Contrast in Chocolate Cake

So I had this extra cake...........and I wasn't totally certain what to do with it........but I wanted to show another "something" that I do - and I had about 30 minutes to finish it. What to do what to do........make something chocolate to decorate the outside? Sure - why not - that is easy enough.

I iced the outside in a chocolate buttercream so it made sense that the chocolate I used for contrast on the outside would need to be white. I melted down some white chocolate chips and piped them into an odd shape - wasn't really going for anything - just something kind different and funnish.

Then I tacked them onto the ouside of the cake. Honestly......this was one of those pieces of art that you finish and go "Uhh...." and figure it is going to be sitting around your house for awhile. You walk away - you come back and it seems less weird and you are maybe a smidge more proud of it....... I took it so the Craft Show to put on my bakery table.......and dang if it wasn't the second cake out of the 5 I had to go. The person was "inspired" by the shape and contrast to share it with her family.......uh....cool.

I so don't know art I guess - even when I create it. I would have sworn the Owl cake would have been the first to go.

This cake was a White Cake on the inside - Chocolate Buttercream on the outside and White Chocolate for the Deco.

Creepy Crawling Cake

Before I did the Spider Cupcakes I had the pleasure of hosting my Bunco group for a night of fun and feasting. Since it was so close to Halloween and I wanted to test out making spider webs with chocolate I decided to make a Spider Themed cake. I started out by melting Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips and then piping a BIG spider web onto the cake plate.


After that I piped out a few different types of spider webs to see what might look most Spidery - and to get a feel for the flow of the chocolate - I learned a smaller cupcake would benefit from webs piped with a smaller tip - these webs were bigger then I wished simply because a lot of chocolate came out quickly. I also learned that letting the chocolate sit and cool a bit is smart too - makes the flow of the chocolate come out slower.

In addition to making the webs I also made a few Spider Legs..............you will see why.

Sorry - skipped a few pictures - or rather FORGOT to take a few pictures. So I had a two layer cake - iced with Vanilla Buttercream - then I piped the chocolate over the top in a spider web. The body of the spider is a cupcake cut off short and turned upside down - covered in the chocolate. Then I piped some chocolate for a head and let it all sit to set a bit.

After waiting a short time I added on the legs of the spider. I attached them by adding a small amount of chocolate at the body and at the cake. They didn't wobble at all.

Popped on two small candy pearls for the eyes and Voila! a spider was born..........er created.

Then I dropped a few webs down the side and added a couple small spiders I made after taking the earlier picture of the webs......and a few spider webs........and it was done!!

The cake was Pumpkin Spice and the Icing was a Cinnamon Buttercream......yum!!

Spider Cupcakes

Happy Halloween!! Or since this year Halloween seems to be a 3 day event - Happy Halloweekend!! Today is the day for Class parties and parades - usually I sign up for the classroom main treat and bring something fun, but I was beat to the sign up sheet. So while I was wandering the halls one day I heard on the wind that there was a class without parent helpers and I immediately offered up my cupcake baking abilities........and it was agreed - I could provide the main treat - yea!!


So I started with a cupcake - topped it with some Chocolate Buttercream and created small spider webs for each one. The spider webs are made of melted White Chocolate Chips - then piped onto parchment paper in the shape of a web. I just used my imagination. After about 5 of them they started to look more like snowflakes and I freaked a bit - but no, they are spider webs - however a Christmas idea was born...........

After creating a home for a spider I tinted some of the Chocolate Buttercream black - and made a spider for each cake. Easily done - quick - and complimented the "idea" very nicely. Creeped my 4 year old out enough that he thought for a moment they were real..........and then realizing they weren't asked for one!!

This cake was Chocolate Chocolate Chip with a Chocolate Buttercream icing - White Chocolate was used for the spider webs.

Hope you have a Super Fun Halloweekend!!

Birds of a Feather - Part III - Celebrating Adoption

After making the nest and the birds - waiting a few days so everything would be nice and fresh......it was time to bake the layers of the cake. I didn't take too many pictures of that. The bottom layer was my favorite - Carrot Cake - the middle was a from scratch Strawberry Cake (I get to learn new things from others choices) - and the top layer was a Coconut Cake (another newbie to me). All done in two cakes to give a little extra height. And yes.........I warned them they would have enough cake to feed all of the community.

