were all made from fondant/gum paste mix. My daughter loved her cake! I have a tool to cut the ribbon, but a pizza cutter does the job in a pinch!

Tomorrow I'm going away to an un-wired house for a few days so I'll see you when I get back!

Two Tier, Two Layer Chocolate Birthday Cake, part 2

Today's Thursday! I was supposed to present the big, beautiful cake, right? Well, we all got sick, sick, sick. So I canceled the party for this week and we'll see what next week will bring. I will finish the cake still. It is in the freezer. I did feel well enough to finish the decorations for it. Here they are

I feel sad that I couldn't even present my little girl with her cake on her birthday, but we are too sick to eat it today anyway. I'm also sorry to any loyal readers out there that there was no post yesterday - I had nothing to tell you other than I was laying down sick all day. I'm feeling much better now and tomorrow is shaping up to be a normal Friday! See you then!

Chocolate Fudge Icing

This is the only recipe I use to fill a chocolate cake! It also came from the NESTLE cookbook from a friend. It is so chocolatey and almost like fudge. Delicious! The original recipe is called "Creamy Brownie Frosting" and is intended to make 1 cup of frosting, to cover, you guessed it, brownies!

I've increased the recipe and used it on brownies, between 2 sandwich cookies, between layers of cake or to ice cupcakes. (Of course, I also snitch bits of it plain when no-one is looking!) Here's my variations of the recipes and what I've done with it:

Creamy Brownie Frosting

3 Tbsp.          1/2 cup   3/4 cup   butter, softened

3 Tbsp.          1/2 cup   3/4 cup   Hershey's Cocoa powder

1 Tbsp.    2 1/2 Tbsp.   1/4 cup   light corn syrup or honey

1/2 tsp.       1/2 Tbsp.       2 tsp.   vanilla

1 cup               3 cups     4 cups   sifted icing sugar

1-2 Tbsp.   3-6 Tbsp. 4-8 Tbsp.  milk

In a small or medium mixer bowl, beat butter, cocoa, corn syrup and vanilla until well blended. Add powdered (icing) sugar and milk; beat to spreading consistency. (Helen's note: only add the milk one Tablespoon at a time so the icing doesn't become too thin.)

The black recipe covered a 9 x 13 pan of brownies nicely.

The blue recipe filled a 9" round cake with a pleasing layer.

The red recipe was enough to fill and cover an 8" two layer cake.

In the photo, I used double the blue recipe to make too much to fill my 6" and 9" layer cakes for the birthday cake I'm working on. There was a 1/2 cup left over, to my family's delight!

Enjoy frosting your everything! It doesn't get much better than this!

Chocolate Cake Recipe

I promised I'd post the cake recipe, so that's why there's 2 posts today. I got this one from a NESTLE cookbook that a friend copied for me. Here is the standard recipe meant for two 9" round pans:

Chocolate Cake
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 cup water
1/3 cup NESTLE Cocoa
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans.

In large mixer bowl, beat sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add flour, water, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Beat until blended and smooth. Pour into prepared pans.

Bake 28 to 33 minutes or until wooden toothpick inserted into centers comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes; remove from pans. Cool completely on wire racks. Fill and frost with favorite frosting. Makes 10-12 servings.

(My daughter requested I add chocolate chips to the filling, but I decided to add them to the cake instead. It worked out very well. I tasted the tops of the cake when I levelled it. Yummy!)

Two Tier, Two Layer Chocolate Birthday Cake, part 1

So, I found about 200 ideas that I looked at on the web last night. In the process, I learned that a 9 x 13 cake has been done SOOOO many times, that it is boring. I also learned that MMF is MarshMallow Fondant. Now you know. I already like fondant, and am willing to try new, cheaper things, so when I am out of fondant, I will make some MMF. Back to my cake story - I liked one that had two round tiers. So I doubled my usual chocolate cake recipe that fills two 9" round pans and filled two 8" and two 9" pans. I am out of time tonight, so I'll give you the recipe tomorrow.

While these cooled, I made a chocolate fudge icing to be a thick surprise between the layers.

Then I levelled the cakes. I used a long, serrated edged knife as seen here and just "sawed" off the tops. I saved those tops for week-day dessert. I looked at the cuts from eye level to see if they looked level. I trimmed a bit and then filled the layers and stacked them. I cut down the 8" cake to give it straight sides and make it a more noticeably different size of 6 1/2".

The party is on Thursday so I covered the two tiers separately and froze them. Earlier today, I cut out 17 three inch high bowling pin shapes from a mix of white fondant and gum paste. That was fun. They will go around the cake. Stay tuned.