Iced........the Carrot got Cream Cheese (of course) - the Strawberry received a Buttercream coating (which I whipped and it made the icing all crunchy.....won't be doing that for decorating under fondant again - makes the fondant bumpy) - the Coconut received a Cream Cheese with some Vanilla & Almond flavoring in them........yummy.

Then came the fondant. Practice Makes Perfect.......Practice Makes Perfect..........Practice Makes Perfect.......Rolling fondant out is super easy (in a building your bodies upper strength kinda way).......but not having the right tools makes the event super challenging because even if you get it all right on the counter - you still have to pick it up and put it on the cake.

The other day I hit this blog site about cakes - a supposed novice like myself doing cakes for fun and documenting them. Her cakes looked FABULOUS and were titled "My first fondant cake" - PERFECT - "My second fondant cake" - MORE PERFECT - "My third fondant cake" - FREAKING AMAZING......in my head - "well if she can do that me too!!"

While it certainly looks like I have that all under control.......this is where photography can create an illusion and where I began to wonder if the person on the Internet claiming to be so fabulous the first go round was telling the truth - because looks can be deceiving......

Flip my cake around and this is what you see..............AHHHH!!!! Sure it rolled out great - in theory all you have to do is roll it onto the rolling pin and you will be golden.........Sure......"My first fondant cake" (not really mine....just channeling the cake site hit).

This is where having children is helpful for me. After crying out loud - like seriously finally breaking down and crying (for about 15 seconds) and having my children stand in shock watching.........I picked myself up - looked them in the eye and said, "There is always a way to make things better." and then something along the lines of, "Never be a quitter."

Then I started to get creative. The other day I also watched a video on YouTube about making fondant bows. While I had never tried to do this before I figured.......it can't get worse right? Did the bow fix the problem? No not really -but it was a good start and I did still have all that beautifully colored fondant left to find a way to decorate the cake with.

Color on a blank pallate can change everything..........and distract the eye. So the night prior to the final fondant I had spent some time making different types of flower and things to place on the cake. Remember the only real design element that was asked for was color - nothing about how to get it into the design - just that it existed in the final product. These colors all matched the Bird Family.

As I began putting the flowers and leaves onto the cake and around the areas of the un-sightly fondant - I began to notice that I no longer really noticed the gaping fondant mistakes that were part of the cake.

I also began to realize why so many fondant cakes have either a real ribbon around the base of the cake - or they have a fondant strip in a color that is made to LOOK like a ribbon at the base of each tier. Things are becoming clearer to me. Those perfect cakes may be more of an illusion - and it may be why so many of the photos are not taken as "up close" as my photos are. Smart bakers.

Still all the added color and the bows did take care of the truly tear inducing look of my fondant covering. At this point in the decorating I was feeling like announcing - with happiness - "My first fondant cake - I am AWESOME!"

and there was one side of the cake that DID look close to perfect - it was the BACK SIDE - where I was able to leave just a few flowers so that all the eyes were pulled forward into the camouflaged area.

Personally I quite like the back.

The nest and the cake.......notice the nest is darker now? Yes, as I said earlier - once the cake was covered I noticed that the white fondant and the light tannish color of the original birds nest really kinda washed out compared to the colorful flowers and the colorful bird family. So a quick fix was in order for the families nest. Darker worked much better.

The Final Cake. I was so happy to have this done and looking really really cute. Yea Me!!

Even more so - Yea the Family that has built a Nest so loving that they could add 5 children to is in less then 1 year. Our family is very proud to have them as our friends and we were so happy to be part of their special day.

Birds of a Feather - Part I

A few weeks ago I was offered the chance to make a SUPER COOL cake!! Some friends of our grew their family from 1 daughter who was 3 years old - to - 5 daughters who are all under the age of 4 (two 4 year olds - one 2 year old - two 1 year olds) all in less then a year.....but it has been about 2 years that they have all been together. The occassion they were celebrating? The finalization of the adoption for two of their daughters. Two are bio theirs and the final daughter is the sibling to the two becoming legally theirs. So it really was a wonderfully special occassion!!

The mom of this brood asked me if I ever do cakes for others.......do I ever do cakes for others?? Only when they ask!! And so it was that our family got to gift their family a tremendously important cake.

What to do - how to do it - what could be special enough to convey the day? The family asked for VERY BRIGHT girlie colors. After that I was told "do whatever you want" - but there was a hint that a tiered cake would be fun.

So my first picture is the stacking.....how big and how much........


The bowl on the top was for me to figure out how big to make my "special element". Since I was given full creative license I thought it would be fun to make a birds nest and have the ENTIRE family represented in a nest together at the top of the cake. So I needed to make a nest.

Making the nest I began by lining a bowl (as seen on top of the stack) with plastic.

Next I took some white melting chocolates and well.......melted them.........this time in the microwaved.


After they were melted I stirred them up until they were smooth. Then I took another step not shown and added a small bit of brown dye in the chocolate to make it more resemble the color of a birds nest.

Put all the chocolate into an icing bag with a medium sized tip and began to put the chocolate into the bowl - going back and forth making a random pattern - to of course look similar to a nest.

Once this was done I let it sit and harden. Tah Dah...........I don't have a final picture of the nest until later in the cake. The nest on the cake though is a darker brown - in the end I felt like this mild brown color was not holding its own against the bold colors of the birds and we ate this one.

Still - it was fun working to figure this out. And even more fun to see how excited the kids were about the final product.

Han Solo Would be Happy

This was a fun cake. I even did a good deal of picture taking correctly. A good friend asked me to do this cake. It was after much consideration though because she had hoped to do both Star Wars cookies and a Millennium Falcon cake for her sons party. Only she had never really worked her way into creating cakes or baking much yet. So in the end - and after I asked/begged to do the cake - she asked me to do the cake and she went forward with her plans for the cookies.

As you can see we started with a 1/4 sheet cake and a rounded cake. The rounded cake was done by baking inside of my medium size glass mixing bowl. Much easier then trying to carve a round shape.

Once the stacking was done I carved out the shape of the ship. Yes there was a lot of waste in thrown away cake - but better that cake hit the trash can then that it hit my families tummy every time a cake is carved - otherwise there would be a lot more Waist in my family (get it? Waste/Waist - it's early the jokes are lame). Still I was happy with the initial shape.

Having a life size replica of the ship - we have a toy Millennium Falcon the kids received a few years back with chunky Star Wars figures - very cute - anyway, the replica of the ship (not pictured) was helpful to look at. I used it to figure out where to carve in some indentations.

You can also see that I attached a cupcake as the cockpit on the side. Remember Luke in there shooting at the rebel fighters?

Finally it was time for the crumb coat - or dirty icing as Ben likes to term it (he watches a lot of Cake Boss). This was a task with this cake because there were so many crumbs due to almost every edge and surface being cut on that the crumbs made it really hard to get an even somewhat smooth surface.

But I moved forward. Created some of the indentations again over the cuts to make sure that when the final icing was placed it would not look too chunky.

And I walked away to let it dry. Sometimes walking away for a bit can make a mess look more reasonable when you return. I do this with any craft type project I have that becomes wonky in my head. Of course - the icing also had to set. If I had added the final icing over this it would have just mixed into the wet crumb coat icing.

Now honestly, when I first came back my head wasn't cleared up. The thing looked like a really badly formed soccer ball to me. Lucky for me I say things to my kids like "don't give up" - "keep moving toward the goal" - "never look backward only forward" - "you can do it" - "I believe in you". They all came by and said - "wow cool" and when they noticed my frustration they used my words to encourage me. And with that I moved foward.

Another fun thing about this cake. It was one of the first few times that I used chocolate as a decorating component in the cake. See the satellite dish thing? That is made from white chocolate chips that I melted and dyed the color of the icing. Using a small ramakin I covered with plastic wrap I smoothed some melted chocolate inside the dish - vaguely shaped it to look like a satellite and let it sit to dry. When I popped it out it was really cool. Maybe not perfect looking - but it worked perfect and it gives me hope to try stuff like that again on future cakes!

At the end of the project my kids and hubby were all cheering how great the cake looked. I have to admit - at the time it still seemed a bit wonky - but after walking away and coming back I even had to agree that it was very cool. I am my own worst critique and I had to pat myself on the back for completing this. The Birthday Boy - he loved it!! What a cool present to gift!

This cake was obviously Chocolate - no chips because it is impossible to carve a tiny chocolate chip. Vanilla Buttercream icing was the rest.